Capacity of Modernization to nationalism

. . . Legitimation achieves what powerfulness only if cannot, for it establishes the belief in the rightness of rule which, as coherent as it endures, precludes massive challenges (17).

modernisation provides this rural areaalistic process with the disruptions that be needed to awaken the people to the gap between their take and wants, and the ability of the monarchical system to meet those needs and wants. Modernization awakens the people to their own hidden discontent, causing them either to claim from the king changes in the system, or, if he cannot or will not provide those changes, to revolt against the monarchy.

Bendix importantly points out a fact which has not been noted enough by other analysts with assess to the central role that the underlying symbolic authority of the nation-state compete in this essential power shift from the king to the people. That is, patriotism played an important part in filling a gap left when the monarch's power was diminished. The power of the king was sanctified by divine authority, and when that power was reduced and eliminated, a " parvenu authority" was required to take the place of that authority:

. . . inviolable authority is more easily destroyed than reconstructed, or peradventure one should say that the critics of royal authority have seldom been conscious that the new authority they propose requires a religious foundation as well. These comments anticipate the p

Bendix demonstrates effectively that the popular political exertions in Western nations were likewise occurring in the East. He notes that resistance to such a movement in Japan, for example, was even more vehement than in europium or America, because the emperor in Japan was viewed as a god. Nevertheless, the forces of nationalism were too strong to resist, particularly in an island nation where cultural similarities prevailed doneout:

Bendix, Reinhard. Kings Or People. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Against a screen background of centuries of absolutist rule, it was agonizingly difficult to accept political parties and parliamentary responsibility, the two institutions which were implementing the will of the people by the end of the nineteenth century (490).

Bendix emphasizes again and again that the basic factor in this shift from the king to the people through modernization and nationalism is power buttressed by legitimation. Nationalism, as a conduct of modernization, involved a shift in the exchange of power between the king and the people. In other words, the king at sea the legitimation for his power as a result of the increase dissatisfaction of the people with the "authority relations" (60) of the monarchy. The emergence of the nation-state was not an item-by-item occurrence, but was a part of the evolution of that power shift.

During the 18th century, French society was marked by the paradoxes of absolutism, by a national awareness articulated in part through reflections on England and America, and by the mobilization of intellectual, social, and political elites. The affirmation of rights and the grand of equality emerged in each of these contexts. . . . Equality of rights [was] the foundation of the authorization of the people (362).

Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.