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Tom Sutcliffe

Adrian Wooldridge

Tristram Hunt

Anjan Sundaram

Charu Lata Hogg

Katy Hickman

Start the Week: What Is the State For?

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09/06/2014

What Is the State For?

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, What Is the State For?

Tom Sutcliffe with Adrian Wooldridge, Tristram Hunt, Anjan Sundaram and Charu Lata Hogg.

Tom Sutcliffe discusses the nation state with Adrian Wooldridge, Tristram Hunt, Anjan Sundaram and Charu Lata Hogg.

Tom Sutcliffe discusses whether Western states have anything to learn from countries like China and Singapore. Adrian Wooldridge argues that many governments have become bloated and there's a global race to reinvent the state. In the past Britain was at the forefront of exporting ideas on how to run a country, as the Labour MP Tristram Hunt explains in his book on the legacy of empire. Charu Lata Hogg from Chatham House looks at the challenges to democracy in Thailand where the country is in political turmoil, and the journalist Anjan Sundaram spent a year in The Congo during the violent 2006 elections, and looks at day-to-day life in a failing state.
Producer: Katy Hickman.

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