Worlds without nation‐states: Five scenarios for the very long term

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-324
Author(s):  
Andreas Wimmer
Keyword(s):  
Nation States

Conclusion: “It Sends Its Bloodhounds Everywhere”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Fuller
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
National Security Policy ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The U.S

This concluding chapter examines the legacy of the CIA's drone war on U.S. counterterrorism, wider U.S. national security policy, and the conduct of America's rivals—both nation-states and terrorist groups. It contemplates the nature of technological progress, judging that innovations always introduce potential threats and opportunities in equal measure. Furthermore, while it is almost inevitable that terrorist groups will exploit drone technology for heinous ends, the technology also offers wider commercial and civilian society opportunities, just as previous transformative technologies, first developed for the purpose of taking lives, eventually came to transform them in positive ways. The use of drones to neutralize terrorists is best understood as the embodiment of America's long-term counterterrorism goal made possible by advancements in both technology and the willingness of the U.S. government to authorize the CIA in undertaking lethal counterterrorist actions.

scholarly journals Europe, the Euro and German Demographic Renewal

2021 ◽  
pp. 275-291
Author(s):  
Carl Christian von Weizsäcker ◽  
Hagen M. Krämer
Keyword(s):  
Full Employment ◽  
Single Market ◽  
Domestic Market ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Debt Brake ◽  
Term Stability ◽  
Long Term Stability ◽  
Nation States ◽  
European Single Market

AbstractAccess to the domestic market is nowadays the trump card of trade diplomacy. The larger the domestic market, the more effective it is. The euro is thus the decisive pillar of the European single market. The German debt brake is incompatible with the long-term stability of the euro. For as long as it applies, full employment can never be achieved in the eurozone as a whole. Under currentfiscal policy, full employment would require unrealistically high export surpluses. A euro doomed to underemployment will collapse. Hence, the international fiscal order must also be applied among the nation states in the euroarea. Germany’s resulting obligations offer an opportunity for a German demographic renewal by aggressively encouraging the immigration of skilled workers.

Beyond the Nation? Or Back to It? Current Trends in the Sociology of Nations and Nationalism

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1072-1087
Author(s):  
Daniel Chernilo
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Nation State Formation

This article critically reviews three of the most significant debates in the sociology of nations and nationalism over the past 50 years: (1) the problem of methodological nationalism on the main features of nation-states; (2) the tension between primordialism and modernism in understanding the historicity of nations; and (3) the politics of nationalism between universalism and particularism. These three debates help us clarify some key theses in our long-term understanding of nations and nationalism: processes of nation and nation-state formation are not opposed to but compatible with the rise of globalisation and non-state forms of governance; the question ‘when is a nation?’ combines modern and pre-modern dimensions; the politics of nationalism is neither unfailingly democratic nor exclusively regressive. A key paradox that unfolds is that all nations invest heavily in the production and reproduction of their own exceptionalism.

Migration, migrants, and human security

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bandana Purkayastha
Keyword(s):  
Forced Migration ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Migration Patterns ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Do So

This introductory article outlines a framework to bridge some of the current fragmentation and knowledge hierarchies in the sociological field of migration. The article builds on the insights – and epistemological roots – used in different parts of the world to reflect on 21st-century realities of migration and human security. It considers international migrants, internally displaced persons, refugees and trafficked persons as part of a continuum of migrants who exhibit seasonal, temporary and long-term migration patterns. The framework draws upon the scholarship of the Global South and North on political-economic processes that have historically influenced migration and migrants’ lives and continue to do so today. It considers the dominant approach used in studies of international migration and shows why it is necessary to go beyond the focus on nation-states and an emphasis on a particular group of migrants. The framework weaves the insights of scholars who work on international, internal migration and forced migration, as well as the critical literatures on intersectionality and human rights to build an approach that centers questions of migrants’ human security. The framework emphasizes the glocal – i.e. intersecting global-national-local – terrains of migration and discusses human security within glocal terrains.

scholarly journals Conflicting Perspectives on the “Migrant Crisis” in the Horn of Africa

2018 ◽  
pp. 228-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Population Displacement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
And Migration

In sharp contrast to the sense of a “migrant crisis” which prevails in Europe, nation states in the Horn of Africa understand migration, including state-induced population displacement, as unexceptional. The chapter addresses this apparent paradox by contrasting European policy discourse on migration with the long-term political and structural processes in northeastern Africa that cause population displacement and migration. The chapter then examines the migration policies of governments in the Horn and concludes by arguing that the European Union misrepresents and misunderstands the factors responsible for large-scale migration and the role of states in exploiting migrants. For these reasons it is highly unlikely that the EU-Horn of Africa Action Plan/Khartoum process will bring about better border management policies and practices.

Strangers in West African Societies

Africa ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliott P. Skinner
Keyword(s):  
Time Perspective ◽  
West African ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Status ◽  
New States ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Stranger

Opening ParagraphThe difficulties attending the attempt of the new African polities to weld their disparate elements into viable nation-states have been popularly attributed to ‘tribalism’. Certainly, in some cases groups indigenous to a region did come into conflict as new states arose there, but a hard look at tribal relations in modern Africa shows these relations to be of a different order from those of pre-European times. One element in the so-called ‘tribalism’ in modern Africa, and one which has so far escaped systematic treatment, is the conflict which arose between Africans indigenous to an area and African ‘strangers’—those groups which for various reasons had moved out of their homelands and had established relatively long-term residence in the territories of other groups—as political autonomy and independence became a reality. An examination of the factors which made for conflict between ‘locals’ and ‘strangers’ in West African societies would not only give us the opportunity to understand this phenomenon in a time-perspective, but would also enable us to see whether the status and role of the ‘stranger’ in these societies could throw light on the universal problem of the ‘stranger’.

