nationalism and identity in contemporary politics · nationalism has been and remains one of the...

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INTRODUCTION

Nationalism and Identity in Contemporary Politics

Issues of Democratic Shared and Self-rule

André LECOURS and Geneviève NOOTENS

Nationalism has been and remains one of the most powerful tools of mass mobilization in the contemporary world. Although it can be asso-ciated to some important processes of democratization and does not necessarily seem to be incompatible with cosmopolitanism (see amongst others Nielsen, 1999; Couture, 1999), nationalism is also sometimes used to sustain a more chauvinistic and exclusivist type of politics, to mobilize people against perceived enemies and dangers (Petersen, 2002). The optimistic trend that saw globalization and the opening of borders as an irreversible and irresistible movement towards an “open” world is currently confronted by, for example, Russia’s inward turn as well as by an American nationalism (Lieven, 2004) that seems fiercer than ever and domestically successful in sustaining international unilat-eralism. Whether explicitly or implicitly (that is, when concealed under the label of “patriotism”), nationalism still hits the mark when it comes to mobilizing people. Even in its most “civic” versions, it is a two-faced phenomenon. On the one hand, nationalism contributed to democratiza-tion (at least in Western Europe), both socially and politically. The nation allowed people to represent themselves as part of one horizon-tally equal space, a community ridden of the privileges of ranks and estates characteristic of feudal society. Also, it was through the idea of the nation that popular sovereignty (so closely associated with democ-ratic self-rule) was conferred upon the people. But nationalism also concealed significant inequalities, whether domestic (class or gender) or international (wealthy/underdeveloped “nations”). The mobilizing ca-pacities of nationalism build mainly on socialization processes that develop the feeling of identification with co-nationals and the sense of a common fate (Habermas, 1996; Anderson, 1983; Handler, 1994; Tilly, 2004). As such, it has involved both elites (for example, trying to con-solidate a conservative social order in mid-19th century Europe) and the masses (in processes of contention and democratization).

Dominant Nationalism, Dominant Ethnicity

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Nation-building was central to processes of state consolidation that often went hand in hand with the assimilation of national minorities (see Conversi, in this book). Indeed, the consolidation of modern states operated partly through the building of a common public culture often closely associated with dominant groups and the denial of the legiti-macy of minority nations’ claims to self-government. Socialization processes, together, in some cases, with more coercive policies, were developed and used to sustain the allegiance to a common, overarching (and overriding) identity more or less close to the dominant group’s view of the country. Of course, processes of state consolidation were not everywhere identical; some were more coercive than others. In every case, however, they included the creation and promo-tion/imposition of an overarching “national” identity. What may be referred to as “dominant nationalism”, hence, was historically con-structed in many different ways that often, although not always, pro-ceeded from the political purpose and power of a dominant ethnic group. For example, state-run education systems with compulsory attendance were central to the construction of nations in Europe as they created a common “high culture” and socialized youths to norms that were meant to be common. More broadly, political structures such as executives, parliaments and the bureaucracy worked to provide a single center to societies that previously had many. The army played a similar role, and international conflicts served to congeal and foster national solidarity (see Erk, in this book). All these institutions typically sought to impose the language, culture, norms and identity of the dominant (ethnic) group, and to craft a new sense of history that fitted the vision and memory of this same group. Indeed, the production of symbols and narratives so central to nation-building is seldom a process completely disconnected from previous myths and stories, especially because the history of the dominant ethnic group typically provides the necessary resources for animating the national project. This nation-building through institutions that reflect a specific group and serve to diffuse its culture and identity has been the central process in the construction of dominant nationalisms in European countries and, later, in the former European colonies.

One of the most interesting peculiarities of nationalism (in addition to its huge power of collective mobilization) is the fact that, although states have claimed international legitimacy on the grounds that they embody a nation, they have also denied that they themselves articulate a nationalism, by pretending to be a neutral locus of relationships between citizens. In this respect, states have contrasted their “patriotism” with the “nationalism” of minorities. Hence, liberal democracies have long pretended to be neutral from an ethnocultural point of view while


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minority groups were required to assimilate in the course of democrati-zation and modernization. This shows a clear double standard.

As we suggested elsewhere, the study of the nationalism promoted by the state (and often colored by the majority group) still requires much theoretical refinement and empirical work (Lecours and Nootens, 2007). This is not to say that the study of this phenomenon proceeds in a theoretical and empirical vacuum. Significant contributions by Greenfeld (2001), Canovan (1996) and Tamir (1993) have stressed the close interweaving between, on the one hand, nationalism and, on the other hand, modern political theory, including liberalism. These works have made clear, among other things, that the background of liberal representative democracy is the representation of the people as a nation headed by a state of its own. Modernist and ethnoculturalist analyses of nationalism have also shed light on significant aspects of this relation-ship between nationalism and the state.1 Modernists closely (and rightly) associate the nation to state-building processes (see e.g. Deutsch, 1966;

Gellner, 1983), hence making clear that states could consolidate partly because of the social, cultural and ideological appeal of the idea of the

nation. However, modernists analyse the national state primarily as a historical force specific to a particular era, rather than as a locus of institutions that continues to play a significant role in the imposition of a dominant nationalism both to minority nations and immigrant com-munities. Ethnoculturalists, for their part, rightly insist on the persistent presence of an ethnic core that acts upon state and public policies, thus contributing to unveil the myth of the state as ethnoculturally neutral (Smith, 1986). Yet, their work does not sufficiently take into account what has been called, in another era and from another ideological point of view, the “relative autonomy” of the state. For example, ethnocul-turalists can hardly explain state nationalisms that build on bi- or multi-cultural grounds, for example by incorporating multiculturalism as a public policy characteristic of the national identity, as the Canadian state has done.

