THE CHANGING CULTURAL CONTENT OF THE NATION-STATE: A WORLD SOCIETY PERSPECTIVE John W. Meyer Department of Sociology Stanford University MEYER@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU Draft, January 1994. For presentation at the University of Chicago, January 1994. Lines of argument here derive from Thomas, Meyer, Ramirez and Boli (1987), Jepperson and Meyer (1991), Meyer (1994), current collaborative projects with colleagues and students (as noted below), and extended comments and discussions in Stanford's Comparative Workshop. I emphasize these linkages, rather than reviewing the literature in general, in the references below. 2 THE CHANGING CULTURAL CONTENT OF THE NATION-STATE: A WORLD SOCIETY PERSPECTIVE In reaction to lines of thought analyzing the nation-state on its own terms as a bounded actor, institutional conceptions are now becoming more prominent. In these views, the nation-state is seen as highly embedded in wider or prior structures of power and meaning. In this paper, I pursue lines of argument that see the nation-state as embedded in an exogenous, and more or less worldwide, rationalistic culture: culture in this sense is less a set of values and norms, and more a set of models defining the nature, purpose, resources, technologies, controls and sovereignty of the proper nation-state. In contemporary, rather stateless, world society, exogenous controls of this cultural kind are highly expanded, and play important roles in constituting nation-states and their activities. The nation-state is prominently an imagined community (Anderson 1983), and the cultural imagination involved is substantially constructed in the wider world environment. Arguments of the sort put forward here can help explain a number of features of contemporary nation-states: (a) the rather standardized character of these entities around the world; (b) tendencies to isomorphic change in their constitutive and organizational structures, and in the activities they pursue; (c) the decoupled character of the links between structure and policy, on the one hand, and practical activity and reality on the other -- especially notable, perhaps, in the periphery of the system; and (d) the very rapid expansion over time of nation-state structures and policy domains, even in peripheries. 3 I discuss below some general theoretical issues, some features of modern world society that make up a world institutional system, and empirical studies and research designs on the impact of world institutional arrangements on the nation-state. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Modern culture emphasizes a social world made up of bounded, purposive, and rationalized (and sometimes even rational) actors, and gives preference to entities conceived and constructed in this way -- particularly individuals, nation-states, and formal organizations (though these are sometimes conceived as derivative on the other two). This deemphasizes other sorts of social units (tribes, clans, families, ethnic groups, communities, and the like). Many useful social scientific theories take this cultural world at face value, and produce analyses of social activity as the product of such actors and their interaction. One line of reductionist criticism, especially in analyzing organizations and nation-states, sees actorhood as a kind of fiction masking the power of real subgroup actors (e.g., resource dependency models). But many other lines of criticism see actors as deeply embedded in, and constructed and controlled by, wider forces -- institutions, of varying sorts. The term institution, in this sense, has little meaning: anything exogenous to a putative actor can be seen as an institution (Jepperson 1991). From the point of view of an organized work group, the personality 4 quirks of the boss, or the prior habits of the members, or the general cultural rules of interaction, or worker-safety laws, can be seen as an institution. The idea simply designates embeddedness: it arises as a critical notion wherever culture and analysis postulates actors. It does not much arise in analyses of families and tribes and communities, where almost all lines of culture and analysis emphasize embeddedness (and are thus institutionalist). Institutionalist models fall into three classes. Some retain the realism of actor-centered models, but see actors as embedded in larger structures (often themselves seen as actors, ore regimes constructed by actors: Krasner 1983). Others emphasize the level of analysis of the actor, but see this actor as phenomenologically embedded in its own history, culture, and interpretive system. Still others -- those we will discuss here -- incorporate both lines of thought simultaneously, becoming more phenomenological and also more macro-sociological. We briefly review the other forms first. Realist Macro-Institutionalism: Useful lines of thought see the nation-state as highly embedded in and constrained and constructed by a larger interests, operating as actors. Wallerstein (1974) sees them as constructions of world economic forces of capital accumulation and exchange domination, and as differentially organized by these forces. Tilly (1984) sees them as constructions of competing military/political elites (see also Krasner 1983). Similar lines of thought (external resource dependency arguments) interpret modern organizations as constructed and constrained by states and economic dominance. And it is 5 conventional in sociology to see individuals as heavily constrained by roles organized