Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

Nations and Nationalism

This edited volume examines power in its different dimensions in global governance. Scholars tend to underestimate the importance of power in international relations because of a failure to see its multiple forms. To expand the conceptual aperture, this book presents and employs a taxonomy that alerts scholars to the different kinds of power that are present in world politics. A team of international scholars demonstrates how these different forms connect and intersect in global governance in a range of different issue areas. Bringing together a variety of theoretical perspectives, this volume invites scholars to reconsider their conceptualization of power inworld politics and how such amove can enliven and enrich their understanding of global governance.

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Power in Global Governance

The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence. Edited by Pauline Jones Luong. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 352p. $49.95 cloth, $22.95 paper. The closed nature of the Soviet system meant that little was known about the republics on the periphery, particularly those of Central Asia. Most scholars viewed the region as a cotton colony of the Soviet Union dominated by a largely traditional, feudal society impervious to Western understanding. Despite greater access to the region and its peoples in the wake of the collapse of communism, the perception that the region remained under Moscow's shadow continued to suppress interest among nonspecialists. More recently, however, renewed interest in the Muslim world brought on by the war on terror has changed all of that. Specialists in international relations, security studies, and comparative politics, in particular, are intrigued by any number of questions, not the least of which are the persistence of authoritarianism and the inability of radical Islam to gain traction in Central Asia.

The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence

Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise, by Martha Brill Olcott. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002. xii + 244 pages. Abbrevs. Map. Appends to p. 267. Notes to p. 300. Sel. bibl. to p. 320. About the author. $44 cloth; $24.95 paper. With all the recent international focus on Uzbekistan and the general movement away from detailed single country studies in political science, Martha Brill Olcott's rich and trenchant account of Kazakhstan's troubled emergence as an independent state is a welcome contribution. Olcott cogently reminds readers of the central importance of Kazakhstan to the future political stability and economic development of Eurasia as a whole, and hence, of the need for the West to renew and enhance its commitment to this former Soviet republic that lies between Russia and the rest of Central Asia. She does not make the case, however, based on geography alone, but rather, based on a combination of the geographical, historical, and economic ties that have created a mutual dependency between Kazakhstan and its post-Soviet neighbors, particularly Russia. More importantly, she masterfully depicts the multiple constraints on Kazakhstan's ability to create the legal order, the centralized and impartial bureaucracy, the multi-national orientation, and the networks of security, redistribution, and market regulation, that characterize the modern state. These constraints include Kazakhstan's: 1) vast energy wealth that has attracted the bulk of foreign investment into the country; 2) geographical proximity to Russia that has not only generated security concerns but also influenced the country's nationality policy; 3) location between Europe and Asia, such that it belongs to neither; 4) demographic situation, which amounts to near parity between Kazakhs and Russians; and 5) experience under Soviet rule, which engendered several important legacies, such as the elevation of nationality over citizenship and the insulation of governmental decision-making from popular will. This litany of structural constraints comprise the thrust behind Olcott's comprehensive explanation for why Kazakhstan has failed to fulfill its "promise" - that is, why it has become a corrupt, Kazakhified, and authoritarian state in which the president (Nursultan Nazarbayev) abuses his unrivaled authority to enrich his own family and impoverish the country. Yet, she also states emphatically that the ultimate responsibility for this unfortunate outcome lies with the Kazakh elite, namely Nazarbayev himself. Fellow political scientists may find it difficult to reconcile what seems to be a structurally over-determined outcome Kazakhstan's failed state - with Olcott's argument that the main cause is voluntaristic. Indeed, there is a growing recognition of the need to merge structural and voluntarist explanations in comparative politics.' The question of how much "choice" Kazakhstan's leaders had in preventing the current situation - or, more importantly, how these constraints structured elite choices - thus remains unanswered. …

Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise

Nationalism remains central to politics in and among the new nation-states. Far from »solving« the region's national question, the most recent reconfiguration of political space – the replacement of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia by some twenty would-be nation-states – only recast it in a new form. It is this new phase and form of the national question that I explore in this paper. I begin by outlining a particular relational configuration – the triadic relational nexus between national minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands – that is central to the national question in post-Soviet Eurasia. In the second, and most substantial, section of the paper, I argue that each of the »elements« in this relational nexus – minority, nationalizing state, and homeland – should itself be understood in dynamic and relational terms, not as a fixed, given, or analytically irreducible entity but as a field of differentiated positions and an arena of struggles among competing »stances.« In a brief concluding section, I return to the relational nexus as a whole, underscoring the dynamically interactive quality of the triadic interplay.

