There are critical questions about how post-communist and developing countries will construct themselves.

There are four features of the modern nation-state:

• the consolidation of policy-making, or centralisation of political authority;
• the expansion of nation-state’s tasks and purposes from defence to social security;
• the creation and expansion of state bureaucracy; i.e., a large civil service; and
• the expansion of citizen’s role in public affairs – citizen’s participation.

There are different aspects to the construction of the state: nation-building (i.e., the political aspects to modernity and modernisation); economic development (i.e., the economic aspects of modernisation), and urbanisation and migration (i.e., the social aspects of modernity).

There are four key factors in establishing the modern-state:

To sustain a common set of symbols (e.g., flag, currency, anthem and myths) is the very heart of nation-building. Nation-building is a process of forging and constructing a set of common beliefs. For example, in the US, liberal ethos (i.e., freedom and equality of all individuals) are central and all-pervasive. At the beginning, Protestantism contributed to the formation and maintenance of liberal ethos.

Most often, beliefs are distinct and in reaction to previous nations. England was the first modern nation-state. Its defining features were:

• the individual as the seat of authority;
• equality of all individuals under God; and
• the importance of science, especially experimental science.

France, in reaction to England, fashioned its own special identity. The idea of the nation was not based on the sovereign and the people (as in England), but took a highly abstract character, one that was reified and materialised in the notion of l’etat’ [state].

Germany, distinct from England and France, focused on ’peoplehood’ (or ‘brotherhood’), emphasising ‘blood of the people’ as the basis of its collective identity. This was translated into ethnic nationalism.

On obtaining its independence from England, the US adopted the English ideal features of individualism and equality. In fact, more so than in England.

Emerging nations (such as Islamic states of Iran and Indonesia) are creating their own features in reaction to (or, rather, in antagonism to) Western values and beliefs. Islam has become the central defining feature.

Interestingly, most post-socialist countries have adopted the Western features (such as individualism and free market principles) in defining their nation. Though, they also possess their own cultural history upon which to drawn on in re-creating their collective identity after the legacy of the Soviet rule.

Legitimacy of rule and of the rulers are critical in nation-building, though inevitably, considerable conflicts occur to achieve nationhood. In absence of social and moral bonds and norms, wide and common consensus, based on dialogue and communication, is required.

As already noted when examining Tocqueville, political legitimacy and stability require political institutions (i.e., political parties, trade unions and voluntary associations) to be durable and strong. In other words, civil order, social trust and participant political culture precede and provide firm grounds for legitimacy.

Creating a new nation is a construction of a sense of citizenship and identity. T. H. Marshall claims that citizenship is a status bestowed and given to those who are full members of a community, making them equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed and possessed.

In the UK, citizenship has evolved over several centuries:

• civil rights – equal rights under the law;
• economic rights – free to engage in work; and
• social rights – welfare rights provided by the state.

These rights temper and limit the inequalities of harsh capitalism, and provide citizens with universal rights, regardless of who they are. In effect, creating an equality of opportunity for all.

Yet, citizenship can not only be understood from the point of view of the citizens, but also of the nation-states, seeking to preserve their integrity of the state by policing the national borders. C20^th and C21^st have seen widespread migration – economic workers, political refugees, ethnic expulsions and forced migration. Nations vary in their granting of citizenship. For example, Germany stresses the importance of people’s ethnicity and ‘blood’ as the basis of their citizenship, whereas France emphasises political and economic rights (such as voting and paying taxes) for people’s inclusion into the French citizenry, and the UK points to the place of birth for people’s identity. Consequently, nation-states have strict or flexible approaches to citizenship.

Some social scientists have argued that a post-national form of citizenship has emerged. It suggested that human rights are, or ought to be, attached to all people regardless of their origins. For example, people from the EU have similar rights irrespective of their national citizenship.