by wider forces. In all these cases, macro-level institutions are invoked, but in a way that is essentially realist: culture, aside from a bit of derivative false consciousness, is little involved. Phenomenological Micro-Institutionalism: Many contemporary lines of thought see actors as interpreting themselves as much as acting from a fixed and prior identity. Extreme lines of thought here -- stressing individual personality, organizational culture (Smircich 1983), or political culture as prior and causal -- are in some disrepute. Weaker arguments, emphasizing the interpretive problematics arising from rationality failure, are common (e.g., March, or Tversky): ignorant actors are thought, for instance, to mechanically copy their accidental successes in future actions. In between, much modern sociological thinking stresses the ways individuals and organizations (less often, nation-states) are simultaneously interpreting and acting in ways that are highly indeterminate. In all these lines of argument, actors are seen as embedded in some sort of institutionalized culture of their own making. Phenomenological Macro-Institutionalism: It is also useful to see modern actors as embedded in -- and as constructed, empowered, and constrained by -- wider cultural forces. Modern individuals occupy the constructed identities of person, citizen, and now human, and derive many properties (e.g., rights and responsibilities) from these rather standardized notions (Meyer 1987; Jepperson 1992). Modern organizations, similarly, are creatures of standardized social theories written into law and science 6 (Meyer and Rowan 1977; DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Scott 1983, 1992; Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Guillen 1994; Jepperson and Meyer 1991). So also with the rationalized nation-state, throughout its history a theorized society and imagined community (Anderson 1983; Hall 1986; Mann 1986). Its sovereignty and boundaries are given exogenous cultural legitimacy (originally religious and legal, later more scientific and legal). Its proper goals (e.g., progress, now roughly the GNP/capita; and justice, now defined in terms of individual equality) are defined and measured by the rules of the wider cultural system: they have clear religious roots in the santified individual soul and collective sacralized community, and are now scientized in logics such as those of psychology and economics). Appropriate means/ends technologies for the pursuit of these goals are defined in exogenous culture and science (e.g., proper strategies, currently including educational improvement and structural deregulation, for economic development; proper mechanisms, such as state redistribution, educational expansion, and legal protection, to accomplish equality and justice). Appropriate resources and costs are defined (human and physical capital, natural resources and now environmental constraints). Standard mechanisms for integration and control (rationalized formal organization, democratic political participation) are promulgated exogenously (Guillen 1994). Thus, the nation-state as an actor (a purposive, rational, bounded, integrated, and functional system) is laid out in scientific, legal, cultural, and religious theory. Naturally, the evolving codification of this theory has had enormous impact. All sorts of unlikely populations and areas are now at least 7 nominally organized as nation-states. In so organizing, standard legitimated forms are employed: new nation-states copy them, and gain strength and legitimacy by doing so; older ones adapt to the supply and constraints provided by highly-legitimated exogenous rules (Meyer 1980; Jackson and Rosberg 1980). WORLD POLITY AS CULTURE Phenomenological macro-institutionalist models are especially useful, in analyses of the modern nation-state and its continuing development, because of the nature of modern world society. Two properties of this society are relevant. The first is more commonly noted than the second: First, there is little by way of a sovereign world state, a point emphasized dramatically by Wallerstein (1974) and many others. If there were such a state, with nation-states as subordinated subunits under direct organizational control, macro-realist models of the system would obviously be highly appropriate. In the absence of a central state, much of the world social control system takes forms that can usefully be called cultural: cognitive and normative models and rules. Second, the system is far from an anarchy of genuinely autonomous and self-defining entities. Nation-states claim their sovereignty in terms of general and universalistic rules: they present these claims both internally (as justifications for their authority and as claims on the loyalty of internal participants) and externally (as justifications for their autonomy and as claims on the support of external bodies including 8 each other). There is great interdependence in terms of reciprocal legitimation, and in terms of dependence on common organizations (e.g., the UN-system) and rules (e.g., doctrines about how to produce economic growth). A partial analogue here is the pre-hegemonic American polity. Seeing its statelessness, European observers anticipated anarchy, and have always been surprised by its coherence. Skowronek ( ) discusses it as a state of courts and parties: Tocqueville (1945) had a broader view, noting the conformity produced by its dependence on common cultural material: law, science, association, opinion, and a