,,yI ( " \ \ - * - \ I - -
I c/& . ~ n i v a ~ ~ ; ' y Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 173
C 1 7 ~ - 2 2 4 ] unity of the nation-state. They include: the mechanization of
transportation; the severance of communication from transpor-
tation by the invention of electronic media; and the expansion of
Administrative ower,
P the 'documentary' activities of the state, involving an upsurge in
the collection and collation of information devoted to administra-
Internal Pacification tive purposes. However, the second and third of these have
increasinglymerged in the twentieth century as electronic modes
of the storage of information have become more and more
L 933 sophisticated. Moreover, electricity becomes increasingly involved
in the means of mechanicalpropulsion. Allthree are tied together
in terms of the scheme of concepts that inform this book. Each
represents a mode of biting into time and space, providing the
The nation-state, let me repeat, i sociologist's 'society'. The means of radically increasing the scope of time-space distan-
nonchalant use of the term the literature of sociology ciation beyond that availablein class-divided societies.
belies the complexity of that bounded and The simplest, and most effective way of analysing the direct
unitary whole that is its not in order to impact of innovations in transportation is via the notion of
prohibit use of the to point to a onvergence.' Somewhere about the middle of the
range of problems ntury, was initiated a series of innovations in modes
the nation-state of transportation, paring down the time taken to make journeys
from one point to another. In all traditional states there were
of some kind, often of a fairly complex sort, as in
Roman Empire. Small bands of individuals could move quite
distanc_es,particularly if there were staging-
horses could be obtained. The Vikings were
ery fast - as well as-on occasion very long -
yages,which compare favourably with anything achieved later,
of mechanically powered vessels. However, the
rlying such forms of (relatively) swift trans-
ry often military, commercial long haulage being
d usually confined to rivers or seas. Until the eighteenth
s no different from anywhere else in these
ere generally extremely poor, except for a few
major cities and ports. In Britain, a 'turnpike
t the middle of the eighteenth century, prior to
Administrative Power 1: hroughout the Kingdom were extremely bad
le, so that it was very difficult to convey
either bulky or heavy articles. Wheel carriages
,and pack horses were the general means of
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
Not until around the turn of t e nineteenth century was there a
Pcohesively organized network f turnpikes, providing for reason-
ably cheap commercial trans ortation, in which respect they
were in any case undercut f r bulk transport by the rapidly
developing canal system. The stage-coach system was the first
modern rapid-transit form of t,iansportation operating regularly
and over a
nineteenth century were and poorly co-ordinated
by the standards of systems. A timetable
is one of the most devices,
presuming and
time in a manner quite unknown to prior types of society.
Timetables are not just means1 of using temporal differences in
order to identify and specifyrebularized events - the arrival and
departure of coaches, trains, uses or planes. A time-table is a
Btime-space ordering device, yhich is at the heart of modern
organization^.^ All organizations, up to and including the world
I
system today, operate by means of time-tables, through which
the sequencing of activities time-space is choreographed.
Organizationshave always somesort of time-table - the
invention of the calendar, was a characteristicfeature
of traditional states. regularized time-space
settings, organized via 'clock time', can time-tables assume a
more precise form. The monastery may have been the earliest
example of such a setting,"but the commodifiedtime inherent in
capitalistproduction undoubtedly was its most decisivepropagator.
Time-space convergence pro ides, then, a dramatic index of
Ythe phenomenon of which it is by now barely possible to speak
without relapsing into clichi: 1the shrinking world. But lying
behind time-space convergence there is the more diffuse, but
profoundly important, of the increasingly precise
co-ordination of the uencing of social life.
It is somewhat upon the mechanization
of of the segmental
174 Administrative Power, Internal Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 175Pacification
journeys per day for a small minority and a tiny proportion of
manufactured goods. Mass transportation demands precisely
timed and 'spaced' movement, which in turn presumes the
capability of communicating 'ahead of time' what is planned.
Only given these can an overall traffic system be reflexively
monitored and thus comprehensively 'organized'. Thus, rather
than the steam train, it is Bradshaw's directory, co-ordinated by
telegraphic communication, that epitomizes modern transporta-
tion. Contemporaries understandably enough were awed by the
railway, 'a plexus of red, a veritable system of blood circulation,
complicated, dividing, and reuniting, branching, splitting, exten-
ding, throwing out feelers, offshoots, taproots, feeders.'=But the
combination of the railway and the telegraph was what brought
this complex into being, not the locomotive and its rails on their
own.
Most historians and sociologists perhaps do not recognize the
extended process that was involved in the spread of mechanized
modes of transportation, a process that did not culminate until
the introduction of world standard time in 1884. At the Prime
Meridian Conference held in Washington during that year,
following a series of acerbic political debates, Greenwich was
adopted as the zero meridian. The globe was partitioned into
twenty-four time zones, each one hour apart, and an exact
beginningof the universal day was fixed.6In some states, railways
and other transport time-tables were quite quickly brought into
line with these delimitations,but in others more chaotic practices
prevailed. How far one or the other was the case depended
substantially upon the pre-existingsystem. As late as 1870 in the
USA there were some eightydifferentrailway times.7However,in
1883 representatives of the railroads met to establish a uniform
time, referred to as 'the day of two noons', since in the eastern
part of each region clocks were put back at m i d d a ~ . ~When the
Washington Conference was held, France - whose delegates
were the most bitter opponents of the choice of Greenwich as the
zero meridian - still had four different regional times, none of
which was readily convertible to Greenwich time. Paris time,
nine minutes and twenty-oneseconds in front of Greenwich, was
adopted as the time of the railways, and in 1891this was made the
statutory time for the whole of France. Curiositiesremained. The
trains were in fact scheduled to run five minutes behind their
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
176 Administrative Power, lnterjal Pacification
'official' times, so as to give opportunity to board in a
leisured way. Nonetheless, French who initiated the
International Conference in Paris in 1912;this was
the congress that set up a of specifying accurate
time signals and transmittingbhem around the world.'
The separation of communication from transportation which
the telegraph establishedis ad significantas any prior invention in
I
human history. It reduces tq a minimum what geographers call
the 'friction of distance'. Separation in distance had always been
not only separation in time, dut had been directly correlated with
the expenditure More or less instantaneous
communication either cost or effort, but it
does break the of these with spatial segregation.
Postal networks urse, a major supplement to the
telegraph and its he telephone. Figures 2 and 3show
San Francisco.
the increasing time-space cdnvergence between New York and
Figure 2 Postal time-space convergence
between New vorl<and San Francisco
Figure 3 Teleph ne time-space convergence
Pbetween New York and San Franciscolo
Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 177
Postal services of a national and international type originated
in the eighteenth century. But early postal communicationswere
both slow and sporadic. Prior to the mid-nineteenthcentury, mail
was rarely transported at more than ten miles an hour over
lengthy distances." The point already made about modern
transportation systems in general - that co-ordination in
time-space is as important as the mechanization of the actual
channel of movement - applies to postal services as a transport
communication device. But highly efficient postal systems
certainly antedate their telephone counterparts. In the USA, a
fully national tekphone service has only existed since the laying
of the first transcontinental cable in 1915.Even then trunk-calling
was time-consuming compared with later on. In 1920, some
quarter of an hour was needed to make such a call, involving the
collaborationof as many as eight operators. As figure3indicates,
by 1930 improvements in network connections cut down the
average service time to two minutes; the introductionof automatic
switching equipment reduced this to one minute in 1950. The
coming of direct long distance dialling reduced this to as long as
it takes to compose the number and for someone to answer the
call.
In telephone communications there is almost complete
time-space convergence both within states and internationally.
There is small difference between placing a local call and one
across thousands of Of course the telephone is only one
among a range of electronic media that permit more or less
instantaneous (or,if it is preferred, delayed)communication over
indefinite distances. Television has developed as a 'one-way'
medium of communication, but there is no intrinsicreason why it
should remain so, since various forms of two-way link are in
principle, and in some cases in practice, possible. Facsimile,
video and computer transmission represent more novel forms of
actual and potential communication, the likely impact of which
social life is still largely unknown, but which will undoubtedly
further extend processes of time-space convergence.
I mention these phenomena here not in order to attempt to
bring the discussion of the nation-state through to the present
day. My point is to emphasize the significance to the consolidation
of the nation-state in the latter part of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries of the separation of the communication of
information from transportation. The initial leap forward in the
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178 Adrninistrative Power, Intern 'I Pacification
7administrative power generatkd by the nation-state was accom-
I
plished prior to the development of electronic communication.
But modern societieshave bekn 'electronic societies' longer than
we ordinarily imagine nformation societies' since their
inception. There is a
which all states have societies', since the
generation of state monitored system
reproduction, storage, and
nation-state, with its peculi$rly high degree of administrative
unity, this is brought to a mudh higher pitch than ever before.
I
In discussing traditional ptates, Innis makes a distinction
between communicationmed'a which 'emphasise time' and those
which 'emphasisespace'.13Th former are durable but heavy, and
Fare the main textual materials of the earlier civilizations. Stone,
clay and parchment belong inthis category.They carry the marks
of the written word over very I engthypassages of time but are not
Iconducive to the generation of administrative power across wide
spans of space. Papyrus and a er tend to be less long-lasting but
v-'are light, more easily tra s ortable and also more easily
Preproducible. The Roman conquest of Egypt, according to Innis,
was peculiarly important to the expansion of the Empire, ~ o t
primarily because of the terqitory thus acquired, but because it
allowed access to large supplies of papyrus which were then used
widely to carry administrativk documentation. Following the fall
of Rome,the European states reverted to the use of the parchment
codex, papyrus virtually dis~ppearingafter the eighth century.
