Crafting state-nations; India and other multinational democracies.

9780801897245

Crafting state-nations; India and other multinational democracies.

Stepan, Alfred C. et al.

Johns Hopkins U. Press

2011

308 pages

$30.00

Paperback

JC311

Stepan (government, Columbia U., US), Linz (emeritus, political and social science, Yale U., US), and Yadav (Center for the Study of Developing Societies, India) propose an alternative to the Weberian ideal-type model of the nation-state, the state-nation, arguing that the ideal type of state-nation should have citizens with: a high degree of positive citizen identification with the state, multiple but complementary political identities, a high level of trust in the state's institutions, and high degree of positive support for democracy among all the diverse groups within the country. They assess this state-nation model with reference to, most prominently, the case of India, as well as other cases. Chapters address the challenge to the proposed model posed by independence insurgencies within India, the comparative treatment of Tamil minorities within India and its southern neighbor Sri Lanka, the unitary state of the Ukraine and its treatment of Russian minorities, federacy arrangements in the otherwise unitary nation-states of Finland and Denmark with regards to the Aland Islands in the first case and Greenland and the Faroe Islands in the latter, and the US model of federalism (which they regard as the worst-case scenario for promoting democracy in robust multinational settings).

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