Nemzetállam és birodalom
Nation-State and Empire

Author(s): Miklós Bakk
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Political Philosophy, Political Sciences, Sociology, EU-Approach / EU-Accession / EU-Development, Globalization, Geopolitics
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: nation-state; empire; sovereigntist-globalist debate;
Summary/Abstract: The study included in this volume attempts to summarize the political, theoretical, philosophical, and historical background of one of the great debates of our time, the so-called sovereigntist-globalist debate, in a synthesising but at the same time an essay-like manner: with free interpretations. The latter means that the work sometimes unequivocally and with speculative courage combines the achievements of various scientific fields such as political science, nationalism theories, geopolitics, comparative federalism studies, philosophy, or border studies. An important starting point of the paper is the concept of the Israeli-American political philosopher Yoram Hazony, according to which there are two defining principles in shaping the international political order: the imperial and the nation-state. However, empire and nation-state are not so much types of states as two different ways in which a state fits into its environment, of the kind of political order it shapes beyond states. The author explores this basic concept, nuances it based on important historical monographs – here we need to think primarily of literature dealing with great empires (such as the Roman Empire, the British Empire or the United States), works of Tibor Grüll, Niall Ferguson, Friedrich Ratzel, and others, as well as classical authors of nationalism theories such as Clifford Geertz, Ernest Gellner, Anthony D. Smith, Michael Hechter, Miroslav Hroch, or the political philosopher Roger Scruton. The study also reflects on the question of the European Union: to what extent can European integration be considered an empire-building process, i.e. whether the plan of a European federation can be interpreted as empire building? The final chapter deals with the issue of globalism: it examines the emergence of global elites and the emergence of Euro-bureaucracy (as a consequence of the Maastricht Treaty, which gave impetus to federal aspirations). The author places the world order based on nation-states before the imperial world order on the scale of values. However, in the spirit of political realism, he warns that the process of world history was determined rather by the continuous birth and disintegration of empires.

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