sort of religious nationalism. The open polity of empowered (and formally isomorphic) individual actors generates a great deal of collective culture. So also with the world polity, made up of strong nation-state actors built up around a common identity as nation-states. This system has generated a great deal of cultural theorizing -- much of it about the nation-state and its properties -- throughout its history. In recent decades, this discourse has been consolidated in several different ways. There are thousands of international non-governmental associations, speaking for various collective goods, the vast majority of which have been formed in recent decades (Union of International Associations, various years; Feld 1972; Thomas, Boli and Kim 1993). There are hundreds of international inter-governmental organizations, the vast majority founded in recent decades (Union of International Associations, various years): central ones have grown very substantially in scale. Scientific communities (and communications) at the international level have greatly expanded, as have 9 the associated numbers of international scientific bodies. This whole system, and its rise, gets less social scientific attention than it deserves. This happens because the world polity involved is not organized as a set of proper bounded actors: the exclusive source of activity defined in much modern social theory and ideology. By both world cultural and social scientific accounts, the actors involved -- the units that have the authority and power to produce purposeful action -- are the nation-states conceived to make up world society. The structures of the world polity are mostly, in this sense, not actors. They produce talk (Brunsson 1989) -- scientific talk, legal talk, non-binding legislation, normative talk, talk about social problems, suggestions, advice, consulting talk, and so on -- not binding authoritative action. Even the European Community -- the nearest thing to a trans-state actor -- mostly operates in this way. Sometimes, world organizations move a bit to action through incentives and constraints (as with the World Bank and its criteria for loans), but mostly their products are talk. This is strikingly true of the world's scientific communities, which produce a great deal of powerful talk -- about the ozone layer, about failures and requirements in national development policy, about the natural human needs of persons, and so on -- but do not assume the authority to act. As befits a cultural system postulating strong actors, most of the talk involved is addressed to these actors: in the modern world, the nation-states, who are supposed to put into decision and action the 10 policies proposed in the talk (e.g., to control the chemicals creating problems for the ozone layer). And most of the talk involved addresses the nation-states in terms of their own putative interests and goals -- advising them how to be better and more effective actors in pursuit of such goals as economic development and social justice and environmental regulation. The world polity is not principally addressed to a world sovereign concerning collective world goods: it principally is addressed to the constituent nation-state actors in terms of their own proper goals and requirements. When world talk instructs a country on its proper educational or economic policy, it is in terms of the nation-state's supposed interest, not mainly or only the world's interest. A Theoretical Aside: The world polity, at the collective level, is organized as a set of consultants more than a set of actors. We lack language for this sort of situation. One cannot usefully call the world collectivity a set of agents, since this term now supposes that there some actors as principals: world political/cultural discourse speaks in terms of higher goods than that -- scientific truths about nature, the environment and technology; basic moral laws about human and group justice; and so on. I suggest we go back to Mead (1934): the social world is made up of actors, indeed, but also Others who advise actors what to do. In the modern world, actors are rationalized, and so are the Others, who speak for the rationalized ideals of the universal scientized truth, law, and moral order, and apply these considerations to the proper interests and needs of the actors. 11 The point is that systems that construct and legitimate standardized, rationalized, universalized actors, create a great deal of social space for rationalized Others to produce talk about what these actors should be like and should do. Actors depend on these Others to become better and more effective actors (Strang and Meyer 1993). We thus live in a world thick with consultants: economists who wander to the South and East to advise on the universal truths about the market economy; educators who propose to the world the universal validity of American (or now Japanese) educational models; scientists who tell about the problems of the ecosystem; legal and moral inspectors advancing principles of the equality of the races, ethnic groups, and genders; organization theorists who unravel the true principles of effective political and economic structures (Guillen 1994; Jepperson and Meyer 1991); and so on and on. Others tend to be structured differently than rationalized actors. Actors are to be interested, others to be disinterested (the economic consultant who stands to gain too much from the implementation of advice loses credibility). Actors require the myth of boundedness; Others can be