A timely collection of articles and case studies dealing with the most urgent political issues of our time.
Are Nation-states obsolete? Are multination states viable? Can we really create powerful supranational institutions? These are the questions that celebrated authors and specialists attempt to answer in this important collection of articles.
The work contains theoretical essays and case studies by philosophers, sociologists, political scientists and governmental analysts that provide state of the art analyses of the situation of the nation-state as it is developing all over the world in the new millenium.
There are different concepts of nationhood and different forms of national consciousness : ethnic, civic, cultural, sociopolitical and diasporic. There are also different ways for nations to be present on any given territory; as immigrant groups, as extensions of neighboring national majorities, as minority nations or as majority nations. There are also different policies adopted toward different groups: bilingualism, multiculturalism, interculturalism, collective rights, etc. Finally, there are different sorts of political arrangements: nation-state, multination state, confederation of sovereign states, multinational federation, federation of nation-states, supranational institutions, etc. The enormous complexity of these issues explain why nations, nationalism and nation-states have been so difficult to understand.
The theoretical essays contained in this volume are sensitive to all those issues. The authors examine the foundations of nationalist thinking and the justifications behind the nation-state model. They also reflect upon the nation building policies, politics of recognition and issues related to globalization. The case studies investigate countries or regions such as Ireland, Scotland, Catalonia, the Balkans, Russia, USA, Finland, India, Indonesia, the European Union and Canada.
Contributors include Benedict Anderson (Cornell University), Rajeev Bhargava (University of Delhi), Rogers Brubaker (UCLA), Margaret Canovan (emeritus, University of Keele), Jocelyne Couture (Université du Québec à Montréal), Matthew Evangelista (Cornell University), Liah Greenfeld (Boston University), Montserrat Guibernau (The Open University), David B. Ingram(Loyola University Chicago), Radha Kumar (Council on Foreign Relations), Avishai Margalit (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), David McCrone (University of Edinburgh), John McGarry (Queen's University), Kenneth McRoberts (York University), Henry Milner (Vanier College), Michael Murphy (Queen's University), Kai Nielsen (Concordia University), Thomas Pogge (Columbia University), Ross Poole (Macquarie University), Michel Seymour, and Daniel Weinstock (Université de Montréal).