The National Identity Problem and Democratization: Rustow's Theory of Sequence

Abstract

In The Early 1970S, Dankwart Rustow Stressed The Centrality of national identity as a background condition for democratization. A recently emerging body of literature has raised this important issue again, opening it up for further discussion. Mark Thompson, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, for example, have highlighted the centrality of the national identity question (they use the term ‘stateness’) in their recent work. Henry Bienen and Jeffrey Herbst see the emergence of a sense of national identity as a prerequisite for democratization in Africa, thus confirming Rustow's idea of sequence. Ilter Turan supports Rustow's view on the role of national identity in his analysis of the cases of Iraq and the Central Asian republics, while James Putzel uses the macro variable of the national identity question to explain why democratic politics is more difficult in Indonesia, which faces the risk of disintegration, and in the ethnically-divided Malaysia, with its weak national identity, than in the Philippines where disintegration is not an issue.