Robin James Shevlane, Queen Mary College, University of London, National Minorities and Theories of the Modern State
Introduction
The implication of Ernest Gellner’s oft-cited description of nationalism as a political principle, ‘which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’ (Gellner 1983: 1), is that all nationalists ultimately seek their own independent ‘nation-state’. The proposition that nationalism is by definition oriented toward the establishment of independent statehood finds its most eminent advocate in Eric Hobsbawm, according to whom a nation ‘is a social entity only insofar as it relates to a certain kind of modern territorial state, the ‘nation-state, and it is pointless to discuss nation and nationalism except insofar as both relate to it.’ (Hobsbawm 1990: 9-10).
However, a brief look at contemporary sub-state nationalist movements operating within Western Europe suggests the need for a re-evaluation of Hobsbawm’s claim. In Spain, the Catalan nationalist coalition (CiU), whose leader Jordi Pujol has been re-elected as President of Catalonia six times, officially supports Spanish unity and orients its demands not toward independent statehood but toward a lesser degree of political autonomy (Guibernau 1999:43). In the United Kingdom, the Home Rule tradition within Scotland boasts a long history of non-separatist nationalism dating back to at least the 1890s, and since the mid-1970s a majority of the Scottish electorate have consistently expressed a preference for political devolution over the alternatives of either no devolution or independence (Keating 2001: 61).
What these examples demonstrate is that sub-state nationalist movements are increasingly orientated toward a conception of self-government that falls short of independent statehood, a demand that if satisfied represents a fundamental challenge to the structure and assumptions underlying the traditional nation-state model. This suggests a need for re-thinking the nation-state model and perhaps even its replacement with a novel state type better capable of accommodating internal national diversity in the form of political autonomy arrangements.
Rather than attempt to construct such a new model of the state, I content myself in this paper to the more modest aim of analysing some of the principle features of the nation-state model with a view to elucidating the potential points of conflict between it and the political demands of national minorities residing within the state’s borders. It should be made clear from the outset that the focus of my analysis is the state half of the nation-state equation, and draws primarily on the sociological theories of the state developed by Max Weber, Anthony Giddens, Michael Mann and Gianfranco Poggi, none of whom construct a fully developed theory of the nation or nationalism within their research.
Violence and Sovereignty
The state, according to Max Weber’s celebrated definition, is ‘a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Weber 1970:78). To argue, as Weber does, that the state be defined according to its monopolistic possession of the means of violence is not to comment on the extent or regularity to which the state resorts to the deployment of violence in the maintenance of its rule. Rather, its intention is to highlight the fact that violence is the means specific to the state; the method to which only states can legitimately turn as a last resort. Control over the means of violence is ‘conceptually intrinsic’ to the political power of the state (Poggi 1990:5).
Weber’s definition can thus be understood as expressing the idea that ultimate political authority – in other words, sovereignty – is the exclusive prerogative of the state. The state’s monopolistic access to the means of legitimate violence is testament to its status as ultimate political authority.
The contention that sovereignty inheres in the organisation of the state is incompatible with the claim of sub-state nationalists to a right of self-determination, for the existence of such a right would imply that the national community, rather than the state, were the ultimately sovereign entity. Indeed, such is precisely the argument of sub-state nationalists, who reject the doctrine of state-sovereignty in favour of a conception of national sovereignty.
Any state that attempts to assert the doctrine of state sovereignty by way of a response to the political demands of sub-state nationalists must confront the fact that one of the founding principles of liberal democracy is that the political authority of the state derives from, and is continually dependent upon, the consent of the people. Sovereignty, in other words, ultimately resides in the people in the form of popular sovereignty, a doctrine that outlined by John Locke in the following terms:
‘all Power given with trust for the attaining an end, being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly neglected, or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the Power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security. And thus the Community perpetually retains a Supream Power’ (Locke 1998:367, my emphasis).
