Thinking about culture and development

According to Wikipedia

The nation state is a certain form of state that gets its legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity. The term "nation state" implies that they geographically coincide, and this distinguishes the nation state from the other types of state, which historically preceded it. If successfully implemented, this implies that the citizens share a common language, culture, and values — which was not the case in many historical states. A world of nation states also implements the claim to self-determination and autonomy for every nation, a central theme of the ideology of nationalism. (For ambiguities in the usage of terms such as nation, international, state, and country, see Nation).

Certainly some nation states are very successsful, such as England, France, Germany and Japan; they have succeeded in developing very productive economies and political systems that provide a rule of law and considerable individual liberty.

On the other hand, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States are also successful in those terms, and have achieved that success as immigrant societies in which there remains considerable ethnic diversity within each nation.

The question that I would address, without much reading to do so, is what level of cultural homogeneity is necessary for a nation to be successful. This would seem to be a vital question for many multi-ethnic countries, from India, to Sub-Saharan Africa, to Guatemala and Bolivia.

First, I would assume that there is something about the communications and transportation infrastructure that is truly fundamental. Nations divided into different city states in the Middle Ages when communications were difficult, and the different nations of Europe are ceding state powers to the European Union now that the evolved infrastructure make it profitable to have regional markets. Indeed, European culture has and is developing institutions to deal with a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic European Union.

Perhaps two key cultural commonalities needed for the success of a state are universal (or at least very widely shared) acceptance of the legitimacy of the state's political institutions and of its economic institutions. Perhaps the breakup of the Hapsburg empire, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellites, or Yugoslavia were related to a failure of such acceptance.

Perhaps there must also be a respect for human rights, at least of all the ethnic groups within the state. The United States, when founded as the union of a number of states which had different state religions, it was important to have freedom of religion, while many European states that were dominated by a single religion established that as a state religion and also prospered. The China experiment is interesting; can a nation continue to develop with a coercive political system combined with property rights and rights to participate in the free market system. Still, some level of acceptance of basic human rights does seem to be needed for development.

The issue of a common language is an interesting issue. The examples of successful immigrant nations cited above all use English as a lingua franca, as apparently does the European Union and India. It would seem important that there be a common language for a number of reasons, but it would seem to be quite possible to have a successful multi-ethnic state which has a widely shared language of politics and commerce, but which allows a multiplicity of different languages in its constituent ethnic groups, where many or most citizens speak two or more languages.

The debate in the United States about a national language does not seem to be about the desirability of all adult citizens having the ability to participate in its political and economic institutions in English (which is widely accepted), nor about the extirpation of second language capabilities in ethnic groups (as was a policy in many countries in the past, but seems not to be sought by Americans),but rather about the degree to which native languages should be used by the state in dealing with immigrants and visitors who have not (yet) learned English.

Is intra-state cultural diversity good or bad, given that the "melting pot" attributes of acceptance of political and economic institutions and a language of government and commerce are accepted? I think so. I am glad to live in a community in which I can eat Tex-Mex, Italian, or Chinese, where I can listen to jazz, country and western, hip-hop or Opera, and where I can enjoy books and dramas that come out of a rainbow of different cultural experiences,

So perhaps when seeking cultural changes to promote development, it is critically important to focus on political and commercial/economic cultures, and protect the religious, artistic and other aspects of culture.