By Arnold Roquerre
City-States Never Left
The modern world continues to describe itself politically through the language of nation-states. Yet in practice, many contemporary societies increasingly resemble older civilizational forms in which a dominant metropolis functions as the true center of power. London, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, Paris, and Singapore are not merely capitals within larger political entities; they operate as metropolitan command systems whose concentration of finance, administration, elite networks, media influence, technological coordination, and cultural legitimacy gives them a role closer to that of historical city-states than ordinary cities. The surrounding territory may be legally sovereign, electorally represented, and geographically expansive, but the decisive organs of national life are concentrated within the metropolis. In this sense, the twenty-first century is not the triumph of the nation-state because city-states never left. The nation- state is just an additional political construct.
This thesis is not entirely without intellectual precedent. Urban theorist Jane Jacobs argued in Cities and the Wealth of Nations that cities—not nations—are the real engines of economic life. Jacobs contended that economic dynamism emerges primarily from urban systems capable of innovation, trade specialization, and “import replacement,” rather than from abstract national economies. Her work challenged the assumption that the nation-state is the natural unit of economic analysis and instead treated cities as the authentic generators of wealth and historical development. Later scholars extended similar ideas into globalization theory. Sociologist Saskia Sassen, in The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, described certain metropolises as “command centers” of the global economy, concentrating financial services, legal authority, information networks, and strategic corporate control. Her analysis implied that global capitalism increasingly flows through interconnected urban nodes rather than through territorially bounded nation-states.
The argument becomes especially compelling in the case of London. Britain formally consists of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, each possessing distinct histories and varying degrees of institutional autonomy. Yet the overwhelming concentration of finance, political administration, diplomatic power, media influence, legal authority, and elite coordination in London creates a structure in which the wider United Kingdom often appears organized around a single metropolitan core. London is not simply the capital of Britain; it functions as the operational brain of the British system. The analogy to Rome is therefore not merely rhetorical. When Rome declined, the provinces survived geographically, culturally, and economically in altered forms, but the integrative imperial structure dissolved because the metropolitan center had ceased to function. Likewise, one could argue that if London were somehow removed from Britain, the territorial state might endure formally, but the coherence of Britain as a unified global power would be profoundly destabilized.
The same logic applies, though in varying degrees, to Tokyo, Taipei, and Seoul. Tokyo concentrates the political, financial, media, bureaucratic, and corporate life of Japan to an extraordinary degree. Taipei serves as the military, administrative, diplomatic, and technological command center of Taiwan. Seoul may be one of the strongest examples of all: the Seoul Capital Area contains an enormous share of South Korea’s population, corporate power, higher education, and political coordination. These cities increasingly resemble sovereign metropolitan organisms surrounded by dependent hinterlands, even if constitutional theory continues to describe them merely as municipalities within nation-states.
By contrast, the United States resists this model because power is structurally decentralized. Washington controls federal governance, New York dominates finance, Silicon Valley shapes technological innovation, Los Angeles influences entertainment and culture, Texas anchors major energy and industrial sectors, and multiple regional centers maintain independent economic gravity. No single American metropolis monopolizes national command in the manner of London or Seoul. China similarly disperses functional power across Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, preventing the emergence of one uncontested metropolitan sovereign.
Singapore stands apart because it is the clearest literal realization of the model: a true sovereign city-state in which city, economy, military, and state are fused into one entity. Yet Singapore may also foreshadow a broader global trajectory. Political theorist Parag Khanna has argued that globalization and infrastructure networks are shifting influence away from territorial states and toward globally connected metropolitan systems. In this view, megacities increasingly operate as the primary nodes of economic and political organization, while nation-states become secondary administrative shells surrounding them.
The deeper implication is civilizational. The nation-state may prove to have been a historically temporary arrangement dominant mainly between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Before that era, many of humanity’s most influential political systems—from Athens and Venice to Constantinople and Rome—were fundamentally city-centered civilizations. Today’s “global cities” may represent the re-emergence of that older pattern under technological and financial modernity. London, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, Paris, and similar metropolises are therefore not simply large urban centers. They are increasingly plausible candidates for a revived form of metropolitan sovereignty: the modern city-state concealed within the shell of the nation-state.
Suggested Scholarly References
- Cities and the Wealth of Nations — Jane Jacobs (1984).
- The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo — Saskia Sassen (1991).
- Connectography — Parag Khanna (2016).
- “Global cities: A multi-disciplinary review and research agenda,” Journal of International Management (2021).