The Penguin History of the World

Still, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for some countries there is no doubt that the modernization process was furthered by authoritarian rule, even if these regimes did not always manage to create lasting growth. The role played by the urge to modernize in strengthening the state – something prefigured long ago outside Europe in a Muhammad Ali or an Atatürk – was an indication of new sources from which the state increasingly drew its moral authority. Instead of relying on personal loyalty to a dynasty or a supernatural sanction, it has come to rely increasingly on the democratic and utilitarian argument that it is able to satisfy collective desires. Usually these were for material improvement, but sometimes not; now, individual freedom or greater equality may be among them.

If one value more than any other legitimizes state authority today it is in fact nationalism, still the motive and fragmenting force of much of world politics and paradoxically often the enemy of many particular states in the past. Nationalism has been successful in mobilizing allegiance as no other force has been able to do; the forces working the other way, to integrate the world as one political system, have been circumstantial and material, rather than comparably powerful moral ideas or mythologies. Nationalism was also the greatest single force in the politics of history’s most revolutionary century, engaging for most of it with multi-national empires as its main opponents. Now, though, it is more often engaged with rival nationalisms and with them continues to express itself in violent and destructive struggles.

When in conflict with nationalism, admittedly, the state often came off badly even when, to all appearances, enormous power had been concentrated in its apparatus. Buttressed by the traditions of Communist centralization though they were, both the USSR and Yugoslavia have now disintegrated into national units. Quebecois still talk of separating from Canada, and Tibetans from China. There are many other instances of disturbingly violent potential. Yet nationalism has also greatly reinforced the power of government and extended its real scope, and politicians in many countries are hard at work fostering new nationalisms where they do not exist in order to bolster shaky structures that have emerged from decolonization.

Nationalism, too, has gone on underwriting the moral authority of states, by claiming to deliver collective good, if only in the minimal form of order. Even when there is disagreement or debate about exactly what benefits the state should provide in specific instances, modern justifications of government rest at least implicitly on its claim to be able to provide them, and so to protect national interests. Whether states actually did deliver any such good at all, has, of course, often been disputed. Marxist orthodoxy used to argue, and in a few places still does, that the state was a machine for ensuring the domination of a class and, as such, would disappear when overtaken by the march of History. Even Marxist regimes, though, have generally not behaved as if that were true.

As for the idea that a state might be a private possession of a dynasty or an individual, serving private interests, this is now everywhere formally disavowed, whatever the reality in many places. Most states now participate to a degree far surpassing any of their predecessors in elaborate systems, connections and organizations for purposes going well beyond those of simple alliance and requiring concessions of sovereignty. Some are groupings to undertake specific activities in common, some give new opportunities to those who belong to them, while others consciously restrict state power. They differ greatly in their structures and their impact on international behaviour. The United Nations is made up of sovereign states, but it has organized or authorized collective action against an individual member as the League of Nations or earlier associations never did.