Actually I'm not sure what this stuff is. Something the lab guys came up with. Works though.

Good show Dan...

People may be reacting a bit to the spin you put on the "end of the nation state" premise.
I agree that the days of the nation state as we know it are numbered. But the show made it sound like that was maybe a bad thing... (although I will note that you didn't specifically say that.)
Certainly the new paranoia about the indivudual acting as an agent of terror suggests that a knee jerk authoritarian reflex is already kicking in...
However the new technology at the same time makes this reaction much more difficult to sustain.

I would suggest that we will see many more real time experiments with transparency and popular participation in government that on the whole have a great deal of potential for new freedoms and collaboration.

There is a parallel here perhaps with the transition from the traditional monarchy to the nation state.. The beginning of the end of the monarchy system certainly seemed frightening in the 18th century... "What is happening here?" they most certainly asked. What came next was a convulsive series of experiments certainly facilitated by new communications technology... In the end, many (not Nergol) would agree, we have new models of government, many of which have more potential for freedom and human rights than were possible under previous systems.

The question is really not so much "Will the nation state survive?" but "What might come next?"

Don't go all Star Trek on us.

I don't think the was one particular reason was the USSR imploded. Even fifty years from now there will be many reasons historians will come up with. However the Clinton administrations and many corporations lost billions in trying to open them up and embrace capitalism. It turns out the price of a barrel of oil made things a little easier.

There have been time we've looked up at them and vise versa. If keep attempting to be the world's policeman and slaying foreign dragons, the backslide will be further and faster.

While I enjoyed the show I won't be recommending this particular episode for first time Common Sense listeners. Dan seems to have been injecting espresso directly into his veins for the maximum caffeine experience this time.

I have a major quibble about the content of the episode:

For a 50 minute long discussion on the impact of communication technologies on modern nation states I am very surprised the word 'nationalism' didn't come up more often. In fact I don't believe it came up even once. The is a HUGE oversight. Nationalism has been the most powerful political force in the world for the past 200 years. It remains the most powerful political motivator of men in the world today. It is the 'ism' that binds us. It is the 'ism' to rule all.

While states, that is an Europe-wide order of states, emerged after the peace of Westphalia (1648), what is considered the modern nation-state did not. It wasn't until a mass national consciousness emerged in the late eighteenth century, kicking into overdrive during the French Revolution, that the nation-state could truly be said to be born. It was then that people felt a mass consciousness, to be part of an entity called a nation defined by language, culture, civic principals and constitutions, religion, ethnicity or blood-ties to varying degrees, depending on which nation is under examination. Regardless of how they defined themselves nations felt that it the sovereign right of the nation to control the instrument of the state. Thus was born a synthesis of nation and state, the nation-state. The nation-state often went to considerable extent to define and impress upon its population membership of nation. Methods of doing so include primary education, support for language institutions,national myths, suppressing of intransigent minorities, symbols of national accomplishments including industrial and scientific innovations, and handing out baubles to men who served the state. It is by such baubles that men are ruled.

In Europe after the French revolution the mighty multi-ethnic empires were torn apart as differing mass national consciousnesses awoke each seeking a state of their own. So went the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire (the USSR and breakup can be understood as a prison house of nations that no amount of Soviet suppression could keep the nationalities in). It was the nation-states that survived the struggles and thrived: Britain, France, Germany, the USA, Japan (a nation-state-in-a-can).

The colonial empires of even these strong nation-states came under pressure in the 19th when the national consciousness of subject people awoke and tried to gain their own nation-states. Who would blame them? Nation-states are stable and generally well run compared to the typical weakness, cronyism, suppression and autocracy of a multi-ethnic state. I would argue that nationalism even facilitates the possibility of a functioning democracy. A mass national consciousness that protects and nurtures its control of state power, the nation and state mutually supporting each other.

That mass national consciousness was made possible by a technological advance in communications, the printing press. It allowed the imagined community to be born, national myths to be created. We know that this particular advance in communications, that allowed nationalism to be born, did not end state power since nation-states were born that proved even more powerful than other previous states. It is true that there were conflicts as the people asserted their control over the institutions of the state and submerged nationalities sought their own states, but the institution of states themselves were never threatened. Rather the riots, strikes and revolutions that national consciousness brought were a battle over the control of state power, not the existence of state power. That is why the upper class aristocracies were hostile to nationalism and the technology that allowed its formation, it threatened their monopoly of state power. Nationalism asserts the sovereign rights of the people of the nation over the instrument of the state.

