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7 The good state This book has been about the way in which Britain under New Labour ‘did good’ in Africa as a way of creating a central core of ideal activity for the state. The themes and approaches contained within this trend were not new, but drew on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas about the continent and Britain’s role there. I have suggested that the creation of a good project formed an important part of protecting the state from internal ambiguity and decay, by creating a utopian core at the heart of what it does. In this chapter, I am going to
M1218 - THOMPSON TXT.qxp:GRAHAM Q7.3 10/3/08 13:10 Page 18 1 The modern democratic nation-state For Machiavelli and his heirs, reason of state was prudent politics for princes and republics in competition for territory and power at home and abroad using violence. By the time the first aspects of what were to become modern democratic nation-states were emerging during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the domestic and external conditions in which the authority and power of any state had to be realised were very different. That change began with
Hungarian Jewry and the wartime crisis in Austria-Hungary v 7 v Between refugees and the state: Hungarian Jewry and the wartime Jewish refugee crisis in Austria-Hungary1 Rebekah Klein-Pejšová Introduction Galician Jews crossed the border by the thousands into the Kingdom of Hungary when Russian troops advanced on the Eastern Front in September 1914. They fled from the Russian army, aware of the fate of Jews in Russia’s western borderlands expelled en masse from their homes and sent deep into the interior of the empire by military commanders fearful of breaches
The image of Iran stretches back thousands of years to the time of Cyrus the Great and the Persian Empire. The vast empire covered lands from Asia Minor to Europe and Egypt, and was the largest of its kind until the last emperor was overthrown by Alexander the Great. Thus, the components feeding into Iranian state identity have been continually negotiated and (re)constructed over time. Iranian state identity under the Pahlavi shahs, from 1925 until the overthrow of the last shah in 1979, is often understood as completely distinct from the post
Primitive state-building State-building is the effort of rulers to institutionalise state structures capable of absorbing expanding political mobilisation and controlling territory corresponding to an identity community. In the Middle East, the flaws built into the process from its origins have afflicted the states with enduring legitimacy deficits (Hudson 1977). Because imperialism drew boundaries that haphazardly corresponded to identity, installed client elites in them and created the power machineries of the new
3 Identities and the Indian state 1 The study of Indian politics has traditionally centred on the political system: government, political parties, elections and so on. However, a strong central government, a dirigiste state and the dominance of the Congress Party promoted a strong national focus. Globalization and economic liberalization has changed all that. A decentralization of power is taking place. And, as regions and constituent states of the Indian union are beginning to compete with one another for investment in their economic development,2 regionalism
2 Defining and quantifying the small state Counting the great powers of an era [is very easy]. … The question is an empirical one, and common sense can answer it.1 No consensus definition of the small state exists. However, a proper understanding of the small state is critical to this study for four reasons: analytical clarity and transparency, the proper usage of statistical data, the applied theoretical framework, and the historical component of the investigation. First, calling for a proper understanding of the object of a scholarly inquiry is stating the
3 The classic balance of power, 1648–1814 Power politics and small state survival: the classic balance of power, 1648–1814 Elle [la politique] maintient l’Europe indépendante et libre. [Frederic the Great]1 How safe was the largely unbridled balance of power of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the small state? This chapter will show that the balance-of-power system was in fact rather accommodating and allowed small states to survive in historically large numbers. Moreover, small state death was measured and gradual only. In short, the loose and
6 The story of small state survival: past, present, and future Over more than three-and-a-half centuries, the fate of small states has depended primarily on the states system. Since the Peace of Westphalia, the starting point for this study, the survival rate of small states has been shaped largely by the international political environment of the time. Small state survival, understood as the net outcome of state creation and state existence minus state termination, is historically determined to a large extent by the overall systemic structure. In short, small
7 The recognition of the modern Turkish state Although Mustafa Kemal asserted himself as the only leader of the Turkish national movement, he was under threat from Islamist Enver Pasha in terms of dominating the national movement. Moreover, the Allies did not acknowledge Kemal’s leadership until the first serious defeat of the Armenians in December 1920. For instance, the CUP was still regarded as the major political power in Turkey in the British Secret Intelligence Services’ report of December 1920. A British policy based on increasing the rivalry between