27 State-nation modernity

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“Modernity produces certain distinct social forms, of which the most prominent is the nation-state. A banal observation, of course, until one remembers the established tendency of sociology to concentrate on 'society' as its designated subject-matter. The sociologist's 'society', applied to the period of modernity at any rate, is a nation-state, but this is usually a covert equation rather than an explicitly theorised one. As a socio-political entity the nation-state contrasts in a fundamental way with most types of traditional order. It develops only as part of a wider nation-state system (which today has become global in character), has very specific forms of territoriality and surveillance capabilities, and monopolises effective control over the means of violence”
(Giddens 1991, 15).

“Modernity” is too often a term used as unproblematic in the singular. And the processes that lead to and through this period are too often considered as uniform and ubiquitous. Scholars working in and on Asian locales have led a counter-argument which notes that a plurality of modernities are to be found, each responding to local historical circumstances. At the same time, there is no escaping the globalizing aspect of modernity, which includes the development of nation-states in geographical and organizational counter-position to one another. So too, the disembedding features of modern nation formation have unlinked internal locales from local histories, recoding these as sites of the nation. And competition among nations steers their internal formations, resulting in homologous institutional arenas where the global holds sway over the local.

Industrialization, militarization, capital formation: there are several arenas within modernity where states compete. And this competition brings them into a dialogic relationship that reduces inter-national differences. Institutions learn from each other, and copy one another in the process. As with the bodies competitive athletes competing in the modern Olympiad, modern states begin to resemble each other as they individually strive to master similar practices.

However, internal “governmentalities” in each nation also reflects a local history of rules (and rulers), and of powers and places. But here, too, in a general—however, I would venture, in a productive—manner, we can speak of dominant frames of governmentality as well as localized practices. These frames for modern governmentalities are plural, but not as numerous as nations, and not as diverse as states might profess.

I want to focus on the location of the state within the nation (the latter as a geographical location and as an imagined community of “citizens”).

In particular, I want to focus on the location of the state within the nation (the latter as a geographical location and as an imagined community of “citizens”). And within this, I would look at the position of the state vis-à-vis civil society and the public sphere. Again, as with “modernity,” these terms have also arisen mainly from debates and descriptions of states in Europe. However, recent reconsiderations of them, as exemplified by Keane (1988) have illuminated their histories and the contours of their application in a manner that makes these both more difficult to use as general terms but easier to apply as historically-grounded examples for global comparisons.

In “Despotism and Democracy,” his own contribution to the work he edited, Keane (1988) notes that the term “civil society” was originally used in several nations as a “type of political association which places its members under the influence of its laws and thereby ensures peaceful order and good government” (35). Until the early eighteenth century throughout Europe, this form of (and forum for) political association was protected by the state, and so developed as an interest internal to the state. In fact, Keane claims, “[c]ivil society [koinonia politiké, societas civilis, société civile, bürgerliche Gesellschaft, Civill Society, societá civile] and the state [polis, civitas, état, Staat, state, stato] were interchangeable terms” (35-36). It is only after that that civil society emerges (where it did) as a counter-state forum and form of political association.

When I speak then of a “frame” for governmentality, I am looking, for example, at precisely the institutional and philosophical connections or dis-connections between elements of modernity, such as civil society and the state. The eighteenth-century transformation of civil society in parts of Europe from a state-based arena of action and discourse, to a counter-state arena marked a shift in the framework of democracy in these nations. This shift moved some aspects of governmentality outside of the state, but perhaps more importantly, it also called into question the existence of the state.

Here I am using Foucault’s term, “government” in a meaning field that Foucault supplied:

“The things with which in this sense government is to be concerned are in fact men, but men in their relations, their links, their imbrication with those other things which are wealth, resources, means of subsistence, the territory with its specific qualities, climate, irrigation, fertility, etc.; men in their relation to that other kind of things, customs, habits, ways of acting and thinking, etc.; lastly, men in their relation to that other kind of things, accidents and misfortunes such as famine, epidemics, death, etc.” (1991, 93).

Government, and its underlying “governmentality” is the dominant discourse of relationships among people, and between people and cultural objects. Government is not restricted to the relations between the state and the individual, although this relationship in modernity has a marked quality because of the state’s monopoly over the means of violence—both carceral and military. And there are also nations where the state’s hegemonic interests spread far wider than a control over the means of violence. In fact, here is where the frameworks for locally-present modernities diverge in important ways.

