liberal nationalism - michael taylor

TMA05

Dissertation Title

Is the support of a national idea a necessary condition for a sustainable liberal state?

Student Name: Michael Taylor, BSc (Hons) in Computer Science and English Literature, Keele University

Student Number: W0623315

Course: A857 - The Philosophy Dissertation Module (MA in Philosophy)

Email: [email protected]

Tutor: Dr Ian Chowcat

Submission Date: September 2006

This entire work has been prepared by the author. Part of this dissertation (albeit in an earlier form) was submitted as part of the A851 examinable work in 2004.

Michael Taylor, A857 TMA05, W0623315 of 122

Table of Contents..................................................................Introduction: The Uses and Abuses of Nationalism 4

...............................................................................................Why Defend Nationalism? 9................................................................................The Positive Roles of Nationalism 12

.............................................................Chapter One: Defining Solidarity, States and Nations 15....................................................................................................................Introduction 15

....................................................................................What do we mean by solidarity? 17.............................................................................................................State and Nation 24..............................................................................................................What is a state? 25

...........................................................................................................What is a Nation? 26.............................................................The Five Unique Features of National Identity 29

..........(i) Mutual Belief and Mythology: Nation as an ‘Imagined Community’ 31.....................................................................................(ii) Historical Continuity 37

............................................................................................(iii) Political Activity 38........................................................(iv) Territorial Concerns: Nation as “Home” 39

.......................................................................................(v) Cultural Similarities 44.........................................................Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for a Nation 48

.....................................................................................................................Conclusion 52....................................Chapter Two: Liberalism and Nationalism - Opposing Standpoints? 53

....................................................................................................................Introduction 53............................................................................................................The Liberal State 53

.....................................................................................Four Main Areas of Contention 55....................................................The First Problem: Political and Cultural Neutrality 56

................................................................The Second Problem: Autonomy and Choice 62...........................................................................The Third Problem: Rational Consent 64

.............................................................................The Fourth Problem: Republicanism 65...........................................................Remaining Issues: what about social solidarity? 67

........................................................................................(i) Political Liberalism 69.............................................................................(ii) The Common Way of Life 74

......................................................................................(iii) Civic Republicanism 76......................................................The Case for Liberal Nationalism: social solidarity 78

.....................................................................................................................Conclusion 81...................................................................Chapter Three: The Ethics of Liberal Nationalism 82

....................................................................................................................Introduction 82............................................................Ethical Universalism and Ethical Particularism 83

.........................................................................................................Voluntary Creation 87

.........................................................................................................Useful Convention 89........................................................................The particularist account of nationalism 94

.....................................................................................................................Conclusion 98....................................................................Chapter Four: Nationalism and Multiculturalism 100

..................................................................................................................Introduction 100.............................................................................Liberal States and Multiculturalism 101

.......................................................................................................Cultural Dynamics 104..........................................................................Inclusive and Exclusive Membership 107


.......................................................................The Need for a Common Set of Values 109...................................................................................................................Conclusion 111

................................................................................................Conclusion: Beyond Neutrality 112...............................................................................................................................Bibliography 115


Introduction: The Uses and Abuses of Nationalism

Isaiah Berlin once argued that, “the ideas of every philosopher

concerned with human affairs in the end rest on his conception of

what man is and can be”.1 For Berlin, being able to grasp that central

concept is more important than understanding the arguments with

which philosophers defend their views, however forceful these might

appear to be. More often than not that central concept is implicit in

the text, and needs to be tweaked out by the critical reader. However

I would like to buck this general trend and announce my beliefs from

the start. What follows here is based on a certain concept of a

person, one which is neither a ‘totally embedded self’, irrevocably

fixed into its immediate environment as some Nationalist’s would

have us believe; nor one which is a form of completely unattached

and hence ‘unconditioned rational agent’ that some Liberals argue for

- instead what follows here is based on the commonsensical belief

that a person is a ‘contextualised individual’.2 As Yael Tamir has

argued, this midway position is, “able to encompass the nationalist


1 Quoted by Tamir in Liberal Nationalism (see Tamir 1995: 13).

2 Scruton has argued that the view there is an ‘unconditioned rational agent’ is “psychologically, morally, and metaphysically highly questionable” (Scruton 1990: 272)

belief that individuals are the inevitable product of their culture, as

well as the liberal conviction that individuals can be the authors of

their own lives” (Tamir 1995: 13). In other words, while we can offload

some of the social and cultural baggage (or norms) we carry around

with us in order to view them rationally and critically, we can never

offload everything at once; there is no ‘view from nowhere’. As

Scruton has argued, choice needs to start somewhere; “even if this

starting point is later described, from the point of view of reason, as

mere prejudice, this is not to condemn it, but on the contrary, to show

the indispensability of prejudice in the make-up of the rational

agent” (Scruton 1990: 272). However, at the same time as there can

be no such thing as an ‘unconditioned rational agent’, so too must we

recognise that the apparent ‘naturalness’ of the societies we inhabit

are more often than not built on mythical premises and ‘invented

traditions’.3

Rather than seeing both approaches at describing who we are

as abject failures, I suggest that it is instead more useful to see what

we can learn from both conceptions, and, as long as there is

philosophical consistency, we could attempt to draw a new approach


3 I will say more about both Anderson’s concept of “imaginary communities” and Hobsbawm’s term “invented traditions” in Chapter Two.

based on the best ideas from both. As such I am in full agreement

with Yael Tamir when she says that instead these concepts can be,

“complementary rather than conflicting, suggesting that no individual

can be context-free, but that all can be free within a context” (Tamir

1995: 14).

In some sense then, this essay is looking at a concept of a

person which attempts to marry together aspects of both man’s

individuality and his sociability. In looking at the social side of this

equation – by which I mean societies and communities – I want to

concentrate on the type we normally identify as nations. This is

because I believe that the related concept of nationalism – if defined

within a liberal framework - can be of immense value to both liberal

theory and liberal states; as David Miller has argued, “nationalism

answers one of the most pressing needs of the modern world, namely

how to maintain solidarity among the populations of states that are

large and anonymous, such that their citizens cannot possibly enjoy

the kind of community that relies on kinship or face-to-face

interaction” (Miller 1993: 308). In addition to their size, liberal versions

of modern states also tend to embody and support a diverse number

of different cultures and values, some of which cut across or openly


contradict each other. Neither is this a temporary position. According

to Rawls, the “diversity of comprehensive religious, philosophical, and

moral doctrines found in a modern democratic state is not a mere

historical condition that may soon pass away; it is a permanent

feature of the public culture of democracy” (Rawls 1989: 161). Given

these issues, it is easy to see why a lack of solidarity is a growing

concern for many liberal states.

Of course Nationalism – by which I mean here the emphasising

and support of a common nationality within a state’s territory - may

not be the only solution to the problem of solidarity. We may for

instance believe that emphasising a more common (non-nationalistic)

way of life, or emphasising civic participation in the political arena,

may provide better solutions to the same problem. As these are two

viable alternatives, I will be discussing them briefly during this

investigation. However I intend to argue that of all the various

solutions on offer, only nationalism is really up to the job in hand. At

the same time I want to show that it is possible to redefine

nationalism so that it is not only compatible with – but also helps to

underpin - contemporary liberal theory. If we can achieve this then I


believe that we will have made significant progress in helping to

defend and support the wider liberal cause.

The weaker argument I will examine in this essay is that the

support of a national idea is of pragmatic value to the liberal - if the

liberal state is to survive then it must support solidarity, and there is

no other form of solidarity that can do the work on the scale

necessary other than a national idea. But in this essay I want make

the case for a stronger argument, namely that a liberal version of

nationalism is of value in its own right, because it gives people a

sense of place, history, and a common set of values with which they

can identify each other by. In fact I will argue that the instrumental

value of nationalism only exists because people find it of intrinsic

value in the first place.

However the first charge any liberal must answer is why defend

nationalism at all? For many liberals, nationalism is antithetical to

liberalism and therefore the term ‘liberal nationalism’ is an oxymoron;

or if not, at best it is a redundant concept better replaced with

something else - at worst it is a dangerous one that is best kept at

arms length or avoided altogether.


Why Defend Nationalism?

In reviewing Gellner’s work on Nationalism, O’Leary argues that both

Liberals and Marxists got it wrong. Nationalism was not the, “doomed

legacy of outmoded irrationalism, superstition and savagery” (O’Leary

1997: 192) as some Liberals would have us believe; nor was it the,

“necessary but temporary stage in the path to global socialism” (ibid,

192) that the Marxists were hoping for. In fact quite the opposite

seems true: “while Marxism is now fast heading towards its grave and

liberalism is wracked with self-doubt, nationalism seems in vigorous

and rude health” (ibid, 192). Why is this?

In order to answer this question, we first need to explain and

then reject two accounts of nationalism which I believe are quite

wrong. The first account holds that nationalism is a sub-human,

primitive force, the work of some kind of ‘dark gods’ within us.4 If such

accounts are true then the only logical reaction for those of us who

are, “immune to the virus of national sentiments” (Miller 1999: 5), is to

try to “persuade our less enlightened fellow-beings to abandon them,

or else to find some form of mechanism – perhaps a reformed system


4 As Albert Einstein put it, nationalism is “the measles of the human race” (Quoted by Miller, in his Introduction to On Nationality. See Miller 1999, p. 5). Popper also said that Nationalism appeals “to our tribal instincts, to passion and to prejudice, and to our nostalgic desire to be relieved from the strain of individual responsibility which it attempts to replace by a collective or group responsibility” (quoted by Tamir: 1993: 80). See also O’Leary 1997, p. 192, for a further elaboration on ‘dark gods’.

of education – that will prevent the virus from taking hold in the first

place” (ibid, p.5). However both Gellner and Miller reject this account

out of hand.5 Miller argues that such accounts are both empirically

implausible and misrepresentative. It is empirically implausible

because there is nothing to suggest that nationalism is going away

(indeed as I have already stated the opposite appears to be the

case); and it is misrepresentative in that this view paints too passive a

picture of nationalism. In this essay I want to argue that nationalism is

not merely something that happens to us, it is also something we help

to re-create and sustain on a daily basis. As this is a crucial point, I

will return to this in more detail in the next chapter when I discuss the

definition of nations. I also want to reject here another implication of

this account, namely that nationalism is an inherently violent affliction.

History shows us that while nationalism has been the cause of

various conflicts and wars, the same can be said about any ideology

taken to extremes. As Scruton has argued, “it is only ignorance that

could permit the belief that Soviet communism, founded on

universalist principles, has involved less crime, less suffering, less


5 For Gellner’s reaction, see O’Leary 1997: 193.

insolence and indignity, than the particularist politics of the

Nazis” (Scruton 1990: 279).

The second account of nationalism I want to reject argues that

nationalism is undesirable but inevitable – a form of incurable

disease. As Miller argues, in this context, “to ask whether a particular

nationalist identity is acceptable, or a particular nationalist demand is

justifiable, is beside the point” (ibid, p.5). This view may be held by

those who believe that nationalism fulfils a sociological function - in

that it helps to give people a sense of place where they might

otherwise feel dislocated or alienated. However at the same time

people with this view retain the belief that we would be better off

without it. While there is more to be said about the validity of this

second account than the first, it suffers from the same problem in that

it still views nationalism as a passive force, as something that

happens to us, rather than as something we also create and

participate in actively. Again I will hopefully shed some light on this

point in the next chapter.

Having briefly explored two negative interpretations of

nationalism, I now want to turn our attention to looking at what a more

positive interpretation of nationalism might look like.