Paper was initially used mainly for commercial purposes, as
credit documents and bills of exchange. Texts of any length,
includingscholarlytexts, continued to be inscribed on parchment
until the development of t v printing press. The invention of
printing was a phenomenon as important to the formation of the
absolutist state as the other factors mentioned in chapter 6. It
would be difficult to overestimate the generalized impac? of
printing in the shaping of m dernity.I4Printing is the first major
step in the mechanization communication and, in making
documents and texts widely it initiated the process of
drawing imagery in material,
So far as the most important
Adrninistrative Power, Internal Pacification 179
consequence of the easy and cheap availability of printed
'
materials was an enlargement of the sphere of the 'political'. The
growth of a 'public sphere' of state administrationis inseparable
from textually mediated organization. The discursive arena
thereby opened up is quite mistakenly described if it is regarded
as one in which 'free speech' is in principle possible. It is not
primarily speech which is at issue, however important debating
chambers might become. Rather it is the 'intertextuality' of the
exchange of opinions and observations via texts that are 'freely
available' - in Ricoeur's terms, distanciated from their authors
- that marks the decisiveshift in the lurch towards a new form of
state. I shall pursue this theme in a later section but for the
moment I want to concentrate upon the implications for the
enlargement of the administrative power of the state. What
printing made possible, and what it was increasingly used for
during the phase of the consolidation of absolutism, was a very
profound furtherance of the surveillance operations of the state.
It was essential to the codification of law upon which Weber
rightly places so much stress. Laws had long been in some part
written but in the preceding scribal culture their influence was \
necessarily limited and diffuse. Printed codes of law, within an 1increasingly literate culture, made for the increasing integration
of 'interpreted' law within the practice of state administrationand
for a much more consistent and direct application of standardized
juridical procedures to the activitiesof the mass of the population.
But the sphere of the law is only one area in which such changes
can be observed. Records, reports and routine data collection
become part of the day-to-dayoperation of the state, although of
course not limited to it.
As good a single index as any of the movement from the
absolutist to the nation-state is the initiation of the systematic
collection of 'officialstatistics'. In the period of absolutism,such
data-gatheringwas particularly concentrated in two areas, at least
as regards the internal affairs of states. One was that of finance
and taxation, the other the keeping of population statistics -
which tended, however, until the eighteenth century to be
localized rather than centralized. The first bears witness to the
significanceof fiscal management,already alluded to. The second
is to do with a phenomenon I shall discuss in the next section - a
preoccupation of the centralizingstate with maintaining internal
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180 Administrative Power, Internal Pacification Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 181
'order' in respect of rebellion, and crime. The official
statistics that all states about the middle of
the eighteenth and extend these
concerns. But of sociallife and,
nearly complete.
to residence,
are recurrently absorbed into what it is that they are about, at the
same time as they (logically)draw upon concepts and theories
already employed by lay actors.16
Social science, in other words, has from its early origins in the
modern period been a constitutive aspect of that vast expansion
of the reflexive monitoring of social reproduction that is an
integral feature of the state. In the period of absolutism, two
formsof discourse were particularlyrelevant in this respect. One,
which I have previously mentioned, was the discourse of early
political theory, constitutively entangled in the formation of the
modes of sovereignty that distinguish the absolutist state from
traditional ones. The other, belonging to a slightly later phase, is
the discourse of early economic theory, which helped to give the
modern senses to 'economic', 'economy', 'industry' and a whole
set of surrounding terms. However, these usages only became
firmly established in the nineteenth century and it is economics,
i
together with sociology and psychology, that have been most
deeply involved with the rise of the administrative power of the
nation-state. In saying this, I do not mean to claim that the social
sciences cannot in some part stand outsidethat power and subject
it to analysis and critique, as I consider myself to be doing in this
text. But we should recognize that one of the features of the
modern state - and of modern organizationsin general - is the
systematic study and utilization of materialsrelevant to their own
reproduction.
There is a very important
statistics.From the time of their
of society have regarded them
Administrative Power I I: Internal Pacification
point to be made about official
first beginnings onwards students
as offering a fund of material that
Surveillanceas the mobilizing of administrativepower - through
the storage and control of information - is the primary means of
the concentration of authoritative resources involved in the
formation of the nation-state. But it is accompanied by large-
scaleprocesses of internal transformation which have their origins
in substantialpart in the developmentof industrialcapitalism and
which essentially can be represented as producing internal
pacification. The meaning of 'internal pacification' needs to be
carefully understood and interpreted against the backdrop of the
character of the internal administration of traditional states. It is
a question which returns us to the theme of violence.
As I have previously pointed out, in traditional states the
can be used to chart the chara teristicsof socialorganization and
social change. The origins empirical social research in the
social sciences are closely up with the use of official
statistics as an index of proces$esof social activity.15Durkheim's
Suicide is only one among dany nineteenth-century works to
have relied upon the analysis df such statistics to substantiate its
conclusions. Now it might we? be accepted that, given certain
reservationsabout the manner ;of their collection,officialstatistics
are an invaluable source of data for social research. But they are
not just 'about' an independenby given universe of social objects
and events, they are inpart cohstitutive of it. The administrative
power generated by the natioi-state could not exist without the
information base that is the means of its reflexive self-regulation.
Other implications also derive from this. Social science, even its
earliest formulations did not come fresh-facedand innocent to an
ordered array of empiricaldat I. The collection of officialstatistics
is impossible without thos involved having a systematic
understanding of the subject-Batter that is the concern of those
statistics. Such an understan ing is progressively monitored, in
4the modern state, by much t e same methods as 'independent'
social scientistsuse to analyse the data thus produced. From this
it follows that the social, sciences have themselves been
bpersistently implicated in the phenomena they set out to analyse.
The connections involved dere are in some part empirical
(because the collection of mbdern statistics normally involves
I
learning processes used to 'systematize' and 'improve' them) but
also conceptual or theoreticai. The discourses of social science
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182 Administrative Power, Inter a1 Pacification
n Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 183
concept of 'deviance' makes very little sense, except within the and infirm - have a longhistory outside Europe.IgThus hospitals
restricted locales of the ruling groups. The administrative scope. in Byzantium were specializedagencies of this sort, although they
of the state did not extend to encompass the practices of the local were always closely associated with monasteries. For example,
spatially distant the monastery hospital established by John Cornmenos in 1112
most concentrated. had five separate wards caring for different types of illness, each
Moreover, patterns of did not resemble those which ward having about a dozen beds in it. Every ward had two
have become familiarin nation-state. In traditional physicians, with full-time assis'tants and orderlies, together with
states the relatively centre over the administrators responsible for the organization as a whole; there
means of violence be little possibility of was also an out-patient department. There were a few hospitals
'policing' in the were always potential resembling this in Europe in the Middle 'Ages,such as that at the
sources of the centre; and that Abbey of St Gall, in Switzerland,built in the ninth century.20The
bandits, marauders, urban and rural gangs of various Abbey building contained a hospital with a number of wards,
tended by a chief physician and other doctors. But such
From the sixteenth ry onwards within the European organizations bear only a marginal relation to those constructed
societies, fears were expressed in ruling circles about from the seventeenth century onwards. The religious influence
many of these involved and the monasticmodel remained strongbut the new organizations
the beginnings of a new were often established by the state, and their concern was more
Two partly independent with crime and vagrancy than with the care of the sick.21
If carceral organizations have their origins in the period of
absolutism,they only assumed the guisewith which we are familiar
oday in the course of the transition to the nation-state. There is
no need to accept the whole sweep of Foucault's arguments to
.acknowledgethat 'disciplinary power' becomes associated with a
of organizations involving new modes of regularizing
social setting. The other was the establishing of remedial ities in tirne-space.22Prisons and mental asylums become
organizations in specifictypes of locale that separated off certain erentiated from other organizations, like medical hospitals, in
categories of individuals frob the remainder of the population. h individuals are not incarcerated against their will.
This is the process, or set of processes, that Foucault calls rivation of freedom' becomes the main punitive mode,
'seq~estration'.'~ acing those spectacular forms of punishment of which
estimated, the 'army of poor jobless' amounted to between 10 cault writes but which were, in fact, never more than the
and 20 per cent of the adult with this figure rising in amatic exceptions to more mundane forms of pre-existing
times of economic crisis to s cent. Acknowledgement ions.23The enforced deprivation of liberties is clearly in
of this as a 'social problem' on the part of part an expression of the centrality which 'democratic' or
those in ruling circles was u main reasons lzenship rights come to assume within the state. The debate -
for the creation of titularly as stimulated by Foucault's writings - over how far
trend towards confinement as a punitive sanction conforms to
mane is in some respects misguided. The point is not
y that there occurred a transition from one type of punishment
lolent, spectacular, open) to another (disciplinary,monotonous,
dden), but that a new nexus of coercive relations was established
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
184 Administrative Power, Int rnal Pacification
1
where few were located befbre. The creation of a perceived need
for 'law and order' is the reverse side of the emergence of
conceptions of 'deviance' recognized and categorized by the
central authorities and by professional specialists. These are
intrinsic to the expansion of the administrativereach of the state,
penetrating day-to-dayacti 'ities - and to the achievement of an
I'effective monopoly of violence in the hands of the state
authorities.
of society -
was a matter of a of local community control
together with the armed intervention when
imprisonment plus policing
'Civil war', where it occurs,
from even quite
state authorities
dissident groups.
'Disciplinary power' as described by Foucault depends perhaps
primarily upon surveillanc in the sense of information-keeping,
tespecially in the form of personal records of life-historiesheld by
the administrativeauthorit'es. But it also involves surveillance in
Iithe sense of direct supervision. In this sense, prisons and asylums
share some of the gen ralized characteristics of modern
organizations, including the capitalistic work-place, but a range
I
of other organizations as well. All involve the concentration of
activities either for a pe iod of the day, or for a period in
7individuals' lives, within specially constructed locales. We may
1 regard disciplinarypower as a sub-typeof administrativepower in
general. It is administrativkpower that derives from disciplinary
procedures, from the use of regularized supervision, in order
either to inculcate or to attempt to maintain certain traits of
Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 185
behaviour in those subject to it. Since, in previous eras, the
monastery was one of the few locales in which large portions of
people's lives could be concentrated, it is not surprisingthat some
of the main features of disciplinary power originate there.