State-nations and nation-states

In some places today, one finds that the nation’s state has acquired a governmental purview which has few limits, while in other places, the state operates within imposed limits, while other cultural and economic institutions exist more-or-less external to the state. The latter places are “nation-states” that display a form of modern state where issues of civil society and the public sphere are central to critiques of modernity. These are the states where, for example, Keane’s “classical” notion of civil society has been transformed into an entity different from the state.

The former places (in order to distinguish them from the latter, I call these “state-nations”—as they tend to put the interests of the state at the front of the nation) are found, for example, in most places in Asia and Africa. In these countries, descriptions of the state, in its many interventions into the lives of its citizens, form the main critique of local modernities.

State-nations and nation-states are not fixed in some formal oppposition. As we noted, the above nation-states were themselves state-nations before the middle of the eighteenth century. And current debates over the position of the state can be seen as potentially repositioning the state, moving the frame of governmentality either toward or away from state-nation modernity. For the state, to date, is the one feature that appears in all locales.

“For Deleuze and Guattari, desire is neither inherently good nor bad, only dynamic and productive; desiring-machines can travel along the path of becoming revolutionary as well as becoming-fascist; lines of escape can turn into lines of liberation or destruction”
(Best and Kellner 1991, 105).

It is important to see both frames of modernity as a) informing the other, and b) capable of transforming into the other. State organizations in nation-states may envy those of state-nations, where the purview of state institutions is much broader. So too, civil organizations in state-nations may envy those in nation-states for the latter’s greater liberty of independent action and influence. Capitalist organizations recognize the benefits of direct government support for research under state-nation conditions, but also complain about state controls on the marketplace.

“Reich is at his profoundest as a thinker when he refuses to accept ignorance or illusion on the part of the masses as an explanation of fascism, and demands an explanation that will take their desires into account, an explanation formulated in terms of desire: no, the masses were not innocent dupes; at a certain point, under a certain set of conditions, they wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of the desire of the masses that needs to be accounted for”
(Deleuze and Guattari 1983, 29).

Both frames for modern governmentalities are, to some extent, keyed to the desires of their citizenry (although this connection generally includes paternalist attempts at control over these desires). And, to the extent that these desires, however articulated, are met, then the frame may be considered to have succeeded. Today, both frames are increasingly linked to a “capitalist-production machine,” (to use Deleuze and Guattari’s term) a mechanism increasingly global in scope. Of late, this machine has become more central to the articulation of lifestyle desires, desires that may run counter to existing or proposed state-nation or nation-state programs.

Both modes are not ever fully realized, but reflect plateaus where the tensions between the state and its population are resolvable. A universal command over the lives of its citizens is generally beyond the reach of even the strongest state, and so state-nations are only relatively state-centered. And, conversely, full independence from the state is not generally possible for civil-society organizations, and so nation-states are only relatively public-centered.

Several attempts at achieving a dual state-nation/nation-state: where the state behaves like a state-nation in terms of supplying social resources, but also acts like a nation-state in terms of economic and public-sphere issues have mostly failed, a failure seen as the result of the fluidity of capital in the global marketplace. “Liberal welfare states” use tax monies to provide state support for social services¹, but corporations and wealthy individuals can simply move away, or take their profit centers off-shore, and so pay few taxes, creating situation of chronic under-funding that eventually undermines the state.

“The fact that the welfare state becomes a focus of conflict as much as reducing it puts limits on the fiscal resources that can be generated to fund its services. ... The 'taxpayer's revolt' places limits on the resources governments can muster to pay for the welfare state in circumstances where they have to compete for marginal votes in the electoral system. This squeeze tends to get tighter rather than to relax. As levels of voter dealignment grow, the parties can rely less and less on their established supporters alone and have to capture those in the middle; a resistance develops to paying marginal rates of tax once broadly acceptable to those who carried the burden”
(Giddens 1994, 75-76).

In some countries, such as in Hungary, a history of state-nation modernity is being challenged by social movements in favor of a public-centered nation-state. Other countries hold a history of movement in the opposite direction—from a nation-state to a state-nation—as Germany did in the 1930s.

Most countries are still working within the founding situations of their own modernity, and it is important, when critiquing their current situation, not to direct an argument to this which lacks a purchase on the mode of modernity which holds sway locally. Now, the distinction between nation-states and state-nations does not correspond directly to any of the “classical” modern political discourses: left-right, liberal-conservative, socialist-capitalist, etc. Instead it points to the role of the state² and that of the public sphere within a nation as an outcome of a local, modern governmentality.

