Focusing on strengthening the governance of a nation state is dealing with the world as it is. We know that globalisation is going on all around us, and we read books and articles and go to conferences about it. There are people out there protesting and trying to stop globalisation and the march of the multinational corporations. Sometimes they have a point, and sometimes they have a less strong point. In part, it is due to the success of the technological breakthroughs of recent times, increased mobility and the telecommunications revolution.
Globalisation is here to stay.
There are those who are trying to stop it, but others argue that it contains the answers to every problem faced by humankind. There are globalisation junkies who say that we should be thinking about global governance and allowing multilateral organisations to tackle the issues globally. That is not yet the real world. Perhaps one day we will move towards global governance, although I have profound doubts about that. It does not seem to strike a chord with the reality of human nature, but there are those who think that that is the way to solve the problems confronting us, and there is an increasing fashion in international development to think along those lines.