The Positive Roles of Nationalism

Until sustained by a national idea […] the liberal state is, I

believe, a solvent of unity and therefore contains the seeds of

its own destruction.

Scruton, In Defence of the Nation

I work for someone else, I rent my apartment from someone

else, there’s nothing for my son to inherit. I have no craft to

teach him, I haven’t a clue what he might do when he’s older.

By the time he grows up, the rules I lived by will be

meaningless - the world will be completely different. If a man

accepts the fact that everything must change, then his life is

reduced to nothing more than the sum of his own experience -

past and future generations mean nothing to him. That’s how

we live now.

Houellebecq, Atomised

While one could still argue that Nationalism is on the rise because it

is an inherently evil concept suited to evil times, I want to argue that

instead it is popular because it helps people to provide answers to


questions they consider important. In this essay I want to explore the

following positive roles that a liberal interpretation of nationalism

might afford us. First, that it can help us to provide an additional layer

of solidarity that I (and clearly Scruton) believe is otherwise missing

from the traditional liberal equation. I will explore what I mean by this

in the next chapter when I discuss the concepts of political and social

solidarity. Second, nationalism can provide us with a sense of

continuity and place, and the feeling that we are ‘at home’ in our

environment. I will look into this in more detail when I explore what I

mean by nations and nationality shortly. Third, nationalism can help to

justify the social contract theory so often favoured by liberals. I will

explain this point in more detail in chapter two, when I explore the

areas where nationalism and liberalism are traditionally assumed to

clash. Finally, I will be looking at how nationalism might help to better

explain the special attachments and obligations we typically attach to

co-nationals. I will be looking at this particular argument in chapter

three when I look at the universal and particular accounts of ethical

justifications.

Having described a liberal interpretation of nationalism and how

it can underpin traditional liberal theory, I will then go on to spend the


final chapter briefly discussing how this theory might help to meet the

challenge of modern, diverse societies. I will conclude that liberal

nationalism could provide the middle ground between the

requirement for solidarity and sharing on the one hand, and the need

to respect and support diversity on the other – concepts which

otherwise might lead to conflicts of interest between the state and its

citizens. But in order to do any of this, we now need to define our

terms more precisely. I realise that so far I have used the words

‘solidarity’, ‘nation’ and ‘state’ rather sloppily; it is now time to rectify

that mistake.


Chapter One: Defining Solidarity, States and Nations

Introduction

I want to begin by defining what I mean by solidarity, and how this

relates to the terms ‘state’ and ‘nation’. I will argue that solidarity as

traditionally understood is not limited to small groups, and that it is

indeed possible to experience solidarity within the national context. In

defining solidarity, I will draw distinctions between what I term ‘social

solidarity’ and ‘political solidarity’. The first interpretation refers to the

commitments members have to the welfare and wellbeing of other

members, and the related sentiment of fraternity; the second refers to

how members are committed to upholding the decisions of the group.

I will argue that while the second form of solidarity is generally

recognised by liberal philosophers as having instrumental value, the

first is more often than not dismissed or ignored as irrelevant to the

liberal agenda. I not only want to show that liberals miss a trick if they

ignore the instrumental value of social solidarity - in that social

solidarity also helps to sustain a liberal state - but that liberals should

also recognise and support the intrinsic value many citizens attach to

this kind of solidarity. I will also argue that national identity is not

exclusive and that it is typically only part of a set of competing and


overlapping associations people tend to make when identifying

themselves as members of various groups.

Having examined solidarity, I will then turn my attentions to the

state, and argue that – contrary to the popular view - the terms ‘state’

and ‘nation’ are not in fact interchangeable terms which describe the

same thing. In defining a nation I will look at the historical

development of the term as outlined by Leah Greenfeld, before

turning to the more philosophical interpretations offered by Miller,

Gellner, Tamir and Scruton. While Miller argues for three

interconnected propositions about nationality – namely personal

identity propositions, ethical propositions and political propositions,

this chapter will focus primarily only on the first of these. With regard

to identity propositions, I will critically examine the five features that

Miller identifies: mutual belief and mythology, historical continuity,

political activity, territorial concerns and cultural similarities. After

looking at each of these features in turn, I will then draw up a list of

necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying a community or

group as a nation. I will then go on in chapter two to see how, if at all,

we can use our definitions of solidarity, state and nation to begin to


draw up a coherent interpretation of nationalism that is compatible

with liberalism.

What do we mean by solidarity?

Solidarity can operate at many levels. We may for instance feel

solidarity with members of our immediate neighbourhood or family, or

with other members of a particular club to which we belong. At this

level (which is typically face to face), feelings of solidarity tend to be

more immediate and apparent, as we can more clearly see the cause

and effect of our individual actions within the group. But feelings of

solidarity can be experienced within larger, more anonymous groups

too. We may for instance feel solidarity as citizens of a particular city,

district or nation, as supporters of a football team, as members of a

profession, or as supporters of an international political organisation

or movement - the majority of whose members we will never meet.

We may even have feelings of solidarity towards other members of a

purely virtual group (such as an internet based discussion group).

The point to be made here is that solidarity is not dependent upon the


size of a group or on the need for intimate, face to face contact.6 In

turn this means that we can (and indeed sometimes do) feel solidarity

as nationals with other co-nationals.

We can also be members of several distinct groups

simultaneously, all of which may demand differing degrees of

allegiance that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Hence being a

British Citizen does not preclude me from also being a supporter of

Nottingham Forest FC or from being a member of Amnesty

International. Indeed these kinds of ‘multi-membership’ (and the

complex identities that result from them) are an increasingly common

phenomenon in the modern world, thanks in part to people mobility

and migration, and technological advances in mass communications

and media. Such developments are not without their associated

problems however. It may occasionally be difficult for individuals that

are members of two distinct groups to reconcile or prioritise their

allegiances when the goals of these two groups are in conflict or

direct contradiction to each other. How for instance might a British

Citizen who is also a committed member of Amnesty International


6 Some even argue that we can even experience solidarity on a global scale (see the REP entry for Richard Rorty, Section 3). It also interesting to note that larger groupings still tend to employ metaphors that link themselves with the strongest groupings people know, namely the family. Hence the common use of terms such as brotherhood, sisterhood, fatherland and motherland, etc.

react if the latter were to heavily criticise the former? Such situations

become potentially more acute when people find themselves

members of two distinct cultures, the values of which may clash on

several important issues. However the point to be made here is that

being a member of a particular group does not typically exclude

someone from being a member of other groups at the same time.

Within the national context, this means that nationality will not

typically be the only source of a person’s solidarity or identity –

instead it will be merely part of a competing multiplicity of overlapping

and sometimes contradictory allegiances. I will return to this important

issue in more detail in the section on nationalism and

multiculturalism.

In philosophical terms, solidarity is usually described as a kind

of commitment – in other words how the members of a particular

group are ‘committed to’ each other. Commitments that imply

solidarity can usually be described in one of two ways. First there are

those commitments which demonstrate that members of a particular

group are concerned about the welfare and wellbeing of other

members. These concerns are, “sometimes conceived in terms of the

recognition of special obligations between the members of a group,


which exist in virtue of their being members of it.” (Mason, A: 1998).

Secondly there are those commitments which demonstrate that group

members are willing to abide by the outcomes of a collective decision

making process. While the first type of commitment normally

describes the social aspect of solidarity (because of its obvious links

with the concepts of reciprocity, fraternity and community), the

second normally describes the political. Taken in either form, it is

clear why solidarity has a potentially important role to play in

supporting social cohesion and the sustainability of communities,

regardless of whether they happen to be national, local or virtual. This

leads most to agree that solidarity has at least an instrumental value

with regard to maintaining social and/or political stability.

So far then this points to three important conclusions about

solidarity: first, that feelings of solidarity are not limited to small

groups, and that it is indeed possible to experience solidarity at a

national level; second, that should we feel national solidarity, this will

typically be only part of a more complex (and sometimes

contradictory) set of allegiances; and third, that there are two types of

solidarity, social and political, and that these are of instrumental value


in maintaining social cohesion and stability.7 However in this essay I

want to go a step further. I will argue that solidarity also has an

intrinsic value in and of itself.

The instrumental value of political solidarity - in other words the

commitment to abide by the decisions of a collective decision making

process - is often acknowledged by liberal philosophers because it

readily ties in to the rational, democratic and contractual approach

traditionally favoured by liberals. Some go further and also

acknowledge the intrinsic value of political solidarity, which is

frequently expressed in the theory of republicanism. However if we

now turn our attention to social solidarity – meaning the concern for

the wellbeing and welfare of fellow members – we can see that the

liberal response tends to be less enthusiastic, especially with regard

to the national context. As already mentioned, some liberals will

grudgingly admit the instrumental value of nationalism – typically

because they believe it fulfils the sociological function that people

commonly need to feel that they are members of a wider group or


7 Indeed the instrumental value of fraternity is underlined by none other than Rawls himself. For Rawls, his ‘difference principal’, “does seem to correspond to a natural meaning of fraternity: namely, to the idea of not wanting to have greater advantages unless this is to the benefit of others who are less well off” (Rawls 1999: 90), a practice of justice he sees as comparable to that normally observed in the family sphere. However Rawls interpretation of ‘fraternity’ remains problematic in that it is more political than social. Indeed in his interpretation he leaves out precisely those aspects most of us would more commonly associate with the concept of fraternity, namely ‘sentiment’ and ‘feeling’, aspects which to Rawls are, “unrealistic to expect between members of the wider society” (ibid, 90). This is perhaps because Rawls is constantly on the look out for the rational justification, rather than the emotional.

culture, and as such it is a useful (if somewhat awkward) tool in

supporting the aims of social cohesion and stability. But it is even

harder to find examples of liberals that also support the intrinsic value

of social solidarity, especially as experienced within the national

context. This may be because social solidarity is more commonly

linked to communitarian concerns with fraternity, but it may also be

because some liberals primarily believe nationalism to be irrational,

and there can be no intrinsic value for a rational agent in subscribing

to something which is irrational. But this is to miss the point of what

membership is about. As Scruton argues, “the experience of

membership is precisely not political, but social” (Scruton 1990: 278).

In other words it is not subject to the same rational responses as

those open to the political dimension, rather it is a complex emotional

response tied up with feelings of belonging. This is not to imply that

political solidarity is somehow ‘trumped’ by social solidarity, or that

liberalism and nationalism is a “a tug of war between reason and

passion”8, instead the two concepts work in tandem with each other

and support each other. As Walzer has argued about the liberal state,

“a pervasive, at least ostensible, commitment to democratic


8 Gellner as quoted by Tamir (see Tamir 1993: 5).

government” (in this sense the political) stands side by side with “an

equally persuasive, and more actual, commitment to cultural

autonomy and national independence” (meaning social).9 Just as

rationality is of intrinsic value to the liberal thesis because it helps

individuals to choose the best alternatives available to them, so too is

fraternity of intrinsic value to the individual, in that fraternity provides

belonging and the feeling that one is recognised by the larger

community as a fellow member, a concept without which rational

options would cease to have meaning. Together then, political and

social solidarity so described provide necessary and sufficient

conditions for what I want to call ‘complete unity’.

The distinction I have drawn here between social and political

solidarity will play a crucial role in the development of this argument.

However, before I go on to explore these links in more detail, it is

necessary to also provide working definitions of the terms state and

nation, without which it will be impossible to progress the argument

that liberal states should support and promote a national idea, one

which is not just politically expedient, but one which is also primarily

social.


