Political Integration
Often the best ideas for this blog come from readers' questions. You make me think. (Hint, hint: Please ask. Use the "Comment" link below each entry or e-mail me directly.)A couple days ago Michael Harvey wrote from Abu Dhabi asking a question about political integration.
The next day I was reading an article* about Ibn Khaldun, a 14th century Arab scholar.
Caroline Stone, author of the article, wrote, "One of Ibn Khaldun's basic subjects is still being debated, and it is of the greatest relevance in the increasingly multicultural societies of today: What is social solidarity, and how does a society achieve it and maintain it? He argues that no society can achieve anything... unless there is internal consensus about its aims... it is clear that, to him, a successful society as a whole must be in agreement as to its ultimate goals."
Over 500 years ago, Ibn Khaldun was discussing political integration.
Theen and Wilson in their textbook, Comparative Politics: An Introduction to Seven Countries (1992, Prentice-Hall, Inc.), write that
"Among the most important political effects of cultural pluralism is the threat it can pose to national unity and stability.
"Creating a sense of belonging to a single political unit among the various cultural groups that inhabit a nation is known as political integration or nation building.
"It is a continuing political process, involving agreement on a national language or languages, acceptance of a uniform set of political symbols that evoke emotional support for the state and feelings of patriotism (flag, national anthem, national heroes and martyrs), and the building of political loyalties that transcend the tribe, religious body, or racial group.
"In short, political integration is the process whereby loyalties and attachments to religious, linguistic, and racial groups are weakened and attachment to a broader political unit (the nation-state) is promoted as the object of the individual's ultimate political loyalty." (p. 10)
This is, in part, the logic behind the argument in the US to require English as the official language. And it helps us understand the political disintegration in Iraq. According to media accounts I've seen, people in Iraq identify themselves as Sunni, Shia, Arab, or Kurd before they identify themselves as Iraqi. Well, except when an Iraqi singer has a chance to win on "Star Academy," the Arab world's version of "American Idol." (See Iraqis Unite Behind Their Heroine on Arab 'Idol' -- Singer Transcends Sectarian Tensions.)
Social solidarity and internal consensus are important parts of political integration, just as Ibn Khaldun suspected.
When Chris Morris wrote in a 2005 BBC article, The identity crisis facing Europe, " In Europe we have British Asians, German Turks... In the US the emphasis is the other way around, they are not American Poles but Polish Americans," he was comparing political integration in the U.S. to that in Europe.
As Theen and Wilson note in their text, political integration has been going on for centuries in places like the United Kingdom, but it's not complete. And the influx of immigrants means that the process will continue.
- The expansion of imperial Russia created the need for large scale political integration. The break up of the Soviet Union, the war in Chechnya and conflicts in nearby republics demonstrate the continuing need for political integration.
- China strives to integrate Tibetians, Uygurs, Tajiks, and at least eight other ethnic groups. And the seeming linguistic unity doesn't extend to spoken Chinese, where subtitles on TV are sometimes necessary.
- The Mexican government recognizes 56 different ethnic groups including the Nahua (1.7 million descendants of the Aztecs) and Mayans (about a million people).
- Nigeria's main ethnic groups coexist with at least 250 others. The Ethnologue lists 521 languages for Nigeria.
- The CIA World Factbook lists 8 Iranian ethnic groups and an equal number of languages.
So, ask your students to know about political integration and ask them to write about it.
There are many ways to approach the topic that will help students better understand comparative politics and prepare for their exam.
- Which of the countries they've studied are most successfully integrated politically? Can they identify the challenges each of the countries face in the pursuit of political integration?
- What factors account for the relative levels of successful political integration?
- Is China's apparent high level of political integration authentic or merely the result of thousands of years of authoritarian government?
- Can a construct of imperialism, like Nigeria, whose borders ignore demographic geography, achieve a higher level of political integration? How or why not?
There are also institutional and legal aspects of political integration. Those are topics for another day.
*Stone, Caroline, "Ibn Khaldun and the Rise and Fall of Empires," Saudi Aramco World, September/October 2006, pp. 28-39.
PS: [You might note that Ibn Khaldun would find fans among many Republicans in the USA today. He wrote, "...you must understand that the most important factor making for business prosperity is to lighten as much as possible the burden of taxation on businessmen, in order to encourage enterprise by giving assurance of greater profits."]
Labels: concepts, political integration, theory
posted by Ken Wedding @ 11:56 AM
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