As argued the proposed model would theoretically fulfil of these conditions; territory, population and sovereign control. Yet, arguably the most contentious condition, recognition by other states, is difficult to predict and would be subject to various political manoeuvring of other states.
The proposal in this case is fictitious - an artificial island of , inhabitants. No real project of this magnitude will be built in the near future.
The standard method of new state formation will continue to be the secession of existing territory. Is oppression necessary before secession? Once again, the underlying logic is that new states are somehow a bad thing - something which can only be justified to avoid another great evil. Most liberal-democratic theorists go further than Seel, requiring an actual policy of oppression by the majority community.
They give the impression that you are only justified in thinking about secession, when the Gestapo is already knocking at the door. If only impending atrocities could justify secession, then it would indeed be something horrifying. But what exactly is so horrifying about it? An interesting question for political science: where and when did this attitude arise? I will return to this question later.
It is true that nation states sometimes support secessionist movements in other states. That attracts all the attention, but the reality is that new state formation is rare. The net long-term average, since the European nationalist uprisings of , is about one new nation state per year. It could have been far more. It also seems, at first sight, that anti-secession interventions are rare, for example the UN attempt to preserve a unitary Somali state.
But Africa is the wrong place to look for the examples. A better example is the NATO, which has an implicit function as a de facto anti-secession league. That may seem a strange interpretation, after the western role in the break-up of Yugoslavia. But the point is, that the NATO does not treat its own members like that.
The structure of the NATO assumes the permanent existence and permanent legitimacy of its member states, and it has the treaty authorisation to preserve them. That would apply especially to attempted non-ethnic secession from these member states, which would qualify as 'aggression'. The European Union also has a stabilising role on the system of states in Europe. It does not have a specific secession prohibition, although it does requires candidate members to resolve their border disputes.
But the geopolitical reality is that the EU has also 'frozen' the number of nation states in western Europe, and it is doing so among its candidate members in eastern Europe.
Any new non-ethnic state in Europe is out of the question, in this geopolitical order. However none of them accept non-ethnic secession. Potential 'incession' was not important in western political theory - the last unwanted mass migration in western Europe was the Viking raids. However, immigration has made it an issue for political ethics. In the older standard view, repressive regimes had walls to keep their citizens in, and democracies had open borders.
Now however, democracies have walls to keep new citizens out. Modern democratic theory was formulated in the 18th and 19th century. It was not then a serious proposition that millions of people from Africa could emigrate to Europe, against the opposition of European governments. Despite the experience in the United States, democratic theory in general assumed low immigration rates, and a culturally stable 'demos'.
In Europe, by the 's, the scale of post-war immigration was becoming clear. Potentially, the new population could politically dominate the old, simply by force of numbers. The fear of being "swamped" as Margaret Thatcher put facilitated the growth of anti-immigration parties. The 'defence of democracy' is one argument they have deployed. Democratic theory seems to treat it as a general principle that the 'demos' should be maintained, in its present form.
If necessary by force, and that includes immigration controls. In the light of recent estimates that Europe may need to admit hundreds of millions of immigrants, the tone is getting harsher. In the future, anti-incession arguments will probably be more prominent in democratic theory. Both democracy theory and nationalism allow the possibility of secession of a recognised unit. For democracy, a 'demos', for nationalists a 'people'. Both ideologies are related, and are borrowing from each other - although democrats may not want to admit that.
Democrats speak of a 'legitimate demos' - entitled to secede, even from a democracy. But their definition overlaps with the nationalists' definition of a nation. It relies heavily on unity of culture, language and descent, and historical links to a particular territory. In practice, the consensus is greatest with respect to overseas colonies, where a clear national majority is oppressed by foreign imperial powers. Ironically, of all the African colonies, Somalia most fitted this description.
It is easy to understand why nationalists give nations priority in state formation. However, there is no reason why these units must form the demos of any new democracy.
There is no logical ground for their special privilege when it comes to secession. How does it work? Select the purchase option. Check out using a credit card or bank account with PayPal. Read your article online and download the PDF from your email or your account. Why register for an account? Access supplemental materials and multimedia. A full orchestra is required, including markets that reward initiative; police that respect due process; legal structures that provide justice; and a press corps that is free to pursue the facts and publish the truth.