9 Quoted by Orlie (see Orlie, 1999: 141).

State and Nation

At first glance it is easy to think that the terms ‘state’ and ‘nation’ are

interchangeable. This may be because people either consider that

the two terms merely refer to the same thing (a distinction without a

difference), or that they refer to two sides of the same coin (the first

refers to the administrative side of the equation, the second to the

population it administers). This is perhaps not so surprising – views

such as these have both historical and modern precedents.10 This

confusion (or unwillingness) to differentiate the two terms may also

help to explain the fact that, for many nations, the end goal of self-

determination is often seen as the establishment of a state and self-

rule. I will touch upon the implications of such a view later, but for now

I want to argue that - contrary to the common misconception that

‘state’ and ‘nation’ mean or refer to the same thing – these two terms

in fact reflect a fundamental conceptual difference. I will begin by

briefly defining what I mean by state before going on to look at the

term nation in more detail.


10 The view that the state represented the institutionalisation of the people’s will formed the basis of the French and American revolutions (see Tamir 1993: 60); while the term ‘nation’ still refers to the ‘federal state’ in the USA today (ibid, p. 60)

What is a state?

The term ‘state’ as I want to define it here refers to any political

organisation that can meet the following necessary and sufficient

conditions:11

(1)There is a population which reproduces itself and whose

members are socially related

(2)There is territory

(3)There is a single government, which: (a) is a distinct body

of rule, supported by a judicial, administrative and military

machine; (b) is the ultimate prescriber and enforcer of law

for all those within its jurisdiction; (c) claims exclusive

control of the use of force within the territory and has

preponderant control of its use; (d) claims authority for its

existence and actions and is generally accepted as

authoritative

(4)The state is legally and politically independent from other

states, and recognized by other states as an independent


11 The following criteria are taken directly from the definition supplied in the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (see Nicholson: 1998).

or sovereign state

Obviously there are arguments as to what extent a state must meet

each of these criteria in order to be classified as such. For example:

how many people must a state have to reach critical mass? And how

many other states must recognise a new state for it to satisfy the

recognition criteria? These are all valid questions, but for the

purposes of this investigation I want to concentrate on the

implications of the first and second conditions only. I want to see to

what extent (if at all) the concept of a ‘nation’ might overlap with the

requirement that a state contains a population that is socially related

and which exists within a defined territory. However in order to do this

we first need to define what the term nation means.

What is a Nation?

In her book Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Liah Greenfeld

researches the origins of the word nation and identifies nine stages in

its historical development as a term. Originally developed from the

Latin word natio meaning ‘something is born’, it was initially used to

refer to a group of foreigners. Subsequent use of the term in the


middle-ages finds it being used to describe communities of students

from geographically related regions that functioned as support groups

or unions, whose members often developed similar opinions and took

the same sides in scholarly debates.12 From here the term

metamorphoses again to refer to the representatives sent by

universities to participate in ecclesiastical debates in church councils.

It is only at the beginning of the sixteenth century in England, in what

Greenfeld identifies as its fifth stage, that the term nation shifts focus

fundamentally from a term describing a political, cultural or social elite

to that of a term describing a wider population, or people. The term

then shifts slightly again to designate a ‘sovereign people’, before

finally settling down on its modern interpretation meaning other

populations and countries and a unique sovereign people.13

According to Tamir, the twentieth century saw the emergence of

yet another interpretation of the term, an interpretation that

recognised the inner diversity of nations: “hyphenated designations,

such as African-Americans or Italian-Americans, emerge[d] for the


12 Indeed, the term is still used in this sense at Swedish universities today, where each major regional district is represented by a “nation”, where students from the same geographic areas live and study together in a communal dormitory.

13 The O.E.D. states that the term refers to a “large number of people of mainly common descent, language, history, etc, usually inhabiting a territory bounded by defined limits and forming a society under one government”.

purpose of differentiating these groups from one another” (Tamir

1995: 429).

What this discussion on the origins of the term nation shows is

that it has generally always meant the same thing, namely that it

refers to an “exclusive and limited community whose members share

some unique, defining characteristics, and are connected by feelings

of fraternity” (ibid, 429). So whether nation was being used to

describe a smaller type of elite community, or to describe a larger

folk, the underlining theme remains the same: it has always been a

means of defining ‘us’ and ‘them’, a tool that allows its members to

rationalise their common fate, to define themselves as a ‘we’,

and to prepare for the competition – which may, at the limit,

become a life-and-death struggle – between ‘us’ and ‘the

others’.

(Scruton 2006: 6)

Having sketched out the historical development of the term

nation, I now want to go on to provide a more philosophical definition,

and to see how nations differ (if at all) from other forms of

communities or social groups.


The Five Unique Features of National Identity

In his book On Nationality, Miller identifies three interconnected

propositions that constitute nationality: personal identity propositions,

ethical propositions and political propositions.14

The first type of proposition says something about who we are

as individuals. When someone claims they belong to a certain nation

(e.g. Sweden), they are not making an irrational statement about their

beliefs. Instead, statements about nationality should be taken as

genuine; they are a constituent (though far from necessary) condition

of personal identity. The second proposition concerns claims that we

owe special duties to co-nationals over and above those we might

owe to non-nationals (a relevant example of which might be the

provision of a welfare state, the benefits of which are only available to

co-nationals). The third proposition concerns the political self-

determination of nations, which may or may not be carried out under

the auspices of a sovereign state and self-rule. In my attempt to

define the term nation, I will discuss only the first of these

propositions at this point in time. The second proposition concerning

the ethical aspects of nationality I will explore in chapter three, as this


14 See Miller 1999, pp.10-12.

is one of the major bones of contention in trying to reconcile

nationalism with liberalism: liberalism is typically based on

universalism, while any consistent account of nationalism is typically

founded on a particularist ethical approach. As the third proposition

concerning national self-determination is such a big issue in its own

right, and is only peripherally associated with the current

investigation, I will not be exploring this or any related self-rule issues

here.15

With regard to the identity proposition, Miller examines what

makes national identities different from other forms of identity - such

as individual or communal identities. He argues for five kinds of

features that are specific to national identities: mutual belief and the

use of mythology, historical continuity, political activity, territorial

concerns, and cultural similarities. I will now go on to critically look at

each of these features in turn, and also look at how other

commentators – notably Gellner, Tamir and Scruton - have also

approached these issues.


15 For further reading in this area, see Miller 1999, Raz and Margalit 1990, Kymlicka 2004, and Tamir 1993.

(i) Mutual Belief and Mythology: Nation as an ‘Imagined

Community’

The first obvious point to be made about nations is that, due to their

size, members of these ‘super-communities’ cannot possibly get to

know each other on a face to face or personal basis. This

differentiates them immediately from families and other small, tightly

knit communities. Nations are not like clans or tribes either, where

“each member is indirectly linked to every other by ties of marriage

and descent” (Miller 1999: 32). Nations are therefore neither families

nor clans – so what is it exactly that differentiates nations from other

types of communities?

In an attempt to define a theory of nationality, Gellner argues

that nations must be ‘willed’ by their members, and he identifies two

generic catalysts for group formation and maintenance: “will,

voluntary adherence and identification, loyalty, solidarity, on the one

hand; and fear, coercion, compulsion, on the other” (Gellner 1994:

53). In general, any group or community has a combination of these

factors in play at any given time in order to come into being and to

continue to exist. However, while these factors are necessary for any

nation to survive, they are not the exclusive property of propositions


about nations and apply equally well to other types of smaller sub-

groups and communities. Clearly, we will need some additional

criteria in order to differentiate a nation from a bridge club.

Miller picks up on a similar point but develops it in a different

way. For Miller, nations are instead held together by beliefs,

transmitted through “cultural artefacts which are available to everyone

who belongs – books, newspapers, media, pamphlets, and more

recently electronic media” (Miller 1999:32). This is precisely what

Benedict Anderson had in mind when he argued that nations are

‘imagined political communities’,

Imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is

imagined because the members of even the smallest nations

will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or

even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives an image of

their community.

(Anderson 1991: 6)

As such, “nations cannot exist unless there are available the means

of communication to make such collective imagining feasible” (Miller

1999: 32).


In part because of they are a product of the collective

imagination, nations are not as natural as they might at first appear.

According to Gellner, “the culture [a nation] claims to defend and

revive are often its own inventions, or are modified out of all

recognition” (Gellner 1994: 56). Although Gellner is being critical in

this instance, this is precisely the point. As Tamir argues, while each

nation is an intricate assemblage of (to borrow Hobsbawm’s phrase),

‘invented traditions’, we should not conflate invention with

fabrication.16 Invention should instead be seen as a positive force, a

result of man’s capacity for imaginative creation, a means of

answering difficult questions with ritual acts.17 In other words, we

should not confuse imagined with imaginary. Nations in this sense

are like stories, albeit stories on a grand scale. What becomes

important is not the truth of falsity of the facts which make up a

national story; instead it is the general underlying truths which the

story is trying to tell us that become of paramount importance.18 It is

part of human nature to look for a structure in chaos. For instance we


16 See Tamir, 1995, p. 420.

17 For a full clarification of what I mean by ‘ritual’ in this instance, see the following section on ‘Nation as Home’.

18 According to McKee (who admittedly is writing about stories of the Hollywood variety), “facts are neutral. The weakest possible excuse to include anything in a story is [to say] it actually happened” (Mckee 1999, p.25, my emphasis). Kenneth Burke once said too that, “stories are equipment for living”. Both sentiments concur with the account of nation being argued for here.

are adept at stitching together the often unrelated events in our own

lives into ‘life stories’, and everything this entails: missing out those

facts we would rather forget and emphasising those of which we are

proud. It should therefore come as no surprise that we attempt to do

the same thing with the cultures which we inhabit.

Such an analysis is not without its problems. If nations are

nothing more than a random collection of facts, figures and people

woven into a largely mythical story, then why are they of value? It

would seem that if we wanted to achieve some kind of unity, then this

might be better served by some other, more rational means, such as

a civic forum. And if we do accept that nations at least serve a

function with regard to political unity, then surely the mythical,

‘imagined’ aspect of national identities means that at best such an

approach can only have instrumental value – after all, how can such

an apparently random event such as being born in Britain have any

intrinsic value?

To counteract such arguments, Miller employs an analogy. At

first glance citizens of nations seem to be no different from the

occupants of a lifeboat – both have been thrown together under

random circumstances. As Miller suggests


The occupants of a lifeboat, after all, must establish

relationships among themselves. They must treat one another

decently, they must work together to keep their craft afloat, and

so forth. It seems no handicap that they can all recognize that it

is the merest chance that has brought them together. In the

same way, people who live together under a common set of

institutions are obliged to respect and co-operate with one

another, and it is not obvious why, in order to do this, they must

think of themselves as bearers of a common historical identity.

(Miller 1999: 41)

This looks like a powerful argument against any intrinsic value being

assigned to national identity or nations. Miller suggests two lines of

defence. The first is based on an ethical account of nations, which I

will deal with more fully in chapter three when I discuss ethical

particularism. The second defence which I will explore here is to

argue that the lifeboat analogy is not particularly useful in describing

nations. In this sense, nations have more in common with a circle of

friends or family than occupants of a lifeboat. For instance the fact

that I am born into a certain family is a random event over which I

have no control. At the same time this does not prevent me from


attaching intrinsic value to the subsequent web of relationships that

are formed by this event. The joint trials and tribulations of families,

the history, the constant contact and complex emotions we share

mean these connections are amongst some of the most powerful and

potentially rewarding connections many of us will form during our

lifetime. But the same may be true of other communities of which we

might find ourselves members, including nations. Like families,

national communities are also made up of a “dense web of customs,

practices, implicit understandings, and so forth” (Miller 1999: 41),

which in turn can be the source of a set of strong attachments and

commitments to fellow members. If we accept that nations are more

like families than lifeboats, then this argues for the potential of

citizens finding intrinsic value in their national identity. This is a point

often denied, overlooked or ignored by liberals, and is something I will

return to again in later chapters.