Disciplinary power is built around the time-tablejust like other
more spatially diffuse aspects of modern organizations. But in
this case time-tables are used to organize the time-space
sequencing of settings of action within physically restricted
locales, in which the regularity of activities can be enforced by
supervision of individuals who might not otherwise acquiesce.
Supervision demands either continued observation (as, for
example, in the case of a teacher confronting a classroom of
pupils) or ready access to such observa'tion when it is thought
necessary (asin the instance of devicesthat can be used to keep a
watch upon prisoners when they are in their cells). In the sense
that disciplinary power involves observation, Foucault is right to
take Bentham's panopticon as its epitome, regardless of how far it
was actually used as a model by those who designed or operated
prisons or other organizationallocales.
But Foucault is mistaken in so far as he regards 'maximized'
disciplinarypower of this sort as expressingthe general nature of
administrative power within the modern state. Prisons, asylums
and other locales in which individuals are kept entirely
sequestered from the outside, as Goffman has made clear, have
1 to be regarded as having special characteristics that separate
them off rather distinctivelyfrom other modern organizations. In
virtue of the fact that it is 'total' in its effects upon inmates, the
former type of organization specifically disrupts the ordinary
routines through which human agentslive their lives.25Goffman's
notion of 'total institution' may or may not have been consciously
coined in awarenessof its affinitiesto 'totalitarianism' but certainly
the concentration camp is, in recent times, the most dramatic and
frightful exampleof enforcedsequestration.The use of techniques
of surveillance in such enclosed and brutally time-tabled settings
undeniably has set a malign stamp on the modern era. One can
, see from this regard why Foucault chooses to accentuate the
implications of those forms of disciplinary power that were
perhaps often first established for essentially humanitarian
motives. But we still have to insist that it is the work-place or,
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186 Administrative Power, jpternal Pacification Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 187
promoting the discipline of potentially recalcitrant groups atlized locale within which administrative
is prototypical of the Western nation- major points of tension, especially in the sphere of production.
settingof the businessfirm This is distinguishablefrom a growth in disciplinarypower linked
organizations,is that the to, and expressive of, the sanctions that those in the state
their walls; and that apparatus are able to wield in respect of 'deviance'. It is this
of disciplinary second aspect that is most closely meshed with the development
In all of surveillance as the policing of the routine activitiesof the mass
of the population, by specialized agenciesseparate from the main
body of the armed forces.
Internal pacification involves severalrelated phenomena, all to
do with the progressive diminution of violence in the internal
: affairs of nation-states. One element,given parti~ularprominence
by Foucault, is the disappearance of violent forms of punishment
associated with the legal system. Perhaps the most striking single
:, index of this is to be found in the history of capitalpunishment. In
post-medievaltimes, capital punishment could be meted out for a
readily turned to lookink for sources of docile, unfree labour in range of transgressions, many of them seemingly quite trivial. On
the other hand, the killing of another person could often be
atoned for by payment of a fine and, in practice, was frequently
-
sanctioned by the local community or by kin groups rather than
by the state. Regarding murder as at the peak of ,the scale of
crimes, whatever level in the social hierarchy they'perpetrator
might be, and separating murder unequivocally from the killing
of alien populations in times of war, are attitudes peculiar to the
past two centurks or so. They reflect both the primacy thatHence the imposition
the very real and 'bourgeois rights' assume and their connection with universal
power which those subject to it can, citizenship withinrthesovereign state.
and do, develop. Public executions were still carried out in England until well
two substantive features of the - into the eighteenth century. Hangmen were well-known figures to
state that the general public, and brought to their work various sorts of
one hand, there takes place a personal idiosyncracies and f o h s of exhibitionism.27 Those
of this form of power, malefactors who were done to death at Tyburn were talcen
through the streets in an open cart, followed by a lengthy cortege
carried on in order to of officials. They died slow, lingering deaths, although friends
were allowed to shorten their sufferingsby pulling at thgir legs on
the scaffold. Although the practice died out well before that of
public executionitself,in earlier times corpseswere often disposed
; of publicly. Gibbetingwas the most common of such procedures.
A corpse would be boiled or tarred and hung up in a chair or
wicker suit at the scene of the crime, on a busy thoroughfare or at
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188 Administrative Power, lntlrnal Pacification
I
Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 189
in order publicly to display to potential wrongdoers the likely
outcome of any malfeasance. On the contrary, they usually have
to be employed in a surreptitious fashion.
The objective In local communities within traditional states, where custom
also became that of mutilation. Scaffoldswere designed was the principal binding force, there were often blood feuds and
in such a way as to person just far enough to other forms of violent encounter between individuaIs and kin
dislocate the to' break blood vessels. groups. Peasants living at any distance away from the main
well as in space, being concentrations of armed force of the state authorities, or of their
local lord, could not be effectively protected from bandits or
.bands of armed raiders. This was true in most areas of traditional
out, China, for instance, right up to the twentieth century, notwith-
standing the fact that China was probably in some more central
wheel; hammering to attakh bodies in crucifixion;fire crackling regions the most successfullypacified of alllarge imperial states.29
and wood tumbling to pots for human boiling . . . The Travel was always a fraught enterprise in such states and
modern desire is for Virtually no effort has been merchants of any affluence virtually always moved in armed
spared to make At the beginning of the caravans, even forjourneys of quite short distance. Finally,within
modern period, baffled with bales of cities themselves there were very often 'no go' areas in which,
cotton and,when rubber cushions even with armed protection, those from other sections would fear
and spring
The development of the absolutist state was undoubtedly ,
is rich associated with major advances in internal pacification, although
the level of day-to-day violence was always widely variable at
differentperiods and in different places. According to Le Goff
and Sutherland, as has been mentioned previously, in most of
rural France under the Old Regime there was a prevalence of
'violence, rowdyism, petty thieving and the like'.30If Macfarlane
is right about rural England, on the other hand, the level of
personal safety in the seventeenth century was considerablyhigher
than in most parts of continental Europe. According to him, in
Kirkby Lonsdale and its environsit was fairlycommon forwomen
to travel on their own, and for people to cross the moors alone at
ght, even when carrying sums of money. A large amount of
ovement went on in the region, seemingly without fear of
bbery. Battles between wandering youth gangs, quite frequent
some areas of rural England, were apparently absent there.31
though the anxieties expressed by commentators at the time
nnot necessarily be taken at their face value, it seems definitely
have been the case that the larger cities, towards the latter part
stations and prisons of modern world. But these are not the eighteenth century, all contained areas in which the levels
generally part of a scale punishment whereby violence is used f murder and armed robbery were very high by subsequent
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1190 Administrative Power, lnterna Pacification
I
Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 191
standards. It is only in this p riod, however, that the notion of
I
the labour contract - the axis of the class system. Closely
'lawlessness' becomes widely used. Modern policing, with its integrated with, and dependent upon, the other forms of internal
characteristic mixture of info mational and supervisory aspects pacification, it is a major fehture of the separation of the
of surveillance,was both mad possible and seen to be necessary economic' from the 'political', although one that is ordinarily
by the wholesale transferral o populations from rural to urban
f ignored in most writings on the subject. It connects closely with
environments. Horace Walpole wrote in 1752 of journeys in processes of social change I shall discuss in the next section, and
London that 'one is forced to tkavel, even at noon, as if one were only the outlines need be sketched here. In industrial capitalism
going to battle.'" Referring tb English cities in general of the - in contrast to pre-existing class systems - employers do not .
period, the Webbs wrote of ' espair of conveying any adequate
4 possess direct access to the means of violence in order to secure
picture of the lawless violence the barbarous licentiousness, and the economicreturns they seek from the subordinate class. Marx
the almost unlimited opport nities for pilfering and robbery
i entirelycorrectlylaid considerableemphasis upon this, even if he
offered by the unpoliced stree did not pursue its implications. 'Dull economic compulsion', plus
The rapid expansionof a ne ly urbanized population, in which
T
the surveillance made possible by the?concentration of labour
,changingmodes of life took s me while to become established, within the capitalistic workplace, replaces the direct possibility
created unsettled conditions o 'lawlessness'. To an extent, these
if of coercion by the use of force. Of course, employers did not
'might have diminished of th ir own accord with more stable relinquish' the use of- sanctions of violence without some
patterns of residence. But und ubtedly the main influencebecame
c-!
reluctance and the class struggles waged by workers have often
the control which the new t y p ~of policing, in conjunction with involved -violence.But these facts do not compromise the key ,
the sanctioning mechanisms qf codified law and imprisonment, importance of 'bourgeois rights' in the formation.of a 'de- !1
were able to achieve. 'Crimi al' activities became much more? militarized' system of production. This is one of the most i
clearly distinct from other so rces of social strife, and these inY significant e1,ementsof the liberal-democratic state - that the .