Modern communication technology has awoken political consciousness in populations that had up until now lacked nationalism and true nation-states. Their political aspirations will remain the same, nations without states desire them, minorities come under pressure to join the nation or be expelled, those who controlled state power will try to stop such nationalisms from ending their control. Nationalism will still provide the glue that stitches together the mass of people in an attempt to gain control of the state and the primary political organizer after they do so. The new communication technologies changes neither the prime motivator nor the existence of the state. The new communications merely allows mass consciousness and threatens whatever status quo powers that controls the state. So nation and states, and their powerful synthesis the nation-state, will continue to be dominant political entities well into the future.

The American nation-state in particular will probably endure. Threats made by new communications are unlikely to threaten either the nation or the existence of the state, even if they are said to be threats to the nation-state. Rather they are threats to the plutocrats, empowered by Reaganite neoliberalism, and their current control over the state. If the plutocrats were guillotined tomorrow the nation-state will still be there because those who guillotined them will immediately seize state power, most likely in the name of the nation. If the upper classes lack the love of nation, or even the pragmatic realpolitik of a Bismark, that requires sacrifices for the national interest, they have only themselves to blame when the blade comes down. That is the gods' punishment for their hubris.

In my opinion the main threat to the American nation-state is if the uniquely flexible American nationalism (renamed patriotism for Americans but in my books same-same to borrow that phrase from Smitty), based on constitutional principals and civic loyalty, fails to integrate minority groups into the national consciousness, thus ending American status as a nation-state. The principal barriers to becoming American in national identity being the usual suspects racism, ethnic and religious difference, language, the huge wealth inequality and intransigent minorities maintaining loyalties to foreign nation-states. If the population isn't accommodated into a newly formed national consciousness, minority groups would be liable to continuing to exist as nations onto themselves leading to the problems that inevitably brings. Note I believe this is a two-way street minorities (immigrant or otherwise) should be open to becoming American and Americans need to be welcoming them as full Americans. Without this give-and-take the essence of the American nation state is endangered. In the Old World nationhood is a whole lot more tied up with the past so I am not even going to go there right now.

Rather than a disappearance of the nation-state I expect the opposite is occurring, there is likely to be a resurgence of nationalism and state power will become more apparent. With globalism proving to be a socio-economic failure and America's relative power declining in the world the inherent state structure of the international order will become more apparent. Globalism itself is somewhat illusory because its current form is basically a reflection of American state power in the world, merely couched in liberal sounding language. The tragedy of competition between Eurasian powers will re-emerge with America's decline in capability or willingness to project power overseas.

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I believe Dan's oversight of nationalism to be peculiarly common in nearly all Americans. Americans have been underestimating the force of nationalism in the world for years. For instance America consistently did not understand that nationalism rather than communism was the primary motivator for East Asians throughout the Cold War and still is very much today. Decisions made concerning the Korean War, Vietnam War, dealings with China (pre-Nixon's visit, Nixon understood the situation better) frequently ignored nationalism and national desire for self-determination. Rather than taking orders from Moscow or Beijing the Vietnamese were motivated by nationalism, communism was a mere veneer, a means of achieving national determination (possibly with a soviet industrialization model after the national determination was achieved. Of course to safeguard the nation-state not spread their 'ism'. )

Iranian nationalism is underestimated in the current media frenzy over their nuclear program. The internal pressures that multi-ethnic autocracies have, such as Iraq, are consistently underestimated. The security threats that Eurasian Asian states experience from other states and internal submerged nations is rarely acknowledged by liberal (in the international relations sense) media discourse. Furthermore, this American oversight starts at the individual level and sometimes climbs into the very halls of power in the White House. That America is the most powerful state in the world makes these peculiar traits more than academic curiosities. It leads to epic blunders by misguided foreign policy.

This American trait seems to originate in the fact that America is really safe. Paranoid at times, but fundamentally safe in a way which most states would envy. World's largest military, two vast oceans on either side, rich fertile land, no neighbours that pose a threat even if they were hostile, a population that for the most part patriotically identifies itself as part of the American nation. If only every nation or state in the world were so lucky! Naturally Americans have trouble understanding the situation many peoples and states find themselves in, where nation-states don't exist but are polyglot states with competing ethnic groups driven to violence by fear of being excluded from state power by another group or having their state's existence threatened by other external states.

