Suchergebnisse

According to Paul Kahn, one of the leading American constitutional theorists, the terms 'nation' and 'national sovereignty' are beyond the moral argument. From the perspective of constitutional ontology, the nation is the community of all those who share the 'political eros' love of the nation, who are ready to respond to her call and, if necessary, lay down their lives on the altar of its self-preservation. The moral debate about the limits of nation's state is meaningless, tells us Kahn. The boundaries of all, even liberal states arise through a 'make sacrifices' they 'never just a matter of geography', and therefore 'there is no abstract drawing of borders by some principle of justice. As in the life of the individual, the limits have the same necessity: There is nothing abstract in that necessity.'. Adapted from the source document.

The author's thesis stated in the title is based on the theoretical and practical experience of modern political regimes, particularly on the example of the Croatian postcommunist experience. The author shows how the belated political constitution of the nation has occurred at the expense of political emancipation, pluralization and democratization. Small nations, which did not take part in the creation of modern state and the establishment of the contemporary political and legal culture, suffer from a double setback: they did not have a state of their own and are regarded small, "unhistorical" peoples. The fascination and obsession with the state and the identification of the nation with the state is especially visible in those postcommunist societies that have not gone through the process of political emancipation, i.e. the emancipation of the state. The author points out that the fascination with the state has had serious consequences for the development of democracy since any oppositional opinion and activity or a criticism of the government is disqualified as an attack on the state. This fascination and the identification of the nation and the state is a barrier to state building since it stands in the way of its emancipation and integrational processes. (SOI : PM: S. 109)

The author analyzes two famous critiques of the bourgeois state: Marx's thesis on the withering away of the state as an instrument of force of the economicall dominant bourgeois class which, by means of the quasi-neutral state as the higher third instance controls the the class antagonisms whose disappearance will make the state as an instrument of repression obsolete; and Carl Schmitt's thesis that the state will become unnecessary in the world in which there are no longer any enemies, only offenders who violate humanistic norms and human rights. (SOI : PM: S. 68)

We bring the most important Opinions in order to show how they have resolved in an unbiased and contradictory manner certain dilemmas about the constituent elements of a state, the conditions for the creation and the recognition of a new state and the effects of its recognition by third states. The document is of vital importance for the process of the constitution of the Croatian state. (SOI : PM: S. 177)

The revival of the nation has shocked German intellectuals who think that the nation-state is historically obsolete and that new models should be upheld: the united Europe, a world community of responsible states, globalisation of markets, a universe of human rights. The contrary tendencies in today's world are marked by giving up on huge political entities which have been replaced by smaller nationality-based states. It seems that political freedom leads to the formation of nation-states based on democratic constitution. This process requires looking into the relation between the nation-state and democracy. The key for the explanation of their relationship can be found in the notion of nation. Citizenship mediates between the people (in its real manifestation as a social group), and democracy as a constitutional principle. It gives to the state as a personal entity legal structure on which to build a democratic form of the state and guarantees legally applicable taxonomies and limitations. (SOI : SOEU: S. 17)