Diese Bedingung ist aber nicht hinreichend. Probleme der Demokratie und der demokratischen Legitimation , Ulrich von Alemann. Sociologicus: Lexicon What exactly is democracy? We must not identify democracy with majority rule. Democracy has complex demands, which certainly include voting and respect for election results, but it also requires the protection of liberties and freedoms, respect for legal entitlements, and the guaranteeing of free discussion and uncensored distribution of news and fair comment.
Even elections can be deeply defective if they occur without the different sides getting an adequate opportunity to present their respective cases, or without the electorate enjoying the freedom to obtain news and to consider the views of the competing protagonists.
Democracy is a demanding system, and not just a mechanical condition like majority rule taken in isolation. US Congress publication. At a minimum, a democracy is a political system in which the people choose their authoritative leaders freely from among competing groups and individuals who were not designated by the government.
Freedom House Annual Survey Voor wie de klassieke idealen van de democratie wil handhaven, lijkt het daarom voor de hand te liggen, in een zekere analogie tot Dahl, onderscheid te maken tussen democratische idealen en democratie. Deze is dan een specifiek procedureel en grondrechtelijk kader dat gebaseerd is op de democratische idealen van vrijheid, gelijkheid en volkssoevereiniteit en waarin deze idealen tegelijk in open competitie staan met andere doelstellingen.
Zo is elk land waarin dit kader bestaat een democratie. Uwe Becker Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis. Democracy is a form of government in which the major decisions of government -- or the direction of policy behind these decisions -- rests directly or indirectly on the freely given consent of the majority of the adults governed.
Encyclopedia Americana Democracy is a political system in which different groups are legally entitled to compete for power and in which institutional power holders are elected by the people and are responsible to the people. Tutu Vanhanen Prospects of democracy: a Study of Countries.
London: Routledge. The book summarises definitions of democracy of the last 40 years on p. Most contemporary definitions of democracy have several common elements. First, democracies are countries in which there are institutional mechanisms, usually elections, that allow the people to choose their leaders. Second, prospective leaders must compete for public support.
Third, the power of the government is restrained by its accountability to the people. These are the essential characteristics of political democracy. Some writers add additional criteria to the list of what makes a polity a democracy.
Larry Diamond argues that a democracy must have "extensive civil liberties freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom to form and join organizations. The best known example of this approach is the Freedom House Annual Survey. In fact, rights checklists seem to be the emerging standard definition of democracy. The online paper The theory and measurement of democracy Gizachew Tiruneh includes a list and comparative table of indices of democracy: most are rights checklists.
Are the legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? Are there fair electoral laws, equal campaigning opportunities, fair polling, and honest tabulation of ballots?
Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? These rights are associated with the alternation of government: they allow one government can be replaced by another. The polyarchy definitions of democracy insist, that there must be a possibility to change the government, through democratic procedures.
However democrats also insist, that there should be no other possibility to change the government. The Freedom House checklist on civil liberties and the rule of law includes: Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? Are there free religious institutions and is there free private and public religious expression?
Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? Is there freedom of political or quasi-political organization political parties, civic organizations, ad hoc issue groups? Is there an independent judiciary? Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Is the population treated equally under the law? Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there open and free private discussion?
Is there personal autonomy? Does the state control travel, choice of residence, or choice of employment? Is there freedom from indoctrination and excessive dependency on the state? Note again that this is largely a checklist of rights, yet I am quoting it as a definition of democracy. That is how it is used in practice. It reflects the current idea of democracy, among theorists and public in the democratic countries.
Civil rights, political rights, and democratic government are all seen as integral components of democracy. That is usually intended as an insult, rather than an insight into the nature of democracy. However, political theorists do contrast democracy with dictatorship, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism, and the last of these is indeed based on the Nazi regime, as a historical model. The theory of totalitarianism was formulated in the United States in the early 's, in a climate of anti-Communist hysteria.
Its central claim is that the ideology, regimes, and social systems under Hitler and Stalin were more-or-less identical. In the Second World War the United States and the Soviet Union were allies against Hitler, but the 'reversal of alliances' at the start of the Cold War made the theory of totalitarianism attractive.
