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

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century Thomas L. Friedman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005 Thomas Friedman is a widely-acclaimed journalist, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, and author of four best-selling books that include From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989). His eminence as a journalist is clearly demonstrated in the way he prepared for The World is Flat. He traveled throughout the world, interviewing in depth the political and business leaders who have the most direct, hands-on knowledge of the truly incredible developments occurring in the business structures and technology of globalization. Only a journalist who moves freely at the highest levels could interview the likes of Sir John Rose, the chief executive of Rolls-Royce; Nobuyuki Idei, the chairman of Sony; Richard Koo, the chief economist for the Nomura Research Institute; Bill Gates of Microsoft; Wee Theng Tan, the president of Intel China; David Baltimore, president of Caltech; Howard Schultz, founder and chairman of Starbucks; Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys in Bangalore - and many others, each of whom gave him the inside story of how, specifically, the barriers of time and space separating economies, workforces, sources of capital, and technical abilities are crumbling. The result of this unfolding story, already far along but with much farther to go, according to Friedman, is that "the world is flat." With some notable exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa and the Islamic swathe, everything is connected with everything else on a horizontal basis, with distance and erstwhile time-lags no longer mattering. Friedman describes in detail the galloping globalization that has unfolded in even so limited a time as the past five years. Under the impetus of a worldwide network of interconnectivity, the world economy is much-changed from what it was at the turn of the century a mere half-decade ago. Friedman quotes the CEO of India's Infosys: "What happened over the last [few] years is that there was a massive investment in technology, especially in the bubble era, when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables," while (Friedman paraphrases him) "computers became cheaper and dispersed all over the world, and there was an explosion of software - e-mail, search engines like Google, and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one part to Bangalore, and one part to Beijing...." Microprocessors today have 410 million transistors compared to the 2800 they had in 1971. And now, "wireless is what will allow you to take everything that has been digitized, made virtual and personal, and do it from anywhere." The effect on productivity is revolutionary: "It now takes Boeing eleven days to build a 737, down from twenty-eight days just a few years ago. Boeing will build the next generation of planes in three days, because all the parts are computer-designed for assembly." The most strikingly informative aspect of this book, however, is not about technology. Most especially, Friedman explores the rapidly evolving global business systems, each constantly regenerating itself to keep ahead of the others. These are systems that span the continents seeking the lowest-cost providers of everything from expert scientific and engineering work to the lowliest grunt work. Friedman points out that India produces 70,000 accounting graduates each year - and that they are willing to start at $100 a month. It is no wonder that Boeing employs 800 Russian scientists and engineers for passenger-plane design when "a U.S. aeronautical engineer costs $120 per design hour, a Russian costs about one-third of that." Friedman describes a call center in India where outbound callers sell "everything from credit cards to phone minutes," while operators taking inbound calls do "everything from tracing lost luggage for U.S. and European airline passengers to solving computer problems for confused American consumers. …

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

As Europe enters a significant phase of re-integration of East and West, it faces an increasing problem with the rise of far-right political parties. Cas Mudde offers the first comprehensive and truly pan-European study of populist radical right parties in Europe. He focuses on the parties themselves, discussing them both as dependent and independent variables. Based upon a wealth of primary and secondary literature, this book offers critical and original insights into three major aspects of European populist radical right parties: concepts and classifications; themes and issues; and explanations for electoral failures and successes. It concludes with a discussion of the impact of radical right parties on European democracies, and vice versa, and offers suggestions for future research.

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Populist radical right parties in Europe

Actors and institutions in localities and regions across the world are seeking prosperity and well-being amidst tumultuous and disruptive shifts and transitions generated by: an increasingly globalised, knowledge-intensive capitalism; global financial instability, volatility and crisis; concerns about economic, social and ecological sustainability, climate change and resource shortages; new multi-actor and multi-level systems of government and governance and a re-ordering of the international political economy; state austerity and retrenchment; and, new and reformed approaches to intervention, policy and institutions for local and regional development. 
Local and Regional Development provides an accessible, critical and integrated examination of local and regional development theory, institutions and policy in this changing context. Amidst its rising importance, the book addresses the fundamental issues of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, its purposes, principles and values, frameworks of understanding, approaches and interventions, and integrated approaches to local and regional development throughout the world. The approach provides a theoretically informed, critical analysis of contemporary local and regional development in an international and multi-disciplinary context, grounded in concrete empirical analysis from experiences in the global North and South. It concludes by identifying what might constitute holistic, inclusive, progressive and sustainable local and regional development, and reflecting upon its limits and political renewal.

Local and Regional Development

(2003). Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 130-130.

Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century

This article analyses the implications of the internationalisation of capital markets, and the influx of Anglo-Saxon institutional investors, for the French model of capitalism Its central contention is that the global convergence thesis misrepresents contemporary evolutions because it pays insufficient attention to mechanisms of change within models of capitalism Secondly, framing analysis in terms of hybridisation and fragmentation of national models, rather than convergence, offers greater explanatory purchase over the French model, constitutes a more accurate characterisation, and helps avoid the ‘convergence or persistence’ impasse within models of capitalism analysis In exploring French corporate governance, it emphasises the importance of specifying the role of institutional mechanisms as transmission belts of change as a precursor to an assessment of how far shifts in international political economic context bring about changes within French capitalism Focusing on financial market regulation regime, new legislation in corporate governance and company law, and the market for corporate control as three key potential mechanisms of change, it finds that pre-existing norms and structures endure, mediating the nature of a national political economy’s articulation with the international context Hybridisation, and recombination of capitalist institutions drawn from different models, provide a far more persuasive account than convergence