members of a poorly specified community (the economics profession). Actors have definite resources (e.g., property); Others do not. Actors must have some organization doing means-ends and control structures; Others may not. Actors are figures; Others may merge with the cultural ground. A final theoretical point is of importance. In the modern stateless world polity, made up of highly legitimated nation-state actors, many normal 12 constraints over the expansion of rationalized Otherhood (both organizationally and in terms of substantive juristiction) are missing. This is true because Others do not bear many costs for the expanding proposals they make: actors bear the costs. Thus if an economist creates new dimensions of economic life (human capital) that must be regulated by rational actors, the authority of economics expands, but the actors bear the costs. If a scientist discovers a new environmental problem, scientific authority expands but the actors bear the costs. If organizational theorists discover expanded principles of effective organization (Japanified work teams, Americanized personnel training), the actors involved bear the costs. So also if world legal professionals develop new human rights, or social scientists new forms of injustice and inequality that must be regulated. A true world state, which had to bear the costs involved in the constant expansion of modernity by rationalized Others, would be inclined to suppress a good deal of this activity. A world sovereign might be uninclined to support expensive discoveries about the ozone layer; or about new human rights (e.g., associated with gender); or about new requirements for economic progress. Our world society, in the absence of a central actor, is one in which the rapid invention of collective goods by a variety of Others, is relatively unfettered: Tocqueville noted the same process as one for which American society is reknowned. Specific Structures of Otherhood: We may note some specific forms taken by the world polity as a cultural system (Meyer 1994). First, there are obvious organizational forms -- intergovernmental organizations and 13 non-governmental associations -- that define expanding models for nation-state action. These cover the domains of rationalized life -- the economy, the polity, education, health, the environment, and so on -- providing recipes for proper nation-state activity in these domains. Second, there are the communities of the sciences and professions, sometimes only partly organized. These generate more or less consensual definitions of problems and solutions in a wide variety of domains. Third, nation-state actors themselves, in a world stratification system, provide models for each other -- a process especially powerful because nation-states are formed and legitimated under myths of ultimate similarity of identity (Strang and Meyer 1993). It thus becomes rational rather than treasonous to propose copying policies and structures that appear to be successful in a virtuous or dominant competitor (Dobbin 1993). Nation-states obviously try to influence each other in their own interest through mechanisms of exchange and dominance. We here call attention to another process by which they present themselves or are presented by intermediaries as models for each other. Thus Japanese success leads to a wave of copying throughout the system -- of Japanese policy, organization, education, and so on (Cole 1989). In the same way, the hegemonic United States has provided many models for other countries throughout the century. This process can occur through (1) a country's own efforts (e.g., foreign aid), since a nation-state gains both internal and external legitimacy if it can successfully portray itself as a model, (2) the search for proper models by potential recipients, and (3) the selection of models by intermediary professionals and international 14 organizations. The last of these processes seems especially important in the contemporary period, in which world organization is so highly developed: countries are less likely to copy successes directly than to copy these successes as institutionalized and interpreted (often to the point of unrecognizability) in scientific and international communities. Such theorized entities as modern nation-states are especially susceptible to well-theorized models (Strang and Meyer 1993). RESEARCH AREAS The general proposition here is that the rise and institutionalization in the world polity of models of the nation-state greatly affects the presence in and change toward such models in particular nation-states. Every rationalized aspect of the modern nation-state is in part driven by such processes. More complete analyses require explanations of the development of the world polity itself, and of the models that become institutionalized in it: in the present discussion, we focus principally on its impact. Existence: Strang (1990) shows that with the consolidation of the nation-state system in the last two centuries, dependent and external territories move at increasing rates into sovereign status. Once in this status, departures are extremely rare. Rates of transition increased notably after World War II, and the increased international privileging of nation-state status. McNeely (1989) shows that independent states joined the international system (with formal application for UN membership) increasingly rapidly over time, and that doing this required clear 15 evidence of conformity to the basic nation-state model. Form: Boli (1979, 