The (Im)possible Return of the State to the Forefront in the Face of a Global Catastrophe

Abstract

The global emergence of the pandemic has unleashed a series of crises in different areas. The state seems thus to have recovered a new centrality with responses to not only the most immediate challenges as pertains health, security, economic and social spheres within a context of crisis of neoliberal globalization and of geopolitical competition between old and new great powers; but also with responses to the worsening of climate change and the re-appreciation of the public and common domains. Different possible scenarios can appear “the day after”: either business as usual or the neo-social-democratic recipe, or a bottom-up alternative that may arise from social movements aspiring to achieve another possible world. Beyond these speculations, in this new era the coexistence with future insecurities will be normal.