French Corporate Governance in the New Global Economy: Mechanisms of Change and Hybridisation within Models of Capitalism

This exploration of UK fiscal rules and the establishment of an independent UK fiscal watchdog focuses on the practical enactment of rules-based fiscal policy to analyse the politics of technocratic economic governance. Analysing UK macroeconomic policy rules and their operation unearths numerous dimensions of the politics of technocratic fiscal policy-making. Firstly, policy rules are marshalled for partisan purposes. Secondly, a politics of economic ideas surrounds the invention, revision and interpretation of fiscal rules. Thirdly, technocratic economic governance entails a 'politics of method', selecting methodological approaches necessarily built on particular political economic assumptions. Finally, a 'politics of numbers' sees politicians cooking the books to present their economic record favourably against fiscal yardsticks. Successive governments have altered UK fiscal rules, informed by different political economic principles. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) sees itself as a technocratic and apolitical institution, yet its operational work entails contrasting accounts of the economy and policy. The scale of discretion and judgement inherent in operating fiscal rules is under-appreciated. This article finds technocratic economic governance to be a much more social and political process than many advocates of economic rules-based policy acknowledge. It engenders new forms of distinctive fiscal politics within elite statecraft and expert technocracy. 

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Technocratic economic governance and the politics of UK fiscal rules

This paper analyses the changing character of the economic ideas informing economic and in particular fiscal policy making in Britain since the global financial crisis broke. It charts some of the key interventions and public spending actions taken by the UK Government, situating these developments in the context of debates about governmental management of the public finances and Keynesianism. It explores what is happening to 'debt and deficit discourse' in the UK in the wake of the global financial crisis, gauging the extent of paradigmatic shift in economic policy-making since the crisis struck in 2008, and since the coalition took office in 2010. This analysis contributes to our understanding of growth strategies in an open globalising world economy by exploring the potential and actual role of UK fiscal policy in contributing to growth, and the formulation of a new British Growth model. The paper charts the evolution of pronouncements about what constitutes a correct or sound approach to the public finances, and briefly explores the implications of this for the British model of capitalism, and the evolving character of the British state. Ben Clift The UK Macroeconomic Policy Debate and the British Growth Crisis: Debt and Deficit Discourse

The UK Macroeconomic Policy Debate and the British Growth Crisis

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of economic patriotism understood not in the narrow or exclusively French sense (i.e. ‘what Nicolas Sarkozy says and does’). Rather, French policy developments are analyzed as one (crude) iteration of a wider genus of political economic activity in contemporary Europe which seeks to advance the perceived economic self-interest of particular groups and actors (firms, workforces, or sectors) defined according to their territorial status. Economic Patriotism can be seen as the latest iteration of a much longer established set of practices and approaches to economic policy (neo-mercantilism, economic nationalism, protectionism). This paper explores economic patriotism in France in recent years primarily in relation to corporate governance and takeovers, noting a combination of neo-liberal and protectionist elements within French Economic patriotism. The novelty of modern economic patriotism is its operation within a multileveled governance of political economic and corporate activity, which spans the regional level (European regulation) and the global level (the World Trade Organisation). This renders elements of traditional economic nationalist political economy and industrial policy unfeasible. Supranational rules constrain or prevent policy mechanisms such as tariffs, public procurement, subsidies, and favoured market access. Economic patriotism must therefore operate within certain limits of supranational and global regulation.

French Economic Patriotism: Legislative, Regulatory, & Discursive Dimensions

The U-turn of French Socialism in 1983 saw a retreat from egalitarian redistribution, full employment and social justice as the priorities of economic policy. A prolonged period of ideological and programmatic fl ux ensued. The manifest failure of a decade of Socialist Government to make any impression on the soaring unemployment fi gures was devastating. This, acting in tandem with widespread disdain for a sleaze-ridden Socialist elite, heralded the biggest defeat in the history of French Socialism in 1993. These developments were grist to the mill of the ‘end’ of social democracy thesis, which has been pronounced repeatedly, with varying degrees of conviction in recent decades (Dahrendorf 1990; Giddens 1994; Gray 1996, 1998). However, French social democracy was not dead. In fact, it rose under Lionel Jospin like a phoenix from the fl ames in 1997. This attests to the capacity for ideological innovation, and renovation, within social democracy. How could reports of the death of social democracy, pronounced so assertively by such eminent scholars, have been so mistaken? The answer lies in how social democracy is conceived, and some hidden assumptions within these commentaries. There is a tendency to identify social democracy fi rst with a particular set of institutional ‘means’ (such as corporatism) and second with the policy paradigms within which those means were couched (such as ‘Keynesianism’). The fortunes of social democracy are then evaluated in terms of particular means through which the political aspirations of social democracy have been channelled. There is an elision within some of this analysis, which assumes that because the political claims of social democracy were advanced through a particular set of policies or institutions, therefore social democracy is ultimately reducible to those elements. It ‘follows’ that the continuing viability of these institutions

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Ben Clift

Papers

French Corporate Governance in the New Global Economy: Mechanisms of Change and Hybridisation within Models of Capitalism

Technocratic economic governance and the politics of UK fiscal rules

The UK Macroeconomic Policy Debate and the British Growth Crisis

French Economic Patriotism: Legislative, Regulatory, & Discursive Dimensions

The political economy of French social democratic economic policy autonomy, 1997–2002 : credibility, dirigisme and globalisation