The argument that the state cannot justify the denial of sub-state national minorities’ political demands on the grounds that the state is sovereign was articulated by the Scottish nationalist Canon Kenyon Wright speaking at the Scottish Convention in 1990, who declared to his audience; ‘What happens if that other voice we all know so well responds by saying, we say no. We say no and we are the state. Well, we say yes and we are the people’ (Devine 1999:613).
The tension, however, lies not in a dispute over whether or not sovereignty should be considered popular, for unionists and nationalists alike are as often as not committed to democratic principles. Rather, at issue is the way in which, and by whom, the ‘people’ itself is defined. According to the model of the traditional nation-state, the demos is constituted by the entire citizenry of the state and is usually, although not always, defined in unitary terms. It is therefore given to the state to define the identity of the nation that is taken as the principle unit of political discourse and practice. The state employs the principle of popular sovereignty to assert itself as a nation-state in the sense of being the property of a sovereign people conceived of as a pre-political entity (MacCormick 1999:125).
Centralization and Unitariness
Anthony Giddens criticizes Weber’s definition of the state for failing to recognize that a) it is only modern states that lay successful claim to the monopoly of the means of violence, and b) only within modern states does the administrative scope of the state apparatus correspond directly with territorial boundaries (Giddens 1985:18). Pre-modern states, by contrast, are essentially segmental in character (Ibid:4).
The modern state’s successful transcendence of the segmentalism that was a chronic feature of the pre-modern state expresses the essentially centralized nature of politics within modern states. The modern state, according to Michael Mann, is ‘a differentiated set of institutions and personnel embodying centrality, in the sense that political relations radiate to and from the center’ (Mann 1993:13, my emphasis). In similar vein, Gianfranco Poggi argues that the modern state is centralized in the sense that it is ‘concerned and committed to a distinctive, unified and unifying set of interests and purposes’ (Poggi 1990:19).
This is, of course, intimately related to the doctrine of state sovereignty as analysed above. If the modern state is of necessity a centralized and functionally integrated organisation, then the demands of sub-state nationalities in favour of a decentralized and divided structure of political authority are highly problematic. More accurately, whilst decentralization is not in principle incompatible with the dominant nation-state model, the existence of rival power-containers is. Consequently, to the extent that political power is decentralized, it is done so as the voluntary and reversible grant of the central state.
Sub-state collectivities, argues Poggi, ‘may hold other forms of social power; but they cannot exercise political power, except in the capacity of agents of the state itself, or by influencing the activities of such agents’ (Poggi 1990:22). However, from the perspective of sub-state national minorities, the decentralization of power to autonomous political institutions, is a reflection of the national community’s right to self-determination, and cannot be legitimately denied by a central state whose authority the sub-state national minority contest.
The model of the modern state, as depicted by Giddens, Mann and Poggi, is therefore incapable of affording genuine autonomy to sub-state national minorities, as this conflicts with the imperative that all political activities must originate from and refer to the state (Poggi 1990:22). Political autonomy institutionalised on the basis of sub-state national minorities’ right to self-determination implies a system of divided political authority that is in direct contradiction to a fundamental imperative of the traditional interpretation of the modern state; that political authority be unitary and centralized.
Administrative Capacity
In his theory of the modern state, Michael Mann distinguishes between two dimensions of state power; infrastructural and despotic (Mann 1993:59). Infrastructural power refers to the state’s institutional capacity to implement decisions, whereas despotic power refers to the distributive power of state elites over civil society. The impressive strength of modern states is infrastructural, as evidenced by its capability to influence the most intimate aspects of the day-to-day lives of ordinary citizens (Giddens 1985:10). In terms of despotic power, the modern state is relatively weak. This, moreover, is a direct consequence of its expanded infrastructural power, which, by bringing the state and civil society into a closer and more direct relationship, enables civil society groups more opportunities to influence the state’s activities (Mann 1990:59).