Coined in the interwar years, but coming into wide usage only after , the term pointed to features of Nazi and Communist regimes that were said to make them "essentially alike" and that distinguished them from traditional autocracies Whatever the theory's analytic merits, in the s and s it performed admirable ideological service in denying what to the untutored eye was a dramatic reversal of alliances. It only seemed this way, the theory asserted; in fact the cold war was, from the standpoint of the West, a continuation of World War II: a struggle against the transcendent enemy, totalitarianism, first in its Nazi, then in its Soviet version.
Peter Novick The Holocaust in American Life. New York: Houghton Mifflin. By the 's the theory was out of fashion, although the comparison Hitler-Stalin is still used by liberal propagandists. And 'totalitarian' is still the word most democracy theorists would use, if they were asked to name a political system opposite to democracy.
Second would probably be 'authoritarian' - and terrorism would not be named at all. Although President Bush may speak of a 'war on democracy and freedom' by terrorists, that does not mean he sees terrorism as a system of government. It is possible to speak of a totalitarian regime, or a totalitarian society - but it is difficult to imagine a permanently 'terrorist' society or a terrorist parliament. With hindsight, the definition of totalitarianism is too obviously a description of regimes and political styles of the 's and 's.
Like George Orwell's '", also written at the start of the Cold War, its image of oppression now seems dated. In , Carl J Friedrich listed 5 defining characteristics of totalitarian societies: 1.
An official ideology, consisting of an official body of doctrine covering all vital aspects of man's existence, to which everyone living in that society is supposed to adhere at least passively; this ideology is characteristically focused in terms of chiliastic claims as to the "perfect" final society of mankind.
A single mass party consisting of a relatively small percentage of the total population up to 10 per cent of men and women passionately and unquestioningly dedicated to the ideology and prepared to assist in every way in promoting its general acceptance, such party being organized in strictly hierarchical, oligarchical manner, usually under a single leader A technologically conditioned near-complete monopoly of control in the hands of the party and its subservient cadres, such as the bureaucracy and the armed forces of all means of effective armed combat.
A similarly technologically conditioned near-complete monopoly of control in the same hands of all means of effective mass communication, such as the press, radio, motion pictures, and so on. A system of terroristic police control. Carl J Friedrich 'The unique character of totalitarian society' in: Totalitarianism. Historically, the vast majority of regimes were non-democratic - but most of them do not fit this profile.
And today, a society with none of these characteristics might also be seen as fundamentally undemocratic. In 'human rights abuses' were not mentioned - yet they are now considered a definitive characteristic of non-democracies. So totalitarianism is not usable as a general ''definition of non-democracy'.
Probably, the early theorists did not intend that anyway, but the term has acquired a secondary meaning of 'non-democratic'. Since the definitions of democracy are increasingly checklist definitions, the word totalitarian is used simply to mean 'a regime without a, b and c' - without free elections, without political pluralism, without a free press, without all the other elements on the checklists.
So although most pre-modern regimes had none of Friedrich's characteristics, they are sometimes thrown into the general category 'totalitarian'.
A similar problem exists with 'authoritarian' and 'authoritarianism' and often with 'autocratic' as well. Although specific definitions exist for specific types of authoritarian political system, the term is often used to mean simply 'non-democratic' There are a wide range of alternatives to democratic government.
We shall call regimes that have little or no element of democracy, authoritarian or autocratic governments. There are, of course, many kinds of authoritarian regimes including traditional monarchies and aristocracies; non-traditional dictatorships and military juntas; and totalitarian regimes.
For the purposes of this paper, we will ignore the important differences between these different authoritarian regimes. Are Democracies Stable? Compared to What? Democracy exists where the principal leaders of a political system are selected by competitive elections in which the bulk of the population have the opportunity to participate. Authoritarian systems are non-democratic ones. Samuel Huntington and Clement Moore eds. When Huntington and Moore wrote that in , the one-party state seemed the definitive modern form of non-democratic state.
Like the definition of totalitarianism, however, that now seems too historically specific, too obviously based on the 'Soviet Bloc' state.