While the notion of state nationalism featured by classic modernist work tends to obfuscate the power relations between cultural/ethnic groups (to the benefit of a functionalist logic of the state and nation formation/consolidation), the ethnoculturalist literature does not allow for sufficient flexibility in the analysis of the phenomenon, neglecting fundamental political processes that shape state-building and consolidat-ing. We argue that state nationalism should be understood as dominant

1 We have stressed the contribution of modernist and ethnoculturalist literatures to the

analysis of state nationalism in our introduction to Les nationalismes majoritaires contemporains (Montréal, Québec Amérique, 2007).


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nationalism since, as Kaufmann argues, dominant nationalism tends to reflect the perspective of the nation which forms a majority in the state.2 Indeed, the understanding of the nationalism stemming from the state as dominant nationalism better reflects contemporary power relationships that underpin the nation-building/consolidating efforts put forth by the central state in order to give citizens a common identity. Dominant nation-alism can take many forms and is best viewed as resting on a continuum where one end corresponds to forms of nationalism guided by civic principles (although these can still be very coercive towards minorities) while the other end reflects a greater penetration of dominant national-ism by ethnicity and culture (see Bertrand, in this book). Dominant nation-alism can therefore proceed through civic dimensions, when the crafting of an overarching identity is undertaken with few ties to the ethnicity, culture and history of any group. Most often, however, dominant na-tionalism exhibits significant ethnic and cultural dimensions, even if mixed in with civic principles. This is the result of processes of nation-building/consolidating put forth by the central state and often spear-headed by a specific ethnocultural group that either controls the state or exercises considerable influence within its institutions. Dominant nationalism, therefore, frequently entails either the transfer of the largest ethnic group’s cultural characteristics or of its elites’ vision of the over-arching identity to the nation projected by the state. Indeed, according to Kaufmann, most state nationalisms are actually controlled by members of the dominant ethnic group, although dominant ethnicity (the phe-nomenon whereby a particular ethnic group exercises dominance within a nation) does not necessarily mean dominant nationalism.3 Of course, 2 Kaufmann stresses that dominant nationalism is often the same as majority state

nationalism, which he understands as being the nationalism that takes the political institutions and the territory of the entire state as its referent and that views the nation through the lens of the majority of the population (Kaufmann, in this book).

3 Kaufmann defines ethnic groups as communities of shared ancestry (real or imag-ined), and nations as “uneasy hybrids of elements from ethnies and the modern state” (Kaufmann, in this book). According to him, there is no automatic relation between dominant ethnicity and dominant nationalism, since it is possible that dominant eth-nic elites may invest their political energy in an inclusive state nationalism. Hence, his own typology cannot be read as excluding Bertrand’s typology, which allows for three forms of state nationalism, namely: a majority nationalism where a majority ethnic group is defined as the core group and the nation is primarily defined in terms of the character of this group; a civic form of nationalism adopted by the state and where rulers promote political values and loyalty to the state without emphasizing a majority group; and the promotion of a state nationalism associated with the creation of a new, overriding identity, this new identity being hailed as the basis of the new nation (Bertrand, in this book). According to Kaufmann, however, since the connec-tion between the myths and memories of the dominant ethnie and “its” nation is typi-cally robust, most state nationalisms are controlled by members of the dominant eth-nic group (Kaufmann, in this book).


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the influence of dominant ethnicity on dominant nationalism can wax and wane. Early Canadian nationalism, for example, was strongly penetrated by its White Anglo-Saxon Protestant core but underwent transformations in the 1960s onward, as the Canadian identity was reconstituted and re-presented as bilingual and bicultural (and later, as multicultural, in what has been seen by many Québécois as an attempt to drown the specific place of Quebec in the federation). Dominant nationalism can therefore be built on a combination of cultural charac-teristics from two or more groups, and it can express an identity that goes beyond the simple reflection of dominant ethno-cultural features. This being said, dominant ethnicity nonetheless remains a frequent and significant component of nationalism at the state level.

An emerging literature analyses nationalism and ethnicity “from above” (Gagnon, Lecours and Nootens, 2007; Kaufmann, 2004a), thus contributing to a better understanding of such phenomena. It shows how, and why, one can speak of a contemporary American, Spanish, Chinese, Canadian or Pakistani (for example) nationalism by focusing on how the state and/or a majority group interacts with minorities. Some have analyzed the forms taken by these nationalisms (Jaffrelot, 2002; Resina, 2002; Lieven, 2004; Gries, 2005). It also explains how behind the construction, and contemporary expression, of the nations promoted by states there are often “ethnic cores” whose influence shapes the trajectory of politics (Smith, 1986; Kaufmann, 2004b). The papers in this book represent significant contributions to this literature.

Nationalism and Ethnicity: The View from Above Nationalism and ethnicity have long been associated with minority

populations. However, approaching nationalism as a phenomenon associated with minorities has not always been the focus of the litera-ture. The pioneers of nationalism studies were foremost interested in the nationalism of states, especially as they manifested themselves through international wars (Kohn, 1944). As we said earlier, the great modernist works (Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1992) focused on how states formed nations. From such a perspective, however, the assumed completion of nation-building ended “state nationalism”: once the congruence between state and nation was achieved, any meaningful connection between state and nationalism is presumed to come to an end. There are two problems with this reasoning. First, in many cases, the process of nation-building was not successfully “completed”, even in advanced industrialized societies (Keating, 1996; Lecours, 2007). In this context, and staying within the modernist logic, the state would keep working towards the complete integration of all its citizens into one national framework. Second, even if such complete integration


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occurred, the state would still need to consolidate, preserve and foster the overarching identity. Thinking otherwise would mean taking the nation and national identity as “givens”, a position that no serious scholar of nationalism could defend (Eller and Coughlan, 1993).

