  In recent years, however, the supposed alliance between democracy and the nation-state has come unstuck. This is due predominantly to globalization: the increased extent, velocity, and scope of cross-border interactions, transactions, and relations (Scholte 2000). Globalization intensifies social, political, and economic relations through technological changes and the flow of people, resources and ideas across state lines. The expansion of global connections has gone hand-in-glove with increased efforts to govern global affairs. Countless formal measures, informal norms and overarching discourses for regulating global affairs are now formulated and implemented through complex transnational networks that combine substate agencies, nation-states, regional bodies, global institutions, and non-state actors (Scholte 2014, 4). Although the state is often an active participant in globalization, many scholars have argued that increased transnational activity undermines national democracy (Sassen 2003). Globalization pierces the sovereignty of nation-states by subjecting domestic affairs to transnational decision-making. Moreover, citizens of each state are often said to be problematically excluded from global activities in ways that lead to a democratic deficit (expanded upon below).