turn became plainly differeniated from the external militaryit rights of freedom of disposal of labour-power, for which the ,,
engagementsof states. Comp ring London, Stockholm and New bourgeoisie actively fought, carry with them the intrinsic :
South Wales during the seco d half of the nineteenth and early
7 limitation of the power of employers in the work-place to hiring
twentieth centuries, Gurr concludes that in each case there is a and firing workers and to supervising 'management'. These are
clear trend towards a decline 'In comqon crimes of violence - a'i not in.any way negligible sources of control. However th'ey are
findingamply confirmedin other studies.34Until about the turn of only possible in a society which has been internally pa6ifiea in
the nineteenth century, even i ' Britain long-distancetravel meant7 other ways and in which 'bourgeois rights' are more than the
risking the attentions of robbers or highwaymen. But during that
i
mere sham freedoms Marx seemingly took them to be.37
century these phenomena ra idly became nothing more than a Most of this book, except where it moves on to the terrain of
memory, invested not infreq ently with .a romantic image that
1
the global state system, is concerned with the European nation-
bore little relation to the pas reality in question. Of course, in state. But it is perhaps appropriate at this point to make a few
other parts of Europe such a level of internal pacification took commelits about modern states in which the use of force has
considerably longer to achiee. As late as the early twentieth continued to play a much more direct role in the co-ordinationof
century travel was unsafe in some mountainous and forested
I the labour-forcein the sphere of production. If in these states the
areas of France and remains s in some part up to the present day ion of work by 'dull economic compulsion' remains
in Sicily or Turkey.35 loped, it is probably in some substantialpart a result of the
Another aspect of internal pacification is of quite elemental ripheral involvement of capitalism historically with the use of
importance to the themes of this This is the eradication of nfree labour. In countries with an economic background of this
1 violence, and the capability t use the means of violence, from
i
ort, the insulation of economy and polity characteristic of the
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
192 Administrative Power, InjFrnal Pacification Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 193
European nationstate has not been achieved. Other aspects of and in its intrinsic form, modern urban development is very
internal pacification may be correspondingly also less securely different from previous cities. It forms a 'created environment',in
developed - in respect, for example, of the existence of armed which the transformation of nature is expressed as commodified
gangs who perpetuate organized terrorism in pursuit of political time-space; as such it is the milieu of all social action, no longer
a distinctphysical entity and socialsector within a broader societal
A final characteristic of internal pacification, intimately totality. The commodification of time and of space is the
condition of those processes of time-spacesequencing described
participation earlier as characteristic of modern organizations, including the
seemed to many nation-state,as the most prominent new power-container.
thesis of the essentially In saying this, I do not mean to deny the importance of either
pacific character of capitalism. What it involves, regionalization within the territory of the state or of social systems
however, is not the but a concentration of military that stretch across states. In many respects nation-states and the
other states in the nation-state global areas covered by the nation-statesystem are more definitely
administrativeresources regionalized than the traditional states that preceded them. The
administrative unity they display is primarily a phenomenon
confined to the scope of the state apparatus. The interdepen-
dence, economic and political, of the world in which nation-
states exist should not be identified with homogeneity. Some of
is quite basic to state poder. But the registering of the more or the main forms of regionalization are the following.40
less complete success of this claim, made possible by the 1 The regionalized distribution of nation-states themselves, as
expansion of surveillance capabilities and internal pacification, core and peripheral states economically,as power-blocspolitically
radically lessens the dependence of the state apparatus upon the and as distinctive and autonomous centres of power within a
wielding of military force s the means of its rule. The distinction
ii global patchwork of states.
between the military and civilian police is symbol and material 2 The differentialzregional distribution of industry,in a division
expression of this pheno enon. At the same time, the fact that of labour in and across states. Industrial production is by its very
this distinction is rarelym/clear-cut, that the police may have nature regionalized, since various types of industry tend to
paramilitary sections employed in cases of what is regarded as develop, or to be placed, in distinct spatial settings and areas.
serious civil disturbance, knd that the military may be directly This applies not only to fairly generalized regional distributions
called in, are evidence enbugh that the differentiation is usually ithin and between states but alsowithin quite restricted settings,
full of tension. ch as the spatial positioning of industrial areas in certain types
ban neighbourhoods. 'Uneven development' can be associated
Urbanism, Regionalizatio and Sequestration any or all of the types of regionalization mentioned in (1)or
In class-divided societies, reasons already elucidated, cities The differential regional concentration of populations,
were a main foundation of the generation of both allocative and gardless of whether or not this is expressed in the shape of
authoritative resources. he relation of modern urbanism to the ultural, ethnic or linguistic variations. The populations of nation-
nation-state is quite differknt, as is the character of urban life as tates tend to be much more unevenly spread than those of
such." The spread of modern urbanism is undoubtedly prompted raditional states, partly because of the limitations of rural
above all by the emergCnce of industrial capitalism as conomy in the latter and of the very high density urban
dominant form of produckion system. But, in its consequen gglomerations assume in the former. The concentration of large
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
masses of individuals witdin relatively restricted spatial areas is
undeniably one of the bst stunning differences between the
7modern and the traditional world. Up to the seventeenth century
there were probably only about 100 million people in Europe,
which was considerably more densely populated than the other
continents. Today there ar/esomehalf this number who live in the
conurbation occupying the comparatively tiny area stretching
from Boston to Washingtonon the Eastern Seaboard of the USA.
4 There are many cled cut and diffuse regional variations
r-
between neighbourhoods and locales within the built-up sections
of the created environmknt. These are, of course, sometimes
planned but are probablymore often unintended results of the
intersectionof product, la our and housing markets. On a smaller
'7scale, regionalization between and within the concretely situated
locales that are the settin bof organizationsis often pronounced
and significant. The d3gree of differentiation among the
neighbourhoods of traditibnal cities and between the locales in
which day-to-dayLife was 'arried on was usually quite low. Most
Flarge, internally differenti ted locales were either public buildings
7or the sites of religious communities. But such locales become
incarceration.
urbanism and in a society massively developed surveillance
is so important to the of power. Where disciplinary
power is strongly settings in which those
194 Administrative power, Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 195Internal Pacification
the analysishq makes seem valid. Traditionally, he argues, death
was a phenomenon integrated with life, with the continuity of
social activities.
The spectacle of the dead, whose bones were always being washed
up to the surface of the cemeteries, as was the skull in Hamlet,
made no more impressionupon the living than did the idea of their
own death. They were as familiar with the dead as they were
familiarisedwith the idea of their own death.
Somewhere in the sixteenth century this began to change, for
reasons that do not have a single source but that converge to
produce a consistent trend.
Like the sexual act, death was henceforth increasingly thought of
as a transgression which tears man from his dailylife, from rational
society, from his monotonous work, in order to make him undergo
a paroxysm, plunging him into an irrational, violent and beautiful
world ...This idea of rupture is something completely new.41
The demands of the early health reformers to remove burial
grounds from churches and city centres were, in Ari6sYview, an
initial symbolic expulsion of the dead from the community of the
living. It preceded and helped shape the 'suppression' of death
Ithat is characteristic of more recent times. But whatever its
origins, which are-certainly both historically and psychologically
complex, this 'suppression' is not limited to theimaterial evidence
of mortality. Not only death is sequestkred from the ordinary
activitiesof dailylife; so are other phenomenawhich, in becoming
'detached' fr m the normal run of social life, produce specific
sources of a xiety or distress - including both madness and
physical illne s of a serious sort. If Elias is right, Aries' comment
i
Ion sexuality*alsosignals an important social chahge, even if
sexual beha iour is not organizationallyconfined in the same way
as the other phenomena. There is good reason to be as cautious
about some of Elias's historical claims as there is those of Aries,
but it does seem that sexual activity used to be engaged in more
openly than subsequentlycame to be the case."
Whatever the sources of these changes,their consequencesare
probably very significant for the tissue of day-to-daysociallife in
modern states. I have argued elsewhere that routinization,
knowledgeably yet tacitly organized by agents in the flow of their
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
196 Administrative Power, In Administrative Power, Internal Pacification 197
action, is fundamental to the reproduction of institutionalized large segments of modern social life engender a ~s~chological
practices.43In tribal and in lass-divided societies,tradition infuses
E . basis for affiliation to symbols that can both promote solidarity
the routine and gives it moral sources through which day-to-day and cause schism. Among these symbols are those associated
life connects to the existeitial arameters of human life, to the
P
with nationalism, and I shall return to the issues thus raised in
relations of human beings with nature, birth, sickness and death. chapter 8.
The 'existential contradiction' via which human beings live their
of death,
sickness and madness, of sexuality, are both a
result of this situation a condition of the
stability of the routine.
In virtue of of experiences J
that are upon the main
enacted. I do not mean do propose some sort of functionalist
account either of the origds of sequestration or of its implications
once widely established.The development of sequestered locales
'
is partly to be explained in fermsof influences promoting carceral -
organizations and partly n terms of the emerging primacy of
i'technical' methods of atteppting to 'treat' 'mental' and physical
illness. The outcome of sequestration is not in any generalized
way functional for the continuityof social activities. In respect of
*
I
feelings of ontological secvrity,the members of modern societies
are particularly vulnerable to generalized anxiety. This may '
become intense either whe ,as individuals,they have to confront
bexistential dilemmas ordiyarily suppressed by sequestration, or
when,on a larger scale, routines of sociallife are for some reason
substantially disrupted. Th emptinessof the routines followed in
.
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
Class, sover$ignty and-
Citizenship 1
Polyarchy
I
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 199
The development of sove!eignty, as concept and reality, is of
major significance in relatipg what at first sight look to be quite
opposed developments: the authority of the absolutist monarch
and the coming of the modkrn democratic state. At the same time
as the drive towards sove!eignty generates a centralization of
taken by many of Marx's critics. Thus Bendix effectivelyseeks to
reverse the Marxist position, arguing that while struggles over
civil and political rights were in certain historical circumstances
conjoined to class conflicts, in fact the former have primacy over
the latter. Neither the origins nor the consequences of the
democratization of the modern state are in a significant way
conditioned by class conflict. Thus the struggles that seemed to
Marx to be the very prototype of class conflict in nineteenth-
century Europe are seen as strivings on the part of excluded
groups to achieve full membership of the democratic polity.'
Before assessing these rival positions, some conceptual and
substantiveobservations should be made. Few concepts are more
fiercely debated than that of democracy. I shall not try to trace
the course of those debates,but shallfollowLindblomin regarding
'democracy', in its broadest sense, as equivalent to 'p~lyarchy'.~
Polyarchy means rule by the many, and involves 'the continuing
responsivenessof the government to the preferences of its citizens
considered as political eq~als.'~Electoral systems, as modes of
ensuring such 'responsiveness of government' are the prime, but
not the only, procedural means of creating polyarchy and courts
of appeal the main mechanism of sustaining it. Lindblom con-
cerns himself mostly with the first of these, but the second is
arguablyjust as important in respect of the formulation he offers.