In terms of defining a nation however, the concept of ‘imagined

communities’ is not sufficient on its own to explain them. True, we will

never meet many of our compatriots face to face, and therefore we

must rely on an image of them as a people. But the same could be

true of an extended family. This is doubly true when we think of our


relations to past and future generations, who we can never know,

either because they died before we were born or will continue to live

after our own death. Clearly, imagined communities are a necessary

part of any definition of nation, but they do not fully explain them.

(ii) Historical Continuity

That nations have a certain historical lineage is undisputed. As we

have already noted, how ‘true’ much of the history we find wrapped

up in the national story is debateable and does not often stand up to

rational scrutiny.19 However historical continuity has a real function, in

that it roots us in a set of obligations, both forward and backward

looking. As Miller argues, “because our forebears have toiled and spilt

their blood to build and defend the nation, we who are born into it

inherit an obligation to continue their work, which we discharge partly

towards our contemporaries and partly towards their

descendents” (Miller 1993: 305). In Miller’s terms, this gives nations a

‘depth’ that other forms of associations do not commonly share with

nationalism. As Scruton has argued, “when people discard, ignore or


19 As a character in The Satanic Verses argues, “the trouble with the British is that most of their history happened overseas” (quoted by Anshuman Mondal, see Replies to David Goodhart’s Essay in Prospect magazine.

mock the ideals which formed our national character then they no

longer exist as a people but only as a crowd”.20

(iii) Political Activity

While some nations seem to be the result of spontaneous events and

movements, others seem to be the result of declarations and

enforced impositions driven by political parties or leaders. The

approach taken would seem to have a direct correlation with the

amount of subsequent fabrication presented as part of the national

myth. As Miller argues, “the emergence of a national identity in

eighteenth century – and early nineteenth century Britain, which

involved competition between a number of groups – tradesmen,

women, the Welsh and Scots, as well as English aristocracy – each

seeking to establish themselves as citizens, and offering contrasting

images of British identity to support their claims” (Miller 1999:41), was

hugely different to the, “Chinese cultural revolution of the 1960s,

where an attempt was made by a small political clique to impose a

uniform definition of Chinese identity upon the mass of people,

involving a deliberate attempt to destroy traditional Confucian moral


20 Quoted by Gordon Brown in his address to the British Council Annual Lecture.

values and replace them with Maoist ideology” (ibid, 41). While no

national story can be perfectly true, there are variations in quality.

However a nation has come into being it needs to be

maintained by political and institutional processes, often by proxy. All

nations have an element therefore of political self-determination, in

that they have to reach joint decisions and abide by them. In this

sense, nations are far from passive communities. How far political

activity is taken however depends on how far those leading the

political process (and those who support them) are prepared to take

them, which may or may not result in the establishment of a state and

self-rule.

(iv) Territorial Concerns: Nation as “Home”

In England: An Elegy, Scruton argues that, at least in England’s case,

the nation was, “first and foremost a place – though a place

consecrated by custom” (Scruton 2006: 7). From here Scruton builds

a definition of nation based on the concept of ‘home’ and the rituals

that are practised within its boundaries.

There seems little mention in the philosophical cannon about

the importance of rituals and the crucial role they play in defining and


demarcating cultures. They are often, though not always, a reflection

of the immediate environment (or place), and a means of

manipulating and shaping that environment. Rituals as we

understand them probably began with formal burials practised during

the Neanderthal period. These burials reflect the development of a

new concern for man in that they demonstrate that he became

concerned about the fate of his compatriots, and that he had a desire

to honour and mourn other individuals. Indeed recent findings may

prove even more: the discovery of the skeleton of a Neanderthal man

who had lost one of his arms years before he died argues that he was

cared for by others for some considerable time. Some archaeologists

go further still and suggest ritual burial may even prove that man had

begun to pose the theory of an after-life – proof of a huge conceptual

jump if true. What we do know is that, “the human brain must already

have been capable of discerning questions it wanted to answer and

perhaps of providing these answers in the shape of rituals” (Roberts

1995: 22).

Nations in turn are stuffed with rituals, and it is the preservation

and continued observance of these rituals which are of paramount

importance to those who identify strongly with a particular culture.


Some rituals may be based on the duties inspired by a particular

religion, but it can also include such everyday things as what you

choose to eat for breakfast.21 As Tamir argues, “the ability to turn an

everyday act into a source of national pride is one of the most

appealing aspects of nationalism. It contextualises human actions, no

matter how mundane, making them part of a continuous creative

effort whereby culture is made and remade” (Tamir 1993: 85).

Rituals are often (though not always) associated with a

particular place and people. Scruton develops this point lucidly in his

definition of ‘home’, and it is worth quoting him at length to make the

point.

When human beings cease their wandering and mark out a

place as their own, their first instinct is to furnish it with things

which have no function – ornaments, pictures, knick-knacks –

or with things which, while possessing a function, are valued

more for other reasons: for their associations, their beauty, their

way of fitting in. This instinct for the purposelessness has a

purpose – namely to make these objects into an expression of

ourselves and of our common dwelling place, to endow them


21 William’s claimed that “culture is the ordinary” (quoted by Tamir – see Tamir 1993, p. 85)

with marks of order, legitimacy and peaceful possession. In

other words objects, when they form part of a home, are

endowed with a soul. […] The enchantment of things in the

home is part of a larger spiritual project. Home has its customs,

its rituals, its special times and places. Or if it does not, it is so

much the less a home.

(Scruton 2006: 13)

Quoting Larkin, Scruton sees home as a, “joyous shot at how things

ought to be”.22 Any nation worthy of the name would have the same

guiding principle, the same spiritual attachment to things and

customs; if not, it is so much the less a nation.

The concept of nation as ‘home’ is not without its problems.

How, for instance, do nations fit in that have no home or suffer

problems of disputed territory? However the fact remains that every

nation has some conception of home, even if this is purely spiritual:

for instance the nation of Islam, despite spanning every continent, still

has a spiritual home in Mecca (indeed one of its central tenets is that

every believer must visit ‘home’ at least once in their lifetime); the


22 Philip Larkin, ‘Home is so Sad’.

same is true, though in different ways, of the Jewish nation and its

relationship to Jerusalem, the Mormons to Temple Square, and the

Catholics relation to the Vatican.23

It would seem then that the concept of place, or home, should

play a qualifying role in the definition of a nation.


23 According to Scruton, the term ‘nation’ came into common use through the Jewish bible. See Scruton 2006, p. 5.

(v) Cultural Similarities

Gellner’s second candidate for defining nationality is that of an

experience of a shared culture. If we take culture to mean, “a system

of ideas and signs and associations and ways of behaving and

communicating” (Gellner 1994: 7), then there is a good argument for

making this a necessary condition for a social grouping to be

classified as a nation. However, once again, this also opens the door

to a whole host of other groups that we would not normally want to

classify as nations, such as a local community with a distinct dialect

and set of traditions, or even an internet community built around a

single issue or interest and which cuts across traditional national

boundaries.

Even taken together, Gellner’s criteria of ‘will’ and ‘shared

culture’ are not sufficient to define what a nation is, or what nationality

might mean, as compared to some other experience of being a

member of a group. Clearly we need to look for some further

conditions in order to fully define what a nation is.

Tamir takes Anderson’s argument that nations are ‘imagined

political communities’ as a starting point to develop a more robust

argument for defining nations. First, Tamir drops the term ‘political


community’ in favour of ‘cultural community’. This is because national

movements are primarily motivated by a cultural rather than a political

claim. Their desire is, “to assure the existence and flourishing of a

particular community, to preserve its culture, tradition and

language” (Tamir 1993: xiii). As such, striving for political power

(usually in the form of a state) is a means to this end rather than an

end in itself. This is an important shift, and one which has clear

similarities with the distinctions previously drawn between social and

political solidarity.

Having changed the focus from politics to culture, Tamir then

looks for some ‘distinguishing features’ that mark out an imagined

community as a nation rather than some other form of social

grouping. She splits these features into two types, those that are,

“independent of the feelings and perceptions of the agents – age,

gender, race, income, or place of birth – and those that are

not” (Tamir 1995: 422). From here it follows that any group whose

major defining characteristics rely on objective facts about the

individuals which constitute them, rather than on how they feel about

and relate to each other, could not be classed as national. Instead the

defining features of a nation are that its members, “share feelings of


fraternity, substantial distinctiveness, and exclusivity, as well as

beliefs in common ancestry and a continuous genealogy” (ibid, 425).

In this sense then, and as I have already argued, nations have more

in common with, “a group of friends than a group of citizens” (ibid, p.

422). This distinction is an important point and one which I will revisit

in discussing the subject of civic republicanism in chapter two, where

I will examine the liberal argument that we should replace the

concepts of nations and nationality with those of civic duties and

citizenship.

Before I move on to explore the implications of this shift from

the political to the social (or cultural), I want to briefly explore the

general misconception that nations are based on the concept of a

single ethnicity. While some nations (which have been the result of

particularly hard-line nationalist movements) have indeed tried to sell

the myth that one nation equals one ethnic group, this is not generally

the case.24 There is a case that ethnic identities are subject to

precisely the same kinds of mythical re-interpretation as national

ones, in that people who identify themselves strongly with a particular

ethnic background will also be identifying strongly with the particular


24 Ernst Gellner makes the mistake of conflating ethnicity and nationality when he argues that, “ethnic boundaries should not cut across political [national] ones”. (Quoted in Miller 1999: 21).

‘historical baggage’ such identities contain. That said, as Miller

argues, “once we recognise that there can be multi-ethnic nations,

the inference [that nations must be understood as ethnically

homogenous communities] falls away” (Miller 1999:21). While a

nation could be built from a single ethnic group, this would mean

potentially putting an objective fact about its members (i.e. their

ethnicity) before that of how the members actually feel about and

relate to each other. If this was indeed the case, then such a grouping

would I argue be better classified as a political grouping than a

national one. As Scruton has also argued, “races, if they exist, are not

confined within national boundaries, and have no characteristic

language, culture or history” (Scruton 1990: 273).

It would seem that Tamir’s interpretation of Anderson’s

argument is more robust than the original, in that it excludes several

types of communities and groups that we would not ordinarily classify

as nations. It would, for example, be impossible to classify an

international women’s rights movement as a nation: even if they

demonstrated fraternity, they would not share a belief in a common

ancestry or distinctiveness – indeed such a movement would instead

reflect the diverse cultures and values from which its members were


drawn. If this is the case then it would be better described as a

political movement (by fighting for the recognition of certain rights),

than a cultural one. That said this definition is not without its problems

and hard cases either. How, for instance, would we wish to classify

the Amish in America? Are they a nation or do they fall below some

as yet undefined tipping point we would like to see in order to call a

group a nation? If not, are they an example of a ‘micro-nation’, or

something else? However, as with our definition of the state, the

definition we are now edging towards will I believe be good enough

for the majority of cases. I will now go on to draw these different

features together in an attempt to define what the term nation means.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for a Nation

Any community can be classified as a nation if and only if it meets all

of the following necessary and sufficient conditions:

(1) Its members have a shared experience of an imagined cultural

community, whose system of rituals, ideas, signs, associations,

values and means of communicating they wish to support,

observe and maintain through political activity and self-

determination


(2) It is primarily a social (as opposed to political) construct, and

therefore its members experience feelings of fraternity with

other members to the extent that they feel obliged to extend

special obligations towards co-members

(3) Its members believe that their culture is unique and that their

being a member of it is a constituent (though far from

necessary) part of their personal identity

(4) Its members share an idea of a homeland (territory) and of a

continuous genealogy, and of the mythology which ties these

together

(5) The community is not defined on objective facts about its

members (e.g. gender, ethnic origin), but rather about how its

members ‘feel about’ or ‘relate to’ each other

While these criteria present a ‘best fit’ for defining when a community

can be classified as a nation, it is by no means perfect.25 It says

nothing for instance about the difficult question of how large a

community should be, or how long it has been in existence, before it

can be classified as a nation. This ambiguity may be no bad thing;

such restrictions would force us to draw distinctions on the basis of


25 By way of a litte light relief, compare this to Frank Zappa’s suggested list of necessary and sufficient conditions: “you can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer”.

arbitrary counts, such as the number of members involved, the

number of years in existence, or even the relative size of a

geographical (territorial) area. Nor does such a definition rule out the

majority of world religions as nations in their own right. It does

however rule out some groups we would not typically want to classify

as nations, such as families, voluntary groups, political parties,

international pressure groups, virtual internet groups, professional

groups and football club supporters.