In a perfect democracy with no anti-democrats, the inhabitants would all adhere to this ethic. Two of its basic principles are given below. It is not fictional or hypothetical - most inhabitants of the democracies do indeed think like this. However, that can not in itself justify democracy. The first and most important component of the democratic ethic is so obvious, that it is rarely explicitly named.
It is the principle of ethical and political legitimacy: "a democratic government should not be overthrown". In the normal course of affairs, democratic states rely on legitimacy to preserve their own existence and cohesion. Overthrow of the government is totally off the political agenda: it is taboo to even discuss it.
There is no large army to suppress armed revolts, because there are no large armed revolts - and no small ones either. The United States is a nation of gun-owners, but despite a month of political feuding over the Gore-Bush election result in , not a shot was fired for political reasons.
That was a remarkable achievement, in a country with a history of secessionism, Civil War, and military conquest of ethnic minorities. The 'normal course of affairs' is historically not normal at all. What would happen if legitimacy disappeared completely? In principle, you could hold free and fair multi-party elections in an open society - and then overthrow the democratically elected government, after each election. That could happen every week, but it would not be considered 'democracy'.
This emphasises the formalism and proceduralism of democracy: once followed, the democratic procedures are claimed to produce legitimacy.
The government which is elected by the democratic procedures becomes the absolutely legitimate government. If legitimacy is strong, then it becomes culturally taboo to overthrow it. It even becomes taboo not to see it as 'our government'. Because US citizens think this way, the United States is politically stable.
To be a democrat means, that you think this should happen: you believe that the democratically elected government is legitimate and must be accepted as legitimate unless it is itself anti-democratic.
The procedures are not an ornament, they are the essence. This legitimacy claim is a major ethical defect of democracy - because procedure is no substitute for morality. Most democrats go much further, and would claim explicitly that a democratically elected government, which has acted on a decision made in accordance with democratic procedures and the rule of law, should not be overthrown, even if the action is morally wrong.
At the heart of democracy is something which is morally unacceptable. What democrats are saying, is that no value may override democracy. In terms of regime preference, they are saying, for instance, that a democracy which tortures, is preferable to a dictatorship which does not. Now, all states claim political legitimacy - that their laws should be obeyed, that their judges are entitled to judge, that they may raise taxes.
However, the claims of democrats imply ethical legitimacy, a claim to moral authority. It is more like the infallibility claim made by the Catholic Church, which asserts that certain declarations by the Pope are the absolute moral truth.
The democracy theorist Christiano writes Other values may compete with democratic ideals and sometimes override them But democratic governments do not generally concede this. Instead the word 'democratic' is widely used as a synonym for 'legitimate", legitimate in both the political and moral sense. This moral judgment is extended outside the narrow political sphere. Many democrats see democracy as a morally legitimising force, which can be applied to any decision - a sort of moral detergent.
These views are vaguely held, but democrats are more explicit about the mirror image of this attitude. They generally believe that there is no moral force, or authority, or principle, which can legitimise non-democratic reversal of democratic decisions. In the democratic ethic, the only remedy for any defect of democracy is democracy itself. In a democracy, there is certainly no political authority external to the democratic process: there is no 'appeal to a higher tribunal'.
No other method or process is accepted as a legitimate response to the democratic process, and certainly not the use of force. The word 'undemocratic' is used as a synonym for 'criminal' or 'hostile'. It is used to suggest an attack on society, a form of terrorism. Christiano and other theorists of democracy are ignoring these political realities, if they suggest democracy is not an absolute.
In practice, democrats accord an absolute moral priority to democracy, and an absolute legitimacy. The evidence for this is simple: they will concede nothing that overrides it. Not even principles such as justice: the democrat will simply say that democracy is itself justice, or at least the path to justice.
If democrats deny that any moral principle can override democracy, then it is correct to say that they treat democracy as a moral absolute. These claims for democratic legitimacy indicate the primary function of democratic theory in western democracies. It serves to legitimise the existing order, however wrong that order may be. Pro-democracy theorists have a lot on their conscience. The second important component of the democratic ethic is the prohibition of secession.