For, as he indicates, polyarchy depends upon debates and
persuasion which (in principle) counter the arbitrary use of
power. I includeas courts of appeal not only parliaments, debating
chambers and law courts, but also any arena in which debate that
influences policy decisions is carried on - in particular the press
and, in recent times, electronic media. There is one major respect
in which I depart from Lindblom's usage. He limits the notion of
polyarchy to 'bourgeois' or 'liberal democracies'. I wish to make it
a much more encompassing concept, such that liberal democracy
is only one type of polyarchy. Although in the European nation-
state polyarchic systems have predominantly taken the form of
liberal democracy, other types of government in nation-states of
all kinds tend strongly towards polyarchy. There is, in short, a
generic association between the nation-state and polyarchy which
it will be my aim to help explicate.
Polyarchy, Lindblom makes clear, depends upon the existence
of a range of rights attributed to the members of a given
resources in the hands of
awarenessthat political power
the ruler, it stimulates a generalized
depends upon collectivecapabilities
which the figure of the mynarch may signlfy, but to which the
traditional trappings of kingly rule have little relevance.
There are two contrasting interpretations of the development
of modern democracy, wit+ both of which I shall take issue. On
the one hand there is the fa 'liar Marxist account, which seeks to
plexplain the origins of democratic participation in terms of class
I
dynamics.Although such an account can and has been given with
widely varying degrees of subtlety,itsbasic outlineis clear enough.
The main transformative influence shaping the emergence of
democratic politics is the ment of capitalismand the class
struggles this entails. involve a range of civil
and political liberties conflicts that ranged
the members of the the land-owning
aristocracy. 'Bourgeois rights', which were proposed by their
advocates as universal, in fsct serve to legitimate the dominance
of the capitalist class. ~ h i l dMarx might admit - especiallyin his
more detailed studies rathdr than his more abstract pronounce-
ments - that struggles inv&lvingsuch rights may have a certain
independence from class cdnflict, for the most part they are seen
as the surface expression class division. An opposing view is
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 201
another, to live where they want, to enjoy freedom of speeech
and justice in respect of accusations of 'deviant' behaviour. The
remainder are political rights and prerogatives, concerning the
participation of individuals in the exercise of political power, as
are universal rights. They voters, or in a more direct way in the practice of politics.
apply in principle to the and it is not surprising Economic citizenship rights are distinguishable from both these
to find that even their as Marx, took this for categories. They concern the right of everyone within the state to
granted. As the transactions enjoy a certain minimum standard of life, economic welfare and
that are also universal in nature, they have no
particular connection with the boundaries of states. In fact,
'bourgeois rights' have been everywhere actualized within Polyarchy, Citizenship
sovereign states. They are, thus, more appropriately regarded as
citizenship rights and I shall henceforth use that term to refer to Why should it be the case that there are inherent connections
them. between the nation-state and democracy (understood as poly-
Lindblom lists the fouowing as the rights and prerogatives archy)? I want' to interpret these connections, in a generalized
associated with polyarchJi4 way at least, as bound up with the dialectic of control,in relation
1 Freedom to form and join organizations to the concentration of administrative resources in the nation-
2 Freedom of expressioh state. In class-divided societies, I have suggested, there was no
3 Right to vote 'government' in the modern sense. The administrative reach of
4 Eligibility for public office the state authorities left largely untouched the day-to-daylife of
5 Right of political lead rs to compete for support
e the local communities in which the large mass of the population
6 Right of political leaders to compete for votes lived. The dialectic of control in class-divided societies,in relation
to the power of the state, can be characterized as a matter of
'segmental autonomy'. That is to say, since the level of
interdependence of the political centre and its subject population
was relatively low, the 'effort bargain' made involved the
maintenanceof.alarge amount of local community autonomy,so
long as certain obligations to the state were met, in return for
which the state provided a limited range of reciprocal services.
The use or threat of the use of military power tended to be ever-
this is a useful formulation resent in sustaining the administrative reach of the state
paratus, because the level of time-space distanciation it was
le to command was low compared, at least, with the modern
e. In the latter,the build-up in administrativepower (generated
ve all by the extension of surveillance in the various senses
oted above)marginalizes the state's dependence upon control of
e means of violence as a medium of rule of its subject
opulation. However, administrative power that depends upon
mainly under categories 1,2, 7 and 9 in his list. They are legally e mobilization of social activities via the expansion of
guaranteed rights of individuals freely to associate with one rveillance necessarily increases the reciprocalrelations between
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
202 Class, Sovereignty and ~ i k e n s h i p
those who govern and those who are governed. The more
reciprocity is involved, the greater the possibilities the dialectic
of control offerssubordinategroupsto influence the rulers. I take
this to be the 'structural1 backdrop' against which polyarchy
develops,first of all in the shadow of the absolutiststate and then
nation-state.
the modern
in their rulers.
begins to wane, the in the system
diminishes - it It is only in such
circumstances of widespread use or
threat of the use of foice is necessary in order to sustain
governmental control. +s an account of the. basis of the
administrative power of ?he nation-state and its connections to
does
system of rule,
in relation to it.
directly involved
order than Parsons
of power deflation. But it
that polyarchic influences
will tend to come or be dissolved.
There are conditions that might bring about
era1 way it is likely to be strongly
conditioned by strugglesover the three basic types of citizenship
rights. In order to demonitrate why this shouldbe the case,I shall
return to the work of ~4sha11,examininghis own account of the
formation of citizenship rights in a critical way.7 Marshall
characterizes his typologb of the three forms of citizenship right
negatively by reference to feudalism and, positively,by reference
to the organizational fodus of each. In the feudal system, rights
were not universal, in other words, not applicable to every
member of a national polity. Those in the various estates and
corporationseffectivelyl/elongedto separate communities,having
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 203
different rights and duties in relation to one another. Moreover,
these rights and duties tended to form single clusters; only since
the eighteenth century have the three strands of citizenship rights
become distinct from one another. This is partly because each
has a different organizationalfocus or, at least, the first two do.
The main institutionalfocusof the administrationof civil rights is
the legal system. Political citizenship rights have as their focal
points the institutions of parliament and local government. The
third - economic rights - apparently in Marshall's eyes lack
such an organizationallocation, which is perhaps why he chooses
the diffuse term 'social rights' to refer to them.
Marshall's discussion is explicitly focused on Britain and he
does not claim that his scheme applies with equal cogency in
other contexts. His thesis is that the three aspects of citizenship
have developed at different rates over the past two or three
centuries, with each serving as a sort of platform for the others.
The main formative period of the development of civil or legal
rights was the eighteenth century,when rights of the liberty of the
individual, and full and equal justice before the law, became
firmly established. Thus the right to live and work where one
pleases becomes generally accepted, something which in earlier
centuries was for many prohibited both by custom and by statute.
The traditional view, Marshall says, onlygradually ceded place to
the new principle that restrictions on the movement of the
population are 'an offence against the liberty of the subject and a
menace to the prosperity of the nati~n'.~The legal system was
primarily involved in advancing this idea, the judiciary delivering
a series of judgements that progressively freed individuals from
their bondage to the places where they were born and the
occupations they were born into. Civil freedoms were essentially
the end process in the dissolution of the remnants of feudal
society. They were the necessary foundation for the emergence
of political rights; for only if the individual is recognized as an
autonomous agent does it become reasonable to regard that
individual as politically responsible. The establishment of
universal political rights belongs to the nineteenth and the early
twentieth centuries. This process, according to Marshall at least,
was not so much one of the formation of new rights as the
extension of old ones, previously the monopoly of the privileged
few, to the whole of the political community. Economic rights
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
204 Class, Sovereignty and kitizenship
In the twentieth centuQ, citizenship and the class system have
been at war ...The explansionof socialrights is no longer merely
an attempt to abate thk obvious nuisance of destitution in the
lowest ranks of society 1 .It is no longer content to raise the floor-
ilevel in the basement of the social edifice, leaving the super-
structureas it was. It had begun to remodel the whole building,and
it mighteven end by codvertingthe skyscraperinto a bungalow.'
belong almost wholly to the twentieth century. The nineteenth
century, the period of ascendant industrial capitalism, was a
period at which those who were most adversely affected by the
play of economic forces had little protection against deprivation.
Poverty was regarded ak an indication of social inferiority; in
Britain paupers placed in the work-house forfeited the rights
possessed by other citihens, to virtually the same degree as
imprisoned criminals or h e certified insane. But in the twentieth
century this became rer)ersed, largely as a consequence of the
effects of political citizenship. With the establishment of the
Marshall's views on thkse matters are somewhat different from
the ideas that Bendix add others taking a comparable standpoint
have developed. In arkh hall's conception, citizenship rights, and
the political struggles ad?ociated with them, do not have a more
profound role to play than class conflict in modern societies;
. rather, the two tend to balance one another. Citizenship rights do
not dissolve class divisidn and cannot do so, in the context of a
capitalist society at any gte, although they do mellow the tensions
deriving from class conflict. The encounter between citizenship
and the capitalist class system results in a negotiated truce, a
'class compromise' rather than an unqualified victory for either
side. I think this view 1in some key respects at any rate - is a
correct one, although I want to put it to use in a rather different
way than Marshall had in mind. This means criticizing some
aspects of what Marshall has to say; detaching the analysis from
universal franchise, the
secure the political strength
rights as rights.
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 205
i
organized working class was able to
to consolidate welfare or economic
the specificallyBritish context of development; and relating the
discussion of citizenship rights back to that of surveillance.
So far as the first of these problems goes, we should register an
objection to Marshall's tendency to treat the development of
citizenship rights as brought about by something of a natural
process of evolution, helped along where necessary by the
beneficent hand of the state. In Britain, as in other societies,
there was little conceded by the state authorities without conflict.