For the purposes of this essay then, the definition of nation we

have now arrived at is fit for purpose and will enable us to examine

some of the traditional problem areas in trying to fit the concept of

nationalism together with traditional liberal values, issues which I will

pick up in the following chapter. But before I move on to discuss

these issues, I want to return briefly to the question I posed earlier as

to how well the concepts of state and nation overlap, particularly with

regard to the necessary criteria that a state needs to rule a defined

territory which also has a socially related population.

In the modern world, evidence suggests that it is a rare

occurrence that these two concepts overlap perfectly, meaning that a

single state rules over a single nation. By far the most common


situation is that a state finds itself ruling over a territory which

encompasses several national identities. Indeed in some cases it is

yet more complicated, in that a state may govern only part of the

territory traditionally associated with a particular nation (as is the case

with the Kurdish nation and its relation to Turkey and Iraq). How

modern liberal states try to manage these complex challenges is

something I will return to again on the chapter on multiculturalism: I

will argue that despite the fact that several nationalities often exist

within a single state territory, there is nothing illiberal about promoting

a single, ‘over-arching’ (or ‘umbrella’) national identity which would

bring all of these together.


Conclusion

I have argued for two types of solidarity – social and political – and

together these make for complete unity. I have also argued that social

solidarity on a national scale has instrumental value in that it helps to

sustain the liberal state. I have also argued that this kind of solidarity

has intrinsic value in that it helps to give people a sense of place and

belonging, much like that gained from being a member of a family or

a circle of friends. I have shown that national identities need not be

exclusive, and that they often compete with other forms of

membership. I have also tried to show what makes nations distinct

from other kinds of communities, from which I have subsequently

drawn up a list of necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying a

community as a nation. I have not as yet shown how our definition of

a nation might be further refined to make it compatible with liberalism,

or as yet defined what I mean by a liberal state. In the next chapter I

will begin to explore how we might go about this, and from there look

at the ethical implications for the liberal should they agree on

attempting to reconcile nationalism and liberalism.


Chapter Two: Liberalism and Nationalism - Opposing

Standpoints?

Introduction

So far our discussions of solidarity, state and nation have only

obliquely referred to liberalism. I now want to go on to argue that, just

as is it is possible to argue for a liberal interpretation of a state, it is

also possible to argue coherently for a liberal interpretation of a

nationalism. Before I go on to explore what this might look like, I first

want to briefly outline what I mean by a liberal state, and identify the

major areas where such a definition might clash with a traditional

theory of nationalism.

The Liberal State

While in general it can be said that liberal principles of justice vary

considerably (encompassing everything from Nozick to Rawls), it is

true to say that all liberals at least agree on the basic Kantian view of

individuals. This view finds its embodiment in Rawls’ first principle of

justice:


Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive

scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar

scheme of liberties for others.

(Rawls 1999: 53)

The “basic liberties are given by a list of such liberties” (ibid, 53),

which includes (amongst others) political liberty, liberty of conscience,

freedom of speech and assembly, and freedom of thought. As this is

necessarily the first principal of any liberal state, I do not want to go

into any further detail here. However the existence of any further

principles over and above this remains contentious. For instance

Rawls’s second principle – which he calls ‘democratic equality’ -

argues that the best way for a liberal state to distribute the resources

available to it is through the implementation of what he calls the

‘difference principle’ – an approach which Nozick categorically

rejects. There is no room to enter into the complex arguments put

forward by both sides here. Instead I want to limit my interpretation of

a liberal state to the following: first, it would uphold the basic liberties

as outlined in Rawls’s first principle; second, it would make some

form of provision for the less fortunate through the maintenance of a

welfare system; third, it would also make some provision for equal


opportunity for all. I do not wish to go into any more detail on these

points here for fear of prejudicing my argument for connecting liberal

values and nationalism in favour of one form of liberalism (e.g.

Rawlsian) over another; by leaving room for a certain amount of

ambiguity we can avoid this restriction.26 I now want to go on to

outline the major areas where the values of the liberal state might

clash with that of nationalism, and suggest how a liberal interpretation

of nationalism might provide solutions to these problems.

Four Main Areas of Contention

In On Nationality, Miller argues that the debate between liberalism

and nationalism may turn out to be a “more general contest between

liberals and communitarians” (Miller 1999: 193). He goes on to say

that, “if there is a contest here at all, it occurs at the level of the

justifying theory rather than at the level of the political principle: most

‘communitarians’ adopt recognizably liberal political positions” (ibid,

193). However because such justifications do indeed matter, it is

important for our purpose here to make sure that any marriage we


26 Having said this, my interpretation of the liberal state, by allowing for the provision of a welfare state and the taxes this would entail, does in fact rule out any version of a ‘nightwatchman’ or similar libertarian state.

might achieve between liberalism and nationalism is not forced, and

that any differences in justification can be properly reconciled.

As to specific areas of contention, Miller identifies four possible

areas where liberals might clash with nationalists: the principle of

cultural (and political) neutrality; individual autonomy and choice;

rational consent; and republicanism. I will add to this list (as does

Miller in an earlier chapter) the problem of ethical foundations, by

which I mean the debate between ethical universalism and ethical

particularism. As this is one of the more complicated areas of

contention between these two theories, I will look at this in more

detail in the following chapter; for now I will go on to examine these

first four areas of contention and suggest ways in which both sides

might reach a suitable compromise.

The First Problem: Political and Cultural Neutrality

The liberal position typically favours a position called political

neutrality, the basic interpretation of which “requires that the state

remain neutral on disputed questions about the good” (Waldron

1998), which is itself an extension of the old liberal tenet of toleration.

In other words, the state should not favour one way of life over


another, but should respect all equally. However there is an important

caveat liberals place on the extent of such toleration, namely that only

those conceptions of the good which do not violate the basic liberal

principles are allowed. According to Waldron these principles might

typically include “justice, freedom and individual rights” (ibid). Liberals

call these the ‘principles of political right’, the point of which is, “to

define a framework within which individuals ought to be able to

pursue any conception of the good they please” (ibid). As Rawls also

argues in A Theory of Justice, “the principles of right, and so of

justice, put limits on which satisfactions have value; they impose

restrictions on what are reasonable conceptions of one’s

good” (Rawls 1999: 27). Rawls goes on to say that this means that,

“the concept of right is prior to that of the good” (ibid, 28). The

implication of this is that (at least in the Rawlsian world), any

conception of the good must meet the necessary conditions of the

principles of right and justice; hence any “interests requiring the

violation of justice have no value” (ibid, 28). We could add to this

explicit principle of political neutrality that of the implicit principle of

cultural neutrality, in that no liberal state should prioritise the traditions

and values of any one culture over that of any other; if it did, then the


state might be guilty of stepping over the demarcation between what

is ‘right’ and what is ‘good’.

At face value then, the concepts of political and cultural

neutrality seem at odds with that of nationalism – liberal or otherwise

- which may well seek to prioritise certain aspects of a particular

culture or values (meaning its own) over those of other cultures and

values. Within the context of a liberal state, these may take the forms

of nationalist groups demanding special privileges which they feel are

necessary in order to protect their group identity. In turn this may lead

to the granting of certain group-based rights – something which the

liberal state may well be wary of granting. As there is a whole set of

complex problems hiding within this, I will return to this and related

issues when I discuss nationalism and multiculturalism in chapter

four. At this point however I instead want to concentrate on the more

basic problem, namely how can we reconcile (if at all) the liberal’s

desire to uphold the principle of political neutrality and the

nationalist’s desire to actively promote a particular culture?

We can start this line of enquiry by trying to point something out

to the liberal, namely that the prioritisation of the principles of right

over good in itself carries certain value commitments – such as


protecting individual rights and autonomy.27 This means that - far from

being neutral with respect to values – liberals have in fact ring-fenced

certain values as inviolable and essential to the liberal outlook. Most

liberals however are willing to admit this. According to Rawls the core

values are ring-fenced because they “are very great values indeed

and hence not easily overridden” (Rawls 1989: 168). He goes on to

say that, “these values govern the basic framework of social life, ‘the

very groundwork of our existence’28, and specify the fundamental

terms of political and social cooperation” (ibid, p.168). However given

this twist – meaning that we are now looking at a sliding scale of

values as opposed to two different types of values - the nationalist

could rightly accuse any liberal of making a distinction without a

difference when they attempt to differentiate between ‘right’ and

‘good’.29

At one end of the scale then (let’s call it the ‘thin end’) we have

the small list of prioritised values essential to the liberal position,

while at the other end (the ‘thick end’) we have a much more


27 Although see my later section on ‘political liberalism’ as to why autonomy may or may not be one of these values.

28 Rawls is quoting Mill here, see J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism (3rd ed., 1867), ch. 5, par. 25.

29 In a later work, Rawls also seems to acknowledge this point. In outlining a ‘political conception of justice’, Rawls says that the difference between a political conception of justice and other moral conceptions is “a matter of scope” (Rawls 1989: 165).

comprehensive list of values which more fully prescribe how we ought

to live. In the liberal world, those values at the thick end would also

be ‘backwardly compatible’ with those found at the thin end, meaning

that the ‘thin’ conception of the good is that which is general (and in

the liberal ideal, universal) to all conceptions of the good. Walzer

makes the point more concisely when he argues that, “there is a thin

and universal morality within every thick and particular morality”.30 As

this is an investigation into liberal nationalism, I now want to see what

use the liberal nationalist can make of this discovery.

The first thing the liberal nationalist could argue is that, because

national identity need not be (and frequently isn’t) an all embracing

identity, nationalism can also be described in ways which are only

partially comprehensive and which also meet the criteria of the

principles of right. In other words nationalism can also be ‘thin’ and

therefore does not need to prescribe every aspect of the good; just

like the core values of liberalism itself it can therefore leave room for

further values to be bolted on top, and thereby provide the means for

diversity within its own ranks, including the existence of other national

identities.


30 This interpretation of Walzer’s claims is made by Orlie in her review of Walzer’s book Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. See Orlie, 1999, p. 140

The second thing a liberal nationalist could argue is as follows:

if we can show that social cohesion and stability are vital to the

survival of the liberal state, and that nationalism can provide this, then

we can argue that liberal nationalism is also part of ‘the fundamental

terms of political and social cooperation’. The liberal nationalist is not

asking the traditional liberal to rip up their theory and start from

scratch; instead they are making a much more modest request,

namely to move the marker designating the ‘principles of right’ a little

further up the scale to make room for nationalism too. As Kymlicka

has argued, “if states promote such thin national identities on the

grounds that possessing them will make citizens more likely to fulfil

their obligations of justice, then there is no violation of liberal

neutrality” (Kymlicka 2002: 266).

