Single Nation-state Research Articles

Democracy and Globalization

There is a striking paradox to note regarding the contemporary era: from Africa to Eastern Europe, Asia to Latin America, more and more nations and groups are championing the idea of democracy; but they are doing so at just that moment when the very efficacy of democ racy as a national form of political organization appears open to question. As substantial areas of human activity are progressively organized on a re gional or global level, the fate of democracy, and of the independent democratic nation-state in particular, is fraught with difficulty. Throughout the world's major regions, there has been a consolidation of democratic processes and procedures. In the mid-1970s, more than two thirds of all states could reasonably be called authoritarian. This percent age has fallen dramatically; less than a third of all states are now authori tarian, and the number of democracies is growing rapidly.1 Democracy has become the fundamental standard of political legitimacy in the current era. Events such as the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall are symbolic of changes indicating that, in more and more countries, citizen voters are, in principle, able to hold public de cisionmakers to account. Yet, at the same time, the democratic political community is increasingly challenged by regional and global pressures and problems. How can problems such as the spread of aids, the debt burden of many countries in the developing world, the flow of financial re sources that escape national jurisdiction, the drugs trade, and international crime be satisfactorily brought within the sphere of democracy? What kind of accountability and control can citizens of a single nation-state have over international actors, e.g., multinational corporations (MNCs), and over in ternational organizations, e.g., the World Bank? In the context of trends toward regionalization, European integration, fundamental transformations in the global economy, mass communications and information technology, how can democracy be sustained? Are new democratic institutions neces sary to regulate and control the new international forces and processes? How can citizens participate as citizens in a new, more complex, interna tionally organized world? In a world organized increasingly on regional and global lines, can democracy as we know it survive?

Networks of Power: Organizational Actors at the National, Corporate, and Community Levels.

Large organizations, particularly corporations, possess considerable resources, and with that comes considerable power, often extending beyond a single community or nation-state. Networks among large corporations enhance that power to the point that they exert a major impact on national and multinational economies and policies, influencing decision-making to achieve their own goals. Networks of Power applies interorganizational analysis to the study of power in three main areas: national policy domains, community influence structures, and national corporate structures. The main body of the text is comprised of original research by the leading authorities in the field and covers such areas as national policy decisions in health and energy, corporate structure, innovative theoretical and methodological approaches, and a critical review of network analysis of interorganizational relations and power. Also presented is an agenda for future research.

Karol Irzykowski: Apologist of the Inauthentic Art

Karol Irzykowski (1873-1944) was one of the key Polish intellectuals of the first half of this century. Hisfin-de-sidcle anti-novel Paluba (The Hag) ironically bared the processes of its own making in a manner anticipating Proust or Gide, and was to be a powerful influence on Gombrowicz in particular. A Germanist by training, his first published book was a monograph on Hebbel's dramatic theory. The most acute Polish literary critic of the inter-war period, he demonstrates the pervasiveness of the German theoretical tradition in Central Europe in the late days and aftermath of the Austro-Hungarian empire. An engagement with German theory seems to have been the necessary precondition of almost all the period's significant work in aesthetics (one thinks, for instance, of Luk~cs or Balkzs writing in German, as Irzykowski himself could well have done). The point is not of course that German culture was superior to the surrounding ones; simply that German was the lingua franca of Central Europe, that now-vanished domain. In the Wagnerian theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk, German aesthetics had foreshadowed cinema. The process whereby the theoretical possibility of the Gesamtkunstwerk translated itself into actuality by uniting diverse art-forms can seem almost to have been a metaphor for, and displaced expression of, the simultaneous historical process that synthesized the German-speaking peoples into the unity of a nation-state. If the German nation-state had long been merely a theoretical possibility, the same was to be true of cinema; and may it not be that the Faustian overreachers of early German cinema symbolize a fear of the demonic origin of the magic (among other things, of the technology) that permits one to synthesize diverse states into a single nation-state, varying art-forms into a single super-art? If Irzykowski's engagement with Germanic culture drew him towards theory, it assumes a volatile, provocative and post-Nietzschean form in his book on cinema, X Musa (The Tenth Muse). Although the book's first chapter was written in 1913, it already regrets the imminent possibility that the cine-phone (talking pictures) may replace the cinematograph, jolting one into an awareness of the earliness of the first fears of the de-

Challenges of Nation-Building: Uganda—A Case Study

The success or failure of nation-building in the new states has far-reaching implications for domestic, regional and international stability and security. This is aptly illustrated in South Asia today, where differences of language, culture and religion forge great obstacles to the creation of single nation states in both India and Sri Lanka. However, of all the regions of the developing world, it is sub-Saharan Africa that perhaps presents the greatest challenge to the idea of a nation-state. Colonial boundaries cut through ethnic groups and led to the creation of post-colonial states that were in no sense nations. These states contained several nations (or tribes) or part of nations within them. Unity that had been forged to rid colonies of foreign rule collapsed when independence was won and tribal loyalties resurfaced. Some states, such as Tanzania, have fared better than others since then in their efforts to create domestic unity, harmony and a nation-state. Others, such as Uganda, have sunk into anarchy. This paper looks at the example of Uganda in some detail. Particular attention is paid to the decade of the 1970's when Idi Amin was in power, and Uganda hit the international headlines on account of his reign of terror. Trends and events, both before and after Amin, are examined in an effort to establish whether the 1970's were an aberration or part of a continuing tradition of represssion in the name of state security. The Tanzanian action of intervening in Uganda, whatever the motive, had the effect of ridding Uganda of Amin. This action is analyzed in terms of its legitimacy and its consequences. The idea that nation-building is something which has to be generated from within, and cannot be imposed from without, is raised.