Studies on ethnicity have a dual origin, both of which strongly root the phenomenon in minority positions. The first is the process of de-colonization in Africa and Asia of the 1950s and 1960s, which for the scholars of this era raised the issue of the feasibility of “political inte-gration”, that is, of state and nation-building in the context of “primor-dial” ethnic ties (Geertz, 1963). From this perspective, ethnicity is concep-tualized in opposition to majority and universalist references. It is seen as an exclusive, narrow, backward and even dangerous form of social solidarity that needs to be destroyed or superseded by “civic” ties. The second origin of studies on ethnicity lies in the social agitation that corresponded to the Civil Rights movements in the United States. The focus, here again, is on a minority population challenging an existing political order, thereby producing a situation requiring adjustments and regulation on the part of the majority group and of the state. The litera-ture on ethnicity covers a lot of ground but the emphasis is almost invariably on minority groups (Guibernau and Rex, 1997). Studying nationalism and ethnicity from the perspective of the state and/or a dominant group remains, in many cases, a non-option. The notion of “French nationalism”, for example, has virtually no meaning as a socio-political phenomenon; it is mainly used as a shorthand for the extreme-right politics of the Front National. Still, in the French context the notion of ethnicity refers unavoidably to immigrant populations; to link ethnicity to the “native” French would come across as absurd. Such an obfuscation of the presence of dominant nationalism and ethnicity reveals some fundamental assumptions about politics, especially when it comes to industrialized liberal-democracies: nationalism and ethnicity are, almost by definition, the work of minorities. This being said, ac-cepting that nationalism and ethnicity play a pervasive and enduring (although variable) role in the state’s relationship with the dominant group raises significant issues related to federalism (both as an ideal and as a conflict management approach) and to democratic self-rule. Al-though the promoting of an identity spearheaded by a dominant group can be mitigated by a constitutional division of power, federal states are not immune to phenomena of dominant ethnicity and nationalism. This has important implications for democratic self-rule, including the fed-eral ideal of self- and shared rule. At the same time, democracy can also affect dominant nationalism. For example, Bertrand argues that democ-ratization can create strong pressures that counter state nationalism, since when states are bound by democratic institutions, the means of repression available are more limited and the space for contestation


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much greater (see Bertrand, in this book).

Federalism and Nationalism The management of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and/or religious di-

versity has long been hailed as a foremost virtue of federalism (Elazar, 1994). According to Burgess, multinational federations

cannot afford to allow their multiple identities and multiple allegiances – their distinct federalisms – to fragment and polarise around narrow, visceral, cultural-ideological loyalties whose effect would be fissiparous. This would create enormous constitutional and political instability and could even result in the break-up of federations via secession. Instead, as essentially political communities, these federations have been compelled to ensure that claims of citizenship are fundamentally compatible with other sub-state loyalties, be they religious, linguistic, nationalist or territorial (Burgess, 2006: 103).

In multinational federations, the presumption was that the historical processes of state-building and national integration would foster and cultivate loyalties that would lead eventually to a new identity formation, namely, the national state. The key question was whether the new (artificial) national identity would evolve alongside those national identities that already existed at the formation of the federation or whether it would effectively suffocate and ultimately assimilate them via a combination of malicious indifference, willful neglect or genuine absent-mindedness. Fur-thermore, in circumstances in which a national majority successfully – even if subconsciously – equated itself with the overarching federal political na-tionality, the effect would be to displace and marginalise distinct minority nationalisms (Burgess, 2006: 104).

The logic behind federalism as a conflict management approach is that conflicts in multiethnic and multinational states can be avoided, or at least lessened, by devolving power over language, culture, and other fields such as education that traditionally create tensions between the various communities. Typically, when federalism is used for this pur-pose there are one or several ethnic or national groups that are minori-ties within a state but majorities inside federated units. In these coun-tries, sensitive policy areas are made the prerogative of these units so that minority groups can decide on them for themselves rather than struggle with the majority group and therefore strain inter-group rela-tionships. In some cases, federalism is presented by the minority group as an essential condition for political union because it views autonomy as a safeguard against cultural domination and assimilation. This was the case in Canada, where French-Canadian leaders pushed for federal-ism while John A. Macdonald and other English-Canadian elites pre-


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ferred the model of the unitary state. Switzerland is, along with Canada, a good illustration of the use of federalism for the purpose of managing ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. Swiss federalism presents a framework of autonomy for four language groups (German, French, Italian, and Romansch) and two religions (Protestantism and Catholi-cism). Swiss federalism is often hailed as the key ingredient for the peaceful coexistence of these various groups and the presence of a strong Swiss national identity, although it must be said that there are other aspects of the Swiss political system (the use of referenda, politi-cal neutrality, the collegial executive) that contribute to this unique outcome (Linder, 1994).

Not all scholars are convinced of the usefulness of federalism as a management device for multiethnic and multinational societies (see the discussions in Simeon and Conway, 1998, and O’Leary, 2004). Skepti-cism tends to come from the idea that autonomous political institutions tend to crystallize ethnic and national identities, and offer resources to sub-state leaders to spearhead nationalist mobilization (Nagel, 1986; Roeder, 1991). This argument has solid theoretical grounding in litera-tures that demonstrate the identity-generating and mobilization effect of autonomous political institutions resulting from the political dynamics of a distinct political class; the production of distinct symbols, myths and narratives; the confrontational aspects of intergovernmental rela-tions deriving from power struggles and zero-sum competition over resources, etc.(Brass, 1991; Lecours, 2000). Taken to its limit, the skeptical position on federalism in multiethnic and multinational con-texts views it as setting countries on the “slippery slope to secession”. However, as Burgess argues, “if federation does not guarantee success, it is hard to see any form of successful accommodation of multiple nations within a single state that does not include some form of federal arrangement” (Burgess, 2006: 131).