Given these two possible approaches, I would suggest that the

differences between nationalism and liberalism on the principles of

political and cultural neutrality are not as great as they at first

appeared.


The Second Problem: Autonomy and Choice

We have already touched on the essence of the debate here in the

introduction to this essay, where we drew a distinction between the

‘unconditioned rational agent’ sometimes favoured by Liberals and

the ‘totally embedded self’ sometimes favoured by particularly hard-

line Nationalists. At the extreme end of the scale a liberal may argue

that, unless we have rationally chosen the culture and values we

recognise and practice (either through some kind of voluntary

agreement or social contract), it can be of no value. This approach

requires us to ‘step outside’ the usual bundle of prejudices that

normally provide the framework for our choices in order to asses

them from a purely rational perspective – much as Rawls tries to

achieve with his idea of the ‘veil of ignorance’.31 At the other end of

the extreme, Nationalists may believe that, “our membership of a

national community is not open to choice in this way, and that the

public culture which the community embodies forms an unchosen

background against which more specific private cultural decisions can

be made” (Miller 1999: 194).


31 Rawls argued that, “somehow we must nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage” (Rawls 1999: 118).

As already argued, both of these positions seem nonsensical. It

is absurd to suggest that we can shake off all of our prejudices

simultaneously – after all, prejudice is in part what makes us human

(as opposed to purely rational robots). Conversely it seems equally

absurd to suggest that we can never evaluate (and therefore possibly

reject) the cultural norms in which we grow up, however strongly

inculcated. Surely the more commonsense approach is to argue that

some middle-ground view – what we have termed ‘the contextualised

self’ - is more like the state of affairs as we actually understand and

experience it. To borrow a concept from Heidegger: even if the

nationality we inherit has an element of ‘throwness’ about it –

because, just like families, they are not initially subject to our rational

consent and are instead given to us by an accident of birth – this is

not to argue that they cannot be critically re-assessed or that such

connections have no intrinsic value; nor does it mean that everything

about them must confirm to the laws of blind rationality. In the liberal

interpretation of nationalism therefore, such cultural norms are indeed

up for debate, and as such they can be reconfirmed, rejected or

modified. This makes liberal nationalism an ongoing, creative and

critical process, subject to revision and reconfirmation. This also has


the implication that an individual should have the right to change

nationalities if they so wish (as long as the other nationality is willing

to admit them). The argument therefore is that, rather than

perpetuating the dispute about the concept of a person that exists

between nationalists and liberals, liberal nationalism instead provides

a potential reconciliation.

The Third Problem: Rational Consent

This problem is to some extent a reflection of the problems discussed

above: if liberals favour the contractual or voluntary consent approach

to explaining the legitimacy of political institutions, then nationalists

may well believe the opposite, namely that the legitimacy of such

institutions rest on the will of the national community, which does not

require that each individual consents to such institutions. At face

value this would seem to be an impasse between justifications.

However I would suggest that the liberal nationalist can actually point

to a significant advantage to his or her theory in this context, in that it

potentially provides the answer to an embarrassing conundrum for

the liberal. The conundrum is this: “in order to sign a contract

individuals would have to regard themselves as part of a group, but


they are not supposed to regard themselves as part of a group until

they have signed the contract” (Matravers and Pike 2003, 267). We

could well add to this basic necessity (i.e. that some form of grouping

already exists), Scruton’s demand for the rule of law, which in turn

demands that, “the safety, continuity and stability necessary to a rule

of law are unobtainable until territory is secure” (Scruton 1990, 283).

So without a pre-existing group (however defined), a rule of law, and

a territory, it would seem that the contractual approach is unable to

even get off the ground. As Scruton argues:

The liberal ought to bite the bullet, and confess to the

advantages of the national idea. It establishes a social loyalty

suited to territorial jurisdiction; and without territorial jurisdiction,

there is no possibility of a liberal state (ibid, 284).

The Fourth Problem: Republicanism

According to Charles Taylor, the “mature liberal society does not

demand very much of its members, as long as it delivers the goods

and makes their lives prosperous and secure” (Taylor 1989: 203).

This would appear to be in contrast with the traditional nationalist

approach to, “attach real intrinsic value to public life, and to adopt a


republican view of citizenship, according to which the citizen should

be actively engaged at some level in political debate” (Miller 1999:

194). As Kymlicka also notes, “whereas the ancients sacrificed

private liberty to promote the political life, moderns view politics as a

means (and somewhat of a sacrifice) needed to protect their private

life” (Kymlicka 2002: 295). Once again I want to suggest that liberal

nationalism can provide the middle-ground between these two

versions of ‘passive’ and ‘active’ citizens. In part, the alleged passivity

of citizens under a liberal state may be part and parcel of liberalism’s

underlying problems. It is tied up with the neutrality principle,

autonomy and rationality, all of which provide answers to the political

aspect of solidarity but remain completely silent about the social side

of solidarity. As Kymlicka has argued, “shared political principles may

indeed by a necessary condition for political unity […] but shared

political principles are not sufficient for unity” (ibid, P.253). This is

because “unity is, in the normal instance, social rather than

political” (Scruton 1990: 271). Liberal nationalism as it is conceived

here is designed to precisely plug that gap: it provides the missing

necessary socially-based condition for complete unity by bringing

together the social aspects of nationalism with the political aspects of


liberalism. Taking an active role in politics and social networks does

not therefore run counter to the liberal thesis; rather, it underpins it.

Remaining Issues: what about social solidarity?

We have done some work now on trying to marry together liberalism

and nationalism in a coherent way. In the process we have provided

solutions to four major principles on which they might have been said

to clash, those of political neutrality, autonomy and choice, rational

consent and republicanism. However it is now the turn of the liberal

nationalist to ask questions of the traditional liberal. Liberal

nationalists suspect that liberal theory – and in particular its

attachment to political and cultural neutrality – provides only part of

the solution, in that liberalism only answers the political side of the

solidarity problem and says too little about what we should be doing

to address the social side.

In his Defence of Nationality, Miller makes the point that, in

“societies [where] economic markets play a central role, there is a

strong tendency towards social atomization, where each person looks

out for the interests of herself and her immediate social


network” (Miller 1993: 308).32 Whether we agree with this particular

line of reasoning or not, Miller is certainly not alone in his belief that

modern liberal states are suffering from fragmentation, atomization

and a lack of solidarity. While there may be small isolated pockets of

altruism and instances of strong communal bonding, the fact remains

that the once traditional sense that citizens of liberal states were ‘all

in it together’ and that they were working towards a common goal is

being slowly eroded. The knock-on effect of this can be of real

consequence to the legitimacy of state institutions, especially with

regard to welfare. If diversity is indeed a “permanent feature of the

public culture of democracy” (Rawls 1989: 161), then the need for

something to bind us together in some way is all the more crucial.

This is because, as Goodhart has argued, “sharing and solidarity can

conflict with diversity” (Goodhart 2004). Goodhart goes on to argue

that, “this is an especially acute dilemma for progressives who want

plenty of both solidarity – high social cohesion and generous welfare

paid out of a progressive tax system – and diversity – equal respect

for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life” (ibid). A similar

point it is made by Kymlicka. He argues that when we become


32 I will take it for granted here that atomization, and the inherent dangers it presents to social cohesion and stability – not to mention the sustainability of the liberal state itself - is no good thing.

distanced from our shared form of life, it means that “we become

unwilling to shoulder the burdens of liberal justice” (Kymlicka 2002:

253). He goes on to say that, “as a result, liberal democracies are

undergoing a ‘legitimation crisis’ – citizens are asked to sacrifice

more and more in the name of justice, but they share less and less

with those for whom they are making sacrifices. There is no shared

form of life underlying the demands of the neutral state” (ibid, 253).

So while the principle of political neutrality (and the subsequent

diversity it encourages) remains a central tenet of the liberal thesis, it

is also one of the main causes for the current ‘crisis of legitimation’

that Kymlicka is talking about. As such, the liberal thesis needs a

complimentary approach to help underpin solidarity in such a way

that it engages every citizen in a similar and meaningful way. I will

argue that this is best answered by invoking and supporting a

national idea (liberal nationalism). But before I do that, I will first go on

to briefly examine and reject three alternative approaches to the

problem of solidarity. These approaches can be called ‘political

liberalism’, ‘the common way of life’ (or communitarianism), and ‘civic

republicanism’.

(i) Political Liberalism


At the minimum end of the spectrum – in what Kymlicka calls ‘political

liberalism’ – there is an attempt to redefine the core liberal values on

an even thinner account than those set out in the ‘principles of

right’.33 Oddly enough, the reasoning behind the move towards this

‘lite’ version of liberalism is an attempt to increase unity - I say odd

because the immediate, commonsensical approach to increasing

unity would seem to be to increase the number of values and virtues

a community shares in common, not decrease them. However, the

justification of political liberalism goes roughly something like this: by

reducing the number of normative values to which any member of

society must consent to an absolute minimum, the chances that even

members of fundamentally opposed comprehensive conceptions of

the good can subsequently find a common ground for rational

discussion are increased. In practical terms, the key issue becomes

that of the need to find areas of consensus between strongly

communitarian, minority groups founded on mainly non-liberal

principles on the one hand, and those of the wider (liberal) society on

the other. To drill down even further into this problem, we find that the

main sticking point between these two groups tends to be that of


33 See Kymlicka, 2002, pp. 228-244.

autonomy: for many liberals, the right to step back and rationally

review the values of society and to potentially challenge them is of

vital importance; while for some communitarians, such a move can be

seen as potentially fatal to their entire enterprise.34 Thus, by re-

inventing liberalism in a way that significantly ‘plays down’ the value

of autonomy, ‘political liberalism’ claims to leave the door open for

dialogue with illiberal communities; whereas a more ‘comprehensive

liberalism’ (because it values autonomy) may end up forcing certain

values on minority groups which they have no desire to adopt, a

position which could lead to charges of imperialism.

One advocate of ‘political liberalism’ is none other than Rawls

himself. In his later writings, Rawls argued for a ‘political conception

of justice’, the aim of which was to “specify the special domain of the

political in such a way that its main institutions can gain the support of

an overlapping consensus” (Rawls 1989: 167). The ‘overlapping

consensus’ turns out to be a very narrow set of what Rawls calls

purely political values; this domain “affirms certain basic political and

civil rights and liberties, assigns them a certain priority, and so


34 A concrete example of which can be found in America, where the Amish fought to be exempted from the mandatory (liberal) education laws, because they believed that the liberal education system and its emphasis on rational choice would undermine the successor generations beliefs in the Amish way of life (see Kymlicka 2004, pp. 162-164).

on” (ibid, p.166), which in turn yields what Rawls calls ‘constitutional

essentials’. However this is not the big about-turn it seems, as for

Rawls the domain of the political still leaves room to include such

political conceptions as his own ‘justice as fairness’.35 Rawls argues

that, unlike his earlier, more ‘comprehensive’ version of neutrality, this

new position is not even partially comprehensive, as “for a conception

to be even partially comprehensive it must extend beyond the political

and include nonpolitical values and virtues” (Ibid, p.165).

