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The State. the Fate of a Concept

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The State. the Fate of a Concept PARTONE TheState. The Fate of a Concept the revival fthe growinginterest in the natureof the staterepresents I of a maiorintellectual concem of the 1950sand 1960s:state- and I nation-buildingin old societiestumed new nations. Howevet the currentinterest in the statehas a differenttonal qualityto it, for during the last threedecades the world haswitnessed a major changein the contextin which studiesof the stateare conducted. The 1950sand 1960swere a periodofoptimism. Itwaswidely beliet/ed in the modern world, and in modern centresof the nonmodernworld, that every societyhad to passthrough clear-cuthistorical stagesand finally conform to the prevalentmodel of a propernadon-state-exactly as everyeconomy had to go through fixed stagesof growthto attainthe beatitudeof development.It wasalso believed that while passingthrough theseinescapable stages, each society had to restructureits culture,shed its reuogressivebits, and cultivatethose cultural traits thatwerecompatible with the needsof a modernnation-state. ,A------ TWoforces seem to havechanged that eas(pEgreglvptv!$rf the relationshipbetween culture and the state.@ southern societieshave failed to walk successfullv arduouspath of -consiaet"t"@ the 'prcElg{=laid out so pott- Wb-rldWar II socialsgiences-and they havefailed to developinto viable nation-statesalong the line rY euiEuJapF. Tne sffie aylike some of specializedcoercive apparatus or privatebusiness venture Second, -culture in thesesocieties has shown monrsilknseftale,qegg bytle tea,ma an@pittedandthe pitted againstthe n6&andneJdJi-nd rationales olof the state,it is often the statethat hasgiven way to culture.This resilience The State:The Fateof a Concept . 3 2 . The Romance of the State The concept of the state that emerged from this experience had some of culture,also expressed in the spiritedresurgence ofethnic self-awareness distinguishing features.Among other things, the new concept assumed in many societies,seems to show that what wasonce possible within a closer fit tietween the realities of ethniciry nadon and state; it gavea small tribesand minoritiesis no longerpossible within largercultural more central role to the state in the society than the ancien rdgime had entitieswithout arousingstiff resistance.Cultures can no longer be done; and it redefined the state as the harbinger and main instrument bulldozedby the globalforces of modernity.Increasingly, cultures are lhatrigser refusingto sing their swansongsand bow out of the world stageto enter "l'ssgkh;A;hi.hi"th;il;t;;onG---eaniuein'f fo r an d p rotecto r o.f lqgd eln jnstilutio nE 3llo_qlAlgd,$tith i n du stri aI the textbooksof history.l@egun tojetum, like capitaligm-.these newly-assumedfunctions naturally madethe-modem ( Freud'sunconscious, to haunt the modern svstemof tt'ationGles. - n*eaion---i,.r"suspicious of all illtural differences,not on the grounds It ir tht. b..f.gio"i'ta t-hatiFe-iecent viciisitud'ei oFGe idea grounds "gai"rt of racialor ethnic prejudice,but on the that suchdifferences or constructionof the statein the dominant cultureof global politics intervenedbetween the'liberated' individual and the republicanstate must be explored. and interferedwith the more professionalaspects of statecraft. Evenmore important, thanks to the new institutional ordering that new of the stateand the expansionof colonial ) What we havelearnt to call the stateis actuallythe modern nation-state. went with the concept j It becamea seriouspresence in the Europeanlandscape only afterthe empires-which had alreadybecome globally visible-within a short i treatyof Wegpfulia in 1648.Though a contractualelement between an time theconceptof a nation-statenotonly marginalizedall otherconceps l--<:k;:-:=^* r rL | : L r r,^^ r,- Spplratusof powerand the ^ general-^- ^,^ public^..Lr - had^ already^ entered^-+^-^r civic-:-,: - space ^-^ -^ of the statein Europebut also beganto enter the intersticesof p,ublic by the thirteenth century in parts of Europe the treaty of Westphalia consciousnessall overAsia, South America and Africa. w(ru ?,{O{;o,' I 1 gaveformal institutional statusto the emergingconcept of a statein The increasingdominance and spreadinghegemony of tlrls idsi had I Europe.But eventhen the conceptwould neverhave attained the power two consequences.First, under the influenceofthe conceptof the nation- ' J it later did if the FrenchRevolution had not underwritten i/by linking st4$qpJa4.