Political Fragmentation Quotes

Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?

The principle [secession] itself is one of disintegration, and upon which no government can possibly endure

The challenge of Mosul and Nineveh is the considerable number of ethnic groups, religious sects, tribes, and other elements that make up the province.

Canada is divided by great mountains, great prairies, Great Lakes, and eleven governments that really grate.

We need to understand that we've divided our country in language based states. So what happens is that more regional parties come in the front and different opinions don't let any one particular strong decision to pass through.

13 years after Indonesia began devolving power from the federal government to hundreds of sub provincial units, the link between local and national political interests have become extremely tenuous… although locally elected politicians may be delivering things that people want in their own back yards, they are not, collectively meeting the nation’s needs.

Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of sovereignty.

It would certainly be for the good of mankind to have all the mighty empires and monarchies of the world cantoned out into petty states and principalities.

This system of splitting up into spheres of influence a country which, while nominally a unit, represents as a matter of fact different political and administrative entities, is not one that can be recommended. More especially is this the case where, as in Morocco, it was done without consultation with the ruler or the people of the country, and introduces frontiers that only to a very small extent are based upon natural or physical features--frontiers that pass through unexplored and unknown districts.

The most active people in the country know different things, and because each one tends to hear mostly and deal mostly with people with whom they agree, they are reinforced not simply in the conviction that they are right, which is totally appropriate, but that they are the majority. So you have both sides, the Left and the Right, thinking that the majority of the country is really with them.

Each secession destroys the unity of a nation.

Pakistan is not a unified country. In large parts of the country, the state is regarded as a Punjabi state, not their (the people's) state.

Increasingly, “left” and “right” don’t just describe divergent political judgments but also sealed-off understandings of what is true and how we know it.

Voters who are neither bound to the great political nor to any of the little sectarian divisions have no means of making their votes available.

Dear God, in mercy and grace, prevent the Senate from being like Humpty Dumpty. Keep it from being so fractured and fragmented that no one will ever be able to put it together again.

We have seen a major decomposition of French political life, of the old political mainstream parties, and what we see now is a real new configuration which is emerging between the patriots and the new liberals.

The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered.

A geographical division... is a most fatal of all divisions, as no authority will submit to be governed by a majority acting merely on a geographical principle.

While anti-immigrant and anti-E.U. parties across Europe may not take power anywhere in 2017, theirs is now a permanent and growing presence, leeching away support from centrist parties left and right.

No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.

[Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.

Dogmatic ideological parties tend to splinter the political and social fabric of a nation.

In the space of just 18 months from 1999 to 2001, one of the world’s most centralized nations [Indonesia] burst apart to become one of its most decentralized.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

If not met promptly and decidedly, the two portions of the Union will gradually become thoroughly alienated, when no alternative will be left to us, as the weaker of the two, but to sever all political ties or sink down into abject submission.