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Concerning non-state actors: I am not worried about being killed by a terrorist but in a war, now states those are real killing machines. Non-states actors are mere rank amateurs.

Something I saw on reddit that I thought might be of interest, especially considering the subject matter of the episode:


http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57412 ... st-always/

Declan McCullagh. Wondered where he had wandered off to. Used to subscribe to his newsletter which is archived over at http://www.politechbot.com/

Going to be looking for a new cellular provider soon, and I've been wondering how long it would take for a company like that to surface...

Interesting show! Thanks! Very thought provoking.

Lots of good stuff in this thread.

Sums it all up nicely, I think. I flip flop around on this, probably because we're smack in the middle of it.

My current thinking is that we are at a far end of a pendulum swing; perhaps at the height of gluttony and selfishness, getting to levels where the un-sustainability is becoming more obvious to the many. Hard to say, but it does feel like we're in the middle of "something happening here."

@TheAtheistMissionary - thanks for posting that! Interesting stuff!



Lol... +1

Thanks for the lengthy lecture about the obvious. Dan is quite well aware of nationalism and its influence, and indeed the question of whether new communications will kill the nation state really come down to whether they undermine nationalism. I know my own nationalism is reduced by it, since I would feel relatively comfortable living anywhere in the world so long as I had an internet connection and wasn't worried about the local government killing me for violating their cultural norms. Open communication allows me to better see that people are people, wherever they are. It is harder to make people hate their neighbors when they regularly talk to them, game with them, and can see the suffering caused to them. All of this undermines the idea of nationalism that people who live in certain geographic borders are all that really matter. Is there still some nationalism resisting this shift? Sure. But more and more people are realizing that nationality really isn't as important as we might once have believed. That could be the end of the nation state.

Instead of ragging on the newb, how about offering him a number of CS shows where Dan talks about nationalism? I don't remember any titles off the top of my head, but I know he's talked about it before...

Thanks for bringing the point up Brennus. We did get into it at one point, but I stopped going down that road as it took the podcast down a long meandering road that extended the length significantly, while veering us away from the main point too much to make it worthwhile.

Atanamis pretty much sums up where we were going with it though...the idea that we are getting a diminution of importance to the nationalism idea as people re-orient themselves towards what entity they feel allegiance to. Some people in developed nations feel more connection to their online groups (believe it or not) than their national entities (a trend that is likely to continue and perhaps deepen in many nations). In fact, in some nations (like the U.S.) "nationalism" (in the strict sense) has never been less of an influence. Ditto for Western Europe.

The process of trying to cope with the challenges of a more open world may also pit the nation-state more and more often against the desires of their people (we/they may want a more open internet...they may want a less open one...as just one example). This is also likely to damage the traditional "Rah Rah" element of nationalism as the Nation-State and People find themselves more and more often to be on different sides of more and more debates.

Nationalism requires a romantic attachment to one's own country (which formerly was likely to be an extension of one's broad "tribe" ethnically or culturally speaking). This is less the case in the multi-ethnic/multi-cultural interconnected world (and also many of these large states...which are less the embodied "spirit" of a race or people, and more often a conglomeration of many groups and peoples...a "Melting Pot" if you will).

Now, this trend is reversed in some places to be sure. New nations often have more nationalistic feeling than more "mature" ones (including new "reborn" nations like Russia). But, on the whole, Nationalism as a force is less powerful than it has been in a long time. The question we can ask is: Is longer-term exposure to the inter connectivity of a larger uber-National world likely to foster more or less Nationalism in individual countries?

I should also add that I don't believe things like anti-Muslim feeling in some Western European states is a function or a result of "Nationalism". Xenophobia and racism perhaps...maybe even some form of Nativism. But that's not the same as Nationalism.

You could, for example, be a Frenchman that wants Muslims sent back to "where they came from" (a Nativist) without being particularly romatically attached to the idea of the French State.

I have mentioned this for a long time now. There already is a global conflict starting, except it is not between nation states. It is between factions within nations, and between the average world citizen and the property holders. OWS and Egyptian protesters might be very different people, but they essentially took the same side of the conflict -- against bankers and corporations. Those dictators were propped up for global economic interests.