\gas increasinglyseen in a more idealizedform-as an. L=- I thestate,orstateh@ 6!gSa{grg-d arbiteramong different classes, ethnicities and interests. e spftiadofrepublicanism in Europeafter the FrenchRevolution Most statesdid not live up to the image,but few disownedit. Someeven ti severedoubts grew among European dlites about the sustainabilityof negotiatedthe transparentgap between principles and practicethe hard long-term legitimacywithin the emergingnon-monarchical states. way.For instance" some of them went democraticbut propoundeddear- Nationalismcame in handyat this point andwas qntematically promoted cut structurallimits on democrag.@and as the alternativebasis for such legitimacy.The Weberiancharisma n i n eteenthcen turies. a I ine was drawn-Eem6?6ocrq9]' -ing!fr eao--, previouslyconcentrated in the personof the monarch-supposedly aniclfiepoffi *ar"r.EiGl6j,sry-of"G-Jtai"ii-e to iniludethe "r mediatingbetween sacred and secularorders-was now distributed beliefthatireedanq-ssrm--etilf iiga-tgpgp"'iggi*6riiL"diinioaacy, among the population, though not equallyof course.Given theJpSS_ if necessaryby curbingthe panlapition iif the loweid?sCC3rarid*oihen o !!D-ee nt-Ia l-1zed p-o-441eh!eal -charism a, a lessspeci fi c, im personal in politics. Likewise somestates managed to becomemore tolerant of nationalismwas seen as the bestguarantor of the stabilityof the state. ethnicityonly afterghettoizing or driving out problematicminorities. This insecurityin the €lite for which nationalismwas supposed What Francedid to the Huguenotsor Polandto the Iewsbefore they to be the persistedin the cultureof the nation-state.From the very learnt to be more tolerant,others states like the United StatesorAustralia did lessconspicuously, but asruthlessly, to their aboriginaland black minorities. state.Some early nation-states,for instance,even proscribed uade unions for a while. And, of course,there itory of specificcultura wasalwap some godforsakenminority or other that thesestates could t I exdude.Such minorities had a placeonly in the few fragmentednations that militated against the broader meani wherethe constructionof the pastwasdominantlyplural and could not confinable within territorial boundaries.Occasionally, states vied with easilybe built on a romanticizedimperial memory. 4 . The Romance of the State TheState: The Fate of a Concept . 5 one anotherto emergeas the upholder of particularcultural values. colonial powerfound in the ideaof the nation-stateths clue to theWestt England and Franceboth spokeon behalfof Europeancivilization, even economicsuccessand poligicaldominance. The idea of a nativenation- whilst they wet to war with eachother and when both dedaredwar in state,thus, was increasinglyseen as the cure-allfor the ills of the Third the rwentiethcentury against Germany, they claimed againto be the World. Rarelydid anyonethink of an indigenousmodem stateas a in hard defendersof Europeancivilization. Nazi Germany turn tried contradictionin terms.Indeed no other idea,exceDt perhaDs the twin in somewhat to becomea symbol of Europeancivilization, albeit a notionsof mode .-I.dil,ily idiosyncraticfashion, and to someof the bestminds of the twentieth py Heidegger-the Nazi daim et century-Ezra Pound,Ihut Hamsun,Martin Evenmodern science and developmentbecame, for the Afro-Asian€lite did not seemparticularly exaggerated. the responsibilityprecisely of the nation-stateand two new raisonsil'etat. It is possibleto arguethat the story of the modernization of Asia that In the beginning,the new conceptof the statein Europeand its beganin the nineteenth-centuryis actuallythe storyof the intemalization corresponding institutional arrangementshad to contend with other, andenculturation ofthe ideaofthe modem stateby individualsas divene suwiving conceptsand structuresof the statethat differedfrom and were asRammohunRoy (1772-1833), SunYat-Sen (1866-1925) and lGmal antagonisticto the newconcept. These contending concepts and structures Ataturk(1881-1938). oft.enwent with culturally distinctiveexpectations and demandsfrom As a resulttoday, in most of the world any referenceto a stateusually the state.British colonialism, for instance,though it wasperfectly at home meansthe modem nation-state.All political arrangementsand all state with the conceptof the nation-statein Britain,operated in India within systemsare now judged by the e)ftentto which they servethe needsof- the broad culturalframework of the Mughal empirewhich had preceded or conform to-the ideaof the nation-state.2Even the varionqmodes of it. This it did axplicitly and self-consciouslyduring the early decadesof defianreqgainst the state are usually informed by thil standardized r the Raj,and more tacitlyand partlyunwittingly roughlytill World War I. _gcepprit. KarlMarx ( l818-83), while he spokeof theii6t-e withering During the first sixty-fiveyears of British rule it is doubtful that the new away,had in mind a nation-statewhich had first to be capturedby a ruling circlesin Indiahad an operational concept of a 'civilizingmission' dedicatedvanguard fully versedin the intricaciesof a modern-read on their part.They certainlydid not havea
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