Are the processes commonly described as globalization presenting us with a borderless future? Are borders, the limits of state authority, traditionally the instrument by which states and nations define themselves, changing beyond recognition at the threshold of the twenty-first century? Are borders, in the classical sense of the age of the nationstate, being abolished, as part of the erosion of the nation-state itself? Are they withering, or are they undergoing functional change? Are there regional differences between the developments in Europe (EU), America (NAFTA), Asia, and Africa?

A full answer to such very practical questions would perhaps benefit from a grounding in a "general theory of boundaries" conceived as an integral part of the "general theory of systems" (Strassoldo 1976–77, 1979, 1982). States and nations are just a genus of social (societal) systems, and it can be argued that social systems are just a specific kind of...