Unlimited secession would make democracy pointless. If free and fair multi-party elections are held in an open society, but anyone who disagrees with the result can set up a separate state, no democrat would accept that as a democracy. For democrats there must be a unit, beyond which secession is not permitted: this unit is the 'demos'. Again, its modern expression is the democratic nation state. The indivisibility of the demos is as important as legitimacy, because legitimacy collapses in the face of secessionism.
Secessionists see the existing government as 'foreign', and they no longer feel any obligation to its laws, institutions, and policies. So a democratic government ultimately depends on military power to sustain itself in office, and to prevent the unlimited secession of minorities. This aspect of the democratic ethic brought democrats into a long-term alliance with nationalism. No guns,no democracy. Inequality and democracy Democracy has failed to eliminate social inequality, and this seems a permanent and structural failure.
It is undeniable that all democratic societies have social inequalities - substantial differences in income, in wealth, and in social status. These differences have persisted: there is no indication that inequality will ever disappear in democracies.
In the stable western democracies, inequality is apparently increasing. The pattern established in the United States is, that the lowest incomes do not grow: all the benefits of economic growth go to the higher-income groups. Average household income before taxes grew in real terms by nearly one-third between and , but that growth was shared unevenly across the income distribution. The average income for households in the top fifth of the distribution rose by more than half.
In contrast, average income for the middle quintile climbed 10 percent and that for the lowest fifth dropped slightly. Historical Effective Tax Rates, In a theoretical democracy of voters, a party of 51 voters can confiscate the property of the other They can divide it among themselves.
However, if one voter is sick on election day, they lose their majority. A party of 52 has more chance to divide the property of the minority, but now the minority is 48 and there is slightly less to divide. A party of 99 will have guaranteed success against a minority of one, but the shares after division will be small. In practice, a coalition of two-thirds, or three-quarters, can successfully disadvantage a minority one third, one quarter.
For instance, the majority might exclude the minority from the main labour market, and then force this excluded underclass into workfare. The emergence of an underclass is usually seen as a structural change within a society, but it might be simply a side-effect of democracy. Every democracy is a temptation to the majority to disadvantage minorities.
In practice, every existing liberal democracy is a dual society, with some politically marginalised minority typically the urban underclass.
Testable propositions: inequality Several testable propositions are available for the hypothesis of structural reinforcement of inequality in democracies: in all democratic states there is inequality of wealth and income inequality of wealth and income has not declined permanently in any democratic state in democracies stable over more than one generation, inequality of wealth increases in democracies stable over more than one generation, inequality of income increases The first proposition is more or less self-evident: the inequality is there.
The fact that democracy is rarely investigated as a causal factor is itself a political choice. Most sociologists are democrats: they are not likely to blame democracy for inequality. In the past, aristocratic conservatives feared that democracy would allow the poor to confiscate the wealth of the rich.
In reality, the historical trend seems exactly the opposite. Increasingly, western democracy is not about 'ordinary people' against the elite: it is about ordinary people joining with social elites to 'bash the underclass'. Guarantees of fundamental rights do not prevent a low-status minority being targeted, politically and socially. In several European countries political parties compete against each other, to show how tough they are against an unpopular minority - for instance asylum seekers.
There is nothing the minority can do, so long the political parties do not infringe their rights. Unfortunately this development is probably still in the early stages: the worst is yet to come. In a democracy, those at the bottom of the social scale can expect steadily worsening conditions of life.
Liberal democracy in combination with the free market, which is what western media and governments mean, when they talk of democracy in eastern Europe. In the older democratic states, the present model of democracy was formed over or years. Britain in can not be compared with Britain two centuries later: the huge differences are not simply 'the result of democracy'. However, in eastern Europe modern states acquired a new political and economic system within a few years - with a complete statistical record.
Russia in can be compared with Russia in the difference is largely due to the economic and political transition. The UN Development Program listed 7 social-economic costs of the process the reference to "life expectancy levels achieved in the s" should apparently read "'s" : The process of transition in the region has had huge human development costs, many of which still continue unabated The biggest single 'cost of transition' has undoubtedly been the loss of lives represented by the decline in life expectancy in several major countries of the region, most notably in the Russian Federation, and most strikingly among young and middle-aged men Most regrettably, the trends in life expectancy have meant that several million people have not survived the s who would have done so if the life expectancy levels achieved in the s had been maintained The second cost of transition has been the rise and persistently high level of morbidity, characterized by higher incidence of common illnesses and by the spread of such diseases as tuberculosis that had been reduced to marginal health threats in the past A third cost of transition has been the extraordinary rise in poverty - both income and human poverty A major contributor to the increase in poverty - along with falling incomes and rising inflation - has been the rise in income and wealth inequality, and this has been a fourth cost of transition A fifth cost of transition has been rising gender inequalities.
During the Soviet era, quotas for women helped to incorporate them into positions of economic and political decision-making and authority, but the advent of more democratic regimes has led paradoxically to lower percentages of women in such positions.
Women have found themselves progressively pushed out of public life. Simultaneously, their access to paid employment has declined and their total work burden both within the household and outside it has increased A sixth cost of transition has been the considerable deterioration of education A seventh cost of transition has been the rise in unemployment, underemployment and informalization of employment Summing up the seven costs of transition across the whole region underscores the dramatic and widespread deterioration of human security The report itself has more detail on all of these aspects, and especially on poverty.
In historical perspective, this is clearly not indicative of a voluntary choice for emancipation and progress. Instead these characteristics are consistent with the traditional historical pattern of expansion by conquest: more on this 'democratic conquest' below.
So what would happen if the existing market democracy was abolished, in an older liberal-democracy such as Britain or the Netherlands? It is not possible to recreate 's 'Soviet-bloc' societies in these countries, but experience in eastern Europe indicates the possible benefits of a reverse transition The western lobby in favour of the transition process in eastern Europe also quote its successes - again using longitudinal comparisons of non-comparable societies.
If cross-generational, cross-cultural, cross-societal comparisons are acceptable in justification of democracy, then why not in criticism of it? The statistics on health give a more comprehensive picture of a fundamental, long-term, inequality - apparently resistant to all declared government policy. The evidence for a worsening gap is also clearer in the health statistics. Above all, inequalities in mortality are a moral defect of democracies. This comment is on western European countries: all of them are democracies: The differences in mortality and morbidity are quite shocking.
Economically inactive men have three times the risk of premature death observed for employed men. While strong health selection increases the risk of exclusion from the labour market, it seems likely that there is also reverse causation due to social isolation and stress. Sometimes illusion is deliberately promoted: political claims that opposites exist are often followed by claims to necessity of some form of fusion.
Howard's original Garden City proposals were a classic example. In current spatial theory the first claim - "dualisms exist" - is associated with mainstream realism. The second - "fusion is better" - is common in post-structuralism and feminism. Of course, not all land surface is identical to all other land surface: it is however a question of definition as to which categories are used, and the four-zone ethic is at least as valid as a categorisation of land surface as dual oppositions, or any claimed fusions.
The real processes of fusion, then, differ according to the categorisation. Certainly, the former urban-agricultural boundary is being eroded in some form. This is a source of much comment and confusion in terminology and theory Coombes et al.
Despite a trend to combination in all-purpose leisure park-centres Hatzfeld and Temmen , this are more than a phase in the leisure industry.
In effect agricultural areas are bypassing the urban fourth zone phase entirely. Similarly "counter-urban" settlement of some depopulated rural areas Clout is a direct conversion to what is, crudely speaking, very low density suburbia. The "appropriate label" sought by Saraceno , for these post-rural areas is "urban". This comment on s Britain is still relevant compare the map of migratory gain from Paris in Lipietz , : The concept of an outer city embracing both the more accessible and some of the more remote rural areas appears to be increasingly relevant.
Herington , Finally there are basic changes in urban form: the house in a garden has become the prototype for the landscaped offices, industry, airports and even refineries. New urban form is primarily a garden: Within perimeter centers building-to-garden relationships, not building-to-building relationships, are the only formally substantive morphology.
The buildings themselves may be best analyzed as components of garden typologies, not as structures that exist independent of landscape. Kieran and Timberlake This is the historical triumph of the utopia of the suburb, and certainly in the United States of some form of anti-urban ideology.