Nationalism and Identity: Does Federalism Matter? The broader question of whether or not federalism matters was

raised most famously by William Riker nearly forty years ago (1969). It has been re-examined several times since then (for a recent discussion, see Erk, 2006), and it is still a matter of debate. A difficulty in tackling this issue is that there might not be a blanket answer to the question “Does federalism matter?” for at least two reasons. The first is that federalism might impact some aspects of politics and society but not others. The impact of federalism might be different if assessed with regards to public policy (Béland and Lecours, 2008), representation and democracy (Gibson, 2004), or territory and identity (Amoretti and Bermeo, 2004).


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Second, even if we narrow the question to our present concern, na-tionalism, assessing the impact of federalism is a difficult task because it comes in many different forms. Here, it is useful to make a distinction between federalism and federation (Watts, 1999). Federalism is a principle of government whose crux is the idea of combining self-rule and shared rule.4 Through federalism, different political units can live together yet apart since they share a government while at the same time having their own. From this perspective, federalism attempts to maintain the delicate balance between the federal government’s tendency to favor centralization and the will of the units to preserve and/or expand their own powers. Federation is a more descriptive concept referring to types of political system, more specifically, to the way territory is structured politically. In this context, federation is a state where two or more levels of government are sovereign (autonomous) within their own given jurisdiction as specified in a constitution.

This distinction has important implications for understanding how federal contexts shape politics. Some countries have formal federal structures, but are only weakly permeated by federalism as a principle of government; in other words, the state may be federal but the society is not (Erk, 2004). In these cases, socio-political processes are mediated by the political institutions of federalism. In other federal countries such as India or Switzerland, federalism is present not only in institutional terms but also as an idea; in other words, the state and the societies are federal. We can also think of situations where the idea of federalism may be more developed, at least amongst some segments of the popula-tion or the political elites, than the institutional framework. The Euro-pean Union arguably fits this description. Finally, federal political institutions and federalism as an idea can be found in states that do not explicitly call themselves federations. Spain, for example, is not for-mally a federation but clearly finds inspiration in the principles of federalism, as its constitution specifies the existence of seventeen “Autonomous Communities” including three “historical nationalities” (Moreno, 2001). Moreover, Spain features federal institutions since the Autonomous Communities are constitutionally-endowed with self-government and their own powers as specified in quasi-constitutional documents, the Statutes of Autonomy.

There is probably not a single answer to the question of whether fed-eralism can help in securing stability and democracy in multiethnic and multinational countries. Federalism as a set of institutions comes in many different forms with respect to the division of powers; the repre-

4 This is why the issue of federalism also has normative import. We will come back on

this later.


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sentation of federated units in central institutions; the structure of intergovernmental relations, etc. (Kincaid and Tarr, 2005). Moreover, federalism as an idea may be understood in very different ways across countries and even within a particular federal system. Another potential influence on the consequences of federalism for the political dynamics of multiethnic and multinational societies is the structure of majority-minority arrangements, although the exact causation remains a matter for debate. Hale, for example, has found that federal states “are more likely to collapse when they contain a core ethnic region-a single ethnic federal region that enjoys dramatic superiority in population” (2004: 166). McGarry and O’Leary, for their part, have argued that the presence of a Staatsvolk, a dominant ethnic core, makes a multinational federal state more stable because members of this Staatsvolk “can feel secure – and live with the concessions attached to multi-national federation, and ceteris paribus, has the demographic strength and resources to resist secessionism by minority nationalities” (2007: 198).

Nationalism, Federalism, and Democratic Self-Rule As federalism does not merely come down to institutional clusters,

its ideational dimension is very important for understanding how it can shape phenomena of dominant nationalism and dominant ethnicity. Indeed, as an idea, federalism is normatively loaded with notions of self-rule and shared rule. This means that the way federations are organ-ized, and the consequences of this organization on the management of multinational and multiethnic societies, can be normatively assessed relatively to those ideals. This seems to be a particularly significant (and touchy) issue when state and societies are federal; for even when federal systems embody some recognition of the idea that uniform representa-tion of citizens does not suffice to ensure self-rule, many problems still arise. For example, minorities that are not territorially concentrated are not necessarily represented as such in federal institutions. Even for territorially-concentrated minority nations, there is a constant risk of being in a minority for decisions that pertain to competences belonging to the federal government or defining the nature and workings of the country (Gibbins, 1990; Nootens, 2007). For example, in 1978, Basque nationalists considered the proposed Spanish constitution inadequate because it did not recognize the Basques a right to self-determination and advocated a “no” or abstention vote in the referendum on the docu-ment. As a consequence, the constitution of democratic Spain lacks legitimacy in the Basque Country.

A normative assessment of democratic governance in federal sys-tems would include examining how federations conform to the ideal of shared/self-rule and to democratic requirements, while acknowledging


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that constitutional arrangements are also highly contextual (since they also mirror power relationships between groups within the state). Burgess stresses that the normative import of federalism pertains to the issue of legitimacy. According to him, “the kernel of the conceptual and theoretical problem is how far questions of national identity, nation-hood, nationality, patriotism and the repercussions of national, ethnic or cultural belonging, as well as the feasibility of multiculturalism, are compatible with liberal political values” (Burgess, 2006: 104). Accord-ing to Burgess, then, liberal democracy is the underlying theoretical framework that connects notions of nations, nationhood and nationality to comparative federalism and federation (Burgess, 2006: 130). This may be true, but the issue of democratic self-rule may not come down solely to liberal democracy, precisely because liberal democratic states are not ethnoculturally neutral. Let us turn to this argument.

