H.S.H. Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein Publishes The State in the Third Millenium

A new book by H.S.H. Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, The State in the Third Millenium (van Eck Publishers, 2009), analyzes the evolution and future of the state. The author looks at the modern nation-state from many different perspectives: as a head of state, as a politician, as an active global businessman, and as an amateur historian. He analyses those forces that have influenced the state in the past and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, including religions, ideologies, military technology and economics.

Prince Hans-Adam II suggests how to make the traditional democratic constitutional state both more democratic and more efficient, and discusses strategies for realizing worldwide the modern democratic constitutional state in the third millennium. He observes that citizens should no longer be conceived of as servants of the state, but rather that states should be transformed "into service companies that work for the people on the basis of direct and indirect democracy and the right of self-determination at the local level."

Prince Hans-Adam II is the Reigning Prince of the Principality of Liechtenstein. In 1984, his father Prince Franz Josef II, appointed Prince Hans-Adam II as his permanent representative and conferred upon him the mandate to administer the business of the State in accordance with the Liechtenstein Constitution. During his time as the Reigning Prince's representative, Prince Hans-Adam II was particularly engaged on behalf of an independent Liechtenstein foreign policy. In November 1989, upon the death of his father, Prince Hans-Adam II assumed the regency. Under his leadership, Liechtenstein succeeded in joining the UN in 1990 and the EEA in 1995. In August 2004, H.S.H. Prince Hans-Adam II entrusted his son H.S.H. Hereditary Prince Alois as his representative with the exercise of all sovereign rights pertaining to him, in accordance with the Liechtenstein Constitution.