It is a triumph of the Arcadian vision which inspired the first "green" movements over years ago McCormack , Equally, suburbia reveals itself as transitional, leading to "a new kind of decentralized city" Fishman , An ethic which promotes fusion of nature and urban excludes non-natural cities.
This process parallels a more general form of technological conservatism, seen in Donna Haraway's cyborg concept: only that which can fuse with humans or biological organisms can exist in the cyborg world. As Haraway's exclusion of future technologies is the veto "no non-cyborgs", so Howard's veto is "no non-garden cities": conservatism through syncretism. In urban modernity, cities are an accident: the intention was to build a garden.
It was an explicit goal of prototypical early modern gardens to restore paradise Gerndt , ; Wagener Urban modernity is therefore an ethic, a prohibition of cities, and not the inevitable process presented by historicist claims. That can also be said of the second context of urban ethics, a second prohibition: the geocultural structure. Europe is so far unique in having a series of explicit visions, not so much of alternative futures, as of alternative forms of state.
The three most prominent are the national model, and the ethnic and regional challenges to it. If military force, the ultimate resolution of alternative forms of state, is an indication, then the reality is one-sided. A "geocultural structure" is not an abstraction. Apart from one explicit multinational federation, nation states hold almost all the territory of Europe.
All of them operate policies to promote national culture and unity, including a national monopoly of force, of the executive, legislation, and elections. What makes this a single geocultural structure is not the diversity of cultures, for they may not differ at all in some respects, but the exclusion of the non-national. Concretely: there are no non-national cities in Europe, the Vatican excepted.
Urban theory tends to take it for granted that modern cities are national: here too a historicist approach equates non-national with pre-national, as if there were no ethical choice involved. So there is an exclusionary effect of the geocultural structure: there are also internal processes of conformity to the national culture, rarely referred to explicitly CEC , In effect each nation has a national urban model enforced by law, by the military and police, and by social and economic pressures.
In accordance with the transgenerational nature of nation states, that model includes projection of the past into the future. It is these characteristics of national cites - permanence, transgenerationality, convergence to national norms - rather than post-industrial or post-modern trends which explain the growth of the culture and heritage sectors.
This growth can in any case be traced well back into or before the classic industrial period. The form may be recent, but a heritage park for instance has nineteenth century precedents: improvement, paternalist education with nationalist emphasis, cross regional exchange through new infrastructures.
Still at work is a range of classic nation-building, or at least nation-consolidating practices Knippenberg and de Pater - now usually without direct state coercion. However their impact is probably increasing, and almost never questioned. Opposition, if any, is only to the priority for "high culture", not to culture as such Jauhiainen European cities are supposed to have culture, because they are national, and nations are supposed to have a culture.
Morris , Nothing "new" here: this vision of Europe as competing historical cultures derives directly from Mazzini. The imposition of culture, and prohibition of its absence, is central to nationalism, and identity politics.
Nationalism justifies this with claims of historical continuity, new forms of identity with the value of diversity in general, or their own internal diversity. Urban theory presents this as a neutral fact, referring to "British cities" or "German cities" as if they had existence rights. So too with "lesbian spaces": And so the process of imagining, contesting, reworking, redefining, and the challenging of sexual identities, community identities and the reshaping of landscapes of desire continues Valentine , That does not mean it should continue.
No quality of a culture confers existence rights, or the right to prohibit its absence. In practice there is no difference between forcing people to live in a city with a National Museum, or in a city with a Lesbian Centre. The standard ethic incorporates logical errors in its views on urban unity and diversity.
Basic models of urban space can be presented in simple diagrams: they make implicit norms explicit. Sometimes it may only confuse: see Heikkila and Griffin , The first is preferred, the "multi-national city". Those who favour a territorial mix of nationalities, should logically seek the dissolution of, for instance, Greece. Instead, nationalists accept the principle of ethnic segregation at country level.
Secondly, Aravantinos accepts the existence of non-national social groups, but rejects separate cities for them - because of the danger of racialist or nationalist trends. Here the logic is reversed: arguing, from the problems of division among nations, against other divisions.
