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Political Community, Legitimacy and Discrimination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
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Relating the notion of political community to those of discrimination and legitimacy — and, consequently, setting up a typology which will contrast communities by the criteria they use to distinguish members from non-members and by the location they give to legitimacy, placed either in a ruler or in a process — will be made easier if we consider first of all certain striking similarities which exist between the most private of social groups, the family, and the most public, the state, similarities which probably facilitate the transfer of the ideological constructs formed in infancy and childhood into the political expectancies and assumptions of adulthood. Let us distinguish communities defined through the brothers from communities defined through the father: communities centered around a leader from those centered on themselves. These contrasts will suggest to us a natural/ artificial continuum along which political communities can be ranked, those most resembling the family in their ideas about legitimate authority and legitimate membership being closer to the ‘natural’ end of the continuum. I will explain later the reasons for this distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, but I must at the outset make it absolutely clear that the use of these terms does not in any way imply an evaluative preference on my part.
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References
1 Aristotle noted that the state, like the family, was organized in function of three ‘natural’ relationships: the husband-wife, the master-slave and the parent-child. The latter relationship provides Freud with the theory that what begins in relation to the father is completed in relation to the group. See Aristotle, The Politics, Book 1; and Freud, S., Civilization and Its Discontent (London: Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1930).Google Scholar
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6 After hesitating on the qualifier ‘legitimate’, I decided against it on the ground that illegitimacy of its government may be as binding on a community as legitimacy. One could however build the concept into the definition by stating that the authority under which the community is gathered is that of an assumed, existing or desired ‘legitimate’ government.
7 Not only is the parent-child relationship necessarily hierarchic during the crucial years of early socialization, but in most cultures, the family has, during that period, a monopoly or near monopoly of access to and influence on the child. See Dawson, Richard E. and Prewitt, Kenneth, Political Socialization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), p. 106 ff;Google ScholarElkin, Frederick, The Child and Society: the Process of Socialization (New York: Random House, 1960), p. 47.Google Scholar Christian Bay, who builds his ideal polity on the absence of physical coercion, admits reluctantly that a major exception must be made for children and young people. See Bay, C., The Structure of Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 104.Google Scholar
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23 One could of course reverse my argument and see in the absence of collective action the proof of an absence of generalized insecurity. Such was not my impression at the time, but I grant that I did not find this feeling of insecurity among students, quite the contrary, though they were the group which at the time could have most quickly mobilized for such collective actions.
24 See Deutsch, K., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).Google Scholar
25 It is important to note that in Quebec the Provincial premier has usually had somewhat higher visibility than the Prime Minister. At the time of P. E. Trudeau's election, however, the reverse occurred. This is my impression at least, which could be verified by content analysis of newspapers.
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27 u stands for what remains unexplained (God for example); like any of the other factors it can have an value.
28 I purposely stretch the usual meaning of random to mean here that any biological, cultural or free-will factor will do.
29 According to my notes at a Paris Round Table of the Association francaise de science politique, mai 25–26,1962.Google Scholar See also his analysis of nationalism in Domenach, J. M., Barrispar luimeme (Paris: Seuil, 1954)Google Scholar, in which the author shows his preference for an open nationalism, that of the Barres of earlier years, that which led Barres from egoism toward some form of socialism; and in which he shows by contrast his distaste for the nationalism of Barres’ second manner, a closed, protective, excluding and divisive ideology.
30 See ‘Qu'est-ce que la nation?’ a lecture given at the Sorbonne in 1882 in Renan, E., Discours et conferences (Paris: Caiman LeVy, 1935), pp. 277–310.Google Scholar
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32 In the preceding section, when speaking of communities defined through the father, we considered the will of the ruler; we are now considering the will of those who are ruled, of their will to join and share.
33 For a survey on the strength of separatism, see Jenson, Jane and Regenstreif, Peter, ‘Some Dimensions of Partisan Choice in Quebec, 1969’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, III (1970), 308–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Maclean, 's Magazine, 05 1971.Google Scholar In the provincial election of October 1973, the independence party (Parti Québécois) obtained slightly over 30 per cent of the total vote. Since the French ethnic group accounts for about 80 per cent of Quebec's population, one can assume that the number of French Québécois supporting a separatist party was between 35 and 40 per cent.
34 Quoted in Johannet, R., Le Principe des nationalites (Paris: Nouvelle librairie nationale, 1923), p. 211.Google Scholar
33 Among the exceptions is Malaysia. See Groves, H. E., The Constitution of Malaysia (Singapore: Malaysia Publications, 1964), p. 215.Google Scholar
36 For the exceptions to the rule of adoption of the rulers’ religion, see Laponce, J. A., The Protection of Minorities (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960).Google Scholar For studies of political migrations in twentieth century Europe see Kulischer, Eugene, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948)Google Scholar; Schechtman, J. B., Postwar Population Transfers in Europe 1945–1955 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the world wide pattern of refugee migrations, see Bouscaren, A. T., International Migrations Since 1945 (New York: Praeger, 1963).Google Scholar
37 See Stephens, J. S., Danger Zones in Europe: A Study of National Minorities (London: L. and V. Woolf, 1929).Google Scholar See other examples in Laponce, The Protection of Minorities.
38 For an experimental demonstration of this possibility, see Sherif, M., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Norman: Institute of Group Relations, University of Oklahoma, 1961).Google Scholar
39 ‘Considerations on the Government of Poland’ in Rousseau, J. J., Political Writings (New York: Nelson, 1953), p. 163.Google Scholar
40 Small religio-political communities such as the Hutterites are very close to that extreme.
41 See Deutsch's chapters in Jacob and Toscano, The Integration of Political Communities.
42 For a review of the problem of stress and aggression in society, see the collection of essays in Bramson, Leon and Goethals, George W., eds., War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1968);Google Scholar see in particular Hebb, D. O. and Thompson, W. R., ‘Emotion and Society’, pp. 45–64.Google Scholar
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