In discussing Rawls’ updated theory, Kymlicka argues that

Rawls makes this move in response to communitarian critics. Rawls

came to believe that “not everyone values autonomy, and so

appealing to it in political life would be ‘sectarian’” (Kymlicka 2002:

243). He goes on to argue that, “the autonomy-based defence of

individual rights invokes ‘ideals and values that are not generally

shared in a democratic society’, and hence ‘cannot secure sufficient

agreement’” (ibid, 243). In other words, to include a value such as

autonomy in the political domain simply means that “liberalism

‘becomes but another sectarian doctrine’” (ibid, 243).


35 See Rawls 1989, p. 160.

The problems with this account are legion, but for the purposes

of this argument I will focus only on the following.36 First, it explicitly

focuses only on the political aspect of solidarity, and says nothing

about the social aspect, which in the Rawlsian world becomes

privatised and outside of the state’s field of interest. I believe this is a

fatal flaw in the argument. Second, as an explanation of unity, it is

simply far too thin and extremely naive. As we have already pointed

out, shared political principles alone are “not sufficient for

unity” (Kymlicka 2002, p. 253). In other words, the fact that we are

occasionally take part in political debate is not enough to legitimise

state institutions. Finally, in its rush to find a common ground, it

abandons one of the fundamental building blocks of liberalism,

namely autonomy, and is thus in danger of ‘throwing the baby out

with the bathwater’. At first, this may seem like an odd position for a

liberal nationalist to adopt; surely autonomy works against the need

to ‘protect’ the story and values which holds the national idea

together should not be tampered with? While this may well be the

case with some forms of nationalism, it is precisely not the case with

the liberal interpretation. According to Anshuman Mondal, we should


36 For a fuller account of the problems with political liberalism, see Kymlicka 2002, pp. 228-244.

not “settle on a new story once and for all”.37 Rather “we should

recognise the value of keeping who ‘we’ are open and negotiable”.

This is a point I will raise again on the chapter on Multiculturalism and

Nationalism.

To conclude then, I want to argue that for unity to work, the

state must go ‘beyond neutrality’. Accounts of liberalism that rest on a

‘purely political’ definition of values and virtues address only the

political side of solidarity, and as such they fail to address the social

needs of communities.

(ii) The Common Way of Life

While this approach to solidarity is more rightly called communitarian

than liberal, this is not to say that the desired ‘outcome’ of such an

approach would not be liberal in nature.38 For the sake of argument,

we can say that by a ‘common way of life’ we mean that people share

a common conception of the good life. If such a society were to exist,

then the state would have no problems of legitimacy, as everyone

would be working towards a common good. While there is no doubt


37 This and the following quote are taken from Mondal’s piece “New national Myths” (see Replies to David Goodhart’s essay “Too Diverse?” 2004).

38 Kymlicka quotes Sandel and Taylor as two proponents of this type of approach (see Kymlicka pp. 257-261).

that communitarian accounts of this position are much more subtle

and complex than this, the underlying problems remain the same. For

surely while the approaches of ‘political liberalism’ and the

‘overlapping consensus’ are too ‘thin’, this approach is too ‘thick’. By

straying so far beyond the principal of political neutrality, the ‘common

way of life’ approach risks running rough shod over the values and

interests of minority communities and other groups. As such it has

more in common with hard-line nationalism than with liberalism.

Examples quoted by communitarians of such ‘ideal’ societies – such

as ancient Greece – ignore the fact that the good life they

encouraged did little to include the interests of women, non-citizens

and slaves, a position which of course is an anathema to liberals. It is

clear then that this approach to creating solidarity comes at too high a

price in that it overrides the core liberal value of respecting diversity

and the freedom to choose one’s own comprehensive conception of

the good life.


(iii) Civic Republicanism

This approach has much in common with the related concept of

citizenship theory, in that it also emphasises political participation in

public life. As such, civic republicanism is “intimately linked to liberal

ideas of individual rights and entitlements on the one hand, and to

communitarian ideas of membership and attachments to a particular

community on the other” (Kymlicka 2002: 284). It is an approach

which has many proponents, including (amongst others) Weinstock,

Mason, Dzur and Mayerfeld. There is no room here to explore all of

the variations proposed within this general theme, for instance

whether the participation in public life has intrinsic value, or if this is

only instrumental. However I do not want to argue that many of the

conclusions reached by proponents of this view are invalid. Rather I

want to argue that the conclusions they reach are in fact

complementary to as opposed to contradictory to the findings of

liberal nationalism. In fact I want to argue that this ‘complementarity’

may be even stronger than civic republicans want to admit. By way of

example: if one of the aims of civic republicanism is that of building a

deliberative democracy, then it is “difficult to imagine how [this] is

possible without a shared language […] but the diffusion of a shared


language within each state is one of the main goals of nation-

building” (Kymlicka 2002: 312). In other words, civic republicanism

answers the political side of the solidarity equation quite well, and as

such it is only to be welcomed by liberal nationalists. In turn liberal

nationalists can argue that they answer a different problem, namely

that of social solidarity, and so the two answers go hand in hand, as

both political solidarity and social solidarity are necessary conditions

for complete unity. This means that – however much the civic

republicans would want it to be so – their theory is simply not

sufficient on its own for unity. With respect to this investigation, what

is more interesting then is not to try and reject civic republicanism

(because we shouldn’t), but rather to answer the arguments put

forward by its proponents as to why nationalism isn’t part of the

equation. Much of this boils down to the fact that, by definition,

nationalism is not ‘cosmopolitan’ in the same way citizenship theories

can be, which in turn comes down to a disagreement about ethical

justifications. This is something I will explore in the next chapter.


The Case for Liberal Nationalism: social solidarity

To counteract social atomisation, Miller argues that there is a

requirement for large-scale solidarity, and that the de facto solution to

this type of solidarity is nationality. If this is true, then nationality has

the potential to reach the large-scale populations within a state’s

boundaries in a unique way, one that other kinds of solidarity simply

cannot compete with. As I have hopefully argued, the non-nationalist

approaches mentioned above all fail properly to answer the question

of ‘complete unity’. This is because they either: a) provide too little in

that they answer only half of the unity equation, meaning political

solidarity (or what Habermas has called ‘constitutional patriotism’39),

such as is the case for ‘comprehensive’ liberalism, political liberalism

and civic republicanism; or b) they provide so much unity that they

are in danger of repressing diversity, such as in the approach we

have called ‘a common way of life’. Instead I would suggest a middle

ground, one which goes some way towards a common way of life but

stops far short of repressing diversity. Together with the political

approaches of liberalism, liberal nationalism helps to complete the

picture. While it is a ‘thicker’ approach in the sense that it is partially-


39 For a fuller account of ‘constitutional patriotism’, see Miller 1995: 162-3).

comprehensive (as, indeed, is the ‘comprehensive liberal’ approach

of political neutrality), it is still ‘thin’ in the sense that it does not

attempt to describe a fully comprehensive set of values and virtues.

However the adamant liberal may still question the value of social (or

cultural) solidarity, and it is this question I would now like to answer.

Prior to the development of the modern state, societies were

more often than not highly structured affairs - meaning that they were

prescribed and ruled by elites. They were also managed in their own

fashion – there was typically little regard or care taken in

communicating their decisions to the wider populace which they

managed; indeed many such elites often spoke a language entirely

alien to their subjects. The picture is however much more complex in

the modern liberal state. Posts of responsibility and power are now

generally open to all, and as such their decisions need to be

communicated and agreed by the majority of the populace (at least if

we are to follow the basic principles of democracy). According to

O’Leary (in part quoting Gellner), this means that nowadays, “those

who communicate must speak the same language, in some sense or

other” (O’Leary 1997: 193), as the rest of the population over which

they are put in charge. O’Leary goes on to argue that, “the erosion of


rigid social structures [means that] a shared culture is now much

more important in creating and sustaining social cohesion than it

was” (ibid, 194). And as I have already pointed out, a shared culture

at this level has only one possible interpretation, and that is

nationalism. O’Leary concludes that, “Nationalism is a principle of

political legitimacy for us precisely because culture has become so

important that it does not so much underline structure: rather it

replaces it” (O’Leary 1997: 193). If this is true, then nationalism

cannot be simply ignored. Even if we only apply this rather ‘narrow’

interpretation of a national idea – meaning that of finding a ‘common

language’ of some sort or other – the case for nationalism is strong.

As Miler has argued, “a shared national identity is the precondition for

achieving political aims such as social justice and deliberative

democracy” (Miller 1999: 162).


Conclusion

I have hopefully shown in this chapter that, just as it is possible to

have a liberal interpretation of a state, it is also possible to develop

and coherently defend a version of ‘liberal nationalism’. I have also

hopefully shown why the four main areas of possible conflict between

nationalism and liberalism – neutrality, autonomy and choice, consent

and republicanism – can in fact be reconciled with each other via

liberal nationalism. I have also attempted to demonstrate why

nationalism – rather than some other approach – holds the best way

forward to solving the puzzle of ‘complete unity’. I have not, as yet,

said anything about the ethical justifications of liberal nationalism.

This forms the subject of the next chapter, where I will argue that

liberal nationalism does a better job of explaining and justifying the

special attachments we often feel bound to as co-nationals of a state

– something which a more universalist approach to ethics has

consistently failed to satisfactorily explain.


Chapter Three: The Ethics of Liberal Nationalism

Introduction

One of the main bones of contention between liberalism and

nationalism is the way in which they attempt to account for our moral

actions. On the one hand liberalism has traditionally been associated

with universalism and rationality, of treating people the same

regardless of their particular social, economic or national context;

while on the other hand nationalism has been associated with the

more particularist branch of ethics, in that it requires we make room

for exceptions with regard to particular circumstances and

relationships, and potentially treat people differently as a result.

Hence liberals are more obviously associated with the ‘cosmopolitan

outlook’, while nationalists are viewed as more insular. These

traditional views and their relationship to liberal nationalism is

something I will pick up again towards the end of this chapter. Before

that however I want to begin by defining a few terms. Following Miller

I will draw a distinction between ethical universalism and ethical

particularism. I will then go on to look at two attempts to unify


nationalism with universalism – labelled ‘voluntary creation’ and

‘useful convention’ respectively - and show why these attempts fail.

Finally I will look at accounts of nationalism based on particularism,

arguing that this is the more successful approach, and that it is not

incompatible with the liberal thesis. I will conclude that liberals should

in fact acknowledge the benefit a liberal account of nationalism brings

to their agenda, in that it helps to explain the intrinsic value we place

in relationships.

Ethical Universalism and Ethical Particularism

Within the boundaries of a nation, it would seem that we sometimes

extended special duties and obligations to co-nationals that we do not

subsequently extend to non-nationals. This would seem to contradict

the intuitive belief that everyone matters equally and should therefore

be treated the same. As Miller puts it, “from an ethical point of view,

nationality may seem to give our feelings for our compatriots a role in

practical reasoning that is rationally indefensible” (Miller 1999, 49).

Indeed, Kant argued that partiality, “the tendency to make exceptions

on one’s own behalf or one’s own case, is the central weakness from

which all others flow” (Gellner 1994: 2). George Kateb makes the


same point even more forcefully, “any strong group identity derives

from, promotes, and rewards certain traits and habits that should be

called by their right name – vices”.40 Clearly there is an ethical case

for nationalism to answer: why should we acknowledge special

obligations and duties at all?

In order to open the defence for special obligations to co-

nationals, Miller makes a distinction between ‘ethical universalism’

and ‘ethical particularism’. The first argues that only general

responsibilities are really significant, meaning that our duties and

obligations should not be swayed by specific relationships - instead

they should adhere to a system of ethics rationally conceived. This is

what I would call the ‘flat iron’ approach to ethics and it is the

traditional position of the liberal. The second argues that special

obligations do indeed matter, meaning that the social relationships

people find themselves in naturally and justifiably affects their

behaviour.

