Relational Studies on Global Crises [vol. 4] Funso ga kaeru Kokka (Nation States Model Transformed by Civil Conflicts)

One of the “global crises” facing the world today is civil conflict. Even though we have entered the 21st century, civil conflicts continue to break out around the world, not only threatening the lives and property of individuals living in affected regions, but, also, shaking the very foundations of nation states themselves or even causing their collapse. In some cases, dysfunction of the central government leads to the overtake by non-state actors or triggers intervention by other states. As such, conflicts are a security problem not only for the country in which question but, also, neighboring states as well as regional and international society.
 
Under these circumstances, various policies are mounted to support states that have experienced or are currently experiencing civil conflict under the name of “state building” or “peace building.” In most cases, the underlying theory of such policies is the reproduction of the pre-conflict nation state and a return the governance by the central state and identity of the civilian population to some “original state.”
 
However, if we carefully observe the outcome of conflicts, in some cases, we see the rise of empirical statehood as opposed to ideal statehood. At times, the establishment of effective territorial control through military conflict between military cliques and armed insurgents, efforts to secede and form independence on the basis of ethnicity or religion, and the division of land due to prolonged military conflict give birth to or enable the continued existence of non-ideal nation states.
 
It would be easy to criticize these states as “deviating” from the ideal. What is important, however, is the fact that such states, in reality, manage to function in terms of government structure and as a political system. It appears that, when the dysfunction of the central government of the empirical state is exposed and citizens lose their faith in the ideal and their sense of national unity, a new state emerges to replace or compensate for the failing state. In such instances, it is possible that, from an empirical standpoint, the ideal nation state becomes less meaningful to the residents and, thus, no longer the object of residents’ faith and empathy.
 
This book examines the cases of major countries that have experienced civil conflict and attempts to elucidate the diverse natures of states that exist in the world today at the micro-level based on the perceptions of ordinary people. In doing so, the book seeks to reexamine the nature of today’s normative and single-track policies aimed at recreating ideal nation states—i.e., state building and peace building—in order to generate new insights into how we should respond to civil conflicts as a “global crisis.”
 

(Written by ENDO Mitsugi, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2022)