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Nation and community in the international order*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1993

Antony Black
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Extract

It is obvious that today the facts of international relations do notfitinto any general framework of which people are aware (perhaps they never have). As descriptions, concepts such as state, sovereignty, federation seem more than ever stabs in the dark. In prescriptive political theory, we are even more at sea. Old prescriptive certainties such as nationhood must be conceded to be at best the most provisional of guides to action. The interface between domestic sovereignty and international organisations (and what a wilderness of phenomena that term is supposed to describe) needs to be comprehended anew. This is urgent if we are to make sense of, and have a sense of direction through, the problems of the European Community, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, not to mention a host of problematic multi-ethnic polities as diverse as India and Iraq. Wherever we look in the world today, the relationship between ‘state’, ‘nation’ and ‘community’ seems to be in crisis: from the Balkans to Canada, from Scotland to Kurdistan. This no more has the appearance of an aberration from some historical norm than does the tie between state and nation in previous European history. It makes more sense to regard both as shifting patterns of collective human consciousnesses. The idea that there is something ‘out there’, ‘given’, that preordains human beings to live in nations, and nations t o form states, was certainly a myth; and as a myth had a certain real force. The problem today is, first, that the myth is reviving in some places at just the time when it is being swept aside in others (in parts of the European Community, for example); and, secondly, that the idea of imprescriptible national rights seems to be a postulate of democracy whenever the majority in a territory embrace it, and at the same time a recipe for carnage and the vilest known abrogation of all other human rights. The revival of this nationalist idea around 1990 has also to be set beside the real feelings of belonging that arise amongst groups other than nations; which, whenever they do have such a feeling of corporate identity, we may describe by the general term ‘communities’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 1993 , pp. 81 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1993

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References

1 I have attempted a full statement of these points in Black, Antony, Stale, Community and Human Desire: a Group-centred Account of Political Values (Hemel Hempstead, 1988)Google Scholar.

2 See Parsons, Talcott et al. (eds.), Theories of Society (New York, 1965), esp. pp. 269ffGoogle Scholar, and 315–18; Wilson, Stephen, Informal Groups (Englewood Cliffs, 1978), p. 90Google Scholar.

3 See especially Koenig, Renée, The Community, trans. Fitzgerald, E. (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Minar, David W. and Greer, Scott (eds.), The Concept of Community (London, 1970), esp. p. 63Google Scholar; Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar.

4 Schmitter, P., and Lehmbruch, G. (eds.), Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Cawson, Alan, Corporatism ami Political Theory (Oxford, 1986).Google Scholar

5 Black, Antony, Guilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought (London; 1984)Google Scholar, chs. 17, 19.

6 Peter, Blickle, Deutsche Untertanen (Munich, 1981)Google Scholar; ‘Der Kommunalismus als Gestaltungsprinzip zwischen Mittelalter und Moderne’, in Bernard, N. and Reichen, Q. (eds.) Gesellschaft und Gesellschaften (Munich 1982), pp. 95–113Google Scholar; and ‘Kommunalismus: Begriffsbildung in heuristischer Absicht’, in Blickle, P. (ed.), Landgemeinde und Stadtgemeinde in Mitteleuropa (Munich, 1991), pp. 5–38Google Scholar; Press, V., ‘Kommunalismus oder Territorialismus,’ in Timmermann, H. (ed.), Die Bildung des friihmodemen Staates (Munich, 1989), pp. 109–35Google Scholar. On international theories of this period, see my forthcoming Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450 (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks) (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar, ch. 3.

7 Reynolds, Susan, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford, 1984), esp. pp. 238–40Google Scholar; Clarke, M. V., The Medieval City-State: an essay on Tyranny and Federation in the Middle Ages (London, 1926)Google Scholar.

8 Mesnard, P., L'essor de la philosophic politique au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1936), pp. 567–616Google Scholar; Winters, P. J., Die ‘Politik’ des Johannes Althusius und ihre zeitgenossischen Quellen (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1963)Google Scholar; Black, Guilds, pp. 132–42.

9 For an example of Gierke's work and further literature, see Black, Antony (ed.), Community in Historical Perspective: A Translation of Selections from Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht by Otto von Gierke, trans. M. Fischer (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Althusius, Johannes, Politico Methodice Digesla, intro. Friedrich, C.J. (facsimile edn, Cambridge, Mass., 1932), p. 169Google Scholar.

11 Cf. Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Trivers, Robert, Social Evolution (1985)Google Scholar.

12 Gellner, E., Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar.

13 I am grateful to Basil O'Neill for suggesting this point, apropos Derrida's attempt to draw political conclusions from the notion of deconstruction.

14 Cf. Salkever, Stephen G., Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy (Princeton, 1990).Google Scholar