Energy in World History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaclav Smil
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
World History ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Energy Needs ◽  
Prime Movers ◽  
Total Capacity ◽  
Socioeconomic Consequences

This chapter discusses the place of energy in world history. It examines historical milestones—such as the rise of larger populations organized with greater social complexity into nation-states and supranational collectives, and enjoying a higher quality of life—in terms of dominant energy sources and leading prime movers, as well as the most important socioeconomic consequences of these technical changes. It also considers grand patterns in the consumption of energy throughout history, focusing on the long-term relationship between human accomplishments and dominant energy sources and changing prime movers in terms of energy eras and transitions. Finally, it outlines trends that have accompanied the growth of unit power of inanimate prime movers and the accumulation of their total capacity; transformations of the fossil-fuel era including new structures of social relations; imperatives of energy needs and uses; and the importance of harnessing energies and controlling their conversion to supply.

The Meaning of Irish Freedom Constitutionalism in the Free State

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 45-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Townshend
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Free State ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Die Life ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Autonomous State ◽  
The Military

The performance of Ireland as an autonomous state since 1922 remains a contentious subject. Joseph Lee's withering critique of Irish economic backwardness and cultural parochialism, which he holds to be rooted in a narrow adhesion to the ‘possessor principle’ against the ‘performance ethic’, charts a long-term failure to rise to the challenge of statehood. It is not appropriate here to attempt even a summary of his sprawling, bristling account; I want to focus on an aspect highlit by Denis Donoghue when he reviewed it in die London Review of Books. ‘The first and most important fact about modern Ireland,’ Donoghue contended, ‘is that, after die Civil War, there was unquestioned transition to democracy.’ On this view, modern Irish history is, pace Lee, in essence a success story. As Brian Farrell put it, die capacity of die Irish parliamentary tradition to ‘encompass, neutralise and institutionalise’ the disastrous split of 1922 ‘makes die Irish experience unique among the new nation-states of the twentiedi-century world’. Tom Garvin has recendy reinforced this verdict by pointing to the surprising speed with which any tendency to military intervention in Irish politics disappeared. This after a Civil War in which die new Army—lacking any experience of subordination to the civil power— had saved die life of the infant Irish Free State. Indeed, far from witnessing the politicisation of the military, Ireland ‘rapidly became one of the most demilitarised societies in Europe’.

The French Mandate in Lebanon

2019 ◽  
Vol 124 (5) ◽  
pp. 1689-1693
Author(s):  
Carol Hakim
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Modern World ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Nation States ◽  
French Mandate ◽  
Imperial Power

Abstract A century after the victorious Allied powers distributed their spoils of victory in 1919, the world still lives with the geopolitical consequences of the mandates system established by the League of Nations. The Covenant article authorizing the new imperial dispensation came cloaked in the old civilizationist discourse, entrusting sovereignty over “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world” to the “advanced nations” of Belgium, England, France, Japan, and South Africa. In this series of “reflections” on the mandates, ten scholars of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the international order consider the consequences of the new geopolitical order birthed by World War I. How did the reshuffling of imperial power in the immediate postwar period configure long-term struggles over minority rights, decolonization, and the shape of nation-states when the colonial era finally came to a close? How did the alleged beneficiaries—more often the victims—of this “sacred trust” grasp their own fates in a world that simultaneously promised and denied them the possibility of self-determination? From Palestine, to Namibia, to Kurdistan, and beyond, the legacies of the mandatory moment remain pressing questions today.

scholarly journals Environmental Impacts of Planned Capitals and Lessons for Indonesia’s New Capital

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 438
Author(s):  
Hoong Chen Teo ◽  
Alex Mark Lechner ◽  
Saut Sagala ◽  
Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Forest Reserves ◽  
East Kalimantan ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Nighttime Lights

Indonesia’s new planned capital in East Kalimantan is being touted as a “smart, green, beautiful and sustainable city” but has stoked fears of massive environmental damage to the island of Borneo, one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots and carbon sinks. Precedents of other planned capitals can contribute to an understanding of the potential long-term impacts of Indonesia’s new capital. We used historical nighttime lights to quantitatively assess the spatial growth footprint of 12 previous planned capitals, and conducted land-use analyses to identify the potential environmental impacts on Borneo’s natural environment. Our assessment suggests that it is likely that the direct footprint of the new capital could grow rapidly, expanding over 10 km from its core in less than two decades and over 30 km before mid-century. We identified sensitive ecosystems which may be affected by the new capital’s direct and indirect footprint, such as forest reserves, mangrove and peat. Deforestation emissions from the new capital’s direct (30 km) and indirect (200 km) footprint could be approximately 50 MtCO2e and 2326 MtCO2e respectively, equivalent to 2.7% and 126% of Indonesia’s 2014 greenhouse gas emissions. We discuss how planned capitals can spatially restructure the socio-political geographies of cities and nation-states by interacting with meanings, symbolisms and power relations, which may aggravate environmental impacts but also be seized upon as a catalyst for improving environmental performance in Borneo and Indonesia. Finally, we recommend the use of best practices in impact assessment and sustainability as a necessary first step towards protecting Borneo.

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