Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age famously speculates on a future society dominated by tribal groups like the Ashanti Nation and the Neo-Victorians, nations whose members live distributed around the world rather than within a single territory. In the novel, Stephenson calls these tribal groups "phyles". What might phyles look like in the real 21st century?
The case of the United States of America is interesting. The USA (population 300 million) is one of the few nation-states — perhaps the only one — which levies income tax on non-resident citizens, although currently only those with particularly high incomes. As a sort of compensation for this, a US passport makes it easy to travel to most of the world's territory, even obtaining work visas in many places; and in many cases, the US Embassy or Consulate will intervene if a US citizen encounters legal trouble or needs legal help in a foreign country. Additionally, the US military forces, consisting of some 1.5 million people, occupy parts of about 25 other countries†. In part because of these factors, some 3–6 million of the world's 200 million expatriates are US citizens0.
† The US has military deployments in some 150 countries, which is nearly all of them, but only the US and Afghanistan have over 100 000 US troops; only those countries and Germany have over 50 000; only those countries, South Korea, and Japan have over 20 000; only those countries, Italy, and Kuwait have over 10 000; only those countries and the UK have over 5000; only those countries and Australia have over 2000; and only those countries and Belgium, Spain, Turkey, and Bahrain have over 1000 US troops.
The case of the Romani is also interesting, largely by contrast. The Romani, unlike the USA, control no territory, and have controlled no territory for some 700 to 1000 years; but they are bound together not just by a language (with some two million speakers) and social customs, but also a separate, parallel justice system, the kris-romani. (The kris originated within the Vlax Romani, and has spread to some parts of the Romani diaspora influenced by the Vlax.) The Romani have suffered conflicts with much more populous indigenous peoples during their centuries living in Europe, including mass enslavement, mass killings, childhood kidnapping, mass deportation (most recently in France in 2009 and 2010), and so on, but also including day-to-day discrimination.
Perhaps their position vis-a-vis such events could be improved by better coordination in order to negotiate with national governments collectively. Imagine, for example, if France recognized the Romani as a sovereign state; the 2010 mass deportations of Romani which provoked no particular reaction from Bulgaria and Romania, to which the Romani were deported.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, is a worldwide organization of some 14 million people, more than a third of whom live in the US. Some one-third of this number are "active" members. They tithe, in general, 10% of their income to the church, a centrally controlled hierarchy, which prepares its plans to establish a worldwide theodemocratic government after the predicted collapse of secular government in the days before the Second Coming of Christ. Members who do not tithe cannot enter the temple, even to attend weddings of family members. The church's net worth is estimated at US$30 billion. Most people born into Mormon families remain Mormon, and nearly all male Mormons spend two years proselytizing overseas in the care and 24–7 surveillance of the church, funded by their own money, an experience which strengthens their bonds to the church; at any given time, some 50 000 Mormons are missionaries in this way, at some 340 missions throughout the world. As a result of this proselytism, the church is still doubling in size every 15–20 years. In addition to the 50 000 missionaries, the church has some 100 000 other volunteers.
Among other services, church maintains a "bishop's storehouse", which provides goods to poor people in exchange for service to the church; in theory, these goods are available to non-Mormons as well.
The church's earlier attempts to assume temporal authority in the 1830s through 1858 resulted in wars with the USA and the assassination of its founders. Until 1927, the church's "endowment" ceremony, required of its missionaries and those who would wed in the church, included an oath to "pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation".
Dubai is a sort of inverse case: 80% of Dubai's population consists of expatriates, who do not enjoy the rights of citizenship in Dubai. The UAE in general does not recognize jus soli citizenship, so citizenship in Dubai is a sort of inherited élite status distinguishing a powerful indigenous upper class from a large class of people who, by birth, have diminished legal rights.
The Roman Catholic Church is, in some sense, the remnant of the Western Roman Empire. It operates a worldwide hierarchy with a variety of relationships with other sovereign states; sometimes its local leaders ("bishops" or "archbishops") are supported by local governments, chosen in part by local governments, or both, and sometimes not. It has territorial control over only a single square mile, the Vatican City.
Triads?
Freemasons?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/bart-strike-shows-privatizations-dark-side.html talks about the upper class abandoning public transit in the Bay Area:
In the Bay Area, many high-earners have already moved on to what amounts to a private services grid. They get to work on corporate shuttles, go out at night using Uber or Lyft cars, and use services like Seamless to bring food and other necessities to them. They've accepted the public sector's dysfunction as a given, and they've already abandoned it for most basic services.
The CEO of Avego strenuously objects in the comments to being lumped in with luxury services like taxis and Uber:
Avego allows people to carpool together and share the cost of the ride. The only thing Avego is doing is providing efficiency and reducing the cost of commuting for both rider and driver. Is this a bad thing? In fact, BART costs the average rider $0.35 per mile (that's their pricing model, if I remember correctly). It's not a particularly cheap network to begin with, although I grant you, it's a great system and San Francisco needs it and I love the good public transport San Francisco has, in general.
But you say Avego could never afford to charge less that the Public Transit system? In fact, the Avego network does (unlike the Ubers and Lyfts and others, which do cost about 5-7x higher than public transit). The cost works out to about $0.20 per mile, below BART's own rate.
It's a little naive to think that technology necessarily makes things more expensive. In Avego's case, we're dramatically lowering the cost of the commute, and, particularly in these difficult economic times, cutting waste and reducing people's cost of living while also improving their quality of life counts for a net win.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/technology/financial-times-site-is-hacked.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3& describes the Syrian government's arm's-length relationships with computer crackers who advocate its cause, similar to what Myhrvold was talking about in his Strategic Terrorism paper.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/if-your-government-fails-can-you-create-a-new-one-with-your-phone/278216/ has lots of interesting points about supplementing states with ad-hoc smart mobs, such as:
But when states fail to deliver governance goods, communities increasingly will step up, digitally. This shouldn't be surprising, given how much excitement there is around the prospect that e-government will significantly improve the capacity of even rich governments to deliver services. However, what we're talking about here is about more than service delivery: it is about the capacity of communities to set rules, stick to them, and sanction the people who break the rules. A sovereign state is one that can implement and enforce policies. When states don't have these capacities, a growing number of communities use digital media to not only provide services, but to do so in a way that amounts to the implementation and enforcement of new policies.