Poli 239 - Nation States

State (Weberian def)

-Organizations that possess a monopoly over legitimate physical coercion within a given territory

Nation State

The overlap between these two, where the majority of members view themselves as being part of the same nation/demos

Nation

A group of people who see themselves as a cohesive and coherent unit based on shared cultural or historical criteria.

socially constructed

National Identity

A constructed identity of a group of people who view themselves as sharing a cultural, social and (usually) political project.

Nationalism

A belief that the interests of one’s nation and national identity should be placed above the interests of other nations and identities.

Primordialism

-the idea that nations or ethnic identities are fixed, natural, and ancient.

-Always existed, will always exist

• Human nature

• Individuals can selectively adopt into national identities

Citizenship

The rights and responsibilities constituting the formal relationship of the individual to the state

Tilly (1992)

The Bellicist Model (Charles Tilly)

Variation depends on the role/reliance on Coercion and Capital:
 Capital: Tangible, moveable resources and “enforceable claims on such
resources” (Tilly 1992, pp. 17).
 Coercion: The ability to use force to impose and enforce power over
people or subjects.

- The bellists model of state making: War made the state and the state made war.

Anderson (1983)

Imagined Communities.

Why imagined?!
• Socially constructed
• Outsized frame for meaningful social interactions
Foundations of the pre-national order:
• Transnational societies (Christendom) and communication (Latin)
• Hierarchical and divinely prescribed social-bonds
What Changed?
• Print capitalism
• Decline of the divine social order
• Conscious effort by new political institutions

Essentially describes two explanations (or stages) of nation
building:
1. Inevitable consequence of system-level properties
2. Premediated project by political entrepreneurs

Darden

• Natural experiment

• Identity acquired through socialization 

• Pre-national: oral, parental gatekeeping

• Mass Schooling: written, state-direction

• Key Component: Initial period of mass schooling

• Darden thinks literacy is important - now the state can manage what the students read/learn about

Skocpol (1979)

Theories of the State: Social Revolutions - A conflict involving the coincidence of societal structural change with class upheaval; and the coincidence of political with social transformation