1987) shows that national constitutions clearly reflect standard world models of the state and its proper powers. These models become more elaborated over time, and new countries entering the system do so with constitutions reflecting the models current at that time. He and others (Meyer et al. 1975) also show worldwide increases in nation-state organizational size. A number of studies also show system-wide changes, reflecting changed world standards, in the functions built into the centers of states: e.g., lists of cabinet-level offices expand, and seem to become increasingly isomorphic. Following the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme in 1972, for instance, countries form a Ministry concerned with the Environment at increasing rates (Meyer et al. 1994). Overall impacts here may be especially strong in the Third World: the old core often shows some capactity to adapt to changing requirements while retaining or even intensifying older forms (Huntington 1968; Guillen 1994; Dobbin 1993; Jepperson and Meyer 1991). Nation-states depict themselves in their data systems in expanded and standardized ways, which tend to be strongly affected by world standards. Ventresca (1990) shows that with the rise of international statistical standards about the proper depiction of the nation-state, countries adopt the institution of the census at increasing rates, and censuses increasingly collect the data prescribed by the world order (and apparently decreasingly collect some other types of data). McNeely (1989) shows that world rules strongly affect national economic data systems -- countries increasingly develop these, do so along standard lines, and 16 conform to an increasingly elaborate set of standards in doing so (the international system suggested a simple accounting system with eight items of information in 1948: the list expanded to eighty-four items by the late 1980s). In many other sectors (e.g., education or health) the same process has been dramatic. Education: Since the early nineteenth century, scientific and ideological doctrines that mass education is a crucial element of the modern nation-state (both in the interests of collective progress, and in the interests of equality and justice for individuals) have been central in world society (Ramirez and Ventresca 1992). These doctrines became increasingly dominant over time, and after World War II were celebrated in many UN and UNESCO pronouncements and in the highly-developed scientific ideologies about education as a direct ingredient in national economic and political development, as with human capital theory (Huefner et al. 1987; Fiala and Gordon Lanford 1987). Several studies show that rather standardized systems of mass education arose around the world, in all sorts of countries, at increasing rates over time. Countries became susceptible on entering world society (with claims of sovereignty and recognition), and the rates at which they adopted mass educational systems increased -- most dramatically, after World War II (Meyer, Ramirez and Soysal. 1992). Rates of enrollment expansion followed a similar pattern, and again increased in all sorts of countries after World War II (Meyer et al. 1992). Independently, the custom of creating national rules of compulsory mass education (empirically little related to actual enrollments) spread and became almost universal (Ramirez and Ventresca 1992). Mass educational curricula, throughout the modern period, show 17 pronounced isomorphism around the world, and tend to change in remarkably isomorphic ways: in both cases, changing world standards are clearly involved (Meyer, Kamens and Benavot 1992). For instance, the originally American notion of replacing history and geography instruction with an integrated social studies subject, spread widely, under some direct encouragement from UNESCO (Wong 1991). Even peripheral educational changes tend to spread isomorphically: for instance, the UNESCO data system classifying mass education in a 6-3-3 pattern from primary to senior secondary school has impacted the actual educational organization of many countries, which shift their entire structures to the 6-3-3 model. But central educational issues show the same pattern -- for instance, a worldwide shift to greatly expanded enrollments of females in both mass and higher education (Ramirez 1987) appearing in every country for which there are data. The same effects appear in higher education: the Western university model spreads at increasing rates throughout the entire world, so that almost all nation-states organize universities (Riddle 1989) -- and universities which follow clearly isomorphic models. An unlikely field like sociology, for instance, is now to be found almost everywhere, and in remarkably similar forms. Science: The principle that science, and its management, is to be incorporated in the nation-state was developed in the seventeenth century (Wuthnow 1989), and central scientific academies spread among the European countries. The theorized linkage between science and national goals 18 became progressively tighter in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After World War II, models of national development (built around economic theories, in particular) built a still tighter linkage. In OECD and UNESCO models, science moved from being seen as a general world good to a specific instrument of national development (Finnemore 1990), associated with specific preferred forms of national organizational control. After this development, all