Communications technology is simply a new battleground. It can be used by either side. Governments simply do not adapt very quickly to such paradigm shifts. But the people governments now serve sure as hell do. They are winning the battle on new media, not the people. Astroturfing, media campaigns, and all sorts of shenanigans take place to create artificial consensus or just outright propaganda. You need to step back and look at the *whole* picture. Consider cable news outlets. Consider astroturfed groups like the tea party. Consider the fake consensus for content "piracy" laws, or clean coal, or anti-regulation nonsense.

They are winning this war right now. But the problem is that they are necessarily driven by greed. That can easily be used against them. Even if we don't use it against them, they eventually undermine themselves because of it. The abridgements and police state tactics are going to reach a tipping point. I suspect the government and corporations will not be prepared for it. When a nation of people snap, especially Americans btw, it usually happens suddenly. The government will think they can get away with quite a lot more based upon the perception of docility after past abridgments. But then they just go one step too far. Most likely, the government is going to kill some innocent American, attempt to label that person a terrorist, and watch the blowback develop into a fire storm. It's only a matter of time. Same thing will happen with economics. So many people will be made homeless that enough people rally to create some real pain on corporations and banks.

I do like to ramble on about the obvious.

My criticism was not that I don't believe Dan's is not aware of nationalism's influence in history but rather that it should have come up in any modern poltical discussion of the nation-state and its possible dissapearence.

Nationalism isn't maleavolent hatred of others pe se. Sometimes that happens with a hyper-nationalism or twisted ethnic-race based nationalism. More often it gives people an identity, culture, a loyalty to some political construct greater than immediate family or tribe. Often giving the state stability that would otherwise be lacking with that national conscioussness.

I am glad you feel comfortable in many countries and so do I. I have also noticed that many countries I have been to have a strong nationalism that plays a really large part in their politics. That nationalism is not directed at me for being a foreigner, but rather a way they define themselves and their relationship to their state.

Even very modern societies with large amount of contact with foreigners and openness have potent nationalism. Pre-WW1 Europe was an open society, Europeans of various nationalities travelled to other countries and communicated with them. Still did not dissolve nationalism in pre-WW1 Europe. Not at all. Modern day East Asia cannot be understood without acknowledging the powerful force of nationalism at work. Ask a Korean how he feels about Japan? Or a Japanese national about China? If you think nationalism is a spent force prepare for a shock. Those nation-states in East Asia do not appear to be going away merely because of Twitter. Go to Turkey and see what happens when you insult their founder Ataturk. Actually DON'T, not only was Ataturk an awesome guy, but I fear I would have contributed to your demise as you would most likely not even survive to make it to your trial for insulting Turkishness. You seem like a nice person and I don't want any blood on my hands.

The Eurocrisis is another example of enduring nation-states and even nationalism. German taxpayers don't want to bail out Greek debt even if they belong to the same union of states. They think the we is their nation-state of Germany. This is despite Germany profiting handsomely by that union and contributing to teh massive trade imbalances that it ensured. Nation-states are not going away in Europe. In fact nationalist parties are on the rise continent wide. Check out the developments in Hungry or the popularity of the National Front in France if you remain sceptical.

All this talk of nationalism dragged something up from my memory

NOTES ON NATIONALISM (1945) - George Orwell
(wow, sorry fort the long quote )

We may be seeing an expansion somewhat of what Orwell was talking about.
Not Nationalism of the state, but Nationalism of Ideas, Concepts, or Class.
The advancement of communication technology is breaking down the barriers that we traditionally used to divide and segregate our selves (The Nation-State). But Humans, the semi-rational cave apes that we are just can't seem to live without some team to belong to. Religions, political parties, races, social movements, factions of all kinds

Exactly. It is still some group we feel attached to...just not the group it used to be (we often have less in common with our neighbor now as with the people we interact with online. This shouldn't be surprising. We CHOSE the people we wanted to interact with online... )

The key isn't that Nationalism isn't a factor these days...just that it is less of a factor than it traditionally has been since the French Rev. I mean...yeah...it's not dead or anything. But can you think about when it was at a lower ebb overall in the past two centuries?

This is part of the dynamic too...WHY is it at a lower ebb? Can it be because we have new options that didn't exist before? (for example, being able to choose your group instead of automatically just being in one because you were randomly born someplace).

Again though...historical experiment in progress...we shall see how it all plays out...