Trade route 11: Methods to assess port exchanges of maritime containerized cargo flows

Although maritime commodity flow analyses have received a fair amount of attention in geographic literature, previous studies have emphasized flows originating at or destined for a single reference point or nation state. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate several procedures for ordering and grouping port facilities based upon the magnitude and the direction of flows of containers between them. Thus, the interactive elements of an individual portion of the worldwide container system—a trade route—can be measured and load center development can be appraised.

The Dutch Case: a National or a Regional Culture? The Prothero Lecture

As in relation to many other countries in sixteenth-century Europe, it is difficult to apply modern conceptions of nationhood to the situation in the Low Countries. If the difficulty seems more awkward in this area than elsewhere, it is perhaps merely because the sixteenth-century Netherlands, as we all know, developed into two distinct nations, the northern Netherlands and Belgium. It is clearly impossible to give a convincing answer to the question whether, in politically more propitious circumstances, the northern and the southern Netherlands might have grown into a single nation state with one common culture. All we know is that in the north a new state was created which, in the seventeenth century, undoubtedly possessed a culture idiosyncratic enough to be described as properly Dutch. We may well call this a national culture. On the other hand, if we bear in mind, asmany seventeenth-century commentators did, that the Dutch Republic was no more than a part of what had been the real Netherlands, both north and south, it would not be totally incongruous to define Dutch culture, that is the northern culture, as regional rather than national. However, if we do so, we must conclude that the national culture uniting the southern and the northern Netherlands, and somehow enclosing the regional cultures of Flanders and Brabant, of Holland and Zeeland, never came into existence.

Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation

It is widely recognized that the concepts of ‘state’ and ‘nation’ developed largely out of the history of Europe. In Western Europe the process of state-building preceded and assisted the process of nation-formation. In consequence, the concept of the nation that developed from this process focused on the political community as defined by the institutional and territorial framework. In the tradition of Rousseau, Abbé Sieyes could define a nation as ‘a body of associates living under one common law and represented by the same legislature’. In most lands of Western Europe these developments also produced the model of a single nationality nation or nation-state. In Central and Eastern Europe the process was different: ‘the nation was first defined as a cultural rather than a political entity’ and the underlying theoretical foundation was in the tradition of Herder rather than Rousseau Nevertheless, once nationhood had been achieved in these regions there was a tendency to approximate to the model associated with Western Europe. This was made all the easier in such states as Italy and Germany because the majority of their citizens were from one ethnic group; they, too, were single nationality nations. Whatever the dualisms and amalgams in Europe, the export model has been that associated with that of Western Europe—for the simple reason that the predominant colonizing powers were from this part of the Continent.

The Politics of Regionalism in India

ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT developments in Indian politics since the i967 General Election has been the emergence and success of several regional parties. In one sense, this politics of regionalism is not a new phenomenon: since independence many state and regional parties have sprouted in India, usually to wither quickly in the shadow of the Congress banyan tree. Others have continued to exist in a weak or comatose condition, capable of annoyance but little more. What is new is the relative success of these parties. In i967, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK) of Tamil Nadu proved for the first time that a well-organized regional party could come to power at the state level in India.1 Ever since that triumph, a trend in toward the politics of regionalism has been evident.2 Although Mrs. Gandhi's recent landslide victory has obviously slowed this trend, some of the regional parties (the DMK, for example), on the whole, survived the March i97i debacle better than some of the national parties (the two Socialist parties, for example) .3 The regional parties in today are no longer simply local annoyances to a Congress Party overwhelmingly dominant once again. They continue to play significant roles at the state level in the Indian political system. Given the tremendous heterogeneity of Indian society, the politics of regionalism should not be a surprising development. In a recent issue of the journal Seminar, devoted to the problem of Indian nationalism, the fundamental problem facing was well summarized: India is not a single nationstate. It is a continent of many communities united through shared experiences but powerfully motivated by parochial and regional considerations.4 The politics of regionalism is a manifestation of this reality. Taken by itself, the DMK victory might well have been considered a unique phenomenon, but it cannot be so interpreted. The emergence after the i969 Mid-Term Election of the Akali Dal as the dominant partner in an Akali-Jan Sangh coalition government in the Punjab was another harbinger

In Whose Camp?

If one wishes to know the reasons for the decline and ultimate failure of the Austrian Republic in the space of some fifteen years, one cannot do better than read Miss Alary Macdonald's succinct, clear, well-informed and amply documented account. The documentation, especially in the form of lengthy quotations in German, is perhaps too full for the average reader; but the latter may be confidently recommended to restrict himself to the text, for the author's knowledge and control of her sources are beyond dispute. Not that there ever was any serious dispute about either the facts or the records: differences of opinion have been largely ideological, the tendency to see a bloodthirsty fascist in every opponent of the Vienna Socialists or. on the other hand, the fear of the red hand of Bolshevism in every expression of a democratic spirit. These were extremes, but a middle way was rendered difficult by excesses on both sides and the inevitably limited capacity of the not ignoble men who tried to take it.The elements of dissolution at once showed themselves in 191K. Austrians who had formed the habit of living in an empire could not easily conceive the possibility of a single nation-state within their sadly shrunken frontiers; Vienna was an imperial, capital or nothing. Hence the attempt to create still smaller states out of the Lauder. or for such a province as Vorarlberg to seek union with Switzerland—the nearest neighbour, with a people speaking almost a common dialect and offering an economic prosperity such as even a united Austria could scarcely hope to create.