Aufgabenwandel ändert Staatsstrukturen

Government tasks are changing. It is time to deliberate on essential public tasks once again. Some responsibilities are new, while some are well-known but capturing new content. The latter – established responsibilities – are maintaining technical infrastructures, such as rails, roads and waterways, stabilizing public finances through debt reduction, revitalizing a heavily underfinanced German army and ensuring that the national economy is not dependent on foreign, stateowned resources such as gas and oil. The former – new responsibilities – mostly emerge when situations of emergency arise. The battle against climate change and the necessity of data protection are, meanwhile, commonly accepted as some of our greatest and most urgent government duties. They are, however, not the only new tasks. States have developed a tendency to privatize essential infrastructures, such as social media and the internet, with Iittle regard for them working well. There must be a public guarantee for their functioning or, alternatively, they must be state-run. The changing nature of public tasks modifies public organization too. Some duties must be fulfilled on a global or a supranational level in the future, such as climate protection. Such responsibilities will no longer be national duties but, rather, the task of the European Union or some other supranational organization. Some will move from private organizations to the state – for example, functions currently fulfilled by mega-enterprises of the internet economy. When public tasks change, the state will change too.