State-nation modernity

“Although he resigned in 1989 following charges of corruption, Takeshita’s brainchild, the Furusato kon no kai (Spirit of Furusato Association) was adopted by the present (1989) prime minister, Kaifu Toshiki, as his personal advisory committee. Political factionalism aside, the LDP as a whole regards furusato-zukuri as the means by which to forge a new ‘cultural state’ (bunka kokka) in tandem with a ‘new Japanese-style welfare state’ (‘Nihonsei no atarashii fukushi kokka’)”
(Robertson 1991, 26).

Japan, for example, is a place where a certain contour of modernity has been accomplished, a matrix of modernizations and reflexive institutionalities that in their combination assemble what might be called a “state-nation modernity:” a modernity where agencies the state figure centrally in modernization and modern institutionalities. State-nation modernity occurs in nations in several parts of the world. It is one of the stable forms of modernity that have emerged in this century. Its basis is a strong, centralized government and a determined program of control over economic and social forms of life. For decades it has been the main form of the modern state for more than half of the population of the world. State-nation modernity is the outcome of decades of a nation’s state operating within the state-nation governmental frame.

I want to suggest that state-nation modernity has some primary contours, although these are more or less evident in any locale:

1. Strong central state control over or active management of the means of production within the nation;

2. Centralized governmental control over or management of health, education, cultural, and social programs;

3. Centralized control over local governmental agencies;

4. Centralized state control over or active management of mass media, particularly over broadcast media and newspapers;

5. A weak and ineffective public sphere either within or external to the state;

6. A court system dominated by the interests of the central state, and a strong national police.

“Conscious control means economic planning, which to be effective even in principle has to be largely centralized. In socialist theory, this forms a ‘cybernetic model’ of economic organization. The socialist economy (not the state, which disappears') is regulated through a 'higher order intelligence', the economic brain, which controls 'lower order' economic inputs and outputs. As one prominent author of the earlier part of the century put it, production and distribution will be regulated by 'the local, regional, or national commissars', who 'shape, with conscious foresight, the whole economic life of the communities of which they are the appointed representatives and leaders, in accordance with the needs of their members'
(Giddens 1994, 58).”

Most generally, we find a strong centralized state that pursues a national state interest in the economy (through nationalized industries or through bureaucratic intervention³), and an interest in providing for health care, education, and a variety of social resources, together with an interest in managing mass media and in using the justice and penal systems in the service of the state.

The weak public sphere may be seen as an outcome of the strong state, but is, I believe, more a primary feature of the relationship between the state and its population within the circumstances of state-nation modernity. As the state is the primary conduit for all decisions of public interest, other arenas become peripheralized.

The state that emerges within conditions of state-nation modernity uses its institutions to exert conscious control over the economic, cultural, and social lives of its population. This control has been characterized by Anthony Giddens (1994) on the model of a “cybernetic” organism, where the state is the mechanical brain, and the population its organic body. The notion of Cybernetic governmentalities articulates the distance between the state and its polity, a distance that magnifies the power of the state to act upon its population, as the latter is fully objectified as a field of operation for the state.

“This politics of The Prince, fictitious or otherwise, from which people sought to distance themselves, was characterized by one principle: for Machiavelli, it was alleged, the prince stood in a relation of singularity and externality, and thus of transcendence, to his principality. The prince acquires his principality by inheritance or conquest, but in any case he does not form part of it, he remains external to it”
(Foucault 1991, 89-90).

State-nations are countries where the state has not rejected the externality of the sovereign state in favor of the internality of the democratic state. The state becomes positioned outside of the population. It announces its interests as those of the population, and it proceeds on their behalf, but it is not subject to interrogation by or oversight from the population via the public sphere. This produces a weakened public sphere both within (e.g., in the instrumentalities of parliamentary discussions and decisions) and outside of the state.

All the democracy that fits

Given the widespread persistence of sovereign governmentalities (including colonial ones) up to this century, and the ready-made access to economic means that this form of governmentality provides to a ruling elite, it is really not surprising that subsequent, modern states have, on the whole, not embraced the internalization of power that would erode and replace this governmentality with that of an actually democratic state. The practical advantages of ruling under sovereign conditions are not obscure.

Varieties of “democracy” have thus emerged in many countries that are not actually supported from a democratic logic, but which offer a modicum of democracy⁴ as a legitimizing feature both internally and externally. State-nations use the discourses of democracy to code their own practices, but in the form of an alibi, rather than a logic of practice.

