Digital, privacy, intellectual property: the state form facing new challenges

For several years now, the state has been at the center of two seemingly contradictory trends. On the one hand, many argue that it is recessive, because many functions that it previously performed have been transferred to intergovernmental organizations established on a global (such as the WTO) or regional (such as the EU) basis and in the digital age they matter more and more companies capable of reaching billions of people, such as Facebook and Google. On the other hand, like Lorenzo Casini noted in his agile little volume, “Lo Stato (im)mortale” (Mondadori, 156 pp., 14 euros) the state remains the political community par excellence: not surprisingly, there are still numerous social groups today – in some cases, peoples, such as the Palestinians – who claim their own state. Furthermore, it is the state apparatuses that we turn to in the most acute crises, such as the recent pandemic. Regional and global organizations also need it to enforce their decisions. Not even the multinational companies of the digital age can ignore itas we saw when Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before the US Senate.