According to R. Bellamy and D. Castiglione, democracy can be de-fined as a political regime that allows and institutionalizes a real control on political power by the people (Bellamy and Castiglione, 2000: 70). Hence, democratic accountability requires sanction mechanisms5 (for example, being able to change government through elections), transpar-ency, and public spaces of deliberation where democratic will forms. It is also generally accepted that in a democracy, the people not only have the right to partake in the choice of government (through voting in elections) but also to run for office. Moreover, political equality stands as a basic principle of democracy. Hence,

Democracy has three main meanings that appeals to the democratic impera-tive frequently conflate. First and most obviously, democracy is a form of government characterized by institutions, rights and practices designed to give people a say in how their community’s political affairs are run. Second, and more loosely, democracy refers to the underlying values, notably free-dom and equality, that define it as a fair scheme of co-operation between formally equal people. Finally, democracy denotes a decision-making proc-ess, often identified with majority rule, that applies to groups irrespective of their scope and aims, and so extends beyond the political sphere narrowly conceived (Bellamy and Castiglione, 2000: 70).

In liberal democracies, legitimacy is closely related to three core ideas: consent, rights, and the sovereignty of the people. Consent and rights are at the heart of the conceptions of government developed by liberals such as Locke from the 17th century onward. Legitimate gov-ernment is based on the consent of the individuals, and any assessment of such legitimacy includes respect for fundamental rights such as religious freedom, freedom of consciousness, etc. But liberal democratic 5 On accountability, see e.g. Keohane and Nye, 2003.


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legitimacy is also closely related to the move from monarchy to regimes based on popular sovereignty as the source of political legitimacy; namely, the idea that the people rules. The “people”, however, has histori-cally and conceptually been associated to the nation: in modern doc-trines of popular sovereignty, the nation is the whole people acting as constituent power (Hont, 1994: 194; Nootens, 2007). As the nation came to be seen as the rightful holder of popular sovereignty, states benefited from “picturing” themselves as nations; generally, a dominant nationalism conveying an overarching identity has accompanied state consolidation. Very often, such dominant nationalism was concealed by the claim that the state is the locus of egalitarian relationships between citizens, and hence, neutral as to their ethnocultural characteristics (Dieckhoff, 2000; Kymlicka, 1989, 1995; Nootens, 2004; Lecours and Nootens, 2007).

It is this picture of the people as a national community headed by a state of its own that represents the background of liberal representative democracy. Liberal democracy is intertwined with institutions and practices conveying and diffusing a view of the overarching identity of citizens, an identity that makes them a people, whatever their other commitments. Some significant institutions of liberal (representative) democracy are grounded in the very assumption that everyone belongs indiscriminately to the demos, whereas the demos is in fact related to an overarching national identity which is dominant or even exclusive (Nootens, 2007). Amongst other things, liberal democracy assumes 1) that the “one person, one vote” principle provides for the expression of popular will, 2) that the same people will not always be in a minority, because people have various claims and interests and gather with vari-ous groups to defend those claims, according to circumstances, and 3) that belonging to a shared national community mitigates the impacts of majority mechanisms, since such belonging is presumed to unite people at a deeper level and to ensure solidarity even when some are in a minority. Those beliefs obviously collapse in the case of minority nations that challenge the representation of a common identity conveyed by state institutions. When there is a dominant majority culture, the “one person, one vote” principle will generally provide for the expres-sion of the majority’s will. On some matters, this may have benign or indifferent results; but when it comes to matters on which majority and minority nations within the state collide (namely, to differences related to the representation and claims of nations), it may lead to unfair results. In other words, the way in which federal regimes embody shared rule may deprive minority nations of having a say on significant decisions. And from the point of view of minority nations, the impact of majori-tarian mechanisms cannot be mitigated by the presence of a shared national identity overriding other allegiances. Moreover, as Tierney


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stresses, the dominant position of the majority national group has been crystallized both by the process of theoretical legitimation afforded by traditional liberalism and by the theory and practice of constitutionalism in democratic state. As he says, “as the largest national group, dominant nations have invariably been able to establish constitutions according to their own terms” (Tierney, in this book).

This is why the focus should not be merely on liberalism when it comes to federalism, but on a more general conception of democratic self-rule. In other words, the issue is not merely one of compatibility with liberal values; it is also one of democratic self-rule, and this is precisely where federalism comes in as a normative idea. In multina-tional states, federalism represents a way to ensure some degree of self-rule to minority nations that constitute a majority on a territory.6 As Tully demonstrates, this is not merely an issue of liberal political values: it is also an issue of grass-roots democratization and openness to plural-ity, of more democratic and pluralistic forms of federalism, and of self-rule (Tully, in this book).7

How does federalism affect the processes of identity-building and mobilization that constitute nationalism, both in its dominant and minor-ity forms? From a diversity management perspective, federalism is most often studied for its effect on minority groups. A less explored aspect of federalism is how it shapes the projection and promotion of the identity associated to the state and/or to a dominant group. As a principle of government, federalism welcomes diversity and, as an institutional framework, it divides power and shares sovereignty. As such, one of its foremost consequences is to allow for a multiplicity of identities to coexist. A constant component of this multiplicity is the expression of the state’s presence, which is sometimes a reflection, total or partial, of the dominant ethnic group. A federal state is typically in a less favorable position to promote its national community than a unitary state. This does not mean, however, that federal states are content to engage with the more technical aspects of government. On the contrary, through various public policies, fiscal powers, inter-governmental relations and symbolic outputs, federal states attempt to gain or strengthen the at-tachments of citizens to their national community.