sorts of countries rapidly established national science policy structures, and these appear in a great many countries (Finnemore 1990). Similar patterns of diffusion describe increases in national scientific activity, which spreads around the world in increasingly standardized ways, sponsored by nation-states and the university systems they control (Drori 1989). Thus the range of countries producing authorships cited in the science citation indices greatly expands over time, and countries increasingly produce scientific work in the fully expanded range of approved scientific fields. Predictive factors here probably have much more to do with linkages to the evolving international system than with any domestic factors. Welfare, Population and Health: Collier and Messick ( ) long ago noted that the spread of welfare models among nation-states followed diffusion lines rather than the functional ones (e.g., associated with national development) conventionally predicted. Strang and Chang (1993: see also Chang and Strang 1990) show the effects of world patterning as organized by the ILO, which set out a constantly expanding set of preferred welfare models over time. National patterns are more predicted by national 19 linkage to the ILO, and to the expansion of the standard ILO models, than by internal functional factors. Health regulation and provision has followed similar patterns, highly structured by international organization, and most recently by internationally-standardized systems of diagnostic categories (Thornton 1992). The international system has contained discussion of the virtues of population control (as opposed to an earlier pronatalism, justified on military grounds) since the turn of the century (Barrett 1992). This had little impact, as the collective goods imagined had to do with the human race generally (in a generalized Malthusianism). After World War I, but only loosely associated with the League of Nations, ideas about national interests as calling for eugenic control developed in the system, and in some measure spread among nation-states. This line of theorizing fell into disrepute with World War II, and was replaced in the 1950s with the model of population control as a crucial mechanism for national development: major world institutions, and the sciences associated with development theories, took up the call (Barrett 1992). After this development, which produced a very elaborate international organizational system, national policies for population control spread very rapidly and widely throughout the Third World: linkages to this wider system seem to be more important predictive factors than any internal characteristic of these countries. Human Rights and the Individual: Since the French Revolution, the model of the nation-state as ultimately rooted in individuals as citizens has been dominant, reinforced by long traditions of the sacralization of the 20 individual in Western religious history. There are obvious variations in the conception of citizenship (Bendix 1964; Marshall 1948), running from liberal to communitarian, and from emphasis on participation to emphasis on entitlements, but one or another version is celebrated in every vision of modern rationalization. Boli (1979, 1987) shows the extent to which such doctrines are to be found in ever-expanding ways in national constitutions over the last century, with expanding definitions of citizen rights and responsibilities entering the constitutions of both old and new countries throughout the period. The League of Nations was founded as an international security organization, with little emphasis on expanding human rights. But the UN-system, founded in reaction to World War II, incorporated such conceptions from the outset. These have expanded greatly, and have bound organizational bases in many intergovernmenal and nongovernmental associations. The impact of this wider system on particular nation-states has been enormous. Berkovitch (1993) shows the rise, for instance, in international emphasis on women's rights over the twentieth century, and the shift in this emphasis (after World War II) from corporatist to liberal equalitarian terms. She also shows the enormous expansion in national law and policy devoted to the question. Practical effects, running from female participation in the labor force (Charles 1992; Ramirez and Weiss 1979) and government and education, to changed family laws, are very widespread throughout the world (and often poorly related to internal national culture and development levels). The same changes describe world models of ethnic and racial incorporation, and consequent national-level principles of the incorporation and legitimation of such properties of individuals (Ramirez and Meyer 1993). 