“Japan’s experience demonstrates the insufficiency of equating democracy with the formal or nominal presence of certain institutions. The country is not a democracy in the Western sense”
(Herzog 1993, 18).

This opens up the states of state-nations to critiques of democracy as this is practiced by the state. However, an expectation of democracy in state-nations is not well-founded as a critique of the state’s role in the state-nation. The same holds for expectations on an independent public sphere within state-nation modernity. What public discourse does take place in these circumstances is produced by or with the consent of the state, and so an independent public sphere is not an available option.

Critiques of local democracy acquire usefulness in the larger critique of modernity, that is, of the choice of the mode of modernity itself. Those who, like Herzog (1993), would argue that Japan is not a democracy, hold a misplaced expectation, given the state-nation modernity of which Japan is a well-formed example. But those who would critique Japan’s choice of state-nation modernity as the locally practiced mode can use notions of democracy to articulate alternative—nation-state style—modes of modernity.

democratizing Japan

The nation-state-style democratization of Japan would not only necessitate that the existing institutions (the constitution, the diet, etc.) operate as they now claim to do, but a more fundamental break from the state itself as the instrument of governmentality, and also a break from the paternalist governmentality that informs not only the state’s position vis-à-vis its population, but also relationships within corporations, factories, schools, and families.

In short, democratization, as this process is pursued and critiqued within and about nation-states, is an ongoing recoding of relationships at all levels of society, and, most importantly under capitalist economic systems, a recoding of the relationship between people and cultural objects.

A critique of democracy within a state-nation is thus an external critique of the persistence of the state-nation system of governmentality, and necessarily includes a counter-public critique of the lack of a public sphere as the forum where such discussions can take place. But here we have to also mention that critiques of democracy within nation-states have also led to the formation of state-nations, even where there already exists a public sphere and a civil society.

Where there is an pre-existing strong public sphere (such as in Germany before 1933), the movement toward state-nation modernity is characterized by a state rhetoric of “national interests” and an erosion of public sphere discourse as a means for decision making or oversight of the state. This erosion is coupled to state efforts in acquiring control over the media, which may be accomplished under the rationale of “protecting” national interests. Finally, the centralization of institutional powers provides the central state with the means to direct the economic and social lives of its citizens.

Where there not a pre-existing strong public sphere, such as in cases of direct transfer of power from a princely state (as in the Soviet Union, Iran, or Japan) or from a colonial state (as in Indonesia), or both (as in China), the emerging modern state might suddenly acquire an ability to speak on behalf of “the national interest” and a centralized state apparatus may already be in place. Under these circumstances, the notion of a strong public sphere or of active non-governmental organizations would only threaten the ability of the state to govern⁵ in the manner in which it now operates.

With the collapse of communist regimes in Europe it may be tempting to typify the state-nation form of modernity by reference to these, and so to announce that this is no longer a viable alternative for local modernities anywhere in on the globe. However, state-nation modernity is still the most prevalent form of modernity on the globe, and it is nowhere more evident than in Asia. And in Asia, it is today not linked to the Titanic adventures of state socialism, but rather rides the tigers of Asian capitalism.

Japan is a reasonable example of a state within a state-nation modernity, and it demonstrates how this type of modernity can foster rapid industrial growth at a national level. By harnessing its control over the “national interests” of the population and corporations, central government planners in Japan created one of the world’s largest economies within a space of forty years. And much of this economic growth can be described as the outcome of this nation’s fostering its own state-nation modernity⁶.

The consequences of state-nation modernity include a strong state with an enhanced capacity to direct the lives of individuals, and with the means to plan for and invest in economic and social programs of national scope, on the long term. Under these circumstances the public sphere is also “privatized” by the state (see also: Private public sphere). And so we now see the growth of “state sponsored non-governmental organizations” in nations such as Malaysia. The state penetrates the lives of individuals and encompasses the arenas for social and cultural participation.

Such a state looks to legitimate its actions through the seamless appearance of its capability to plan for the future, and its own servitude to the national interests it articulates and promotes. Its legitimacy does not rest on the claims it might make as a democratic state. Although citizens in any state may not be aware of circumstances of democracy in other states, they can discern the contours of democracy in their nation and government, whatever the latter’s own claims. However, as the state becomes implicated in the goals it announces for national “progress,” a lack of democratic legitimacy reduces its ability to avoid the consequences of failures in its goals. But as long as these are attractive (or reasonable) and it subsequently meets them, it is not liable to critiques over its lack of democratic decision-making. Here, the state’s “sovereign” legitimacy hinges on a combination of evident benevolence, ultimate justice, and visible power.