Public policy is one of the most concrete manifestations of the rela-tionship between state and citizens. Through public policies, the state performs regulatory, redistributive and service-delivery functions that

6 The principle of personality has not been widely used in the contemporary era,

although it could be useful to manage relationships between nations that are not terri-torially concentrated and are very much intermingled.

7 For which nations are not the only candidates, of course.


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place it in direct relation with citizens. In addition to establishing this direct contact between state and society, public policies often come with a discourse about collective identities, values and interests that have nation-defining and nation-building effects. Even in the most decentral-ized federal states, the central government retains power over many different policy fields, which enables it to connect with citizens and deploy a discourse of national identity and solidarity.

Welfarism and social policies are a particularly potent force for strengthening the national community conceptualized by the state (Béland and Lecours, 2008). At the most basic level, the welfare state involves mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that allow it to build inter-subjective boundaries and to frame, in its own terms, the national community. Perhaps more importantly, its redistributive nature builds a substantive bond between citizens that state actors can depict as pro-found national ties. In a sense, the existence of social programs and concrete economic solidarity may help substantiate the existence of a community whose members typically do not have face-to-face relations. Independently of their degree of politicization, citizens are likely to share a basic understanding of social policy as involving the pooling of fiscal resources for the purpose of redistributing income and providing social protection. This “commonness” is what generates feelings of national solidarity because the status of participants in social programs frequently overlaps with that of national citizenry. A federal govern-ment struggling against powerful nationalist movements can choose to launch new social programs to gain, regain, or preserve the loyalty of a population being targeted by nationalist leaders seeking to increase political autonomy or achieve independence. In doing so, the welfare state not only generates a formal community of contributors and recipi-ents, frequently conceptualized in national terms, but it also makes subjective connections between the nation and certain sets of values.

In practical terms, federal governments can use their fiscal resources to set up new programs or launch new initiatives that promote the nation. Federal governments typically enjoy the bulk of the financial resources while governments of federated units are often responsible for programs that are very expensive to fund such as health care and educa-tion. In this context, federal governments are typically recognized, formally or informally, a power to spend money. This power can be used to circumvent the formal division of responsibilities in an effort to stimulate nation-building (Telford, 2003). Federal governments (with the exception of the United States) also use their financial resources to work on regional economic disparities through “equalization” or “soli-darity transfers”, another form of spending that can build up national solidarity (although it can also foster territorial conflicts).


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Financial and policy issues are the main reason why every federal system requires some form of inter-governmental relations. Even when powers are constitutionally-separated in a way that they do not overlap (which is fairly rare), the complexity of modern politics means that different levels of government need to interact for the purpose of coor-dination or, at a minimum, information-sharing. In certain circum-stances, intergovernmental relations can represent a process through which the federal government can push its agenda on the whole of the country, including launching nation-building initiatives. This is harder to do when intergovernmental contacts occur through central institu-tions where federated units are represented and have a strong bargaining position such as the United States or Germany. Federal governments have a better opportunity to promote their vision of the national identity and interests when intergovernmental relations take the form of punc-tual multilateral relations, especially in the absence of a common front of federated unit governments. In Canada during the late 1990s, for example, the federal government used multilateral networks of inter-governmental relations to engineer a “social union” that could improve its position in the design of social policy in the country as a way to strengthen national unity (Brodie, 2002), an initiative widely decried in Quebec (Gagnon and Segal, 2000; Fortin, Noël and St-Hilaire, 2003).

Finally, federalism shapes the way symbols are deployed and narra-tives developed for the purpose of nation-building or asserting ethnic dominance. The literature on the construction of the state in Europe has emphasized how it produced, through various socializing forces such as the army and education system, symbolic outputs (flags, anthems, stories, etc.) to build the nation. All these symbols were typically an-chored in the particular make-up and history of the dominant group as were the narratives and other identity-generating tools deployed by the newly independent states of the developing world. Nation-building through symbolic deployment does not stop when states are modern-ized, even liberal and democratic (Billig, 1995). That is especially the case when it has to contend with nationalist movements seeking in-creased autonomy or independence, or simply ethnic minorities who refuse to fully accept the state’s identity. The peculiarity of federal states is that their ability to diffuse symbols and stories about the nation can be circumscribed by the particular nature of the division of power. In this context, federal governments can and do use a variety of symbols to build, consolidate and promote its nation, and/or the culture and identity of the ethnic group they represent. However, in multiethnic and/or multinational contexts, these governments typically have to contend with different symbols or narratives that promote alternate nations or ethnic groups. The struggle between dominant and minority


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nationalism and ethnicity over the control and use of symbols is there-fore strongly conditioned by the structures of federalism.

An Overview of the Book This book looks to make a contribution to the study of nationalism

and ethnicity by elaborating on “the view from above”, that is, by examining how states deploy their own nationalism, which is often penetrated by the culture and traditions of a dominant group. The book considers two additional angles. First, it looks at how federalism, under-stood in the broadest terms as both a cluster of institutions and an idea, shapes nationalisms and the expression of ethnicity both at the sub-state and state level (and, in the case of James Tully’s piece, at the interna-tional level). Second, it considers the implications of dominant national-ism and ethnicity on democracy.

The book opens with some theoretical and historical perspectives on dominant nationalism and ethnicity.

