Social and Political Sciences
Topic:
State and Ideology Ethnic cleansing
Each answer should be approximately 400 words in length.
(A) What is the relationship between the “State” and “Ideology”?
(C) What is ethnic cleansing and why does it occur?
Nexus between state and ideology
Informed by the French Revolution, Filippini, Michele, and Patrick J. Barr (2017) termed ideology as the social aspect of political science. On the other hand, a state is an international person with a permanent population, defined jurisdiction, and the capacity to have foreign relations with other countries, as defined in the Montevideo Convention. State ideology can be defined as national ideas that define the country’s social and political system. They inform the national ideal that informs the aims of the state. It will determine how people will live as well as the social, political and economic institutions. According to Batalov (1997), when a state adopts an ideology, it becomes a force that will mobilize the state’s machinery, for the benefit of the people or to their detriment.
The ideology of the state can be looked at as capitalist, communist, or even socialist. Ideology affects the development of a state and has even been described as the theory of political economy. The way a country is structured determines how the citizens relate with one another and with the government. It affects how the citizens enjoy their rights, civil, political, and economic. Sometimes, ideologies can be irrational, leading to wars with other countries or even intra-state. It’s an idea that drives the country that determines the greatness of that state.
Ideas crystallize the social, economic, and political context of a state. More often than not, they are informed by the country’s history. Economically, they affect the market structure. Some countries have free markets where the forces of demand and supply determine prices. This is common for capitalist states. The government solely determines the market forces in other countries. This illustration shows the interplay between politics and development. No ideology has been superior to the other. The world’s most superior is economic, while the second-largest is communist. No formula can be said to guarantee prosperity.
Ideology has also manifested itself in the form of worship, majorly Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. It has shaped how states are governed because states observing catholicism are majorly centralized, while the reverse is true for those upholding Protestantism. Wuthnow (1989) has opined that this is because Catholics believe that God is found in one centralized place, the Holy places of worship, whereas the protestants believe in an omnipresent God.
Concept of Ethnic Cleansing
Ethnic cleansing, according to Bell-Fialkoff (1993), refers to the forceful eviction of inhabitants due to ethnic or ideological biases. Political considerations can also lead to ethnic cleansing leading to populations being ejected from their place of habitation. Cleansing means getting rid of the ejected population. It can be affected by small groups or even states. In the nineteenth century, Turkey as a state tried cleansing Greeks and Armenians. This, Bell-Fialkoff opines, is because the natives think that the ‘aliens ‘will taint the pure original ethnic group. The Nazi regime targeted the Jews to cleanse them from the Reich. Traditionally, it did not involve war or violence. In Germany, the ‘aliens’ were issued with warnings to move, and only after that would they be sent away at night.
Causes of Ethnic Cleansing
Conflicts over economic resources can lead to ethnic cleansing. This is how colonialism happened. Countries scrambled for colonized states in a bid to acquire their economic resources resulting in the displacement of people. Ethnic cleansing results in the ejection of people from an occupied region. If one ethnic community deems the other community as unfit to reside in that region, they may eject them to occupy it. This usually occurs in the form of belligerent occupation during the war.
Global leaders have made efforts to prohibit discrimination based on ethnicity, informed by the word’s history. The discrimination may be in the form of racial or religious discrimination. Muslims have been victims of the latter in the wake of terror attacks. As analyzed by Farhana Khera and Johnathan J. Smith (2017), countries like the USA enacted legislation against immigration solely on this basis. The goal of ethnic cleansing, according to Preece, Jennifer Jackson (1998), is for the group remaining to be ethnically homogenous. As seen below, religion has been an underlying factor in ethnic cleansing. Terrorists can attack an area to rid it of people who are not of the same religion. This has forced ‘alien’people to move from those areas affecting the development of the state. Such areas are avoided by professionals and investors owing to instability and insecurity.
Ethnic cleansing has been a product of nationalists seeking to build homogenous states. States will embark on killing many, but the majority will be forced to flee. The Polish in 1928 resort to ethnic cleansing to minimize the popularity of communism. As explained earlier, it is such ideologies that shape states.
Historically, ethnic cleansing has been caused by statelessness and pursuit of self-determination. Before states came together to achieve world peace, countries would fight each other and take over the territory causing the natives to flee. A recent example is in Sudan. The armed conflict against minorities caused the state to pursue self-determination to part in two; Sudan and South Sudan.
References
Bell-Fialkoff, Andrew. 1993.”A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing.” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3: 110- 21.. doi:10.2307/20045626.
Eduard Batalov, “Where Are We Heading: On a National Idea and a State Ideology,” Russian Politics and Law 35, no. 5 (September-October 1997): 40-45
Farhana Khera and Johnathan J. 2017.Smith. “How Trump Is Stealthily Carrying Out His Muslim Ban.” The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opinion/trump-muslim-ban-supreme-court.html
Filippini, Michele, and Patrick J. Barr.2017. “Ideology.” In Using Gramsci: A New Approach, 4-23. London: Pluto Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1h64kxd.7.
Preece, Jennifer Jackson. “Ethnic Cleansing as an Instrument of Nation-State Creation: Changing State Practices and Evolving Legal Norms.” Human Rights Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1998): 817-42.
Wuthnow, Robert. “State Structures and Ideological Outcomes.” American Sociological Review 50, no. 6 (1985): 799-821.
