Showing papers on "Sovereignty published in 2002"

What is a Nation

Abstract: What I propose to do today is to analyse with you an idea which, though seemingly clear, lends itself to the most dangerous misunderstandings. [Consider] the vast agglomerations of men found in China, Egypt or ancient Babylonia, the tribes of the Hebrews and the Arabs, the city as it existed in Athens or Sparta, the assemblies of the various territories in the Carolingian Empire, those communities which are without a patrie and are maintained by a religious bond alone, as is the case with the Israelites and the Parsees, nations, such as France, England and the majority of the modern European sovereign states, confederations, such as exist in Switzerland or in America, and ties, such as those that race, or rather language, establishes between the different branches of the German or Slav peoples. Each of these groupings exist, or have existed, and there would be the direst 10 of consequences if one were to confuse any one of them with any other. At the time of the French Revolution, it was commonly believed that the institutions proper to small, independent cities, such as Sparta and Rome, might be applied to our large nations, which number some thirty or forty million souls. Nowadays, a far graver mistake is made: race is confused with nation and a sovereignty analogous to that of really existing peoples is attributed to ethnographic or, rather linguistic groups.

All International Politics is Local: The Diffusion of Conflict, Integration, and Democratization

Abstract: How does regional interdependence influence the prospects for conflict, integration, and democratization? Some researchers look at the international system at large and disregard the enormous regional variations Others take the concept of sovereignty literally and treat each nation-state as fully independent Kristian Skrede Gleditsch looks at disparate zones in the international system to see how conflict, integration, and democracy have clustered over time and space He argues that the most interesting aspects of international politics are regional rather than fully global or exclusively national Differences in the local context of interaction influence states' international behavior as well as their domestic attributes In All International Politics Is Local, Gleditsch clarifies that isolating the domestic processes within countries cannot account for the observed variation in distribution of political democracy over time and space, and that the likelihood of transitions is strongly related to changes in neighboring countries and the prior history of the regional context Finally, he demonstrates how spatial and statistical techniques can be used to address regional interdependence among actors and its implications

Power and governance in a partially globalized world

Abstract: 1. Introduction: From interdependence and institutions to globalization and governance Part 1: Interdependence and Institutions 2. International Institutions: Can interdependence work? 3. International Liberalism Reconsidered 4. Hobbe's Dilemma and Institutional Change in World Politics: Sovereignty in international society 5. Risk, Threat and Security Institutions Part 2: Law 6. International Relations and International Law: Two optics 7. The Concept of Legalization 8. Legalized Dispute Resolution: Interstate and transnational Part 3: Globalism, Liberalism and Governance 9. Governance in a Globalizing World 10. The Club Model of Multilateral Cooperation and Problems of Democratic Legitimacy 11. Governance in a Partially Globalized World 12. Afterword: The globalization of informal violence, theories of world politics and the 'liberalism of fear'

The Architecture of International Cooperation: Transgovernmental Networks and the Future of International Law

Abstract: The prevailing form of international cooperation in the 20th century, known as liberal internationalism, is increasingly under attack. Based on multilateral treaties, often coupled to formal organizations, liberal internationalism has drawn fire from many quarters. Some critics argue that international organizations threaten national sovereignty and ought to be curtailed. Others claim that globalization and the rise of NGOs are eclipsing state power. In response, transgovernmentalists argue that while that liberal internationalism is dying, the state is here to stay. Much contemporary international cooperation is not international at all: rather, it is occurring among discrete, specialized domestic agencies. These "transgovernmental networks" are expanding rapidly, particularly in regulation. Proponents believe that networks are "the blueprint for the international architecture of the 21st century". This article assesses the future of international cooperation by examining transgovernmental networks and evaluating their relationship to liberal internationalism. My central claim is that networks are a significant development in international law, but one likely to supplement and strengthen, rather than supplant, liberal internationalism. I make four subsidiary claims. First, an empirical examination of three networks - in securities, competition, and environmental regulation - demonstrates that networks are active and growing. Second, I argue three factors are driving the evolution of networks: the expansion of domestic regulation, increased economic interdependence, and technological innovation. Third, while regulatory enforcement has been a key driver of networks, networks also promote the export of regulatory rules and practices from major powers to weaker states, which in turn promotes policy convergence. I offer a theory of this process which builds upon the insights of network economics. Fourth, and most importantly, the cooperation that networks foster and the convergence that they facilitate have important implications for liberal internationalism. Networks smooth the negotiation of new treaties. They act as gap-fillers where treaties are politically precluded. And by building bureaucratic capacity, networks can improve domestic regulation and thereby enhance treaty compliance and effectiveness. Put differently, there are good reasons to believe networks will make treaties more effective by making governments more effective.