In his paper, Eric Kaufmann stresses that current scholarship neglects the phenomenon whereby a particular ethnic group exercises dominance within a nation. Dominant ethnicity does not necessarily mean dominant nationalism but, Kaufmann argues, most state nationalisms are con-trolled by members of the dominant ethnic group. A key issue is how to square dominant ethnicity with the idea of a national identity. Kauf-mann argues that there are three basic elements to national identity: referents, symbolic resources, and lenses. The process of national imagination is an interaction between those basic elements. Dominant nationalism takes the entire state as its referent, and views the nation through the lenses of the majority of the population. As for normative considerations on dominant ethnicity and dominant nationalism, Kauf-mann distinguishes three models: liberal multiculturalism, liberal na-tionalism, and liberal ethnicity. While liberal multiculturalism confuses culture and identity (mistaking the culture with the community as the active agent), it is unclear how liberal nationalism can be squared with the recognition of ethnic minority rights without diluting the content of a national identity. Kaufmann hence favors the third model, liberal ethnicity, compatible with both nations and ethnic groups. Liberal ethnicity allows for a better balancing between needs for ethnocultural continuity and individual autonomy. One cannot but accept a measure of dominance. The issue is how to exercise it: dominance must be sufficient for the nation or ethnic group to maintain its collective mem-ory and boundary symbols over generations, but it must be exercized within strict liberal limits, and ethnic groups should be as inclusive as possible.


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Daniele Conversi builds on the theorizing of dominant ethnicity by looking at how the construction of the modern state involved the seizure of state power by ethnically dominant elites who imposed their culture, set of norms, and world views on the rest of society. The ensuing spiral of oppression and counter-resistance, Conversi argues, characterized the development of the modern state in both the West and the developing world. He suggests that its most dramatic long-term consequences have been the militarization and policing of entire societies as both elites and proto-elites have used war, violence and confrontational tactics while clamping down on internal dissent. Conversi brings together two schol-arly approaches, which have so far remained largely disjointed: the emerging literature on dominant ethnicity and the more established literature on state-building. Conversi looks at early modern Spain as a case where a dominant ethnic group attempted to impose its culture through a variety of violent means before coming back to an analysis of the relationship between culture and ethnicity in the context of the dynamic and subaltern groups.

Jan Erk’s piece moves us towards dominant nationalism as he looks at the interstate dimension in the construction of dominant state nation-alisms. He contrasts Germany and France, which have historically esta-blished a fair degree of internal unity around a shared notion of nation-hood, with the consociational democracies of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, where dominant state nationalism has been weak. Erk situates the difference in outcomes in the countries’ international posi-tioning. During the 19th century, when national identities were “under construction”, France and Germany were active players in European power politics. Expecting a major European war, Erk argues, these countries sought national unity as a way to bolster international strength. In this small continent with exposed national borders, a unitary national identity was seen to project external strength. For Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, he suggests, international neutrality – recognized and guaranteed by international law and the Great Powers – brought external security. Consequently, this provided a domestic environment conducive to compromise settlements creating internal diversity.

Stephen Tierney tackles dominant nationalism from the point of view of constitutionalism. He analyses how the dominant role of major-ity nations has been crystallized within the constitution of democratic states, an entrenchment that has been neglected by constitutional theory. The “statism” of traditional liberalism makes the demotic unity of the state a given, and hides the fact that “each state became the tool for the consolidation of the particularisms of the specific national culture of the dominant national society” (Tierney, in this book). He signals the


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emergence of a new theoretical school, particularly in political theory and philosophy, stressing that: 1) the foundations of liberal theorizing are either insufficiently comprehensive, or empirically flawed; 2) the universal assumption of single-demos states grounds the erroneous premise of state neutrality on matters of cultural and national identity; and 3) the idea that nationalism is incompatible with liberalism or democracy is a myth. Tierney then explores how the dominant position of the majority national group has been crystallized both by the process of theoretical legitimization of tradition liberalism and by the constitu-tional theory and practice of constitutionalism in democratic states. He identifies four dimensions of a constitutional approach to plurinational-ism: the need for an alternative constitutional methodology reflecting the fact that the constitution is capable of bearing alternative meanings; the recognition of the agencies that are in a position to influence consti-tutional behavior; the recognition that constitutional processes can be as important as the substantive terms of the constitution; the relationship of formal constitutional processes with less formal ones. Tierney then addresses the role played by courts in entrenching the privileged posi-tion of the majority national society through constitutional interpreta-tion, for example by adopting a positivist approach which has been used to undermine the normative force of informal norms.

The next three papers look at specific cases of dominant nationalism. Alain-G. Gagnon and Raffaele Iacovino address the issue of the pur-

poses of constitutionalism in federal multinational democracies, using their normative argument to discuss Canadian nationalism. They suggest that, in multinational democracies, constitutions can only be legitimate when assuming the form of a consensual pact between self-governing peoples. However, the Canadian federation continues to define itself in opposition to principles of multinational democracy, thus sidestepping the issue of legitimacy. They identify the “unity imperative” as the main problem faced by multinational democracies, and argue that “authentic” federal asymmetry requires that the central state removes itself from the identity game, if national pluralism is to be the basis of “meaningful” asymmetry. “We-feeling”, as they call it, must be the result of democ-ratic negotiations between equal partners. They use the case of Quebec to illustrate their argument, insisting that the symmetry of the current configuration of Canadian political institutions acts as a powerful focus of Canadian nationalism and undermines political negotiations between constituent units, thus limiting the potential for justice and stability. Theirs is a normative argument: no dominant political identity ought to impose unilaterally a specific representation of the country in order to keep it together. They argue that Quebec should be viewed as a histori-


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cally self-determining entity, and the Constitution as the result of an evolving set of agreements acceptable to all parties.