The question of liberalism

State-nations and nation-states represent modal frames for local governmentalities, conditions that reflect the local relationship between the state and its polity. In nation-state modernity, the state has been internalized by the polity and reemerges as a government subject to what Foucault (1997) called “the question of liberalism:”

“...liberalism resonates with the principle: ‘One always governs too much’—or, at any rate, one always must suspect that one governs too much. Governmentality should not be exercised without a ‘critique’ far more radical than a test of optimization. It should inquire not just as to the best (or least costly) means of achieving its effects but also concerning the possibility and even the lawfulness of its scheme for achieving effects. The suspicion that one always risks governing too much is inhabited by the question: Why, in fact, must one govern?”... Liberal thought starts not from the existence of the state, seeing in the government the means for attaining that end it would be for itself, but rather from society, which is in a complex relation of exteriority and interiority with respect to the state. Society, as both a precondition and a final end, is what enables one to no longer ask the question: How can one govern as much as possible and at the least possible cost? Instead, the question becomes: Why must one govern? In other words, what makes it necessary for there to be a government, and what ends should it pursue with regard to society in order to justify its existence? (74-75 emphasis added).

By viewing government as an unhappy compromise predicated upon the current failings of society, liberalism⁷ imagines a society where the least amount of government is necessary, and looks to the practices that will realize this utopian vision.

liberalism and the nation-state

Looking at the history of liberalism in England, Germany, and the United States, Foucault notes that each case presents its own forms of liberalism, and local distinctions between the state and civil society. But in each case, the circumstances of the nation-state are evident. The presence of public-sphere institutions that are external to the state actually mark the state’s position as internal to the public.

The public sphere is what surrounds and subtends the state. Under these conditions, the state is not granted a controlling interest in the economy, nor in mass media, cultural production, or legal proceedings⁸, etc.. These social practices might share the same techniques of government that the state uses (and this creates the problem of “governmentality” as a logic that is hegemonic among even counter-state organizations), but they are managed independently from the state.

In state-nations the state maintains an (earlier developed) external position to the polity. This is its founding condition, and remains the operational logic. Under these circumstances, the liberal question makes no sense. Society has already been equated with the nation, and the state has already acquired control of the “national interest.”

“The era of big government is over”
US President Bill Clinton in a State of the Union Address;

“The era of big, centralized government is over”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair
on the day of Scotland’s plebiscite authorizing a Scottish parliament.

It must be noted that state institutions within nation-states are not “weakened” because of the state’s lack of interest in controlling the economic, social, or cultural lives of its citizens. These states may seem “thin” compared to the “thicker” layer of state presence one finds everywhere in state-nations, and there may be whole areas of life where the state plays no role at all (a circumstance that persons accustomed to life in a state-nation may find difficult to imagine). But even the “thinnest” state today still maintains its monopoly over the means of violence, and it supports the nation’s legal infrastructure, collects its taxes, and usually shows some interest in economic matters, for example, monitoring the market’s ability to monopolize economic resources against the interests of the consumer public. (The state works to make rational and fair constraints on corporations, which, in turn, views these as onerous.)

It may be said that today several countries in Europe and North America are well within the description of nation-states, and that there is, in some other places, including Eastern Europe and Latin America, a movement toward this form of governmentality. This movement can be seen today in the collapse⁹ of the welfare-state governmentalities that were the liberal-social varieties of state-nation modernity (e.g., “Thatcherism” in the United Kingdom), and in the growth of civil-society institutions and public-sphere arenas in former communist states.

But it can also be said that state-nation modernity is, in many places, a central feature of the circumstances of modernity, and that this seems to be at least as durable in these places as “nation-state modernity” (See: below) is in other states. In the People’s Republic of China, for example, despite changes in economic institutions, there has been little change of late in the desire of the central state to control the media, and to penetrate the lives of its population. Notions of a strong public sphere there are about as local as Coca-Cola.

nation-state modernity

Under the circumstances of nation-states, i.e., of a state where one finds a public sphere that is involved not only in discussion, but in actual decision making, one of the possible outcomes over the course of decades is a form of nation-state modernity: a modernity where a strong public sphere, a state apparatus, and an independent marketplace confront each other in an open-ended contest where overall control is not possible or even desirable.