Liberal government and authoritarianism

Abstract: This paper examines the intelligibility of authoritarian measures within Foucauldian analyses of the liberal government of the state. Such measures are understood as following from a liberal understanding of the task of government itself. This understanding rests on a distinction between the legal and political order (of 'the state') and a 'liberal police' of what is exterior to it, classically conceived as 'civil society'. The relation between these two aspects is conceived as a series of 'foldings' between the two sides of a liberal governing, which turn the injunction to govern through freedom into a set of binding obligations potentially or actually enforceable by coercive or sovereign instruments. The paper places this perspective within aspects of the genealogies of economy, poverty, welfare and police and discusses the trajectories of such foldings in the present.

America's Imperial Ambition

Abstract: IN THE SHADOWS of the Bush administration's war on terrorism, sweeping new ideas are circulating about U.S. grand strategy and the restructuring oftoday's unipolar world. They call for American unilateral and preemptive, even preventive, use of force, facilitated if possible by coalitions of the willing-but ultimately unconstrained by the rules and norms ofthe international community. At the extreme, these notions form a neoimperial vision in which the United States arrogates to itself the global role of setting standards, determining threats, using force, and meting out justice. It is a vision in which sovereignty becomes more absolute for America even as it becomes more conditional for countries that challenge Washington's standards of internal and external behavior. It is a vision made necessary-at least in the eyes of its advocates-by the new and apocalyptic character of contemporary terrorist threats and by America's unprecedented global dominance. These radical strategic ideas and impulses could transform today's world order in a way that the end of the Cold War, strangely enough, did not. The exigencies of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and the debate over intervening in Iraq obscure the profundity of this geopolitical challenge. Blueprints have not been produced, and Yalta-style summits have not been convened, but actions are afoot to dramatically alter the political order that the United States has built with its partners since the 1940s. The twin new realities of our age-catastrophic terrorism

Challenge to the Nation-State : immigration in Western Europe and the United States

Abstract: This volume presents the latest research by some of the world's leading figures in the fast growing area of immigration studies. Relating the study of immigration to wider processes of social change, the book focuses on two key areas in which nation-states are being challenged by this phenomenon: sovereignty and citizenship. Bringing together the separate clusters of scholarship which have evolved around both of these areas, Challenge to the Nation-State disentangles the many contrasting views on the impact of immigration on the authority and integrity of the state. Some scholars have stressed the stubborn resistance of states to relinquish territorial control, the continued relevance of national citizenship traditions, and the 'balkanizing' risks of ethnically divided societies. Others have argued that migrations are fostering a post-national world. In their view, states' immigration policies are increasingly constrained by global markets and an international human rights regime, membership as citizenship is devalued by new forms of postnational membership for migrants, and national monocultures are giving way to multicultural diversity. Focusing on the issue of sovereignty in the first section, and citizenship in the second, this compelling new study seeks to clarify the central stakes and opposing positions in this important and complex debate.

The idea of Europe from antiquity to the European Union

Abstract: Part I: Introduction Anthony Pagden 1. Europe: conceptualising a continent Anthony Pagden 2. Some Europes in their History J. G. A. Pocock 3. 'Europe' in the Middle Ages William Chester Jordan 4. The Republican mirror: the Dutch idea of Europe Hans Blom 5. The Napoleonic Empire and the Europe of nations Biancamaria Fontana 6. Homo politicus and homo oeconomicus: the European citizen according to Max Weber Wilfried Nippel Part II: 7. The European self rethinking an attitude Michael Herzfeld 8. European Nationalism and European Union Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia 9. From the ironies of identity to the identity of ironies Luisa Passerini 10. Muslims and European identity: can Europe represent Islam? Talal Asad 11. The long road to unity: the contribution of law to the process of European integration, 1945-1995 Philip Ruttley 12. The Euro, economic federalism and the question of national sovereignty Elie Cohen 13. Identity politics and European integration: the case of Germany Thomas Risse and Daniela Engelmann-Martin 14. Nationalism in Spain: the organization of Convivencia Andres de Blas Guerrero 15. The Kantian idea of Europe: critical and cosmopolitan perspectives James Tully.

Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty

Abstract: (2002). Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty. The International Journal of Human Rights: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 81-102.

From Politics to Technocracy - and Back Again: The Fate of the Multilateral Trading Regime

Abstract: As is known to every student of trade law and policy, the modern idea of free trade originates from the theories of absolute and comparative advantage developed by the classical political economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Smith and Ricardo both addressed themselves to a sovereign unilaterally deciding its trade policy. They concluded that, with some qualifications or exceptions, a policy of liberalizing restrictions on imports would maximize the wealth of that sovereign.

Building State Failure in East Timor

Abstract: East Timor is the newest state of the twenty–first century. Yet its human development indicators compare with the most severely collapsed states in the world. Two and a half years of international administration by the United Nations seems to have had little effect on a social and political reality that has evolved by itself. In effect, the UN has given birth to a failed state. The purpose of governorship types of intervention — which attempt to (re)build governments that have collapsed or states that have failed — was to take control of a local political process and break with an abusive past. This aim was the rationale behind the most total form of international administration — UN statehood and international sovereignty in East Timor. In practice, however, the intervention failed to decentralize its own absolutist form of authority, but succeeded in excluding the local population from the equation. If there is to be any future for interventions that are both effective and legitimate, then they will need to guarantee much greater and genuine integration of the local population. ‘Participatory intervention’ is the next doctrinal puzzle to solve in the evolution of international state–building enterprises of any brand.

The utility of human security: Sovereignty and humanitarian intervention

Abstract: `Human security' is a promising but still underdeveloped paradigmatic approach to understanding contemporary security politics. We argue that tension between those embracing the politics of development and those supporting the human security paradigm has intensified because the transnational dimensions embodied within the latter approach have been under-assessed. The idea of `threat' also needs to be identified with more precision for the human security concept to accrue analytical credibility. We focus on how transnational behaviour addresses the central human security problems of vulnerability and immediacy. Human security's utility for confronting crisis is also evaluated via the application of two case studies of humanitarian intervention: the 1994 multinational operation in Haiti and the 1999 intervention in East Timor. We conclude that, while general security politics includes both domestic and international issues, human security allows us to transcend sovereign prerogatives and to address emerging...

When Tribal Sovereignty Challenges Democracy: American Indian Education and the Democratic Ideal:

Abstract: The lessons of American Indian education—a grand experiment in standardization—can lead to a more equitable educational system for all U.S. citizens. While masquerading as a tool for equal opportunity, standardization has marginalized Native peoples. We argue for diversity—not standardization—as a foundational value for a just multicultural democracy, but diversity is feared by some as a threat to the nation’s integrity. Critical historical analysis of the apparently contradictory policies and practices within American Indian education reveals a patterned response to cultural and linguistic diversity, as the federal government has attempted to distinguish “safe” from “dangerous” Native practices. Examples of the contest between Indigenous self-determination (rooted in internal sovereignty) and federal control illustrate the profound national ambivalence toward diversity but also the potential to nourish “places of difference” within a healthy democracy.

The Securitization of Migration in Western Societies: Ambivalent Discourses and Policies:

Abstract: What shall we become now without the barbarians? Those people were a solution, weren't they? C. Gavafy, "Waiting for the Barbarians" The last decades of the twentieth century were marked by a dramatic change led by the development of globalization, the enhancement of transnational flows, and the end of bipolarity. The construction of the European Union, the emergence of new economic agreements such as NAFTA, the deterritorialization of markets, physical borders, and identities, the increase of migration flows, the construction of the Schengen area, (1) and the fragmentation of major states (e.g., the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) have raised questions about many old assumptions, including those made about Westphalian state sovereignty and identity. These phenomena significantly affected the forms and the meanings of borders, individual and collective identities, and the sense and nature of state sovereignty and authority. In the meantime, these changes have recast the domestic order, challenged traditional structures, modified social arrangements, transformed the forces of integration and fragmentation, and accelerated the dynamics of inclu sion and exclusion. In consequence, Western societies are witnessing the emergence of many existential and conceptual anxieties and fears about their identity, security, and well-being. As Martin Heisler asserts, (2) migration is at the focal point of the interrelated dynamics of identity, borders, and orders. By its transnational character, its dynamic, and its impact on people and institutions at all levels, migration is perceived as posing a serious challenge to the long-standing paradigms of certainty and order. One of the prominent features of Western societies in the post-bipolar era has been therefore the production of a discourse of fear and proliferation of dangers with reference to the scenarios of chaos, disorder, and clash of civilizations. It is easily noticeable in the public sphere that the fear is mainly about the different, the alien, the undocumented migrant, the refugee, the Muslim, the "non-European," the "Hispanic." These different expressions converge on the figure of the migrant, which appears as the anchoring point of securitarian policies and fierce public debates that gained momentum in the 1990s. Because of the widespread publicization of preventive and repressive immigration policies, a politics of fear was generally considered as being developed specifically in the European context and not in the United States, which was presented as being more tolerant and open to migration. But the production of similar discourses and the adoption of securitarian policies in the United States as well, made it difficult to argue the singularity of Europe. Indeed, although with differences in social and economic contexts as well as in immigration and integration policies, both the EU countries and the United States have been marked, since the 1980s, by a reversal of the image of migrants and asylum seekers in the public space. In both cases, migrants, who were welcomed after World War II as a useful labor force, are now presented in political discourses as criminals, troublemakers, economic and social defrauders, terrorists, drug traffickers, unassimilable persons, and so forth. They are demonized as being increasi ngly associated with organized crime. They are accused of taking jobs away from nationals, taking advantage of social services, and harming the identity of host countries. Introduced in public debates as a political hot-button topic, migration is thus transformed into a threat not only to the state but also to the security and the identity of the host society. What is important to stress here is that through such a presentation, the migration issue, which was not at the origin inherently securitarian, became one involving new actors and leading to stricter public policies and to new surveillance and control devices. …

Ironies of Sovereignty: The European Union and the United States

Abstract: The concept of sovereignty can help us understand contemporary policy disagreements between Europe and the United States. Ironically, the US, from which the first republican critique of the concept of sovereignty emanated, has now become one of its staunchest defenders. Meanwhile, the European Union has moved away from the classical conception of external sovereignty. The success of the European Union could enable it to serve as a model for more troubled regions, for which insistence on classical sovereignty is a source of conflict. More ominously, transatlantic differences over sovereignty could increase tension and conflict between democracies, thus undermining world order in the long run.

Memory and power in post-war Europe : studies in the presence of the past

Abstract: Introduction: The power of memory, the memory of power and the power over memory Jan-Werner Muller Part I. Myth, Memory and Analogy in Foreign Policy: 1. Memory of sovereignty and sovereignty over memory Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine since 1939 Tim Snyder 2. Myth, memory and policy in France since 1945 Robert Gildea 3. The power of memory and memories of power: the cultural parameters of German foreign policy making since 1945 Thomas U. Berger 4. The past in the present: British Imperial memories and the European Question Anne Deighton 5. Memory, the media and NATO: information intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina Monroe E. Price 6. Europe's post-Cold War memory of Russia Iver B. Neumann Part II. Memory, Power and Justice in Domestic Affairs: 7. The past is another country: myth and memory in postwar Europe Tony Judt 8. The emergence and legacies of divided memory: Germany and the Holocaust after 1945 Jeffrey Herf 9. Unimagined communities: the power of memory and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia Ilana R. Bet-El 10. Translating memories of war and co-belligerency into Cold War politics: the Italian case Ilaria Poggiolini 11. Institutionalizing the past: shifting memories of nationhood in German education and immigration policies Daniel Levy and Julian Dierkes 12. Trials, purges or history lessons: treating a difficult past in post-communist Europe Timothy Garton Ash.

Globalization, Education, and Citizenship: Solidarity Versus Markets?

Abstract: This article suggests that globalization places limits on state autonomy and national sovereignty, affecting education in various ways. Those limits are expressed in tensions between global and local dynamics in virtually every policy domain. Globalization not only blurs national boundaries but also shifts solidarities within and outside the national state. Globalization cannot be defined exclusively by the post-Fordist organization of production; therefore, issues of human rights will play a major role affecting civic minimums at the state level, the performance of capital and labor in various domains, and particularly the dynamics of citizenship and democracy in the modern state. However, educational policy and its contributions to citizenship, democracy, and multiculturalism will face unprecedented challenges if the logic of fear, exacerbated by the events of September 11, prevails.

