Nation-Building Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Nation-building refers to the general process of constructing a nation making use of the power and institutions of the state or the political community (polity). As an ideology and social mobilization, nationalism has often been attributed to earlier phases in the process of evolution of contemporary nation-states. Nation-building policies have generally been implemented so that a transition from traditional societies to modern polities could be realized.

Following a phase of boundary building and state formation, the process of nation-building generally seeks to socialize the people of the state into a nation. Such a task may take centuries, as the cases of Japan or the European nation-states illustrate, whereas in other instances (i.e., New World and postcolonial countries), developments were more rapidly implemented in contemporary times. However, nation-building is not merely a phenomenon associated with the past state formation. It continues to manifest itself in well-established states seeking to maintain their legitimacy and territorial integrity in the face of internal or external challenges. To this end, nation-building promotes national identity with the establishment of national symbols, such as anthems or flags, together with the (re)creation of historical myths or cultural markers.

A process of creating administrative and military centers and of consolidating territorial boundaries usually implies the enforcement of one central authority upon peripheral regions or subordinated political groups. As regards the case of Europe, there persists a controversy on whether the processes of nation-building were mainly the result of the French and Industrial revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, or if their origins can be traced back much further (to around the High Middle Ages). Indeed, it would difficult to deny the existence of “proto-nations” before the Modern Age. However, it would also be awkward to regard nation-building phenomena as the product of history beyond the paramount impact of the modern processes of social, economic, and political changes (bureaucratization, colonization, industrialization, and urbanization, to name a few). The term nation-building came into widespread usage in the 1950s with reference to the creation of newly independent states in postcolonial Africa. In more recent times, it has become more controversial, being associated with U.S. efforts at post conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq.

Among the main policies deployed by state centers to integrate peripheries and to create nation-states, four can be underlined: (1) the active presence of an administration (particularly the military and security forces) in all the territory of the polity, (2) a common system of education and the promotion of a state language, (3) the extension of communications, and (4) the configuration of a national labor market and related welfare arrangements.

In modern times, the most dynamic sectors of the bourgeoisie and some elites of the peasantry have made use of the ideology of nationalism to fight old aristocratic privileges. The concept of citizenship drafted by the English Revolution (1640–1660) and articulated by both the American (1776– 1783) and French (1789–1799) revolutions became essential in the conformation of the nation-building programs put into place during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The aim was to consolidate nations where citizens would become peers with equal access to a set of universal rights and obligations. Countries forged by this type of nation-building were to become the embodiment of modernity.

In the post-Enlightenment epoch, the cornerstone of nation-building, primarily in the European tradition, has often been the creation of a common national identity throughout a specified territory under one central authority. This idea of “one state, one people,” which was transported worldwide as a result of European colonialism, has been far from being accomplished in countries with long-standing traditions of internal diversity and strong ethno-territorial collective identities. All-embracing and exclusive nation-state identities have in many cases become problematic, particularly in those heterogeneous countries composed of diverse cultural communities and stateless nations. Since the late nineteenth century, those advanced industrialized countries of welfare capitalism have made use of the great nation-building potential associated with the development of social policy institutions. For them, welfare institutions embody a common heritage of shared risks and mutual commitment, and a common project for the future.

Reports of the death of the nation-state challenged from above by the forces of globalization and continental integration have been greatly exaggerated. Political developments at a supranational level, however, do not necessarily point toward a command-and-control model of vertical governmental action. Much of the legitimacy of the modern nation-state depends on the efficacy and sustainability of national-building policies that seek to keep pace with the socioeconomic changes in the new global order.

Bibliography:

Bendix, R. Nation-Building and Citizenship Studies of Our Changing Social Order. New York:Wiley, 1964.
Deutsch, K. Nationalism and Social Communication. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1953.
Flora, P., S. Kuhnle, and D. Urwin, eds. State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Rokkan, R., and S. N. Eisenstadt, eds. Building States and Nations. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1970.
Tilly, C., ed. The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.
Weber, E. Making Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914. London: Chatto and Windus, 1977.

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