Abstract: This article compares state and nation building in Latin America with Eastern Europe, including the Balkans. It comes to the conclusion that different imperial legacies (land empires vs. maritime empires) have led to different interpretative paradigms of understanding the world, with national/ethnic problems dominating the literature in and on Eastern Europe, whereas a social and post-colonial paradigm has become the dominant key of self-understanding in Latin America. As one of the consequences, the terms „left“ and „right“ do not have the same meaning in both regions. The article concludes with outlining a research agenda for further comparative work.
Keywords: Latin America, Eastern Europe, state building, nation building, imperial legacies
Summary
This article explores different patterns of interpreting reality in Eastern Europe (including Southeastern Europe) and Latin America. It claims that the social paradigm, or a cognitive emphasis on the contrast between the rich and the poor, the empowered and the powerless, is a dominant method for comprehending society, politics, and international relations in Latin America.. In contrast, Eastern Europe has developed a dominant national paradigm that tends to underline national differences rather than societal conflicts. This contrast is rooted in different imperial legacies: while the highly exploitative Spanish colonial empire left behind societies with vast social cleavages, the land empires of the Romanovs, Habsburgs, and Ottomans produced certain possibilities for social advancement for the subjugated populations, thus laying the ground for later national projects of these populations. Other factors producing the different paradigms are historical memory and geography – national liberation in Eastern Europe proceeded from competing historical projects usually rooted in the middle ages, which often pretended to the same lands on a limited territory. The resulting wars, particularly in Southeastern Europe, reinforced national identities and generated societies accustomed to viewing threat in terms of national foes. In Latin America, national states arose from colonial provinces, making border disputes and wars between neighboring states uncommon. Here, economic exploitation and domination, both within society but also on the international level, advanced as main themes of discourse, a fact that rather helped to develop elements of a common Latin American identity than solid national identities. Both paths have deep consequences for contemporary integration projects, since Latin American states (or civil societies) occasionally tend to form anti-US coalitions. Meanwhile, Eastern European states find it harder to overcome the legacy of mutual national conflicts in formulating common agendas vis-a-vis the power centers of this world, especially in Southeastern Europe.