Internationally renowned scholars, including Zygmunt Bauman, Saskia Sassen, Loic Wacquant and Craig Calhoun, come together in this exciting new collection to debate the 'state of the state' in an age of globalization. The 'crisis' of the nation state has been widely debated, but this collection argues that so far this debate has failed to understand the complexities of the impact of a globalized world system. Arguing for the continued relevance of the state as the key politico-juridical institution, this book shows how, rather than being an irrelevance or redundant, it has undergone a period of transformation from 'welfare' state to 'penal' state. In other words, the state should be understood as a 'social hypochondriac', increasingly occupied with monitoring and control, and placing high emphasis on its juridical apparatus of surveillance, secured borders and penality in order to reconfigure its position and status: globalization offers opportunities, as well as challenges, for the state to re-imagine and recreate itself. Focusing on key themes including global financial markets, migration, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, terrorism, Europeanization and populism, this important collection will shed fresh light on debates surrounding globalization and the state.