Enthusiasm For The Importation Of Ethnic Bloc-Voters May Easily Arise From Depraved Power-Greed

From my comment here: The Audacious Epigone
"If ethnic nationalism is on the rise, so is the premium on ethnic homogeneity"
The rise of democracy is what drove the breakup of the polyglot empires. Insofar as one empire was resistant to losing land, it was also among the most resistant to democratization. Examples are the USSR, Spain and Portugal. The [proximate] reason for this is ethnic bloc voting; democracy then becomes the equivalent of taking a census more frequently. Scholars and officials may congratulate themselves on how cosmopolitan they are, even to the point of extravagantly ignoring or slighting the lethal effect of ethnic bloc voting on the polyglot polity, but they do not do so honestly and wisely. What is more likely is that they know all this very well, and only wish to have excuses for establishment of absolute dictatorship, once they have enough immigrants to make democracy a dysfunctional ethnic bloc-voting exercise in redundant census-taking.
Beyond that, is the bedrock national question of the minimum loyalty of citizens to each other, over against the foreigner, who arrives with some degree of aggression, than which the nation cannot mean less. Can this very minimum of national loyalty obtain in a polyglot polity, where the fellow subjects do not speak the same language, or not nearly enough to trust each other to have this indispensable loyalty? Although it is not actually impossible, it is so unlikely that, by now, the significantly polyglot polities are either wretchedly despotic, unable to extend their writ outwards from the capital, or moving towards both dysfunctions simultaneously. There are some mostly small exceptions, but the thrust of world-historical forces appears determined on tearing to pieces every last polyglot empire. It is not known to be other than human nature itself which drives this on.
Added 7-20-08 from: Monday, March 24, 2008

The Rise Of Democracy Is The Doom Of Polyglot Polities
For each notable increment of democratization, the polyglot polity is pushed closer to its breakup. It may be reversible, but that involves moving towards more and more despotic measures. The rise of nationalism is not the instigator, but the inheritor, of the nation-states which emerge from the wreckage of the polyglot polity which has been democratizing.The polyglot polities which resist fracturing longer than others, have done so only in proportion as they have resisted the intrusion of democratic procedures. Examples are the USSR, Yugoslavia, sundry African dictatorships, and, especially, the empires of Spain and Portugal, relative to similar recent empires which broke up faster.On March 8, 2008, I pointed to ethnic bloc voting as the chief means by which this break-up occurs, as follows:Enthusiasm For The Importation Of Ethnic Bloc-Voters May Easily Arise From Depraved Power-Greed ,and admitted to exceptions large and small. The main point that needs to be made clear, is that the power-greedy can know all of the above, and gladly seek further moves towards the polyglot polity, as through mass immigration. That is, the astute, yet unscrupulous, power-seekers may easily be for increase of diversity as above, not IN SPITE OF, but BECAUSE OF, its likely lethal effects on the polyglot polity. It allows for the disposal of democratic procedures, the closer you have the polyglot polity pushed to the edge of dissolution. A clue to the motivation being as described, is that pro-diversity and moves towards the more destabilizing polyglot polity conditions, are urged on nations, in proportion as they have been resistant to despotic rule. For this sort of motivation to drive the whole process on, it is not necessary for the correlations to be exceedingly high, as between democratization and the break-up of polyglot polities. The result need not be assured, to justify the gamble in the quest for power.
Posted by John S. Bolton