There has not only been a 'struggle' between citizenship and
class,but a struggleto achieve the rightsof citizenship themselves
- although one which, if my argument is correct, the
underprivileged have been able to muster considerable resources
to pursue their claims. In Britain, the sequence of achievement of
citizenshiprights Marshall describes does make sense. Civil rights
were in some substantial part established prior to political rights
and these, in turn, before economic rights. Even in Britain,
however, the picture is rather more complicated than Marshall
would allow; some kinds of civil rights, for example, have only
been achieved in the twentieth century (othershave arguably also
been eroded or diminished). Developments elsewhere cannot be
readily portrayed as a successive movement through the three
stages of citizenship rights, since the order of their realization is
quite different. Thus in nineteenth-century Germany, Bismarck
conceded variou~welfarerights to the working-class specifically
in order to prevent the realization of the political rights Marshall
Rather, then, than seeing the three categories of citizenship
rights as phases in the overall development of citizenship, it is
more plausible to interpret them as three arenas of colztestation
or conflict, each linked to a distinctive type of surveillance,
where that surveillance is both necessary to the power of
superordinategroups and an axis for the operation of the dialectic
of control. Civil rights are intrinsically linked to the modes of
surveillance involved in the policing activities of the state.
Surveillance in this context consists of the apparatus of judicial
and punitive organizations in terms of which 'deviant' conduct is
controlled. Marx tends to discuss civil rights as the category of
urgeois rights' par excellence, legitimating the dominance of
ital over wage-labour. While there are some aspects of the
arxist position that are undoubtedly valid, it is essential to see
The development of citizenshiprights, particularly those of the
second and third types, according to Marshall, has substantially
undermined the class di?isions which he accepts are inherent in
capitalist society. As he buts it:
Určeno pouze pro studijní účely
206 Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship
that civilrights,and the more-or-lesschronicstrugglessurrounding
them, have a generic and independent significance in modern
states: I
Civil rights Surveillance as policing
Politicofrights ~urviillanceas reflexive monitoringof
state administrative power
Economic rights surveillance as 'management' of
production
Like the other two types of rights, civil rights have their own
particular locale. That is to say, there is an institutionalized
setting in which the claimed universality of rights can be
vindicated - the law court. The law court is the prototypical
court of appeal in which the range of liberties included under
'civil rights' can be both defended and advanced. Of course it
would be wrong to see thelaw court as the only setting in which
strugglesover the form and bounds of policing are enacted; they
occur in virtually all situ'ations in which surveillance of this
type is carried out, including the sequestered contexts of
disciplinary power. The same should be emphasized about
political rights, where the institutionalized locale of contestation
- parliament or the council chamber - is the formal setting for
the discursiverepresentation of rights,but where a whole variety
of extra-parliamentary colltestations are also possible. Marshall
does not connect economic rights with a distinctive locale and in
one sense there is good reison for this, because there is not the
same sort of relevant debating chamber. But I would suggest that
the locale in which strugglesover economic rights are focused is
the work-place, the surveillance in question being that of
'management' over a labouk-force.If there is not an institutional-
ized court of appeal herd, this reflects phenomena of major
significance in the class structure of capitalism. The main
organized agency of struggle over economic rights is the union
and it is in the mechanics of industrialarbitration that we find the
settingsof contestation in relation to this type of surveillance.
Capitalism entails a class society and to develop the analysis
further we must consider dew class relations influence, and are
influenced by, the various formsof citizenship right. In explicating
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 207
these influences, it will be helpful to return to the ,critical
assessment of Marshall's views. This involves using Marx against
Marshall, but subsequently I shall tip the scales the other way,
using Marshall against Marx. I have emphasized elsewhere the
significance of the capitalist labour contract in the organization
of capitalist enterprise.1° The capitalist labour contract is a
primary element in the separationof the spheresof the 'economic'
and the 'political'. Now, variouspoints have to be made about this
in relation to Marshall's views. The insulation of the economic
from the political was in some part achieved by the very legal
freedoms Marshall refers to as civil rights. Such rights and
prerogatives should not be seen as being created 'outside' the
sphere of the state, but as part and parcelof the emergence of the
'public domain', separated from 'privately' organized economic
activity. Civil rights thus have been, from the early phases of
capitalist development,bound up with the very definition of what
counts as 'political'. Civil and political citizenshiprights developed
together and remain, thereafter, open to a range of divergent
interpretations which may directly affect the distribution of
power. Moreover, economic rights cannot be regarded as just on
a par with the two other types of citizenshipright, because it is in
the nature of capitalistsocietythat these expressan asymmetry of
class domination. Marx regarded civil and political rights as
liberties which are-universal in principle but in practice favour
the rule of the dominant class. In substantial degree, Marx was
surelyright about this. The capitalistlabour contract, particularly
in the early period of the expansion of capitalist enterprise,
excludes the worker from formal rights over the control of the
work-place.This exclusion is not incidentalto the capitalist state,
but vital to it, since the sphere of industry is specifically defined
as being 'outside politics'. Given this perspective,we can explain
why economic citizenshipsrights are not to be regarded just as an
extension of civil and political rights, and why they do not have
their own specificcourts of appeal.
The three types of surveillance are, in some respects, knit
together and, in other respects, dislocated by the class character
of capitalist society. As I have just pointed out, civil rights are of
particular signhcance at the juncture that connects and separates
the economic and the political. The class asymmetry this relation
involves both gives workers' movements a particular historical
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208 Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 209
importance and, at the same time, tends to separate the struggles
of the labour movement at two different sites. In each of these,
citizenship rights tend to be a focus of class conflict, rather than
standing opposed to it as Marshall suggests. In the political
sphere, the formation of labour or socialist parties (actively
resisted by pre-existinggovernmentsin many countries)has been
geared to winning the universal franchise and then either to
implementing, defending or expanding economic rights. Here
labour movements, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, have been able to build upon a combination of civil
and political rights, which have often been broadened in the
process. But in the realm of industry the situation was, and
continues to be, different. The separation of the economic from
the political meant that, in the early years of capitalist
development, the worker who walked in through the factory
gates sacrificed all formal, and much actual, control over the
three forms of citizenship right distinguished by Marshall are
double-edged. As aspects of surveillance,they can be mobilized
to expandthe control the members of the dominant class are able
to maintain over those in subordinate positions. But, at the same
time, each is a lever of struggle, which can be used to counter
that control. In a capitalist society,class dominationprovides the
most important single institutional axis around which these
strugglesconverge and, in that respect, Marx's view is still cogent.
But it does not follow from this that surveillance is an
epiphenomenon of class, or that the modes of generating power
which it provides will disappear with the transcending of the
capitalist class system. Conflict centred upon 'bourgeoisrights' is
not necessarily class conflict, and the level and nature of their
realization has to be regarded as altogether more problematic
than Marx believed.
work process. Citizenship, Ideology and Nationalism
What was in prior types of society an integral element of
production - a significant degree of control by the worker over Traditional states, I have proposed, opened out a public sphere
the process of labour - had to be won all over again in the new directly related to the monitoring operations of the state, but
surveillance settings of modern production. In all capitalist confined to a very small 'public'. The term 'public', as an adjective
countries unionization, backed by the threat or actuality of the 7 and as a noun, has a number of possible shadings of meaning. A
withdrawal of labour-power, has formed the principal source of phenomenon which is public is 'open to view', rather than
the power that subordinates can wield in the workplace. The concealed;and it pertains to a generalized body of persons rather
emergence of the strike, or threat of it, as a major sanction in the than to those in particular contexts of co-presence.Each of these
dialectic of control in work settings, can be readily traced to the ' aspects of the 'public' again helps emphasize the importance of
novel conditions of modern production. Peasants tend to be writing in the traditional state. A list, or file, or a text, are of
dispersed, as Marx points out in a famous passage in the + necessity 'open' in the sense that they become distanciated from
Eighteenth Bnrmaire.l1The development of the capitalist work- *
1, their authorsin a way in which spoken communicationcannot be
place provides settings in which collective action is facilitated. - at least, until the advent of electronic modes of information
But just as important is the fact that the propertylessness of storage. Written documents also shed the contextual confinement
workers,upon which the dominance of entrepreneurs is founded, of speech in virtue of that very distanciation: they potentially
becomes itself a resource. Being dependent upon co-ordinated reach an indefinitely wide audience. How far the existence of
labour-power, employers are vulnerable to its collective with- { writing supports a public sphere in respect of state power may
drawal, as well as to a range of other stratagemsworkers can use ? vary widely, depending upon the scope of literacy, the nature of
to achieve a substantial measure of control where formally they the documentation involved, and the communicative settings in
are allocated none. "" which the information thus stored is utilized. But the development
In my view, therefore, it is more valid to say that class conflict : of states is necessarily convergent with theformation of modes of
has been a medium of the extension of citizenship rights than to discourse which constitutively shape what state power is.
say that the spread of such rights has blunted class divisions.All - It is in the nature of agrarian states that the discursive
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210 Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship
articulation of administrative power is relatively limited, by and
large not reaching the mass of the population. Distinctive of the
modern state, however, is a very considerable expansion of the
reflexive monitoring of state activity. The development of state
sovereignty expresses and further stimulates a new form of
administrative order, signalled by the formation of the absolutist
state, but maximized in the nation-state. A state can only be
'sovereign', in the terms of political theorists of the sixteenth
century and afterwards, if large segments of the population of
that state have mastered an array of concepts connected with
sovereignty.I2Now such mastery need not be wholly discursive,
especially among those who are subject to the administration of
the state rather than directly involved in that administration. But
when Machievelli, Bodin and others began writing about 'politics',
they were not only describing a series of changes, nor even only
making policy recommendations; they were helping to constitute
what the modern state is as a novel ordering of administrative
power. The development of notions of citizenship, as pertaining
to membership of an overall political community, are intimately
bound up with this. In many cases the mass of the population of
traditional states did not know themselves to be 'citizens' of those
states, nor did it matter particularly to the continuity of power
within them. But the more the administrative scope of the state
begins to penetrate the day-to-day activities of its subjects, the
less this theorem holds. The expansion of state sovereigntymeans
that those subject to it are in some sense - initially vague, but
growing more and more definite and precise - aware of their
membership in a political community and of the rights and
obligations such membership confers.