Béland and Lecours place Canada in comparative perspective with the United States. They tackle dominant nationalism from the point of view of social policy as a tool of nation-building, arguing that social programs have been an instrument for dominant nationalism in Canada but not in the United States. Béland and Lecours suggest that social programs are not a mere consequence of national values, but rather participate directly in the construction of national identities. Hence, they depart from Lipset, arguing that the continental divide “is at least par-tially a policy construction rooted in distinct paths of welfare state development and social policy discourse” (Béland and Lecours, in this book). Social programs, then, do not merely reflect “national values”: they “support a discourse about these values that can reinforce symbolic boundaries between countries and between sub-state entities” (Béland and Lecours, in this book). From the Canadian case, Béland and Le-cours make the argument that social programs can be crucial instru-ments for strengthening nationhood in multinational states but that in federal or significantly decentralized systems sub-state nationalism is also likely to deal with social policy so that there are usually two (com-peting) territorial levels of social policy intervention. In Canada, they argue, “national identity and citizenship are strongly rooted in the welfare state and the notion of social rights” (Béland and Lecours, in this book), and the development of a comprehensive welfare state and of a stronger sense of social citizenship gave concrete expressions to alleged shared values. However, Béland and Lecours stress that not all national identities are permeated by the welfare state; they use the example of the US, where social programs have rarely been explicitly linked to the national identity. In sum, the connection between the welfare state and nation-building is variable and contextual.

For his part, Jacques Bertrand looks at nationalism, ethnicity and democracy in Indonesia. His paper begins with a distinction between three forms of state nationalism, understood as nation-building efforts aimed at solidifying social cohesion and supporting the task of creating a strong state: majority nationalism, where a majority ethnic group is defined as the core group, and the nation understood primarily in terms of the characteristics of this group (as in Malaysia); civic nationalism, where rulers promote political values and loyalty to the state without emphasizing a majority group (as in India); and official nationalism with the creation of a new, overarching identity that goes beyond civic criteria (as in Indonesia). In the latter case, “accommodation has been restricted in order to reinforce a common identity” (Bertrand, in this book). Bertrand tackles the issue of the conditions under which a state


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nationalism transforms itself “from one focusing on a common cultural identity to one which can accommodate multinationality” (Bertrand, in this book). He argues that the process of democratization favors the development of civic characteristics and reduces the incentives for states to pursue a nationalism that reinforces a particular cultural core. This is so because democratization reduces the state’s ability to repress, and forces negotiation and compromise, hence contributing to a shift towards more civic notions of the common national identity. In other words, democratic institutions allow minority groups to negotiate accommodative compromises. He illustrates his argument with a discus-sion of Indonesian nationalism. When Indonesia democratized in 1988, one could have expected the sudden democratization to lead to violence and ethnic mobilization, and the state to disintegrate. Yet, no new nationalism movement was created at the time of democratization. When ethnonational mobilization occurred, it was as an intensification of already existing conflict and it limited to a few groups. The context also forced the state into a more accommodative stance. Bertrand con-cludes that democratization limited the state’s ability to use repressive means against the Papuan and Acehnese and allowed for a measure of recognition.

This second part closes with Michael Burgess’s piece. Burgess sug-gests that the overall theme of the book bears a number of terminologi-cal and conceptual pitfalls. Hence, national perspectives should not be equated with either dominant nationalism or dominant ethnicity, since majorities do not necessarily behave actively to control or subjugate minorities. Also, the word “majority” is silent as to, e. g., the intensity of its conscious self-definition for political purposes. The political behavior of such a majority might indeed not conform “to any precon-ceived notion of the nation as a unitary actor in the polity” (Burgess, in this book). He then argues that the inheritance of national minoritarian-ism bequeathed by the legacies of state and nation building should not be construed by majority nations as the “burden of unity” but, in a much more positive and constructive way, as the moral responsibility for keeping alive the federal spirit “that is the state’s original source of legitimacy” (Burgess, in this book). Indeed, “being federal” “carries the obligation and duty to sustain and guarantee the viability of minority nations as an end in itself” (Burgess, in this book). Federation is an antidote to the predisposition of members of majority nations not to see themselves as distinct nations. Burgess then tackles Canada as a case study. He concludes both that the current constitutional order must be replaced or reformed (in ways that make it more democratic, more true to federal principles and more legitimate in the eyes of its citizens) and that majority nations need not resort to dominance (although this re-quires sensitivity and awareness). He also concludes that one condition


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for making the shift from dominance to partnership is to configure appropriately the state as a political nationality in its own right.

The book closes with James Tully’s paper on “Federations, Commu-nities and their Transformations”. Tully describes four types of federa-tions (various federal states, “glocal” federations from below, quasi-federations of and beyond states, and the informal federation of global governance), arguing that they should be studied together because they interact and affect each other. He also argues that these four types of federations and their interrelations have undergone a series of transfor-mations over the last sixty years. Hence, in federal states an elite-driven and centralizing federalism of competing nationalist communities dis-possessed grass-roots organization of their capacities of self-government and of their influence on the central government. At the global level, the informal federation of global governance entrenched neoliberal eco-nomic legislation and criminalized democratic opposition. Formal equality coexists with a vast network of relationships of enormous inequality, dependency, economic exploitation and subordination. Tully argues that the dynamics of state federations cannot be understood if one does not consider this larger field of quasi-federations and the informal field of global governance. He stresses that the emergence and consolidation of the latter has been a key factor in marginalizing federa-tions from below. In other words, grass-roots democratic federations have been undermined both by the dynamic of majority/minority na-tionalisms and by the rise of neoliberal globalization. Yet, federations from below have not disappeared. Like the other types of federations, they have gone through a number of transformations. Amongst other things, they have reorganized as glocal networks, constituting a politics of counter-hegemonic “globalization from below”. They seek to democ-ratize from below the informal federation of global governance. They produce alternative forms of knowledge, solidarity and democratic participation, making another world not only “possible” but also “ac-tual”.

nationalism and identity in contemporary politics · nationalism has been and remains one of the...

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