Dismembering Lahui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887

Abstract: Jonathan Osorio investigates the effects of Western law on the national identity of Native Hawaiians in this impressive political history of the Kingdom of Hawai'i from the onset of constitutional government in 1840 to the Bayonet Constitution of 1887, which effectively placed political power in the kingdom in the hands of white businessmen. Making extensive use of legislative texts, contemporary newspapers, and important works by Hawaiian historians and others, Osorio plots the course of events that transformed Hawai'i from a traditional subsistence economy to a modern nation, taking into account the many individuals nearly forgotten by history who wrestled with each new political and social change. A final poignant chapter links past events with the struggle for Hawaiian sovereignty today.

Media and Sovereignty: The Global Information Revolution and Its Challenge to State Power

Abstract: Media have been central to government efforts to reinforce sovereignty and define national identity, but globalization is fundamentally altering media practices, institutions, and content. More than the activities of large conglomerates, globalization entails competition among states as well as private entities to dominate the world's consciousness. Changes in formal and informal rules, in addition to technological innovation, affect the growth and survival or decline of governments. In Media and Sovereignty, Monroe Price focuses on emerging foreign policies that govern media in a world where war has information as well as military fronts. Price asks how the state, in the face of institutional and technological change, controls the forms of information reaching its citizens. He also provides a framework for analyzing the techniques used by states to influence populations in other states. Price draws on an international array of examples of regulation of media for political ends, including "self-regulation," media regulation in conflict zones, the control of harmful and illegal content, and the use of foreign aid to alter media in target societies.

Clash of Globalizations

Abstract: What is the state of international relations today? In the 1990s, specialists concentrated on the partial disintegration of the global order’s traditional foundations: states. During that decade, many countries, often those born of decolonization, revealed themselves to be no more than pseudostates, without solid institutions, internal cohesion, or national consciousness. The end of communist coercion in the former Soviet Union and in the former Yugoslavia also revealed long-hidden ethnic tensions. Minorities that were or considered themselves oppressed demanded independence. In Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Haiti, rulers waged open warfare against their subjects. These wars increased the importance of humanitarian interventions, which came at the expense of the hallowed principles of national sovereignty and nonintervention. Thus the dominant tension of the decade was the clash between the fragmentation of states (and the state system) and the progress of economic, cultural, and political integration -in other words, globalization.

Powers of Life and Death Beyond Governmentality

Abstract: The work of Foucault on liberal government, and that of his followers, is subject to two dangers. The first is to regard the critical character of liberalism (as governing through freedom) as providing safeguards against the despotic potentials of biopower and sovereignty. The second is to regard these heterogenous powers of life and death as somehow simply relocated or reinscribed within the field of liberal governmentality. The latter point is a major methodological error; the former closes the gap between the analytics of government and the normativity of liberalism itself. By working through these dangers, our understanding of the ethos of liberal government is transformed. That ethos today requires us to link governing through freedom to the powers of life and death, the exercise of choice to the sovereign decision, the contract to violence, economic citizenship to moral discipline and obligation, and rights and liberties to enforcement.

Regimes of Sovereignty: International Morality and the African Condition

Abstract: Theorists of the `African state' and Africa's external relations frequently focus on the causes, consequences, and repercussions of its failures. They are justified in their appreciation of `failur...

The Europeanisation of Refugee Policies: Between Human Rights and Internal Security

Abstract: Refugees, the state and European integration: defining refugees - between human rights and state sovereignty two views on refugees European integration and refugees. Post- World War II refugee regimes: the international refugee regime the German refugee regime: the French refugee regime. The Communitarisation of refugee policies: prologue - activities of the Council of Europe "First Generation" co-operation among EU member states "Second Generation" co-operation - towards a "European" refugee policy? the Amsterdam Treaty - a comprehensive reform?. The Europeanization of refugee policies in Germany and France: policy discourses and Europeanization the implementation of European provisions the scope of Europeanization.