The development of printing, and the extension of literacy,
create a broadened realm of the 'public' -indeed for the first time
it makes sense to apply that term as a noun as well as an adjective.
Printing vastly expands not only the capabilities of reflexive
monitoring of the state, but the distanciation of communication
from oral contexts. Not until the period of the emergence of the
nation-state, however, do the potentialities of printing become
fullyrecognized and utilized. The epoch at which the regularized
collection of official statistics becomes established is the same as
that in which a flurry of journals, gazettes, newspapers and
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 211
pamphlets appear, reaching mass audiences. Gouldner has
commented on this in a cogent way:
At first, suchpu~licationswere more likely to combine commentary
on literature with 'news'. But by 1800 the news predominated, as
parliaments and political centres became of wider interest, and as
the spread of markets into national and international systems
meant that distant events could affect local prices and supplies ...
The emergence of the mass media and of the 'public' are mutually
constructive developments ...With the growth of the mass media,
exemplified at first by printing, numerous persons were now
exposed to a continuous flow of information, at more or less the
same time. Information becomes decontextualised, for it must be
made intelligible, interesting and convincing even to persons of
diverse backgrounds and interests, persons who do not know one
another and do not meet and interact.I3
Some of the main dimensions of ideology in modern states are
to be discovered in the nature and scope of discursivearticulation
of information available in the 'public' domain. In the context of
the modern state, the capability of different groupings to
discursively formulate policies or programmes that express their
interests and to make space in the public domain for promoting
them, are vital. While in the nation-state all members of the
population share an-array of concepts constitutiveof its sovereign
and polyarchic character, these may be mainly ordered in
practical consciousness rather than being available to be
discursively formulated as reasons for action. Although this
theorem applies at all levels of society, it is likely to be strongly
weighted in favour of the more privileged strata and, more
generally, the dominant class.
Of course it is not only the degree and nature of the discursive
formulation of interests that matters. There are at least three
more substantive aspects of those discursive formulations which
exist that influence the ideological shadings of symbol systems.
1 The definition of what is to count as 'political' and, therefore,
in principle open to intervention or control on the part of the
state. There is a direct tie here between the state and the class
system in capitalist soziety, since the 'depoliticizing' of economic
relations is basic to class domination.
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212 Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship
2 The definition of practices, programmes and policies that are
in the 'general interest', as opposed to those that favour the
sectional interests of groups or classes. The more the state
becomes administrativelyunified, the greater the degree to which
government must appeal to the 'general interest' (in some
formulation or other) in order to sustain a basis for its rule.
Again, there tend to be strong pressures promoting a class bias,
since although it is not directly 'run' by entrepreneurial groups, in
capitalist societies the state apparatus is materially dependent
upon the prosperity of economic enterprises for its sources of
revenue.
3 The articulation of 'historicity' in relation to planned or actual
trends of social change.14The reflexive monitoring of all states
involves the invention of 'history' in some sense or another - the
documented interpretation of the past that provides an anchorage
for anticipated developmentsin the future. But only in the modern
West does 'history' become 'historicity' - the controlled use of
reflection upon history as a means of changing history.
Ideological aspects of nationalism can effectively be analysed in
terms of these three categories.15 Nationalism is certainly not
wholly ideology. But it does tend to be linked in definite ways to
the administrative unification of the state.16Sovereignty, citizen-
ship, nationalism - these tend to be connected phenomena for
reasons it will be my aim to try to illuminate.
A useful classification of the main explanatory approaches to
nationalism is that offered by Breuilly.17One group of approaches
consists of those associated with Marxism. Gellner has caustically
labelled Marxist views of nationalism the Wrong Address Theory:
'Just as extreme Shi'ite Muslims hold that Archangel Gabriel
made a mistake, deliveringthe Message to Mohamed when it was
intended for Ali, so Marxists basically like to think that the spirit
of history or human consciousness made a terrible boob. The
awakening message was intended for classes,but by some terrible
postal error was delivered to nation^."^ It is manifestly the case
that Marx paid little attention to the nature and impact of
nationalism, and the comments he does make are mostly neither
instructive nor profound.lgSubsequent Marxists have been very
much concerned with 'the national question', but it cannot be
pretended that the literature thereby generated has done a great
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 213
deal to illuminate the nature or origins of nationalism. None of
the variousMarxist interpretations which seek to treat nationalism
as some kind of masked expression of the interests of the
dominant classfiasmuch plausibility either. The most illuminating
account of nationalism produced in recent timesz0by an author
affiliated with Marxism is probably that given by Nairn.21
According to Nairn, nationalism has its source in the uneven
development of regions within the world capitalist economy.
Traditional Marxist views saw class struggle as 'the motor of
historical change,nationality a mere epiphenomenon of it. Hence,
it was literally inconceivable that the former should be eclipsed
by the latter.' It is in the effects of the expansion of capitalism,
not in its class system as such, that the roots of nationalism are to
be found. 'As capitalism spread, and smashed the ancient social
formations surrounding it, they always tended to fall apart along
the fault-lines contained inside them. It is a matter of elementary
truth that these lines were nearly always ones of nationality
(although in certain well-known cases deeply established religious
divisions could perform the same function).'z2
But Nairn's view, where it is plausible at all, only seems relevant
to forms of anti-colonialnationalism, not to the first development
of nationalism in the European states. The main forms of
nationalism in Europe did not for the most part come about in
areas of marked economic deprivation. German nationalists in
the mid-nineteenth century, for example, may have been
concerned with Germany's 'backwardness' relative to the leading
European states, but to regard this as the principal origin of
German nationalism is quite unconvincing. In other cases, the
development of nationalism was most marked in the strongest
states, not the weaker or more ill-formed onesquHow far Nairn's
argumentsapply even to the emergence of nationalism in colonial
or post-colonial regions must be doubted. There are obviously
general relationships between capitalist development on a global
scale and the formation of nationalist sentiments. But whether or
not nationalism becomes significant in a given area, and its
specific symbolic content, cannot readily be explicated in such a
way.
A second approach, which is appealing because it does appear
more directly to address these issues, is that associated with
Deutsch and others.24Deutsch lays great emphasis upon the
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214 Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship
development of internal communicationswithin states as leading
to the creation of a common sense of moral and political identity.
In this view some of the factors I have identified as contributing
to the heightening of the administrative power of states are
regarded as directly responsible for the stimulatingof nationalist
sentiments. However,on closer scrutiny,the theory is unconvincing
since there is neither any inevitable connection between the
intensificationof communication and the consolidationof states,
nor does the theory explain why such consolidation should be
intrinsically accompanied by nationalism. Gellner's position bears
a definite similarity to that of Deutsch, but Gellner does seek to
indicate why nationalism should be associated with the diffusion
of communications. The economies of industrialized states
depend upon a homogenizing of culture, mass literacy and 'a
fairly monolithic education system'.25The exigencies of industrial-
ism thus demand the diffusion of common modes of thought and
belief throughout the whole population. Nationalism is precisely
the attachment of such modes of thought and belief to the state
which is the means of their co-ordination.How far this analysis is
an advance beyond that of Deutsch,however, is open to question.
As has been previously stressed, there is no intrinsicreason to be
found in industrialproduction as to why an industrialized society
should be a nation-state.Moreover, Gellner's analysis again does
not seem satisfactorily to distinguish the nation-state from
nationalism.
Finally, there are 'psychological' interpretations of nati~nalism.~~
Neither Deutsch nor Gellner has much to say about the content
of nationalism,which is regarded as more or less irrelevant to its
nature or to its appeal. But nationalist sentiments, in their first
origins and in their subsequent guises in the twentieth century, do
tend to involve some common symbols. Attachment to a
homeland, associated with the creation and perpetuation of
certain distinctive ideals and values, traceable to certain
historically given features of 'national' experience - these are
some of the recurrent traits of nationalism. Most psychological
theories of nationalism associate these notions with the need of
individuals to be involved in a collectivity with which they can
identify.Sinceprevious groupingsthat could fulfilthis need, such
as the local community or kinship group, have been largely
dissolved,the symbols of nationalism provide a modern substitute.
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 215
Nationalism not only offers a basis of group identity, it does so in
the context of showingthis identity to be the result of distinct and
precious achievements. While it may be a relatively new type of
doctrine, natioqalism appeals to a desire for an identity securely
anchored in the past. This type of approach offers an analysis
both of the first origins of nationalism and of its subsequent
'varieties. The disintegrative impact which is wrought upon pre-
existing traditional cultures by modern economic and political
development creates a search for renewed forms of group
symbolism,of which nationalism is the most potent. Nationalism
engenders a spirit of solidarity and coIlective commitment which
is energetically mobilizing in circumstancesof cultural decay.27
Although I shall argue that the psychological dimensions of
nationalism are indeed important, the origins and character of
the postulated need for identity remain too vague for this type of
theory to be particularlysatisfactory. It has little to say about why
nationalism should be connected with states, or about how it
might relate to asymmetries of power and therefore to ideology.
Moreover, nationalist sentimentstend to surge and decline; they
are not so much a part of regular day-to-daysocial life as those
symbols connected with the smaller groups which it is claimed
fulfil the same psychologicalneeds.
I have mentioned these various interpretations of nationalism
not simply to object to them, but to make the argument that an
explication of th6 origins of nationalism should incorporate
elements from each, placing these, however, in a different
framework from them all. My intention is not to offer an analysis
that necessarily holds good for all the variant forms which the
. phenomenon has assumed in the twentieth century, but to
concentrate mainly upon nationalism in the European nation-
state. An account of nationalism in such a context should
illuminate the following characteristics:
1 its political character, that is, its association with the nation-
state;
2 its relation to industrial capitalism, and more specifically
ideological characteristics of nationalism involved with class
domination;
3 itslikelypsychologicaldynalnicssince,as a range of sentiments
and attitudes rather than an institutionalizedset of practices,
F
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216 Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship
it is difficult to resist the supposition that there are some
$distinctive psychologicalprocesses involved; and
4 its particular symbolic content.