21 The Environment: Meyer et al. (1994) and Frank (1992) show the rise in international discourse about the environment, and the shift in this discourse from narrow issues (about resources) to generalized ones (about ecosystems). They show that this produces a flood of treaties, and ultimately intergovernmental organizations, providing standard prescriptions and models in the area. A worldwide wave of national environmental policies and structures follows: most recently, many countries (about 50, so far) construct cabinet Ministries to properly deal with the environment. The impact of international change, and linkages to the international system, is obvious. Economy: Hall (1989) discusses international flows in specific economic policies and ideas. More generally, it is obvious that preferred basic economic structures tend to flow around the world. At odds with neoclassical and dependency theories predicting international differentiation, economic structures tend to change worldwide in similar directions (e.g., Meyer et al. 1975). This is true of the general expansion of industrial and service sectors; and it is also true of labor force composition. The preferred forms of the modern economy, if not the wealth supposed to be associated with them, tend to find at least symbolic implementation in a very widespread way. In this area, cultural diffusion sometimes occurs despite the explicit policies of such international organizations as the World Bank (which tends to encourage more differentiated developments). RESEARCH ISSUES 22 The sorts of studies noted above tend to be extremely convincing in showing that nation-state forms, in many specific areas, reflect world models, change along with these models, and change in similar directions despite obvious international diversities in local culture and resources. There is a decreasing tendency to question the power of such effects. The empirical studies have been less successful, however, in isolating the particular world structures, and the particular mechanisms, involved in the effects in question. We can show clearly, for instance, that national educational systems have tended to develop and change in isomorphic ways, and that this process intensified after World War II. It is harder to show exactly which factors and processes are involved: (1) The hegemony of the general liberal model of the nation-state in such arrangements as the UN-System, which rendered the actors so created susceptible to preferred nation-state models; (2) The hegemony of the specific educational arrangements particular to this model; (3) The specific doctrines and activities associated with the main international organizations; (4) Generalized American hegemony in the world; (5) The rise of high professionalized and scientized consensus on the virtues of education and of particular educational models; and so on. Future research can usefully investigate such questions, by measuring more carefully the particular links of countries to particular parts of world society, by mapping the structure of this society more precisely in particular domains, and by incorporating longer time periods in research designs so as better to capture multiple changes in world society itself as independent variation. 23 Studies that find substantial variation in the direction of world influence over time, and consequent variations in structural change in particular countries, are especially useful. Examples include Frank's (1992) observation of change in world environmental emphasis toward more generalized ecological models, Barrett's (1992) findings of similar change in the population area from eugenics models to national development ones, and Berkovitch's (1993) discussion of shifts in world discourse about women's rights from corporatist to more liberal models. In all these cases, World War II seems to have been an important break point. Future research might well discover that 1989 presaged a similar break point: for instance, with the end of the Cold War and the ideological contest involved, the rapid world creation of new generalized human rights (e.g., for women, children, the aged, the handicapped, racial and ethnic minorities: Ramirez and Meyer 1992) may be expected to decline. Other directions for future work include more careful analyses of the flow of practices, in comparison to policies. Effective studies of the flows of structures around the world require data on many countries over time (as well as on the system itself, as discussed immediately above). This means that much of the research reviewed above employs (1) rather superficial data on each case, such as the presence of a few rules or structures, and (2) data that cover policies rather than the real penetration of changed practice. Obviously, world cultural effects can be especially strong on symbolic policies that can easily be brought into line with exogenous standards of rational organization -- equally obviously, a great deal of decoupling is likely to be involved, so that policies and practices are inconsistent (Meyer and Rowan 1977; DiMaggio 24 and Powell 1983; Weick 1976; Orton and Weick 1990). A system in which national communities are principally imagined or theorized is likely to create decoupled inconsistency with practice as a stable outcome. In some areas -- education is conspicuous here -- studies can examine effects on patterns of actual enrollment, and thus practice as well as policy. In other areas (e.g., science policy structures, some types of human rights) it seems likely that ritualized policy or structural change is the main outcome. In most areas, we need analyses with data on a wider array of practice-related dependent variables. There is no reason, however, to suppose that the processes involved function only in a top-down hierarchical way, with states ritualistically adopting exogenous policies and structures and with only occasional implementation. It is clear that world pressures affect not only nation-state centers, but also social groups in national society. Interest groups, organizations, professions, and social movements within nation-states tend to be highly sensitive to legitimating changes in the exogenous world polity: empowered by such changes, they more easily mobilize to create not only policy change but practical