Individual and Collective Identity and Nation-Building

Extract

Professor Lucian W. Pye succeeds brilliantly in Politics, Personality, and Nation Building in explaining why at least one country, Burma, has encountered some of the difficulties it has in creating an effective, modern state system. Proclaiming at the start of his study the need for a doctrine of democratic development, Pye deals primarily with the related search for individual and collective identity by a people unprepared in many of their sentiments and attitudes for the tasks that now weigh so heavily upon their shoulders. The most revealing section of his book, that dealing with the attitudes of various members of Burma's political elite on such matters as power and action and the nature of Burmese politics, is based mainly on 79 interviews (34 with administrative officials, 27 with politicians, and 18 with “observers and critics of the political scene such as journalists, educators and businessmen”). Disguised sketches of some of the persons interviewed follow Pye's analysis of the views of these Burmese.