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 217
I
Let me work back through these, beginning with the question Sovereignty Citizenship
of the content of nationalism as a symbol system. Whatever their
differences, nationalist ideals tend to tie a conception of the
'homeland' - a concept of territoriality, in other words - to a
myth of origin,conferringcultural autonomy upon the community - \Nationalism/which is held to be the bearer of these ideals. 'The solidarity that Figure 4
a nationalist desires is based on the possession of the land: not
any land, but the historic land; the land of past generations, the , If we are to make sense of this relation, and the impact that
land that saw the flowering of the nation's genius.'28Looking to
'
i d e a s associated with it have had upon the world, we have to see
the legitimacyof past generations as supplying cultural autonomy it as a three-wayseries of connections rather than a two-way one.
is what Breuilly calls 'historicism', and this has more than a passing Ideas such as those developed by Herder can be extended in two
connection with the historicity of which I spoke earlier. Here directions. One regards the cultural accomplishments of a given
again, we have a case where historians and philosophers, claiming state as so distinct and priceless that they are elevated -to an
for the most part to describe particular circumstances, have intrinsic superiorityover others.A 'historicalmission7is constructed
provided ideas that have helped to constitute those very , which, in certain circumstances, may offer a vehicle for the most
circumstances. Herder's writings are in some respects not virulent formsof aggressivenationalism. But to regard this baneful
representative of those that informed versions of nationalism course as the only one that can be cultivated on the basis of
outside Central Europe but, in other ways, they provide an , 'cultural historicism' is certainly mistaken.2gFor such ideas can be
exemplary illustration of historicism as a source of nationalist used, as Herder intended them to be, to effect a union between
thought. 'History' for Herder is more than just writing about the cultural diversity and concepts of political organization of a
past, it is the means of graspingthe cultural unity of a collectivity. i universal character: Linguistically mediated cultural values are
Understanding a culture and its specific course of development the carriers of divergent processes of history. But to be a member
involves apprehending it in its totality, distinct from other, - of the community which is the repository of those values can be
divergent sets of cultural values. Language is of key importance construed in an egalitarian way, since all are legatees of the same
in this, because it is necessarily the product of a community, pre- collective experience.Moreover, while the distinctivenessof other
existing any particular generation of individuals and carrying communities might be acknowledged, these can be accorded
within it the main dimensions that render the cultural system in equal status in what is seen to be an inherent cultural diversity of
question unique. . humankind. There are a series of possible ties and tensions
On first inspection, such ideas seem completely discrepant between nationalism,sovereignty and citizenship,depending upon
from the 'bourgeois ideals' of classical liberalism, which have a the direction in which these ideas are channelled. Where
universal character. Indeed we might see here an opposition : ' nationalism is canalized primarily towards sovereignty -
between (say)British utilitarian thought and German Romanticism. particularly in circumstances where there are several contenders
But a closer appraisal, in the context of the involvement of such for statehood, or where an existing state is strongly embattled -
views with nationalist symbolism, indicates a powerful, if nationalist sentiments may take an exclusivist turn, emphasizing
attenuated, relation between them, mediated by sovereignty and the superiorityof one 'nation' over its contenders. Here citizenship
citizenship, as portrayed diagrammaticallyin figure 4. - a rights are likely to be poorly developedor constricted - especially
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218 Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship
civil and political rights. Where citizenship rights are more
substantially founded or actualized, they tend to influence the
connections between sovereignty and nationalism in an opposite
direction, stimulating more polyarchic forms of nationalist
sentiment.
This is one dimension of what so many students of nationalism
have pointed to - its Janus-faced character, as generating both
virulent forms of national aggressiveness, on the one hand, and
democratic ideals of enlightenment, on the other. But there is a
psychological aspect to this Nationalist sentiments, I have
pointed out,tend to be fairlyremote from most of the activities of
day-to-daysociallife, except in fairly unusual and often relatively
transitory conditions. This is one phenomenon which a psycho-
logical interpretation of nationalism must account for. Another,
rarely mentioned in the literature but a rather pervasive feature
of nationalism, is its association with leader-figures. While
nationalistfeelings are no doubt often experienced and expressed
in a diffuse way, in circumstances in which they are strongly
espoused there normally seems to be a leader who in some way
acts as a focal point for their expression. An account of the
routinization of social activity in the time-space settings of the
created environment can help us elucidate the nature of these
phenomena. In the contexts of the modern state, the routinized
character of most day-to-day life is not grounded in the moral
schemes of tradition. In such circumstances ontological security
is tenuously founded psychologically, depending upon the
enactment of 'morally meaningless' routines, protected by the
sequestration of events and experiences which might otherwise
threaten it. Where 'moral meaning' has retreated to the margins
of the private and the public, the communality supplied by
national symbols (includingin particular a common language, as
perhaps the most potent carrier of communal experience)supplies
one means of support for ontologicalsecurity, particularly where
there is a perceived threat from outside the state.
In circumstances where the ontological security of individuals
is put in jeopardy by the disruption of routines,or by a generalized
source of anxiety, regressive forms of object-identificationtend
to occur. Individuals are likely to be swayed by the influence of
leader-figures,identification with whom is based on a relatively
strong affective dependence. The regressive affiliation with
leaders, and with the symbols linked to their leadership, if the
Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 219
Le BodFreud theory of leadership is correct, is based on the
heightened suggestibility produced by situations that generate
high levels of anxiety. Mass support may, therefore, be generated
for policies and causes about which, in other circumstances,
individuals may either be fairly indifferent or sceptical. Such
support is likely to be volatile in more than one sense. Its
durability will tend to be limited and it may move between
stances which seem to be quite discrepant from one another. All
nationalist leaders advocate populist doctrines in one sense or
another, but in some instancesidentification may be made with a
figure exemplifyingthe more 'democratic' forms of nationalism,
while in others it will be with the more aggressively 'exclusivist'
types. Here, therefore, we can see a psychological basis for the
Janus-facedcharacter of nationalism.
It follows from what has been said so far that nationalism can
neither be interpreted as some sort of aberration produced by
Western intellectuals, as in Kedourie's view, nor simply as an
ideology promoted by dominant classes,as in traditional versions
of Marxism. Nationalism is anchoredpsychologically in distinctive
features of modern societies and its content is linked to the
historicity they engender.Nonetheless, nationalist sentiments and
symbols are not ideologically neutral and, at this point, it is
relevant to relate the earlier discussion of ideology both to
nationalism itself and to the question of why nationalism has an
inherently political*dimension.These problems seem fairly easy
to illuminate in the light of what has been argued earlier in this
chapter. Nationalism is the cultural sensibility of sovereignty,the
concomitant of the co-ordinationof administrative power within
the bounded nation-state. With the coming of the nation-state,
stateshave an administrativeand territorially ordered unity which
they did not possess before. This unity cannot remain purely
administrative however, because the very co-ordination of
activities involved presumes elements of cultural h~rnogeneity.~'
The extension of communication cannot occur without the
'conceptual' involvement of the whole community as a knowledge-
able citizenry. A nation-state is a 'conceptual community' in a
way in which traditional states were not.32The sharing of a
common language, and a common symbolic historicity, are the
most thorough-goingways of achievingthis (andare seen to be so
by those leaders who have learned from the experience of the
first 'nations'). But only in those instances where political
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220 Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship Class, Sovereignty and Citizenship 221
boundaries fairly closely coincide with existi component' of sovereignty, nationalist symbols provide a core of
munities is the convergence between the political discourse that significantly shapes both the rhetoric of
nationalism a relatively frictionless one. In all other cases - national solidarity and of opposition. Nationalism helps naturalize
far the majority in the modern world - the advent of the nati the recency and the contingency of the nationstate through
state stimulatesdivergent and oppositional nationalisms as m ovidingits myths of origin. ~ ~ t ,at the same time, the discourse
as it fostersthe coincidence of nationalist sentimentsand exis of national solidarity helps block off other possible discursive
state boundaries. iculations of interest. The discursive arena of the modern
The origins of oppositional nationalism are certainly stro tY treats what ' p ~ l i t i ~ ~ 'is as inherentlyto do with the bounded
influencedby the spread of industrialcapitalism,in the Euro ere of the state. Thus if programmes of reform on the part of
context and world-wide.Uneven development takes a regionalized ordinate c~asses(or other groupings) are to succeed, they
form, in which peripheral areas both within states and within the e normally to be made to appear in 'the national interesty.~~t
nation-statesystem are systematicallydisadvantaged.But nati nant classes have much less difficulty representing their own
ist movements are not just one type of oppositio es as in 'the national interest' than do oppositional groups,
among others, protesting in some sort of way directly again they have much more influence over the style and form of
depradations of capitalism. They mark the injection of historicity t can be discursively articulated.
into areas where the pre-existing hold of traditional modes of
behaviour has been eroded, associating such historicity with the -
claim to administrative sovereignty. It is because nationalism is
inherently linked to the achievement of administrative autonomy
of the modern form that allnationalist movements are necessarily 5
political, no matter how much they may be infused with
symbolism of other sorts.
Now of course nationalist symbols can be, and very fre
have been, deliberately fostered or manipulated by d
groups to support their sectional interests. The
difficulty in understanding the ideological value n
and values may have in these terms. Nationalism is a form of
sentiment that can be utilized to mobilize the suppo
overall national communityfor policies that have quite discrep
consequences for different sections or classes within t
community. But this is in some ways the least intere
significant of the ideological ramifications of nationali
deeply layered ideological implications are to
fact that the conditions involved in the reflexive mo
the modern state, as a surveillance apparatus, are t
those that help generate nationalism. Since the
capabilities involved in monitoring social repr
of essential importance to the state, it is aroun
between discursive consciousness and 'lived experie
ideological consequences f nationalism will cluster. As the 'mo
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