Machiavellian Nation-State Ideology as a Democles’ Sword over Culture Policy of the EU

Abstract

The paper is set out to examine the relationship between working nation-state paradigm in European Union member countries and its effect on the culture policies of EU members. What is aimed here is that the obstacles against a common culture policy in EU ache, is a reminiscent of nation-state reactions which can be explained through the understanding of Machiavellian philosophy of state. The mechanisms of the nation state function in parallel with the Machiavellian “ruthlessness” when it comes to the development of common culture policies since culture is s ‘securitized’ and thought to be bounds of the imagined community that should not be violated in any case. There is a sense of Machiavellian submission of the religion in coherence with the ‘ends’ of the state and the formation of subordinate, god fearing citizens who compose the imagined community in his philosophy. Nation-states have been endeavoring to trash off the diversities to create a new conception of unitary and artificial community whose members are implicitly forced to be subordinates and objects of ‘national culture’ so that just like in Machiavellian vision, they are easy to control. The prominent tool in the mechanism of subordination is the ‘institution of citizenship’, which is directly identified with the notion of having equal rights and the sense of having equal right is directly associated with having the same identity. The deepening process of European Union was expected to create various realms commonalities such as strengthened political union in terms of fiscal and culture policies but it has not been the case so far. The paper tries to put light on the question why member states are still in conflict in culture policy, obstacles against founding a new common culture policy which are crucial since the problematic mechanism still prevents the EU from becoming “People’s Europe”. The Machiavellian philosophy will be utilized to show what kind of parallelisms are working in the complex, multi-faceted problem of legislating a common binding culture policy in the era of “imagined communities” since the philosophy still functions as an “invisible preventive hand” and questions whether it is able to give a viable response to the EU common policy programs.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1956