This article develops five scenarios of how human society could be politically organized in 300 years, after nation‐states have dissolved and nationalism as their foundational ideology has dissipated. The scenarios are based on sociological theories on how functional integration and differentiation shape the evolution of modern societies. All scenarios therefore assume that the basic characteristics of modernity will persist and explore only a small area of the theoretically infinite space of long‐term futures. Also for the sake of manageability, the author envisions only one technological and economic basis for future political developments, which in turn will be constrained by the need to fulfil three basic functions: to provide public goods, collective defence and a political decision‐making mechanism. The five scenarios differ, however, in whether these functions are assumed by states, how large these will be and whether their boundaries align with cultural difference. The author thus arrives at an anarchic scenario without any states, a scenario with a thousand or more mini‐states based on shared cultural identities, an imperial scenario with a few states each claiming to represent an entire civilization, a world with culturally heterogenous and highly efficient Continental states and finally a world state.

中文翻译：

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没有民族国家的世界：长期来看的五个场景

本文提出了五种情景，说明在民族国家解散，民族主义因其基本意识形态消失之后，人类社会在300年内如何在政治上进行组织。这些场景基于社会学理论，即功能整合和差异如何影响现代社会的发展。因此，所有情况都假设现代性的基本特征将持续存在，并且仅探索理论上无限的长期期货领域的一小部分。同样出于可管理性考虑，作者仅设想了未来政治发展的一个技术和经济基础，而这反过来又受到了以下三个基本功能的需求的限制：提供公共物品，集体防卫和政治决策机制。这五个方案不同，但是，这些功能是否由国家承担，这些功能将有多大以及它们的边界是否与文化差异保持一致。因此，作者得出一个无政府状态的无政府状态，一个基于共享文化身份的千个或多个微型国家的状态，一个帝国状态，有几个国家声称自己代表了整个文明，一个世界在文化上异质而高度高效的大陆州，最后是世界州。