Where state-nation modernity may be described as conservative, as it maintains a prior “sovereign” governmentality, nation-state modernity—at its limit—is an experiment in working democracy. The latter places are marked in their formation by events (and today, by memorialized sites) of democratic resistance to absolute sovereign rule, although, as state socialism reminds us, this history is not sufficient to warrant an ensuing discourse of democracy. Nation-state modernity has the following general contours:

7. Weakened state control over or active management of the means of production within the nation;

8. Weakened central governmental control over or management of health, education, cultural, and social programs and active non-governmental organizations in these areas;

9. Decentralized decision making: local governmental agencies have more control over resources and programs;

10. Weakened state control over or active management of mass media—and so strong legal protections and social sentiments protecting the media from government control;

11. A relatively strong public sphere both within and external to the state;

12. A court system able to counter the interests of the state, and localized law-enforcement.

During the past hundred years several states have approached this mode of modernity, and others have abandoned it. National Socialism in Germany rejected this form of modernity in the 1930s in favor of state-nation modernity. The return of the king in Spain marked another move away from nation-state modernity. And welfare-state programs in nations of Europe and North America have tended to allow the state to penetrate the lives of citizens in much the same fashion as states under state-nation modernity. These modes are not fixed in any one locale and continue to inform and compete¹⁰ with each other. Today, several countries are moving toward one or the other of the modal modernities. And so there is an international discourse that critiques both modes, however this has often failed to recognize them both as “modern.” Too often, state-nations have been seen as “pre-modern.”

The following illustrates the main tensions between state-nation and nation-state modernities:

State-nations, and debates over democracy

Like “the state”, “democracy” seems to be a universal feature of all nations today—either in its presence of absence, or both. Each nation on the global pursues, or refuses to pursue, democratic governmentalities in ways that are imbricated within histories of local practices. And so, definitions of “democracy” are debated locally in discourses that may not translate readily from nation to nation. For example, state-nations may promote forms of “democracy” that are fundamentally different from those of nation-states. This means that local demands for “democracy” within state-nations may have quite different goals than demands for “democracy” in nation-states.

Generally, calls for democratic reform in state-nations (coming from citizens or from politicians) are calls for reform within the state, which range from a discourse of anti-corruption, to that of fairness in the state’s dealings with groups of citizens who feel unfairly excluded due to social or geographical circumstances. Farmers, for example, may feel that the state spends too many resources on the cities. These calls for reform are very similar in structure and tone to the kinds of petitions that groups under a monarchy might raise to the king. Rarely do calls for reform question the position of the state within the nation.

Democratic reform movements in nation-states may also center on reforms within the state (corruption happens everywhere), but also include discourses concerning the very need for state intervention in certain arenas (e.g., regulating the internet). Again and again, the “liberal question” is raised. And here too, the final result may not be a petition to elected leaders, but a referendum that imposes the result of a debate from within the public sphere upon the state.

When analyzing democratic movements within state-nations, again, it is important to note first the position of the state within the goals of the movement. Social movements in nation-states may find their goals hampered by a lack of state controls, for example, controls over environmental conditions. These movements may then call for more state controls. Whereas social movements in state-nations may find that the state’s control over the condition in question is simple refractory to external pressures. But what are the available counter-strategies in these circumstances? Instead of calling for a decreased control by the state, a position that would suggest that the state is not legitimate, protest groups look to increase their visibility as supplicants to the state. This strategy only strengthens the state’s claims to legitimate control.

state-nation self-defined democracy

While the states of some state-nations, such as that of the People’s Republic of China, distance themselves from the very use of the term and the practice of “democracy;” others, such as that of Malaysia, critique the model of democracy derived from nation-states in the West as inappropriate for their (state-) nation; and then others, such as Japan, maintain a façade of Western-style democratic institutions without considering that these lose their democratic force when they are controlled entirely from within the state.

“... there is a very funny, peculiar feeling that if it is democracy, then you must be fighting each other. Otherwise, it is not democracy. But we happen to agree. That is also a choice. We have a choice to consciously agree or disagree. But the fact that we agree or the fact that in this country if we don't change government and parties at every election, is in itself, an expression of free choice. The choice not to change”
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
October 4, 1996
(Far Eastern Economic Review web site)

To reiterate, debates over democracy—and, oftentimes, over issues of human and civil “rights” and “freedoms,” issues that are historically linked to nation-state democracies in the West—need first to account for the position of the state within state-nations. Only then can the debate move on to discursive strategies that would discursively “re-place” the state within the nation. While the states of state-nations may attempt to claim that they are the source of such rights and liberties, in practice, these rights and liberties must warranted as much by an external control over the state as they are by democratic institutions within the state. This condition on rights and liberties is an historical feature of the discourse’s founding within (Western) nation-states.

