The Global Crisis of the Nation-State (original) (raw)
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Journal of Democracy, 2010
One of the most urgent conceptual, normative, and political tasks of our day is to think anew about how polities that aspire to be democracies can accommodate great sociocultural and even multinational diversity within one state. The need to think anew arises from a mismatch between the political realities of the world we live in and an old political wisdom that we have inherited. The old wisdom holds that the territorial boundaries of a state must coincide with the perceived cultural boundaries of a nation. Thus, this understanding requires that every state must contain within itself one and not more than one culturally homogenous nation, that every state should be a nation, and that every nation should be a state. Given the reality of sociocultural diversity in many of the world's polities, this widespread belief seems to us to be misguided and indeed dangerous since, as we shall argue, many successful democratic states in the world today do not conform to this expectation. All independent democratic states have a degree of cultural diversity, but for comparative purposes we can say that states may be divided into three broad categories: 1) States that have strong cultural diversity, some of which is territorially based and politically articulated by significant groups with leaders who advance claims of independence in the name of nationalism and self-determination. 2) States that are culturally quite diverse, but whose diversity is nowhere organized by territorially based, politically significant groups that mobilize nationalist demands for independence.
Resketching the Scope and Strength of Nation-State
Mangal Research Journal , 2020
The wave of globalization and the impossibility to maintain uniformity within the nation-state, which in itself is characterized by diversities, has reframed the past status of nation-state in the contemporary globe. In this article, the author considers the scopes and strengths of nation-state are diminishing in the contemporary global order, arguing that the pervasive implications of globalization and the emergence of dissident voices within the specific geo-political territories have posed pragmatic problems in the traditional notion and stand strand of nation-state. As globalization has opened newer avenues with wider spaces of opportunities to the people all across the globe, the culture, tradition, religion, language, emotional affinity within the specified communal people, which are considered to be binding aspects of nation-state, don't sustain the same values as that used to hold in the past. The digital media and communication, advancement of transportation and the flow of knowledge and goods in the postmodern world have been key instruments to the people to transcend national boundary and promote the cross country affinity. Besides, this paper also explores and analyses how an effort to maintain uniformity in structure within particular political geography fails due to its undeniable reality of socio-cultural and economic variations among people within the same territory. If the uniformity and harmony, as assumed, are synonymous to nation-state, why are many countries suffering with civil wars? Hence, this paper attempts to record the practical problems which have created questions on traditionally elated space and scope of nation-state. Moreover, to examine and analyze this situation, the author uses qualitative method.
What's in a Name? Theoretical Perspective on State and Nation-building
To an outsider, the following seems breathtakingly absurd: relations between the Balkan nations of Greece and Macedonia have been defined by conflict for two decades, because the latter's constitutional name is 'Republic of Macedonia'. As a result of that, the small landlocked state with a population of just over two million, has been unable to join its post-Communist neighbours in accessing NATO and the European Union. The Hellenes refuse to allow the former Yugoslav republic to do so, unless the term 'Macedonia' is removed from its name. Although negotiations between the two parties have taken place for almost 20 years now, no compromise was reached. Currently, the situation has reached an impasse. This inevitably poses the question, why no middle ground could be established. This essay will put forward the argument, that both sides use historical aspects of the naming dispute for the purpose of nation-building. Using history for the creation and further consolidation of identity is an idea that has been discussed by numerous academics, and it will be argued that the naming dispute between Greece and Macedonia can be regarded as a critical case in an evaluation of the applicability of this idea. Firstly, the theoretical framework behind the processes of state and nation-building will be reflected on. The relationship between nations, Nationalism, states and history will be shown. Then the naming dispute will be presented as the case-study underlying the principal argument. The use of history by both Greece and Macedonia will be highlighted, and finally the role of external actors, particularly the EU, NATO and the UN, will be assessed. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn based in the findings presented here. History has shown that both states and nations are not rigid entities, but that they are constructed and sometimes even reconstructed. In order give an analysis of the processes of state
Nation and State : An Extended Definition and Analysis
2016
Introduction In the contemporary United States, domestic policy is an appendage of foreign policy, specifically, the U.S. global financial position. If the U.S. is to be the leader of the New Global Regime, then its domestic sense of self must be altered. The economic system of the late 18th century was based on communal farming in certain regions, yeoman landholding, state and county independence and racial and linguistic commonalities. None of that, of course, is even remotely compatible with a global empire. Centralization, a cosmopolitan consciousness and a removal from traditional moral anchors is necessary for the consuming, rootless identity necessary to maintain a commoditybased capitalist and globalist structure, a structure, importantly, controlled by equally rootless, privately-owned entities (rather than the state, which, in the American case, is reactive and clumsy). Therefore, specific policies of the state since the second world war need to be understood in this light...
A nation-state is a form of polity which derives its political legitimacy from the claims that it represents a particular nation. This social organization is characterized by clearly demarcated territory, centralized political authority, and the propensity to legitimately monopolize the use of violence, taxation, education, and legislation over the territory it controls . A nation-state is the dominant form of polity in the modern era and is also popularly regarded as the only legitimate form of territorial political organization. Nevertheless, this contemporary dominance of the nation-state model is historically speaking a very recent development.