Humanitarianism in Crisis

Abstract: THE HUMANITARIAN WORLD emerged from the 1990S both sad dened and chastened. Again and again nonprofit and UN personnel had been overwhelmed by the magnitude of particular crises-as when 2 million people crossed from Rwanda into Zaire in 1994, or when 8oo,ooo Kosovar Albanians were forcibly deported from the province by Serb forces in the spring of 1999. Even more unnerving was the sense that, often despite the relief groups' own best efforts, the moral dilemmas attendant on their actions had only grown more acute over the course of the decade. Even so, humanitarians did not give up. Nongovernmental organizations (NGos) and UN agencies multiplied their efforts to refine their operations in light of the lessons of Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Still, by the beginning of the twenty first century, experienced relief workers had come to accept the new conventional wisdom that there are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian problems. From this simple truth, however, diametrically opposing conclusions can be drawn about what humanitarian action should involve. Many persistent advocates of humanitarianism, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, see it as one of a number of "pillars" supporting a promising new liberal world order. Such an order, they seem to believe, can be constructed to fill the vacuum created by globalization's undermining of the idea of state sovereignty. It will also be built on

The origins, development, and possible decline of the modern state

Abstract: ▪ Abstract Some contemporary states seem subject to aggregational dynamics that bring them together in larger regional associations, whereas others fall prey to centrifugal forces that pull them apart. The autonomy of all states has been drawn into question by the globalization of trade and finance. For these reasons, scholars have returned to examining the historical origins and development of the modern state in the hope that this may shed light on its future, and on the process through which new logics of organization may be emerging that might displace the state. This essay discusses various accounts of the emergence and development of the modern state, comparing security, economic, and institutionalist approaches. It then links these approaches to insights regarding contemporary statehood. Arguments regarding the autonomy of the state must be distinguished from discussions of territorial sovereignty as a constitutive principle of international relations. The latter, juridical notion of sovereignty as...

"Property" and Aboriginal Land Claims in the Canadian Subarctic: Some Theoretical Considerations

Abstract: Many of the world's aboriginal peoples are currently engaged in struggles over land and self-government with the states that encompass them. In Canada, aboriginal people have effectively used the concept of "aboriginal title" to force the government to negotiate land and self-government agreements with them. Such agreements, however, along with the notion of "aboriginal title" itself, are based on the European concept of "property"; they grant First Nations "ownership" of certain lands and spell out the rights they possess in relation to those lands. This means that aboriginal people have had to learn to think and speak in the "language of property" as a precondition for even engaging government officials in a dialogue over land and sovereignty. Yet the concept of property is in many ways incompatible with many Canadian First Nation people's views about proper human-animal/land relations. In this article, I argue that the land claim process—because it forces aboriginal people to think and speak in the language of property—tends to undermine the very beliefs and practices that a land claim agreement is meant to preserve. [Key words: property, First Nations, aboriginal land claims, Canada, Subarctic]

At the Edge

Abstract: Here lies the vocation of those who preserve our understanding of past theories, who sharpen our sense of the subtle, complex interplay between political experience and thought, and who preserve our memory of the agonizing efforts of intellect to restate the possibilities and threats posed by political dilemmas of the past.—Sheldon S. Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation”In the same way in which the great transformation of the first industrial revolution destroyed the social and political structures as well as the legal categories of the ancien regime, terms such as sovereignty, right, nation, people, democracy, and general will by now refer to a reality that no longer has anything to do with what these concepts used to designate—and those who continue to use these concepts uncritically literally do not know what they are talking about.—Giorgio Agamben, Means without Ends: Notes on PoliticsLooking obliquely at the edges of things, where they come together with other things, can tell you as much about th...

Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves

Abstract: “Only in the eyes of the law are we indians.” With these words Anu Chairman sketched the position of tens of thousands of people living beyond the reach of state and nation in dozens of enclaves in South Asia. Much of the recent wave of literature on the nation is concerned with critiquing an earlier generation of scholars who tended to assume a correspondence between nations and states. In the new literature, the connections among nation, state, territory, sovereignty, history, and identity are all problematized. Nations are seen as being socially constructed in many different ways. Thus, there are nations without states, new nations that are invented before our eyes while older ones disintegrate, and older diasporic nations that are being joined by a host of new transnational communities. Nations are now conceived as more fluid, malleable, and unpredictable than ever before.