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The Nation as a Communal Good: A Nationalist Response to the Liberal Conception of Community*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Siobhan Harty
Siobhan Harty
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
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Abstract

Recent work in the field of liberal political philosophy has focused on the value of cultural communities for the individual. The claim that liberal theory can give explicit recognition to the fact that individuals are rooted in a social context has produced an important debate about the preservation of minority cultures and a liberal defence of nationalism. This literature should be of interest to scholars of nationalism because liberal theorists have used concepts related to the nation, such as self-determination, in ways that go against conventional usage, and liberal theorists have made claims about the relationship of the right and the good with which some students of nationalism would disagree. This article presents a nationalist response to the liberal conception of community by developing one possible nationalist argument for the priority of the good over the right by claiming that the nation is a communal good. The author illustrates this argument with examples of the political projects of nationalists-in-government in the developed West. Liberals need not be concerned with this reality since democratic institutions will set some limits on nationalist projects by ensuring that they are the outcome of democratic processes. On this view, the importance of self-determination is that it provides the context for the creation of institutions for a debate about the relationship of the right and the good. Self-determination does not, as some liberal nationalists argue, constitute an automatic right to cultural preservation.

Résumé

La valeur des communautés culturelles pour l'individu a récemment fait l'objet de plusieurs études dans le domaine de la théorie libérale. Le fait que ces dernieres reconnaissent explicitement que les individus sont enracinés dans un contexte social a donné lieu à un important debat sur la vision libérale de la préservation des cultures minoritaires et de la défense du nationalisme. Cette littérature devrait susciter I'intérêt des spécialistes du nationalisme, d'une part parce que les théoriciens libéraux utilisent des concepts reliés à la nation, tel l'autodétermination, dans un sens contraire à l'usage conventionnel; d'autre part, parce qu'ils proposent une définition de la relation entre le droit et le bien qui ne concorde pas avec celle de plusieurs spécialistes du nationalisme. Ce texte oppose à la conception libérale de la communauté une approche nationaliste qui défend la priorité du bien sur celle du droit et conçoit la nation comme un bien communautaire. II illustre cette demière par des références aux projets politiques des forces nationalistes au pouvoir au sein des sociétés occidentals. Les libéraux n'ont pas besoin de faire face à cette réalité empirique puisque les institutions démocratiques imposent certaines limites aux projets nationalistes, en s'assurant qu'ils découlent de processus démocratiques. Dans cette perspective, l'importance de l'autodétermination découle du fait qu'elle crée le contexte dans le cadre duquel les institutions sont établies, permettant dès lors un débat sur la relation entre le droit et le bien. L'autodétermination ne constitue pas, nonobstant les arguments de certains nationalists libéraux, un droit automatique à la préservation de l'identite culturelle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 1999 , pp. 665 - 689
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1999

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References

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8 I purposefully focus on nationalists-in-government because this subset of organized nationalist actors provides us with empirical evidence of my claim.

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12 I am aware that sometimes these decisions are not the product of a democratic debate since they take place in undemocratic settings. Such cases are not the concern here.

13 I thank the Journal reviewers for their extensive comments on this section.

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20 Ibid., 30.

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25 Ibid., 47.

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27 Ibid., 164.

28 Ibid., 58.

29 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 126.

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32 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, chap. 6.

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35 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2. By “independent” Breuilly does not mean “secessionist” nor do I mean to say that that all nations seek political independence or even limited sovereignty. The sense of statement (C) is that the nation must be able to engage in collective decision making without the threat of outside interference. The fulfillment of this objective might require different institutional arrangements across cases, depending on the degree of non-interference sought.

36 Waldron, “Can Communal Goods Be Human Rights?” 310.

37 In her discussion of Waldron's use of communal goods, Tamir confuses public and communal goods: “Waldron defines communal goods as goods jointly produced and nonexcludable” (Liberal Nationalism, 46). This is how he defines public goods, which he maintains can be individualized, not communal goods, which he maintains cannot. See Waldron, “Can Communal Goods Be Human Rights?” 304.

38 Ibid., 309.

39 Ibid., 313 (emphasis in original).

40 Hurka, “The Justification of National Partiality,” 145. As McMahan (“The Limits of National Partiality”) and Hurka use the term “impersonal” good, they mean that it is not reducible to the good of any one individual.

41 Waldron, “Can Communal Goods Be Human Rights?” 313.

42 I am indebted to a Journal reviewer for pointing this fact out to me.

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44 Hechter, Michael, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 10 (emphasis in original)Google Scholar. Hechter uses the term “joint” good but we can substitute “communal” good for our purposes.

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48 There are also means for nationalists-in-government to counteract these efforts. The Quebec government invoked the notwithstanding clause, section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, after the courts ruled that French-only commercial signs were unconstitutional. For a five-year period, the Quebec government was able to override the justices' decision and prescribe the exclusive use of French on signs. The issue was finally resolved when the government chose to initiate a public discussion on the subject and through a democratic dialogue agreed to bring its legislation into line with the judicial ruling.

49 “Jordi Pujol pide al resto de Espafia que acepte el hecho diferencial de Cataluna” (Jordi Pujol asks that the rest of Spain accept the differential fact of Catalonia), El Pais (Barcelona), July 2, 1996, 2.

50 “Pujol critica que las demás autonomias quieran iguales competencias que Cataluñia” (Pujol criticizes the fact that the other autonomous communities want the same competencies as Catalonia), El Pais (Barcelona), July 1, 1996, 1.

51 Tamir, Liberal Nationalism, 37. See also Tamir, “The Right to National Self-Determination.”

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55 Elazar, Daniel, Federalism and the Way to Peace (Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 1994), 165Google Scholar. Indeed, Elazar is doubtful that federalism could be successful in multi-ethnic states: “Ethnic nationalism is the most ego-centric of all nationalism, and the most difficult basis on which to erect a system of constitutionalized power-sharing; the essence of federalism” (168).