Political Loyalty and the Nation-State


Book Description

Examines the weakening of the state's ability to order political allegiances of its subjects. Is it possible to invest political principles with loyalty and can political loyalty become merely a matter of choice and personal responsibility?




Political Loyalty and the Nation-State


Book Description

Political Loyalty and the Nation-State examines the gradual weakening of the state's ability to order the political allegiances of its subjects. At the focal centre of the book lies the question of the extent to which it is possible to invest political principles, such as the rules and procedures of democracy, with a sentiment of loyalty and whether political loyalty can become merely a matter of choice and personal responsibility. The authors consider theoretical issues, problems of loyalty arising from population movement and case studies of conflicts of loyalty from Italy, Northern Ireland, and Russia. It is shown that loyalty can become decoupled from state, territory and nation; that loyalties can be multiple; and that today's loyalties reflect advanced attitudes towards difference.







Liberal Loyalty


Book Description

Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, and Habermas, Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens.




Loyalty and Liberty


Book Description

Loyalty and Liberty offers the first comprehensive account of the politics of countersubversion in the United States prior to the McCarthy era. Beginning with the loyalty politics of World War I, Alex Goodall traces the course of American countersubversion as it ebbed and flowed throughout the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in the rise of McCarthyism and the Cold War. This sweeping study explores how antisubversive fervor was dampened in the 1920s in response to the excesses of World War I, transformed by the politics of antifascism in the Depression era, and rekindled in opposition to Roosevelt's ambitious New Deal policies in the later 1930s and 1940s. Identifying varied interest groups such as business tycoons, Christian denominations, and Southern Democrats, Goodall demonstrates how countersubversive politics was far from unified: groups often pursued clashing aims while struggling to balance the competing pulls of loyalty to the nation and liberty of thought, speech, and action. Meanwhile, the federal government pursued its own course, which alternately converged with and diverged from the paths followed by private organizations. By the end of World War II, alliances on the left and right had largely consolidated into the form they would keep during the Cold War. Anticommunists on the right worked to rein in the supposedly dictatorial ambitions of the Roosevelt administration, while New Deal liberals divided into several camps: the Popular Front, civil liberties activists, and embryonic Cold Warriors who struggled with how to respond to communist espionage in Washington and communist influence in politics more broadly. Rigorous in its scholarship yet accessible to a wide audience, Goodall's masterful study shows how opposition to radicalism became a defining ideological question of American life.




Exit, Voice, and Loyalty


Book Description

An innovator in contemporary thought on economic and political development looks here at decline rather than growth. Albert O. Hirschman makes a basic distinction between alternative ways of reacting to deterioration in business firms and, in general, to dissatisfaction with organizations: one, “exit,” is for the member to quit the organization or for the customer to switch to the competing product, and the other, “voice,” is for members or customers to agitate and exert influence for change “from within.” The efficiency of the competitive mechanism, with its total reliance on exit, is questioned for certain important situations. As exit often undercuts voice while being unable to counteract decline, loyalty is seen in the function of retarding exit and of permitting voice to play its proper role. The interplay of the three concepts turns out to illuminate a wide range of economic, social, and political phenomena. As the author states in the preface, “having found my own unifying way of looking at issues as diverse as competition and the two-party system, divorce and the American character, black power and the failure of ‘unhappy’ top officials to resign over Vietnam, I decided to let myself go a little.”




The Limits of Loyalty


Book Description

"This fine collection on competing political loyalties in the late Habsburg Monarchy is framed by clear research questions.The dynasty faced formidable competitors in its own crownlands, cities and villages. [This volume] presents this competition in vibrant and varied case studies. From it readers will take a sampling of some of the best recent scholarship on the Habsburg Monarchy." - Slavonic and East European Review "Any future discussion on the last years of the Habsburg Monarchy's political history should build on this collection's significant achievements whether the point of departure is the monarchy's ultimate failure or a decidedly a-teleological perspective...It is not a book that only critiques the old; but it also points to the possibility of something new, and arguably more exciting." - H-Net Reviews "[The] rich case studies and vivid vignettes...[offer] the first coherent attempt in examining the efforts to generate dynastic-oriented patriotism and the responses to these efforts.[T]his book contains many seeds for a more nuanced and sophisticated discussion of the late monarchy. It is not a book that only critiques the old; but it also points to the possibility of something new, and arguably more exciting." - Habsburg "There is a welcome intellectual coherence and high scholarship to this latest volume in Berghahn's series on Austrian and Habsburg Studies." - German History The overwhelming majority of historical work on the late Habsburg Monarchy has focused primarily on national movements and ethnic conflicts, with the result that too little attention has been devoted to the state and ruling dynasty. This volume is the first of its kind to concentrate on attempts by the imperial government to generate a dynastic-oriented state patriotism in the multinational Habsburg Monarchy. It examines those forces in state and society which tended toward the promotion of state unity and loyalty towards the ruling house. These essays, all original contributions and written by an international group of historians, provide a critical examination of the phenomenon of "dynastic patriotism" and offer a richly nuanced treatment of the multinational empire in its final phase.




Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict


Book Description

Andreas Wimmer argues that nationalist and ethnic politics have shaped modern societies to a far greater extent than has been acknowledged by social scientists. The modern state governs in the name of a people defined in ethnic and national terms. Democratic participation, equality before the law and protection from arbitrary violence were offered only to the ethnic group in a privileged relationship with the emerging nation-state. Depending on circumstances, the dynamics of exclusion took on different forms. Where nation building was successful , immigrants and ethnic minorities are excluded from full participation; they risk being targets of xenophobia and racism. In weaker states, political closure proceeded along ethnic, rather than national lines and leads to corresponding forms of conflict and violence. In chapters on Mexico, Iraq and Switzerland, Wimmer provides extended case studies that support and contextualise this argument.




Loyalty, Dissent, and Betrayal


Book Description

Loyalty and betrayal are among key concepts of the ethic of nationalism. Marriage of state and culture, which seems the essence of the congruence between political power structure and collective identity, usually offers a simple explanation of loyalty and dissent. Loyalty is seen as once-and-for-all commitment of the individual to his or her nation, whereas betrayal is identified as a failure to commit him or herself to a common cause or as a diversion from the object of political loyalty and cultural/linguistic fidelity. For conservative or radical nationalists, even social and cultural critique of one’s people and state can be regarded as treason, whereas for their liberal counterparts it is precisely what constitutes political awareness, civic virtue, and a conscious dedication to the people and culture. "This book is the first attempt to provide a discursive map of Lithuanian liberal and conservative nationalism. Analyzing the works and views of dissenters and critics of society and culture, we can reveal a mode of being of liberal nationalism as a social and cultural criticism. This volume is of interest for intellectual historians, social theorists, students of East-Central European thought, and anyone interested in Baltic studies and the new members of the EU. Dissent: act of betrayal, or loyalty? Leonidas Donskis' new remarkable study is one consistent, thorough and dedicated effort to provide an answer to that question." – Zygmunt Bauman (from the Preface)




The Frontier of Loyalty


Book Description

Paperback edition of the pathbreaking book on the role of exiles in international relations, with a new foreword (including material on the war in Iraq). "In a world increasingly shaped by transnational organizations and processes, this is a timely and welcome subject, and Yossi Shain provides an informative overview." --Rogers Brubaker, Harvard University, in The American Journal of Sociology "Engrossing." --International Affairs "Mr. Shain is at his best stitching together information that hitherto had not been systematically related to analytical themes. . . . A major contribution to understanding the patterns and complexities of the politics of those at home abroad." --International Migration Review "The Frontier of Loyalty is the first comprehensive and theoretically oriented study of exile politics; the types of exile activity; the relation to both the home and host governments; and the difficulties and ambiguities of exile politics, particularly the struggle for legitimacy as spokesman for the opposition at home and for recognition from the outside." --- Juan J. Linz, Yale University "An ingenious and sensitive analysis of political exiles as 'voice from without,' which contributes to our understanding of the transnational character of contemporary politics." --- Aristide R. Zolberg, New School for Social Research "Drawing upon a wide literature on contemporary political exiles, Yossi Shain presents a sophisticated, learned and sensible survey of their place in political life today. More important, his meditation on the role of exiles proves such essential political categories as legitimacy, national loyalty, and opposition in the modern state. One test of any work of scholarship is whether it enhances our understanding of concepts that we have previously taken for granted. By this measure, Shain's book passes with flying colors." --- Michael R. Marrus, University of Toronto