adaptation as well. Local groups, for instance, use evolving world environmental ideology to mobilize against their own systems and to demand changes; and so do local groups concerned with the expanded rights of women or ethnic minorities or citizens in general. In the same way, historically, professional educators within a country use world-legitimated policies as the basis for claiming the need for change and expansion in the domestic educational system. World changes, in other words, change the internal structure of the nation-state actor, empowering some forces and weakening 25 others. Thus simple proposals that world polity arrangements produce only rhetorical national change are likely to be naive. Empirical research -- ideally with more detailed dependent variables -- is needed to discuss the conditions under which this is more or less true. THE RESULTANT FRAGMENTED NATION-STATE Nation-state 'actors' operating in the current world polity thick with rationalized Otherhood tend to take on somewhat changed forms. An older nation-state form, built around more autonomous sovereignty, often generated the simple limited bureaucratic state organized around international competition. The little-controlled flood of cultural Others, operating at the world level in an expanded and fragmented way, changes the organizational situation. Nation-states come under pressure to assume expanded responsibilities for the widest array of social domains. These pressures are little integrated with each other, and penetrate the nation-state in different ways (e.g., through different structures in both state and society). World educational arrangements come in through one set of channels and strike one set of state and society structures: world economic ideologies come in differently and impact. The one thing all the pressures of world Otherhood tend to produce in common is demand that the nation-state expand its responisibilities as actor. Thus nation-states, even in the periphery, have tended to expand very rapidly in the current period. But this expansion has not been 26 characterized by tight bureaucratic integration -- rather, it has been characterized by organizational fragmentation (Meyer and Scott 1983; 1992; contrast the first and last parts of Skocpol 1985), with components of the state responding to fragmented exogenous pressures and standards. All this occurs under the continuing myth of nation-state sovereignty and responsibility, claimed by both states and by the Others of world society. Everyone agrees that nation-states are the core actors, and should carry the burden of the world-defined responsibilities. It is the argument here that the consensus on this myth may make the myth exceptionally untrue. Actors so structured in a dense world of fragmented exogenous consultants and advisors may be fairly rational. But they are by no means really actors. They are enactors of multiple dramas whose texts are written elsewhere. Thus the modern world situation produces systematic changes in the contemporary nation-state -- sprawling, weakly integrated, expanded organizational forms. The results are strikingly clear in Europe -- the area in which nation-states are most strongly impacted by an exogenous fragmented rationalizing polity. CONCLUSION Modern nation-states are constituted and constructed as ultimately similar actors under exogenous universalistic and rationalized cultural models. This produces a good deal of isomorphism and isomorphic change among them, and high rates of diffusion between them and between centers of world 27 discourse and particular nation-states. In a wide range of social sectors, nation-state change is driven by opportunities and pressures from, and changes in, these exogenous models. The rapid development and change in the models involvedis produced by the enormous expansion in world-level social roles played by Others rather than actors, itself reflecting the fundamental structure of a system with a stateless center but strongly legitimated nation-state actors, all rationalized in a common frame. Arguments along these lines may be especially relevant to the interpretation of the modern stateless world system. They add appreciably to other lines of argument about the modern world system: centrist or leftist models of the differentiated world economy, functional models of national societies, or political models of raw interstate competition under conditions of anarchy. These other lines of argument are better at explaining differentiation than structural similarity and isomorphic change among nation-states. They have trouble explaining, for instance, why the world's educational systems might show such drive to similarity. Institutional models, in the present world context, are especially valuable for this purpose. It is important to emphasize the special, and tendentious, use of the concept of culture in the present argument. In modern social science usage, and in modern rationalistic culture, the term 'culture' tends to be reserved for the primordial, the expressive, and the particular -- in short, for all those things that are not the core rules of modern rationality. This pattern reflects a fundamental myths of the modern 28 system -- the beliefs that its structures and systems and 'actors' and transactions are real entities that have transcended embeddedness and culture (Meyer 1988). In the present argument, precisely this set of myths is the grounding culture of the modern system. 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