Some scholars have suggested that citizenship has been constantly re-defined and re-constructed. This has become especially significant as nation-states attempt to maintain their productive economies by inviting and granting citizenship to people from outside. For instance, the US grants green cards and then bestows US passports to economic workers required for their industrial sectors.

There are several features to the economic development that accompanies the emergence of modern nation-states:

• a change in agricultural techniques and the emergence of market organisation of economic practices and relations;
• the emergence of an economic elite (e.g., the bourgeois class) to direct investment and innovation; and
• the role of the state to boost economic growth via monetary and fiscal policies.

What kind of a state is required to get an emerging nation to take off and develop? A democratic state like the UK and the US, or an authoritarian state like Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Japan and South Korea. However, this distinction fails to capture the complexity of the state-society relationship. Instead, Peter Evans offers another distinction:

• a predatory state – profits and revenues are appropriated by leaders, their family and clients; and
• a development state – a delicate balance is achieved where the state provides capital and leadership, yet loosen its reign over industries’ strategies.

The latter is conducive to economic growth. The nature of such a structural situation can be referred to as embedded autonomy. The development state is autonomous of other institutions, grounded in its own meritocratic standards of performance, and not shaped by nepotism and other such webs of social ties and relationships. At the same time, the development state and its leaders are embedded in that they share important relationships with new entrepreneurs and corporate leaders. Such relationships are built upon a sense of shared trust and purpose, rather than a sense of opposing loyalties and conflicts.

There are three key social actors involved in constructing the modern nation:

Individuals are responsible both for creating and for articulating symbolic themes that play a crucial part in the creation of the nation-state. Intellectuals occupied a special role in nation-building efforts in Asia and Africa, in part, because no other groups were available for that task. The merchants had no special reason or desire for sever ties with colonial nations, and other social groups were insufficiently organised.

C20^th intellectuals voiced the theme of nationalism (ideas of national independence and unity) that seemed to reconcile the tension between the appeal of the urban life in the order nation-states and the parochial tugs of family and friends in the colonial country. This theme were associated with two other sets of ideas. Populism provided a means of articulating the feeling of loyalty to home, as well as a device to arouse the mass required for nation-building. Socialism came to be attractive to intellectuals as they felt it seemed to demonstrate practical political success of accommodating nationalism and populism in the face of imperialism and capitalism.

Whether intellectuals in emerging and developing nations will continue to play a dominate role depends on their ability to commensurate their skills with expanding economic opportunities that come with economic development.

Like the intellectuals, the military have often been propelled to the forefront of organised efforts to change simply because there are no other groups that could assume that part. They possess the training, organisational skills and resources for an active role.

It is a force for innovation and for conservatism depending on the stage of nation-building. It begins with being an agent of transformation and change, shifting from traditional to transitional political orders, having the will and ability to challenge the existing political regime. In these early stages of political modernisation, the military plays a highly modernising and progressive role, promoting social and economic reforms.

With the transformation from a nation-state from oligarchic to radical praetorianism, the military becomes the conservative guardian, suppressing forces aimed at overthrowing the government and securing the reign of representatives of the middle class.

In the future, the military in the developing nations will become ultimately subordinate to that of the civilian rule, as in developed countries.

They are the foot soldiers, and willed by the intellectuals and the military. Yet, peasant wars and revolts testify to their ability to engage in political protest, as they become aroused due to the changes towards a market society.

Peasants are naturally disinclined to engage in rebellions or revolutions, because they work alone and value their own individual efforts. They view themselves as competitors, rather than collaborators. In addition, they lack organisational skills, and possess parochial and local interests related to farming.

Hence, peasants become active only when they are led by outside agents, and usually middle and landless peasants are most engaged as the former are most likely to be affected by the transition towards urban capitalism, and the latter least to be subjected to the power of landowners.

As societies become complex and industrialised, the peasant rebellions will become narrower in scope and less intensive, as the peasants lose their significance in the economy and society.

There are certain events that are more likely to result in a democratic rather than an authoritarian regime.