National Minorities, Nationalizing States, and External National Homelands in the New Europe. Notes toward a Relational Analysis. Institute of Advanced Studies Political Science Series, 11 December 1993

Kazakhstan, the last emerging independent state from the former Soviet Union, inherited multiple challenges of having to build a new state and nation, while engaged in the painful economic and political transformation. Since independence was declared in 1991, diversity and tolerance have been officially at the heart of Kazakhstan’s national identity. Nevertheless, building a single nation in the country of two large ethnic groups (Russians and Kazakhs), with the reversed proportion of the language proficiency – as there are more ethnic Kazakhs but more Russian-speakers in the country – has been an ambivalent and controversial process. Constructing a nation in a primordial sense in this multi-ethnic country might well prove to be a mission impossible. Another option is promotion of the idea of a civic nation based on carefully drafted and consciously adapted multicultural policies. The existence, implementation, and success of such policies are contingent on several factors, including historical, demographic, and social ones. Some are linked to expedient political and economic strategies, however, and their further development would entail democratization of the political system in Kazakhstan. It seems that in Kazakhstan, inter-ethnic tensions have been alleviated by the fact that two major ethnic groups have not been, by and large, in direct confrontation and are balancing each other in the managed tradeoffs. So far, the dynamically developing society might be able to accommodate the interests of major ethnic groups but all the proposed solutions are inconclusive. The focus of this paper is on the bi-lingual and multicultural constellation and cultural and language policy pathways in Kazakhstan, as analyzed through the lenses of several models available in the respective literature on post-communist nation-building. The paper’s the methodology explores systematic historical and cultural interpretations and comparative intercultural-institutional analysis.

https://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/download/2360/2233

Nation-building and cultural policy in kazakhstan

This paper enquires into how effectively “regional transboundary water governance” functions in resolving ecological problems associated with shared water resources. It compares three cases in Asia...

Contestation and Collaboration for Water Resources: Comparing the Emerging Regional Water Governance of the Aral Sea, Irtysh River, and Mekong River:

New trends in market relations require new methods to solve issues towards TNCs and other actors within multilateral diplomacy. The use of economic diplomacy and responsible business is essential for TNCs to achieve the sustainability in global trading system. It is important due to frequent political changes in the modern world, to which TNCs are highly susceptible, and therefore, must be reliably protected by revised international law, clearly enshrined into relevant multilateral agreements. As the legal status of TNCs is somehow blurred, the cases of unstable TNCs performance due to political atrocities may occur. The latter leads to disruptions in their work making them to obey states' interests and further concern of the issue from states and global business entities. The disruption of both agent interests creates an overall economic instability and negatively affects the process of sustainability achieving. The work summarizes some problems TNCs face due to confrontation between states, and the question of the importance of economic diplomacy use and legal support for TNCs.

Geopolitics and Economic Sustainability Nexus: McDonald's in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan

New trends in modern world market relations require a completely up-to-date approach to settle problems concerning transnational corporations and other key actors within the frameworks of multilateral diplomacy. Commercial diplomacy’s involvement in this issue is very crucial and globally important due to contemporary political changes on the world arena. Transnational corporations are vulnerable to those changes as well and have to be strongly protected by modified international law regulations clearly fixed in proper multilateral legal agreements. Since the legal status of foreign business companies, transnational corporations and other participants in the global trade arena is pretty much blurred the world countries and international business entities are dramatically concerned in this question. This article discovers the problems most of transnational corporations face at present on the example of McDonalds and offers a number of applicable suggestions how to find the way out from difficulties, which occur due to conflicts and confrontation between nation states nowadays. It also proposes some dissent recommendations for the settlement of international trade conflicts in order to prevent them in the future.

http://csjournal.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/5_Saari.pdf

Aigul Adibayeva

Papers

Nation-building and cultural policy in kazakhstan

Contestation and Collaboration for Water Resources: Comparing the Emerging Regional Water Governance of the Aral Sea, Irtysh River, and Mekong River:

Geopolitics and Economic Sustainability Nexus: McDonald's in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan

To the question of perspectives and challenges in contemporary international trade diplomacy