Here is where the liberal question becomes a fulcrum that might just re-place the state in state-nations. For this reason, most state-nations—including Japan, where the state runs several “human rights institutes”— tend to overcode (see also: Overcoding, Coding, and Recoding) the state’s commitment to “preserving” human rights, although some state-nations, such as that of the People’s Republic of China, have simply dismissed the idea of civil rights as inappropriate for their locale.

Within a state-nation, counter-state discourses acquire the means to focus on issues of rights and freedoms (which are also linked to a public sphere operating outside of the state) by first asking the “liberal question” that Foucault noted was the origin of the modern (Western) break with the Princely governmentality—the question is: why do we need a state at all?

practice against the position of the state

Above, I noted that, to date, democratic nation-states all have sites that commemorate where counter-sovereign actions and discourses made a break with autocratic rule. This brings us to suspect that such actions and such places may be necessary for a public to appropriate the position of the state within a state-nation and lay the groundwork for a public sphere. Even where the break was not, initially, successful (as in Tienanmen Square, and in Kwangju, Korea), such actions may be integral to the success of counter-state discourse/practice. So too, the ongoing commemoration of prior democratic actions may be in part responsible for maintaining a strong public sphere. For all of its nods to rationality, modern democracy is also a bodily practice that begs for exercise and rehearsals, and, most of all, for performance.

Nation-state modernity may be also characterized by the regular attention paid to the act of achieving the ground of a strong public sphere, and, correspondingly, we can expect state-nation modernity to celebrate the formation of the state as the basis for the nation. We can see here that modernities also reveal their primary modes in collective practices in the “theatres-of-the public:” in the streets of the cities, and in schools, as well as what happens in government chambers and corporate offices.

late modernity and the state

It may be useful to look at possible consequences which attend to either state-nation modernity or nation-state modernity under the conditions of what Giddens calls “late modernity”.

“In conditions of late modernity, we live 'in the world' in a different sense from previous eras of history. Everyone still continues to live a local life, and the constraints of the body ensure that all individuals, at every moment, are contextually situated in time and space. Yet the transformations of place, and the intrusion of distance into local activities, combined with the centrality of mediated experience, radically change what 'the world' actually is. This is so both on the level of the 'phenomenal world' of the individual and the general universe of social activity within which collective social life is enacted. Although everyone lives a local life, phenomenal worlds for the most part are truly global”
(Giddens 1991, 187).

One feature of this notion of late modernity is the disappearance of the nation-state as the site of the construction of individual and group identities, lifestyles (see also lifestyle and state-nation modernity), and social movements. As transnational flows of technologies, workers, tourists, ideas, and cultural artifacts increase, the arbitrary, political boundaries of nation-states lose cultural relevance. The state’s ability to restrict access to these flows becomes problematic, both because the transnational marketplace relentlessly seeks out local market outlets, and because isolation may have negative consequences for the local economy.

Under state-nation modernity, states rely on state-sponsored lifestyle programs coded as national/natural to promote social orthoposture and normalized social behaviors. But these now must compete with market-driven trans-national (and so “de-natured”) lifestyle inputs. Additionally, the emerging “free-market” global economy has been coded with the same “liberal question” that critiques the role of state governments to control national economies. The state’s control over prices and production is now recoded as “protectionist” and the lack of transparent decision-making by the state becomes liable to claims of “corruption.”

At the same time the global job market in cultural production draws talent from smaller, national markets to international cosmopolitan centers, creating a center-periphery circumstance that marginalizes nations where cultural production is managed (usually by the state) as being by and for a national audience. National programs in media and the arts may fare poorly in competition against those produced by the new cosmopolitan centers. And global media are now in a position (e.g., through satellite broadcasting) to ensure that this competition occurs despite state controls on local media.

What I am suggesting is that the circumstances of late modernity hold greater consequences for states under state-nation modernity than they do for states under nation-state modernity, and that this differential is now being felt acutely in places like Japan and China.

In Japan, the state’s response has been to reassert a national character as one-among-many. In order to resist a future where individuals will look outside of Japan for cultural identity, the Japanese Government seeks to strengthen identity with Japanese culture—only this time, and ironically, in the name of “internationalization” (kokusaika).