Taking ethical universalism first, MacIntyre argues that

whatever flavour of liberal moral philosophy we examine – Kantian,

utilitarian or contractarian – they all share five central positions:


40 Quoted by Jamie Mayerfeld – See Mayerfeld 1998, p. 564.

Firstly, that morality is constituted by rules to which any rational

person would under certain ideal conditions give assent;

secondly, that those rules impose constraints upon and are

neutral between rival and competing interests – morality itself is

not the expression of a particular interest; thirdly, that those

rules are also neutral between rival and competing sets of

beliefs about what the best way for human beings to live is;

fourthly, that the units which provide the subject-matter of

morality as well as its agents are individual human beings and

that in moral evaluations each individual is to count for one and

nobody for more than one; and fifthly, that the standpoint of the

moral agent constituted by allegiance to these rules is one and

the same for all moral agents and as such is independent of all

social particularity.

(MacIntyre 1999: 290)

In practical terms this means simply that, at the fundamental level,

the ethical universalist could not allow facts such as “because she is

my mother”, or “because he’s my team-mate”, or “because she is a


fellow national”, to enter in considerations about how I should treat

my mother or my team-mate or my co-national on an ethical level.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, ethical particularism does

take into account such facts: relationships matter, and therefore they

should be taken into consideration when deciding on moral actions.

Particularism takes the view that we are ‘contextualised’ within certain

kinds of communities, relationships, and even accepted ways of

behaving. It is important to note however that this does not mean that

the particularist is condemned to only accepting the ways of behaving

in his or her society: although my relationship with other agents does

figure in my moral reasoning, it does not necessarily preclude me

from acting towards them in non-partisan – or universal - manner.

At face value then it would seem that these two approaches to

morality are irreconcilable and we have reached stalemate. Miller

suggests that, “the universalist sees in particularism a failure of

rationality; the particularist sees in universalism a commitment to

abstract rationality that exceeds the capacities of ordinary human

beings” (Miller 1990: 58). So where does that leave us? If we think

nationalism is defendable, then does that entail a rejection of


universalism? Or are their convincing strategies that a universalist

might adopt in arguing for a coherent version of nationalism?

I now want to go on to see how we might reconcile these

seemingly diametrically opposed ways of thinking. The first of these

examinations looks at two attempts to justify particular obligations

and duties in terms of ethical universalism, the so-called ‘voluntary

creation’ and ‘useful convention’ strategies; the second examination

looks at how particularism might possibly accommodate the concerns

of universalism.

Voluntary Creation

As a strategy for reconciling nationalism with the principles of

universalism, ‘voluntary creation’ would seem to fall at the first hurdle.

Being a member of specific community brings with it specific

obligations. To account for these special obligations a universalist

could argue along the following lines: if the community is the result of

some kind of quasi-contract into which I and the other members have

voluntarily signed-up to and agreed in advance; and if the community

is grounded on universal ethics; then there is nothing wrong from the

universalist perspective if I subsequently observe special obligations


to my fellow members. The obvious problem here for a defender of

nationalism is that this is precisely what does not happen to members

of a nation. As I have already argued, for the majority of us our

nationality is simply something into which we are ‘thrown’: we do not

make an initial choice or provide prior consent with regard to our

nationality, any more than we might initially choose our gender or

family. And while it may be true that for at least some members of

national communities there remains the option of weighing up the

pros and cons of membership, and of subsequently denouncing or re-

affirming membership, this is not the case for every member.

Additionally, any universalist adopting this strategy to explain

nationalism ignores the ‘historical feature’ of nations already

mentioned in the first chapter, namely that nations have emerged

over time, and incur both backward-looking and forward-looking

obligations.41 In this sense then, many of the obligations to which we

find ourselves bound as nationals are not voluntarily chosen or

arrived at rationally, but instead are part of an ongoing historical and

social process over which we have only marginal control.


41 See Miller 1999, pp23-24.

Useful Convention

The second alternative approach to reconciling universalism and

nationalism Miller calls the ‘useful convention’ strategy. In his paper,

‘What Is So Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?’, Goodin poses

the possibility that the special responsibilities required by nationalism

are of a universalist nature. Goodin argues that there are two types of

duties. The first are those ‘general duties’ that we have towards other

people simply because they are people. The second type is what he

calls ‘special duties’, meaning those duties that - over and above our

general duties - “we have toward particular individuals because they

stand in some special relation to us” (Goodin 1988, 663). Among

those whom might qualify for this special treatment are, “our families,

our friends, our pupils, our patients [and] our fellow countrymen” (ibid,

663).42 In addition, Goodin takes special duties to ordinarily imply,

“especially good treatment” (ibid, 663). However Goodin seeks to

counter this general assumption by arguing that – at least in some

cases – our general duties to non-nationals are more compelling

morally than those of our special duties to co-nationals. The


42 It is important to note that Goodin makes no distinction in his paper between terms such as “state” and “nation”, and “citizenship” and “nationality”. For the purposes of this argument, I will take the terms “compatriot” and “countrymen” to mean “co-national”, in other words someone I might recognise as being a member of the same “national cultural community” as myself.

conclusion for Goodin is that nationality does not ultimately matter

when it comes to deciding moral actions. Instead it is, “some further

feature which is only contingently and imperfectly associated with

shared nationality” (ibid, 663). For Goodin this ‘further feature’ is

essentially one of efficiency: the only reason to accept special duties

at all is that they are “an administrative device for discharging our

general duties more efficiently” (ibid, 685). Such a conclusion implies

that nationality has only instrumental value: special duties are useful

only because they happen to be the most efficient way of realising

universal principles.

It is important to state here that Goodin is not arguing against

special duties per se, but rather their assumed priority over general

duties. Indeed, quoting the extreme example of a burning building,

and the choice of being able to rescue only your own mother or a

‘great public benefactor’, Goodin agrees that the intuitive response is

that most of us would choose to rescue our own mother.43 Nor is

favouritism of this kind limited to extreme cases only; instead it

accounts for the majority of ‘real life’ instances when we are dealing

with cases involving obligations to such people as our families,


43 The example is taken from William Godwin. See Goodin 1988, p. 665.

friends, co-workers and the like. The reason for this kind of partial

treatment has to do with, “the need to centre one’s self through

personal attachments to particular people and projects” (ibid, 665).

However the crux of Goodin’s argument for downgrading special

duties to co-nationals stems from the fact that he does not see

attachments to co-nationals as being ‘personal’. In Goodin’s account,

attachments that generate partial treatment apply, “most strongly to

more personal links, and only very weakly, if at all, to impersonal links

through shared race or nationality” (ibid, 665, my italics). Two things

argue against this conclusion.

The first is that, as I have already stated, nationality can indeed

be bound up strongly with someone’s personal identity. People can

and often do attach significant, personal importance to the welfare

and wellbeing of co-nationals; in other words it is not a necessary

condition of a person’s strong commitment to someone or something

else that the relationship should be intimate or at the level of face to

face contact. The second argument against a ‘weak link’ between

special duties and co-nationals is that we often experience strong

emotions with regard to the behaviour and actions of our co-nationals

that are similar to those we experience with regard to families and


friends. Consider for example the case where we might feel ‘shame’

over the escapades of our co-nationals abroad (e.g. rioting football

fans), or, more positively, ‘pride’ over their achievements within an

international arena (e.g. a sporting achievement). Both of these

emotions are ones we generally associate with more intimate

relationships, such as family and friends. Compare these emotions

with how we might look on the actions and behaviours of non-

nationals: puzzlement, incredulity, surprise, sure, but not generally

pride or shame.44 This is surely because that – at least to some

degree – we are more emotionally tied to co-nationals than non-

nationals. Once again this points towards their being a stronger rather

than a weaker commitment between co-nationals than Goodin is

prepared to admit. This is not to say that the welfare of co-nationals

should always override the welfare of non-nationals; such a position

is that of the hard-line nationalist rather than that of the liberal

nationalist. In the latter interpretation, claims by co-nationals compete

with other claims that often contradict or cut-across these, for the

simple reason that national solidarity is typically only one of many

solidarities in which an individual finds themselves entwined.


44 The same point is made by Berlin (see Tamir 1998: 98).

But there are further problems with Goodin’s account for the

nationalist. Consider the following example. The principle of efficiency

is all well and good where two nations – lets call them nation A and

nation B – are equally efficient in their assignment of special

responsibilities. It is more problematic however where we can

demonstrate that nation A is much more efficient than nation B in

assigning these special duties. In this latter case, on Goodin’s

account it would then make more sense to transfer nation B’s

responsibilities to nation A. Additionally, if we can show that nation B

is in greater need than nation A, then nation A’s primary

responsibilities lies with members of nation B, and not nation A. As

Goodin himself argues, “in the present world system, it is often -

perhaps ordinarily - wrong to give priority to the claims of our

compatriots” (1989, 686). It’s not hard to see why these conclusions

might be antithetical to nationalism. For instance the liberal nationalist

may counter that the primary responsibility for nationals of nation B

lies not with nation A, but with the co-nationals of nation B. Only if the

co-nationals of nation B refuse, deny or renege on this responsibility

should responsibility then be transferred to nation A. In such a case,

A’s first reaction must be to try and persuade B to recognise their


responsibilities – only once this position has been exhausted should

A pick up the gauntlet of direct action. It may also be that – even if we

could demonstrate that state A would make a more efficient ruler than

state B – the population of nation B might prefer their own state all

the same.

So it would seem that the universalist wishing to defend

nationalism has nowhere left to go. The conclusion surely is (as

Goodin would no doubt agree) that, “the consistent ethical

universalist should also be a cosmopolitan” (Miller 1999, 79). Having

dismissed attempts to define nationalism in terms of universalism, it is

now time to see if we can fair any better with a particularist

justification.

The particularist account of nationalism

According to Tamir, particularists can point to at least four immediate

advantages that their account of nationalism might be said to provide.

I will also argue that these advantages are not incompatible with the

liberal thesis, although they do imply another kind of justification.

First, particularism allows for relations based on care and cooperation

rather than rational egoism or purely contractual theory. Second, it


accounts for the intuitive belief that we have special duties to those

we share our lives with. Third, as already discussed, communities

potentially solve the liberal ‘social contract’ conundrum and thereby

allow members to agree on the principles of justice. Finally it is not

necessarily contradictory with the liberals desire for global justice – in

fact liberal nationalism may help to further that cause. As I have

already discussed the point about social contract theory, I will not

elaborate further on this final point. I will however now go on to briefly

examine the three remaining points made by Tamir.

Taking the point about egoism first, in the liberal, quasi-

contractual view of the world - where communities could be seen as

nothing more than useful tools - it may well prove irrational in some

cases to help people if the same level of help is not already

guaranteed in return (e.g. through some form of insurance policy).

But communities as we actually experience them don’t work like that.

Instead, what we find is more like what Miller terms ‘loose reciprocity’:

“a person who acts to aid some other member of his group can be

sustained by the thought that in different circumstances he might

expect to be the beneficiary of the relationship” (Miller 1999, 67). This

does not suggest that, “such a person will act in order to receive


some future benefit […] the point is a weaker one: the act of making a

contribution is not a pure loss, from the point of view of the private

person making it, because he is helping to sustain a set of

relationships from which he stands to benefit to some degree” (ibid,

67 my italics). I would argue that this second account is a more

realistic and accurate description of how people actually interact with

each other in communities.

Tamir’s second point deals with special obligations. In Bleak

House, we are appalled by Mrs Jellby’s inclination to care more for

the welfare of the inhabitants of ