economic exploitation or relative deprivation. Birch is arguing largely on
the basis of evidence from developed countries, but his contribution to the
debate about nationalism is too resonant of Third World circumstances for
it not to be considered in the present context.
Political integration involves costs and benefits to minority communities.
There will be a changing balance of advantage from time to time in being
incorporated into a wider community, and the incorporation is unlikely to be
total, contrary to the basic premise of the diffusionist school that ethnic loy-
alties will be superseded by loyalties to the wider political unit because of
bureaucratic penetration, social mobilization, industrialization and mass
communication. Ethnic groups resist the erosion of their cultural identity,
even gaining ‘psychic income’ from pride and satisfaction with the assertion
of an identity which compensates for a sense of inferiority and deprivation
engendered by a dominant culture.
Since the Second World War the balance of advantage between the small
community and the large state has swung in favour of the former, first
because ‘changes in the international order have removed one of the main
benefits to be derived from membership of a sizeable state’, namely diplo-
matic and military security (Birch, 1978, p. 335). Free trade and regional
defence alliances also reduce the benefits of integration in a large domestic
market and a state with an expensive defence capability. A weakening econ-
omy in the larger unit may also increase the cost of integration (Hechter,
2000, pp. 117–18; Phadnis and Ganguly, 2001, pp. 49–50).
Secondly, the development of international organizations such as the EC,
OECD and the IMF give small states access to markets, loans, employment
and investment that make their small economies more viable than they
would otherwise be. Thirdly, the impact of the mass media on minority
cultures and languages has heightened consciousness of, and hostility to,
cultural imperialism and homogenization.
Finally, political agitation for minorities is less costly than in the past.
Rights are more readily demanded and conceded. Agitation and terrorism
are easier and get instant world-wide publicity. National energy supplies are
more vulnerable to sabotage. Hence a decline in the acceptability to minori-
ties of piecemeal reforms and in the value attached to the benefits of inte-
gration in the wider nation-state.
This explanation sounds highly plausible in the context of developing
regions of the world. There are problems associated with it, however. Firstly,
it concentrates more on the relative ease with which the break can be made,
rather than on the factors that prompt disillusionment among some ethnic
minorities and not others with the existing territorial jurisdiction of the state.
It implies that the demand for separation is constant, only awaiting an easing
212 Understanding Third World Politics