Workshop: Size and Success: The Political Economy of Nations
Size and Success: The Political Economy of Nations
- Small States in Comparative Perspective: The Nation-State, Nationalism, National Political and Economical Institutions and the Political Economy.
Objectives of the project:
A fairly neglected area to be investigated in comparative political economy is the relationship between political culture, consensualism, national identity and socio-economic success. This project is an attempt to compensate for this neglect by looking into the relationship between national political culture and the specific national character of
small states and their political economy including their socio-economic performances. The project is an attempt to specify the nature of the institutions and the institutional set up in a variety of small states (mainly in Europe) by examining the importance of the distinct national aspect of the institutional structures in these states. In other words, the project will discuss how different forms of nationalism (and/or patriotism) have framed state and societal institutions in a different ways and how this has pushed and pulled the development of the small states in different directions but still (maybe) with some similar features. An initial hypothesis could be that most of the small states have a more consensualist political culture and are more homogenous compared to larger states. This distinct character of the political culture in the small states is a key element in an understanding of economic achievements and socio-economic performance.
Still, however, we find some remarkable differences in the level of homogeneity between the small states. Thus, as an example, there is a distinctive difference between Denmark and Switzerland in terms of language and religion. What has been an influential element in generating the relative homogenous states and societies? And what has caused some major differences? Do the small states share some common destiny in terms of traumatic war defeats and losses? Do they share the same form of nationalism? Did nationalism develop top-down or bottom up? Has nationalism been a political ideology used as an instrument for power elites and driven by these elites? Or has it been used by specific social movements to gain influence and power vis-à-vis the state elite? Or?
The type and nature of nationalism is an important element in defining and specifying the character and level of homogeneity. Moreover, we have a task to do in terms of relating nationalism, national homogenous culture to consensual institutions and a consensualist political culture. In other words, we are dealing with a complexity of concepts (political culture, nationalism, national identity, consensualism, and consensualist institutions) which we have to define, discuss and examine to what extent this set of concepts can explain socio-economic performances in general and differences/similarities in particular.
The overarching objective is
to point to the importance of national cultures, the possible national distinctiveness of institutions and the consensual cultural framework for a successfully coordinated approach to socio-economic performances as well as to establish how these national political cultures and national institutions originated and how they have been sustained.
The preliminary idea is to kick off the project with a meeting/seminar in April 2005 with the purpose of exploring concepts, frameworks and hypotheses and, hopefully, move forward with some ideas to a delineated and precisely formulated research project with a comparative design. It can lead to conference (late 2005/spring 2006?) with participants representing the selected ‘cases’ and participants, again, discussing the theoretical framework and the outcome of the analyses. Finally, it might be possible to publish a research report and a book.
Participation by invitation only!
Workshop 2005:
2005 8/9 April:
Participants (invited):
John A. Hall, McGill
Lars Bo Kaspersen, CBP
Ove Korsgaard, DPU
Benedikte Brincker, Uni. of Copenhagen
Brendan O’Leary, UC Penn
Hans-Ulrich Jost, Univ. of Lausanne
Uffe Østergård, DIIS
Sid Noel, University of WesternOntario
Ove K. Pedersen, CBP
John Campbell, Dartmouth and CBP
Anker Brink Lund, CBP
Peer Hull Kristensen, CBP
Mette Hjorth, Univ. of Hong Kong
Peter Nedergaard, CBP
Awareness literature:
We suggest that the participants make themselves familiar with some of the following literature:
Katzenstein, P. 1985.
Small States in the World Market. CornellUniversity Press.
Gellner, E.
O’leary, B. 2001.
Right-Sizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders (with Ian S. Lustick and Tom Callaghy editors), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alberto Alesina,
Edward Glaeser. 2004.
Fighting Poverty in USA and Europe Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference. Oxford
:OxfordUniversity Press
Alberto Alesina,
Enrico Spolaore. 2003.
The Size of Nations. The MIT Press