Nation-Building as Necessary Effort in Fragile States
Nation-Building as Necessary Effort in Fragile States
by René Grotenhuis
Amsterdam University Press, 2016 eISBN: 978-90-485-3212-4 | Cloth: 978-94-6298-219-2 Library of Congress Classification JZ6300.G76 2016 Dewey Decimal Classification 327.1
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Policies intended to bring stability to fragile states tend to focus almost exclusively on building institutions and systems to get governance right. Simply building the state is often seen as sufficient for making it stable and legitimate. But policies like these, René Grotenhuis shows in this book, ignore the question of what makes people belong to a nation-state, arguing that issues of identity, culture, and religion are crucial to creating the sense of belonging and social cohesion that a stable nation-state requires.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
René Grotenhuis iis the former Executive Director of Cordaid, associate researcher at Utrecht University, and chairman of the Society for International Development in the Netherlands. He has published both in Dutch and English about Development cooperation and international relations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue: The urgency of reality.1. Struggling in the world of Nation-States. 2. Nation and statea. The defined state: the Montevideo Convention definition b. The undefined nationc. Nation and state intertwinedd. The making of the nation-statee. The ideal of the nation-statef. The nation state and the globalizing worldg. The changing map of the worldh. The nation-state as coveted objecti. The absence of the nation-state. j. Nation without a state? 3. Fragility: a donor's concept but not far from reality. a. The label of fragility b. The International Dialogue for Peace-Building and State-Buildingc. A materialist view on nationhood4. Nation building and state building and the challenge of fragilitya. Nation building and state building in international political discourse b. The intertwined nature of nation-building and state-building. c. Why is nation building so crucial as a complementary effort in fragile contexts? d. Nation-building in fragile states: history never repeats itself. 5. The Scylla and Charybdis of nation-buildinga. The Scylla of nation-building: Identity as exclusionb. The Charybdis of nation-building: silencing identityc. Moderate Patriotism6. Nation-building: identity and identification, process and contenta. The dangerous romanticism of homogeneous nation-states.b. From identity to identificationc. Identification and fragility d. The heterogeneity of fragile statese. Nationhood and minoritiesf. Nation-building as nation destroyingg. National identity as moving target7. Nation-building: sovereignty and citizenshipa. The people as sovereignb. Republican citizenshipc. Citizenship as solid base for diversityd. Citizenship under pressure in globalizing world8. Nationhood: multifaceted. a. The difficult nationhood discourse: some caveats. b. National Identity: civic, cultural, ethnic: the model of Shulmanc. Is the Shulman-Framework applicable for fragile nation-states?d. A modified model for fragile nation-statese. New features for national identity? 9. Nationhood: Civic, Religious, Cultural and ethnic identitiesa. Nationhood and civic identityb. Nationhood and religious identityc. Nationhood and cultural identityd. Nationhood and ethnic identitye. From ascribed to open identity. 10. A program of Nation-building.a. Content: National identity is layeredb. Process: Nation building is a learning processc. Institutions: National building requires an institutional set-up. d. Actors: nation-building is national 11. Complementarity: peace-building, nation-building, state-buildinga. Peace-building b. Nation-building and state-building: the harsh reality of power 12. Epilogue: The reality of urgency.