If Yes/No does the concept of survival of the fittest in political arena correlate with nationalism, ethnic conflict regulation, democracy, politics of national self-determination, and its affiliation towards democracy, conflict and peace studies, comparative political analysis, and political economy. If Yes/No why?
Liviu Damsa Answering this question depends on the status quo and the prevalent circumstances happening. In my point of view, the concept of survival of the fittest cannot be link to the concept of nationalism, ethnic conflict regulation, democracy, politics of national self-determination, and its affiliation towards democracy, conflict and peace studies, comparative political analysis, and political economy. This concept highlights different perspective in relation to how people react in politics. In other words, with the movement of positive nationalism ethnic conflict might not be likely to occur as the concept prioritize the interest of the state which can lead to good democracy, politics of national self-determination, as well as its correlation towards democracy, conflict and peace studies.
It certainly depends on these. Personally, I see the combination of ‘survival’ & ‘fittest’ eventually (and at most) as perhaps a useful starting point from an evolutionary, biological perspective. In more recent writings about evolution, I see that obviously, from an evolution perspective, nature does not care much what we do after a certain age to kill ourselves (e.g. overeating, indulging in over consumption in general, etc), or that it did not select the genes that would allow us to leave longer. But human constructs such as politics are our constructs, far cry from the natural world (even if there might be some similarities we haven’t discovered yet). I am not sure if I correctly remember this, but I think evolutionary ideas and the analogy of the ‘social’ with the natural world went somehow ‘hand in hand’ in the long 19th century. Otherwise, i am unsure that i grasped the idea of the prioritization of state interest in the last sentence.
Adama M. Kolley well, Liviu got a point, although the view is very much multidisciplinary natural science driven in part of the reply. I'm no expert in politics, but as far as I'm concerned, the topic of state may prove to be very obsolete if you add survival of the fittest into the equation more so coalesced in context with nationalism (which in itself has become very vague) and ethnicity. in this regard, I believe the consequence is to also add the lifespan of cultures to make it at least timely tangible.
If you define nationalism in sense that of nation-state theorist, it becomes more irrelevant into the discussion. again, this is just my opinion, BUT if we take into account multi-ethnic, multi-national states like China, the US, India (perhaps), Indonesia, then yes, survival of the fittest does have its very pronounced position. Only then we could critically analyze 'the onion' of groups within the country a quo. in such arena, one culture will somehow thrive better over the other.
Why? well, one answer is the question of complicity. Will the minority comply with the majority's discourse? who rule the state? modernity tends to discourage indigenousness from the equation. factors that may contribute are diasporas and of course, power play.
Marco Lumentah arco Lumentah I understood your point. However, sometimes in politics it might be possible to have survival of the fittest. in other words, what I mean in this context is, if a political party is more influential and possess all the tools and mechanism, they tend to corrupt the system either in a form of clientelism and so on.
