Democratization of Eastern Europe

Nations without States, States without Nations

Based on chapter of the same name by Lonnie R. Johnson. 2002. Central Europe:  Enemies, Neighbors, Friends.  2nd Edition.  New York and Oxford:  Oxford University

Press.

Learning Objectives:

     To learn the nation and state are not always co-terminous, especially in Central Eastern Europe.

      To increase your knowledge of the late 18th-early 20th Century history of Central Eastern Europe.

To consider how this history is shaping the region’s current processes of democratization and nation building.

 

Johnson’s argument

1789 a pivotal date in European history

– why?

Nation-state

The political triumph of the Enlightenment

 

Rationality expressed through centralization, universal rights, state interacts with individual qua citizen not member of estate, ethnic group, etc.

 

Yet Central Europeans did not embrace the idea of nation-state

 

Why?

 

What counter movement, intellectual stream most influenced 19th Century Central European scholars? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on ideas of German proto-Romantic Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1805)