Lipset argues that economic development and material abundance are more likely to result in democratic rather than authoritarian governments:

• values of material growth (e.g., enterprise, self-responsibility, and infrastructural social development) are associated with a set of democratic ideas and values (e.g., free expression and association, and equality); and
• economic growth provides the conditions for equality of opportunity and greater citizen political participation: the social mobility of the working class means economic security and better education, and; the tendency of the middle class to engage with moderate and democratic parties, and to penalise extremist parties.

Yet, Lipset fails to demonstrate the transmission mechanisms from economic development to democracy. His analysis is suggestive, and a product of associational thinking.

Barrington Moore argues that there are several conditions that promoted the growth of democracy in states such as England and France:

• the emergence of a balance of power between the principal social groups that reduced the power of the royal authority and the landed upper class;
• the development of commercial agriculture promoted the growth of a class of capitalists, whose power counteracted the urban manufacturing groups and displaced the peasants from the land, so undercutting the seeds of peasant revolution; and
• the absence of a coalition between the landed aristocracy and the capitalist class.

Nation-states (e.g., Germany and Japan) that produced fascism had landed elites who were sufficiently adept to manipulate the growth of industrialism, and in so doing prevented the emergence of a balance of power. Nation-states (such as Russia and China) that would turn to communism still comprised a large and significant force of peasants, and such societies were either compelled to repress them, or to enlist their support for fundamental political change.

Yet, Moore fails to examine how bureaucratic administrations play a decisive role in nation-building. In addition, he neglects the position of the nation-state in a larger international setting; e.g., substantial losses in war precede the revolution as in the case of Russia.

Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens offer a clear, though conventional definition of democracy. Democratic governments consist of:

• regular, free and fair elections in a system of universal suffrage;
• responsibility of the state to the parliament; and
• basic citizen rights such freedom of expression and association.

Authoritarian governments are those that lack the first two elements, where as totalitarian regimes lack all three.

Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens reach two important conclusions:

• large landlords were the most anti-democratic force of all the forces;
• working class, and not the middle class, was most crucial to the emergence of democratic governments.

They argue that capitalist development weakened the landed upper class, and strengthened the working class. Democracy was the outcome of the contradictory nature of capitalist development, which of necessity, created subordinate classes with the capacity for self-organisation, so strengthening the civil society.

Some societies achieve great success in creating a modern nation-state, whereas others accomplish next to nothing. A successful outcome of nation-building is a nation-state in which policy-making has become consolidated and routine, there is some regular means of renewing political leadership, the interests of the citizens regularly receive recognition from political leaders, and there exists a complex and active machinery of the state. Failure, thus, means the absence of at least one of these conditions.

The principal obstacle to success lies in a system of economic interdependence among advanced and developing nation-states. The world-system is one in which some countries are dominant over others. It is a system whose foundations lie in a world-economy that had its origins in capitalist agriculture but has changed into industrial domination.

The world-economy is responsible for the expansion of the world-system. As technology expands, the boundaries and the content of the economy incorporate more and more territories into the system. First, imperialism, and then colonialism insisted on the economic and political character of subordination respectively. For instance, the efforts of the US to secure economic dominance over other nations have major political repercussions; the efforts severely reduce the likelihood that the subordinate nations can develop a viable and successful state machinery.

Yet, this account neglects that subordinate nations are not necessarily victims of this process, and can and do make some significant difference to how trade is conducted.

The issues of immigration and citizenship become more pressing as old boundaries and barriers between nations seem to be disappearing. It becomes ever more important for transnational bodies to begin to re-think the matter of citizenship.

The global economy has also become an ever more competitive market. Yet, emerging nations are unlikely to be able to compete given the lack of capital to create productive domestic markets. International organisations (such as the IMF and the World Bank) are unlikely to facilitate a change in the economic competitiveness of nations. In addition, in the light of social problems of AIDS, poverty and violence, emerging nation-states will struggle to become productive societies.