Quebec Confronts Globalization: A Model for the Future‪?‬

There are roughly 190 nation-states in the world today, with two dozen being formal federations dividing authority between their national governments and approximately 350 major subnational governments such as Canadian provinces, American, Australian, and Mexican states, German Lander, and Swiss cantons. In an era of globalization, Quebec is the most active player internationally among all of these subnational units. This article will examine the breath and efficacy of Quebec's international programs and offer an assessment of the "Quebec" model that may be useful to other subnational governments as they encounter rising globalization and rapid technological change. In the "global" economy which dates from the late 1980s, the scale of technological innovation and implementation has driven the limits of markets well beyond those of nation-states, and electronically integrated networks are gradually replacing traditional modes of organizations as the pivotal players in international economic transactions. Unprecedented technological change, combined with the emergence of 60,000 transnational corporations with 500,000 affiliates, has resulted in a world where national borders remain very important but are no longer the totally dominant unit of economic accounting.(1) As Thomas Friedman asserts, globalization "is the overarching international system shaping the domestic politics and foreign relations of virtually every country, and we need to understand it as such" (Friedman 7).