ABSTRACT
It has previously been argued that the strength of modern nation-states depended upon the belief that the state was the engine of development towards the vision of the social justice nation, in which the civic nation and the ethnocultural nation would converge. Contemporary disparities between the civic community and the ethnocultural community were thus defused by the extent of the belief that civic integration was intertwined with ethnocultural assimilation. The recent problems of the nation-state have thus been conceived as arising from disillusionment with the capacity of state élites to deliver this developmental promise. As belief in a future convergence of the civic and ethnocultural communities eroded, the contemporary tensions between them became more visible and politically salient.