Thirdly, harmony is wrongly accorded intrinsic value. A city cannot be better, simply because the relations between some groups are open, peaceful or harmonious.
If Mafia clans stop killing each other it gives them no more rights than when they were shooting. In effect Aravantinos claims cities for peacemakers. This claim parallels the claim to territory from peace among nations: both Israel and the nascent Palestinian state began as armed non-territorial groups.
The merit of Aravantinos' paper is to state common assumptions clearly. A geocultural structure is taken as given: - territorial diversity as a monopoly of national cultures, and - inside nations a territorial monopoly of national culture or cultures. In such normative approaches the culturalists mono-, multi- and inter- have a monopoly: no other choice is conceded to exist.
Anti-cultural cities are forbidden in this logic, and in reality existing cities do correspond to one or more existing cultures. Not just legal prohibition, however, prevents its existence, but also social, economic, cultural and political pressures not to build such a city.
Conversely, if there is such a thing as a Slovak city, which could not exist under Czechoslovak federal law, then it could come into existence on the secession of Slovakia. National cities can get built, after independence.
Other cities stay forbidden. High density is not a people or a culture, and so can claim no territory in the present geocultural structure. Nations have a national language, a national density, and a national technology, including national transport technology.
The integration of "car culture" Flink in national culture is evident: choosing rail becomes a rejection of culture. The social pressures related to meat give a good analogy. Being a vegetarian is usually socially accepted in Europe, trying to forbid meat is not.
It would be seen as dictatorial if a vegetarian majority prohibited meat for a minority. Ethically however, the mirror positions are equivalent: eating meat prevents vegetarians living in a vegetarian country. Logically, pro-meat and anti-meat laws are incompatible, like pro-drug and anti-drug laws: a nation is one or the other.
So too, a nation is pro-car or anti-car. No nation is anti-car, therefore no city is anti-car: geoculture prohibits its existence. This is the reason why heritage, culture, identity, and memory are central to policy in nations, and taken for granted in urban policy: preserving the past is the best strategy for limiting futures.
Whatever the scale of heritage - local, regional, national, even "trans-national regional" Larkham, , 7 it contributes to a past-based exclusionary geocultural structure. The class of cities prohibited by the monopoly claim of this structure is vast. It probably includes almost all possible cities. It is therefore pointless to try and list them here. Kevin Lynch gives a partial categorisation of possible urban types, goals and values; de Klerk classifies ideal cities; and most histories of urban design include forms no longer existing in Europe Kostoff ; Kostoff, , Usually, however, possible cities are just ignored.
Conversely, when "alternative" urban types appear in official publications, they tend to be variants of the standard ethic see Luiten's typology in EF , The most relevant and controversial deviations from urban geoculture itself in today's Europe are: deculturation, the suppression or transfer of the cultural sector: depatrimonialisation, the selective destruction of the urban elements which contribute most to cross-generational transmission of culture; urban planning for the erosion of national barriers to migration not to give people a better life, but a less national one ; de-atlanticisation, reversing the preference in transport and telecommunication infrastructure for transatlantic links; the construction of specific cities of Europe not the same as a city for a pan-European culture, real or imagined.
In contrast to the first two exclusions, this prohibition is often explicit e. Schoonbrodt At its most simple it is the promotion of the city as a framework for "business" or "enterprise", place market-place, Standortwettbewerb. Liberalism, however, means more: the political and philosophical promotion of openness, exchange, debate, interaction, argument, competition, co-operation, networks and "society" - as natural, desirable and inevitable.
Liberalism claims: intrinsic value for interaction, that interaction should be maximised, and that its extent and intensity should be maximised. Overlapping or separate liberal structures liberal democracy, the market, Internet share general characteristics: interaction between parties can affect others, these effects can be transmitted through chains of interaction, cause and effect are collectivised, and there are filter effects usually leading to convergence.
Liberal historiography emphasises the transition from the barriers of the pre-liberal era: tolls, tariffs, customs houses, internal duties. One symbol of the pre-liberal city is the wall of the Fermiers around Paris, one of many such customs barriers in European cites until the 19th century Kostoff,
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