“In addition, what can also be thought of as something to be prized and transcending different periods of time, is the need, in the education systems of different countries, to get children to learn their own country's language, its history, traditions and culture, and to foster in them a spirit and state of mind that will treasure these things. In the case of Japan, we have an important duty to see that our children, the rising generation who are to bear the destiny of our country on their shoulders, become fully familiar with the beautiful Japanese language, study the history that has fashioned Japan as well as its leading artistic and cultural accomplishments, its literature, its folktales and its traditions, and as well as developing a state of mind that treasures these things, become able to relate them and see them as relevant to the present age in which we live...
In order to encourage zest for living in children in the context of steadily increasing internationalization and a further deepening of international interdependence, it can be seen as even more important than hitherto to educate ‘Japanese who can live in international society,’ trusted by the world, and to foster an attitude of respect for the culture and traditions of Japan as handed down from a continuous line of past generations” (MONBUSHO 1997).

This call for a renewed respect for the “culture and traditions of Japan” is made from a strategic position that assumes other nations are promoting the same national cultural goal, and so it fails to realize that transnational cultural notions—culture unbounded from states— are the real emerging “competition” for an increasingly globalized cultural imagination.

Nation-state modernities also face challenges under circumstances of late modernity. In particular, the ability of corporations to escape national legal systems (for example, the hiring of slave laborers in foreign countries) hampers the efforts of nation-based public-sphere organizations to use the agencies of state governments to monitor and constrain the market. Until the public sphere is seen as a global discourse, and civil-society organizations acquire international legal standings, international corporations will be able to escape local efforts to oversee their operations.

¹A few states, such as Norway, have natural resources (e.g., oil) that they sell to fund social services. This represents a temporary, artificial, situation. China’s recent move to incorporate market capitalism within state-nation modernity is the most recent attempt to create hybrid state-nation/nation-state.

²As such it resembles the conservative/liberal (there is some debate about who “owns” this position) distrust-of-government discourse at times, and it also includes a more radical critique state-like authority in all organizations and groups, including families, e.g., a counter-paternalist discourse.

³For example, on March 31, 1998, due to a seven-year decline in stock prices, and a local practice of major banks holding large stock portfolios of related manufacturing firms in Japan, up to 16 of the 19 largest Japanese banks found themselves at or near insolvency at the end of the 1997 fiscal year. To avoid (or delay) a banking crisis, the Japanese Ministry of Finance simply changed the rules of accounting in Japan to allow the banks to evaluate their net-worth by the book value (the amount they originally paid for a stock) rather than by its actual market value. Such accounting legerdemain was not unnoticed by international financial ratings organizations, and will further erode international confidence in Japanese banks. But the government was able, by fiat, to keep the lid on a crisis for which its own management policies must, one day, accept responsibility.

⁴Even the most “democratic” of democracies (wherever these may be found) struggle with questions over where and when a democratic logic should apply. The notion of democracy within the family in the U.S. is an example of this debate, as is the notion of democracy within the military.

⁵This type of modernity is also a current feature in debates internal to countries such as Great Britain and the United States. While both the left and the right have expressed concerns about state control, the left still looks to expand the state interest in social welfare intervention into the economy and society, and the right seeks to expand state cooperation with national economic/corporate interests. However, where these debates are carried on within the public sphere, few suggest that the state be given more control over the media or the courts. These controls occur only within conditions of state-nation modernity or some other form of modern nation-state (e.g., colonial governments) that has suppressed role of the public sphere.

⁶However, economic growth has been much more elusive for other nations that share this type of modernity, and so it is really not possible to make any prediction about the economic consequences of state-nation modernity. The lack of transparency in the relationship between the state and the nation’s economic institutions (banks, insurance companies, and corporations) possible within state-nation modernity opens up a space for cooperation that can be used to promote overall economic growth and it can be used to hide gifts and favors that increase the transaction costs within the economy and hinder economic growth.

⁷If this strikes the reader as a position closer to the “conservative” side of current debates, this is mainly because of another “liberal” concern—a suspicion of corporations and of the marketplace as a source of economic control. It is about the role of the state as a check on the market and on corporations where “liberals” and “conservatives” (at least in the US and in Great Britain) as most at odds.

⁸It is not inconsequential how judges and juries are selected, and at restrictions on access to courts. State control over the proceedings of and access to criminal and civil courts is a hallmark of the state-nation.

⁹Such changes can result from the influence of strong multinational market interests rather than from a strengthening of non-governmental civil society institutions to replace state-welfare programs, and so these services (housing, food, health care) may simply disappear as “rights” and be recoded as “commodities” available for a price.

¹⁰For example, US semiconductor companies have looked to the Japanese government/corporate research practices and have pushed for similar practices at home.