John Rapley
ALTHOUGH It is a relatively recent invention, nationalism is taken for granted in the modern world. Legally, you must belong to a nation if you wish to travel - nations retain the right to issue passports. Nations supersede all other bodies in the maintenance of their laws: in a modern courtroom, there is no authority above theirs, and trying to claim the sanction of, say, God will do little good. And, as the coming World Cup will attest, the rallying-power of nationalism remains huge.
Yet, the nation is a recent invention. Most political systems in history decentralised and fragmented authority, with several agents holding some kind of power. Some states had absolute sovereigns, but their authority came from themselves, not from some abstract "nation" whose rules bound even the ruler. Only in the last couple of centuries did the idea emerge that people belonged to overarching groups - nations - which enjoyed the ultimate claim on people's loyalty.
The nation is today officially a universal feature, in as much as virtually all people are assigned to one. Unofficially, of course, many of the planet's citizenry feel little belonging to any nation, preferring longer-standing identities of clan, family, tribe or religion.
ESSENTIAL TASK
Nevertheless, almost all governments see the promotion and preservation of national agendas as an essential task. Yet, if this ideal is widely shared, the actual understanding of what makes a nation differs.
Scholars of nationalism usually divide the phenomenon into two types: civic and ethnic. The first is more inclusive - one belongs to a nation by adhering to its rules and symbols. The United States and Canada are said to be examples of this kind of nationalism. The second is more exclusive, with membership in a nation corresponding to membership in an ethnic or linguistic group. This is said to be typical of many European nations, with the most extreme variant having been German nationalism during the Nazi period.
As with all such typologies, the true boundaries are blurred. Many European nations the Germans especially have struggled to be more inclusive in recent decades, whilst American nationalism historically had a racialised character.
Nevertheless, a recent experience in a French lecture-hall proved instructive for me. When I asked a group of European students whether they could imagine a Cabinet minister in their country having a foreign accent, most considered the question fanciful. But this sort of thing is not unheard of in the U.S. or Canada.
The conception of identity upon which a nation is founded represents more than a political choice. It has profound economic consequences. There is a common belief that nations with a strong sense of cohesion - in short, those whose national identity is based on ethnic belonging - grow faster. In fact, though, there is a stronger argument that nations founded on civic identity perform better over the long term.
The reason is simple. These countries are more open to immigrants. That means that, inadvertently, they are open to new ideas. Since progress occurs as a result of trial and error, the more things are tried, the quicker progress will be.
DILEMMA
This is a dilemma confronting European nations today. Faced with declining birth-rates, they need immigrants to sustain their populations. But as immigrants enter their societies, Europeans often feel their identities diluted. However, restricting immigration will only slow long-term growth. Elsewhere, the Japanese seem already to have accepted this trade-off. If their economy is improving today, its more distant future seems highly questionable.
Building a nation atop a sense of ethnic belonging may seem obvious. But as a pragmatic choice, there is something to be said for inclusiveness.
John Rapley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