Giddens’ terms this phenomenon the dialectic of control and suggests that its operation within the context of infrastructurally strong modern states causes them to be inherently polyarchic, that is, democratic in the sense of being continuously responsive to the preferences of its citizens considered as political equals (Giddens 1985:11, 199). Two points relevant to the politics of sub-state national minorities flow from this observation. First, if the polyarchic nature of the modern state is ultimately grounded in the dialectic of control, it is likely that, even given the limitations of majoritarianism, sub-state national minorities will continue to find openings through which to influence the activities of the state. In such instances as a large proportion of a particular national minority demonstrate a consistent desire for some measure of political autonomy, it is difficult for a modern state to resist accommodating the demand.
Second, the tightening of the state-society relationship that is a corollary of the infrastructurally strong modern state, by affording civil society a greater influence over the state, politicizes the populations’ internal sense of community. Henceforth the state is compelled to ‘represent’ its citizens internal sense of community, as the tightening state-society relation ‘cag[es] social relations over the national rather than the local-regional or transnational terrain’ (Mann 1993:61).
However, the extent to which social relations actually are caged over the national terrain is dependent on the degree of civil society autonomy that sub-state national minorities are able to retain. When national minorities enjoy a significant degree of autonomy in the sphere of civil society, as was the case in Scotland following the Treaty of Union 1707, which left intact Scotland’s distinctive religious, educational and legal institutions, they will be in a much stronger position to advance a claim for self-government.
Legitimacy
According to Weber, the modern state’s legitimacy is primarily of a rational-legal type. That is to say, it is predominately based on the widespread existence of a belief in the ‘legality’ of its order, norms and rules, rather than the charisma of its leader(s) or by reference to tradition (Weber 1970:330). The modern state is an example of an ‘associative’, more so than it is a ‘communal’ group, meaning that a ‘rationally motivated adjustment of interests’, rather than a subjective feeling of belonging or togetherness, is the source of its legitimacy (Ibid:130).
Whilst Weber is correct to highlight the greater importance of a rational acceptance of a consistent set of abstract laws for the legitimacy of the modern state, as compared to its pre-modern predecessors, it is not the case that subjective bonds of belonging are unimportant. As has already been indicated, the direct way in which the modern state governs means it must ‘represent’ civil society’s internal sense of community. This, indeed, is what makes it a nation-state – it is legitimate insofar as it can uphold a claim to be the political/institutional affirmation of the nation.
The relationship between legitimacy and nationality that thus prevails in the modern state problematizes the existence of heterogeneity within civil society. Since, however, heterogeneity is the rule rather than the exception, all modern states embark upon a programme of nation-building designed to strengthen their legitimacy by homogenizing the citizenry. It is in the context of states that have more or less failed in their attempts at cultural homogenisation and nation-building that minority nationalist movements, which challenge the unitary state’s monopoly of political authority, emerge (Guibernau 1999:60, 71).
The link between legitimacy and nationality, and the pervasiveness of state-led nation-building policies, is of central significance to understanding the politics of sub-state nationalism, for it shows that minority nationalism arises in response to state nationalism. When exclusive attention is given to the state’s associative features, at the expense of its communal, it appears as if minority nationalists seek to insert nationalism into a political context in which it is otherwise absent. For this very reason, the political autonomy demands of national minorities are often perplexing to members of the majority nation, for whom the process of national integration is assumed to be an accomplished fact (McCrone 2001).
When the dialectical nature of the relationship between state and minority nationalism is recognized, it becomes less tenable to portray sub-state nationalist movements as necessarily particularist and divisive. Contrary to Hobsbawm’s assertion that minority nationalism is inevitably of an ‘ethnic’ type and thus an affront to efforts at working toward the common good (Hobsbawm 1990), there is no a priori reason for the assumption that sub-state nationalisms are necessarily less progressive than the state-supported nationalisms with which they enter into a dialectical relationship.