The world system would be expected to create organizations combining and superseding the nation states in several ways. This is to be accomplished by the creation of regions of metropolitan districts and functional association governments, concurrently with the revision of the world government. The national state must shed its concept of sovereignty, give over some of its critical activities to these other governmental forms, and submit to cosmarchic planning. It should remain and be an ethnic or (for the most modern and cosmopolitan peoples) cultural community.
The state today is often a procrustean bed on which ethnic and cultural minorities are cut or stretched to fit the imperial demands of the ruling ethnic group, as in Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, Nigeria, India, Serbia, Croatia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and, formerly, Pakistan. The continual harassment and suppression of component cultures will cease when the ethnic state is reassured concerning the unity of its economic areas and its safety from external foes. Thus, the principle of ethnic self-determination can be more realistically and sympathetically applied under the conditions of a world order than it can under the sovereign state system of today.