Rainer Bauböck
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IWE – WORKING PAPER SERIES Multinational federalism: territorial or cultural autonomy? Rainer Bauböck NO.: 15, MÄRZ 2001 ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN FORSCHUNGSSTELLE FÜR INSTITUTIONELLEN WANDEL UND EUROPÄISCHE INTEGRATION - IWE POSTGASSE 7/1/2 1010 WIEN ÖSTERREICH Rainer Bauböck Multinational federalism: territorial or cultural autonomy?* 1. Introduction One of the major tasks for theories of democracy is to reflect on what can be done to prevent conflicts between national and ethnic groups from turning nasty.1 As Rogers Brubaker (1998) has persuasively argued, in most cases there are no “solutions” for national conflicts, at least not in the sense of stable equilibriums of power or permanent arrangements that can be rationally endorsed by all sides.2 However, even if national conflicts may be intractable because there is so little common ground between irreconcilable claims, some arrangements may lead to a heating up of nationalist passions while others allow for a cooling down. Occasionally it has been suggested that the nastiness comes from the nationalist craving for territory. The idea is roughly as follows: The modern state is a territorial monopoly of legitimate violence. Nationalists want to achieve self-government for their own nation. A universal principle of territorial self-determination for nations is a recipe for endless war, because almost any given territory that could form a viable state can be claimed by many different national communities (Gellner (1983:1). However, if one adopts a ‘subjective’ definition of nations as communities of individuals who subjectively profess a national identity, then these communities’ desire for self- government can presumably be satisfied more universally and more peacefully if they rule only over their members rather than over territory that includes people who do not see themselves as belonging to the same nation. Self-government for non-territorial nations appears to resolve the problems of rival claims, of contiguity and of size. The boundaries of constituencies are unambiguously defined by voluntary declaration of membership; there are no more exclaves and enclaves because membership is no longer connected to territorial residence; and there is no obvious minimum size for viable self-government of groups that exercise no territorial sovereignty. * A first draft of this paper was presented in the IMER research seminar on 23 January 2001 and at the conference ‘Nationalism, Liberalism and Pluralism’, organized by Alain Dieckhoff at CERI-Sciences Politiques, Paris on 5 – 6 February 2001. 1 Jacob Levy (2000) proposes a more general perspective of a “multiculturalism of fear” that would be less concerned with what cultural diversity might contribute to the well-being and autonomy of individuals and more with what harm cultural conflicts can inflict on them. I am inclined to adopt a more specific “multinationalism of fear” that emphasizes the particular threats emerging from nationalism. I believe that both cultural affiliations and self-government can have intrinsic value. This should be reflected in normative theories by moving beyond a perspective of fear. However, the exclusive link between cultural affiliation and self-government that is characteristic for nationalism is inherently problematic from a liberal perspective. This suggests that liberal approaches to nationalism should look for accommodation while avoiding affirmation. 2 Brubaker warns against what he calls the ‘architectonic illusion’, that is “the belief that the right ‘grand architecture’, the right territorial and institutional framework, can satisfy nationalist demands, quench nationalist passions, and thereby resolve national conflicts” (Brubaker 1998: 233-4). He argues that “national conflicts are in principle, by their very nature, irresolvable” (ibid.: 234). Most advocates of such non-territorial solutions do not regard them as fully replacing territorially based polities, but envisage instead a dual form of self-governance where individuals would be both citizens of territorial states and members of autonomous non-territorial communities. Nations could thus no longer aspire to sovereignty, which is just as well, because such downgrading of their claims is probably conducive to more peaceful relations between them. The idea of non-territorial cultural autonomy was first systematically developed by the Austrian socialists Karl Renner (1902) and Otto Bauer (1907) who saw it as a way of overcoming the national and linguistic conflicts within the late Habsburg Empire that paralysed the socialist movement. However, Bauer in particular regarded national identity not only in instrumental terms. Against the orthodox Marxist tradition he affirmed that nations would not vanish but thrive under socialism. In our times, Yael Tamir has provided the most systematic defence of a similar perspective. She suggests that nations are entitled to self-determination (by which she means a right of individuals to determine their own national identity and a corresponding right to a public sphere where their culture is expressed), but not to comprehensive self-rule (Tamir 1993: 69-77). Other authors have occasionally hinted at the desirability of non-territorial solutions as a remedy for endemic violence in nationality conflicts. Gidon Gottlieb, for example suggests a functional approach to territorial disputes that avoids the all-or-nothing features of territorial sovereignty and “involves the demarcation of different layers of lines for different purposes” (Gottlieb 1993: 47). In a later commentary he goes far beyond this modest proposal by advocating “the eventual extension of the system of states to include alongside it a system of nations and peoples that are not organized territorially into independent states at all” (Gottlieb 1997: 167). The idea of non-territorial solutions to national conflicts is prima facie attractive and plausible. This is why it is worth engaging with it. The purpose of my paper is, however, to cast some doubts on the general desirability and practical feasibility of cultural autonomy as an alternative to territorial arrangements. In contrast with Tamir, I think that all national conflicts are driven by a desire for self-government. While cultural liberties and protection can and should be offered on a non-territorial basis, the desire for self-government has always a territorial component that must not be ignored in the design of institutions and settlements that are meant to prevent the escalation of these conflicts. 2. Two kinds of political boundaries Boundaries of polities are of two kinds – they define a territory or a group of persons. Independent states always combine both types of boundaries. States establish a political authority within a well-defined territory and for a particular population that is subject to its rule. All modern states distinguish furthermore those whom they regard as their nationals from non- nationals, who are subject to their laws as long as they reside within their territory but are not considered members of the polity. In democratic states, finally, the members are citizens who participate in the self-government of the polity. For independent states, the two boundaries are normally broadly congruent. It is rather irregular if a majority of nationals live outside the state territory and even more irregular if a majority of permanent residents in the territory are not nationals. In the former case, most citizens are not subjects, in the latter most subjects are not citizens. Of course, mass migration produces sometimes quite significant incongruity of both kinds. Liberal democracies ought to (and increasingly do) respond to this by terminating the transmission of citizenship through ius sanguinis after the first generation born abroad, by extending most rights of citizens to permanent residents and by facilitating access to citizenship through ius soli, naturalization and the toleration of dual nationality (Bauböck 1994). Yet it is not at all obvious why polities must combine both kinds of boundaries. Imagine, first, a purely territorial regime. Of course you should not think of an uninhabited territory. All political rule is rule ultimately rule over persons. Think instead of a regime that allows for a free flow of individuals over its borders and treats everyone as a member of the polity who takes up a residence in the territory. Such a polity can be described as purely territorial because it no longer exercises control over its membership. This is not a fancy utopia. The federal provinces and self- governing municipalities within democratic states are polities of this sort.3 They do not control their own borders and they have to accept immigrants from other parts of the state as local citizens.4 Independent states control their borders in order to maintain their boundaries of membership. Only nationals have an unconditional right to enter or return. For provinces and municipalities, borders merely define the range the persons who will be subject to the local political authority. Federalism in its broadest sense is a conception of multilevel governance within nested polities. Even formally unitary states establish institutions of local government and local citizenship. Therefore the experience of being a member of a purely territorial polity is actually shared by nearly all citizens of democratic states. This is generally ignored because of the pervasive (and pernicious) impact of the notion of sovereignty on our views of what defines a political