Introduction

In search of dignified, meaningful lives, members of transnational communities often prioritize their individual as well as collective well-being. With diverse interactions and engagements with other social groups, communities deploy formal and informal networks for multiple sociopolitical purposes and contexts, emphasizing social, political, and economic opportunities. Such a process then generates competition, as well as possible conflicts within the community and with others. Eventual adjustment therefore requires negoti-ating and balancing relationships according to existing societal vertical and horizontal dynamics.

Such a process operates within a situation in which different nations and societies pursue their own priorities and strategies. Nonetheless, such restricted national plans continuously transform within and around con-cerned societies. The globally renowned academic and public intellectual Francis Fukuyama once theorized nation-state development as an imitation/emulation process among different nations. Together with colleagues, the transnational American Japanese scholar recommends that the sooner struggling developing nations (particularly Africans) decide to move to a developmental situation and stage resembling, for instance, that of affluent Denmark, the better (Fukuyama, 2014: 25–26). Obviously, during the period of guest professorship (2009–2012) in the Danish city of Aarhus, Fukuyama fell in love with Denmark. In subsequent book publications and public speeches, reflecting on his seemingly unique Danish experiences, Fukuyama contends that state-society development processes are not just concerned about strength and demographics or whether a country has an abundance of natural resources and wealth.

Rather, he insists on the establishment and consolidation of effective, responsive, and trustworthy liberal political systems. Systems with reliable, functioning institutions are built on the oversight of the rule of law and the existence of checks and balances (Fukuyama, 2011). Such political institutions will then ensure committed leadership that, in return, governs often reliable and efficient bureaucracy and administration. Under such conditions, the point is that a balanced rule of law prevails, as well as the persistence of accountability in securing dynamically routinized and institutionalized state-society platforms.

Despite the necessity and probably unavoidability of state-society bureaucratization and professionalization in most societies, Weber, however, warns us from the development of “extensive secrecy” and “iron cage” (Weber, 2009), while Durkheim highlights the side-effects of linear systematic organization of the state and society in bringing risks of anomie among those who don't make it and even perpetual social malaise (Durkheim, 2013).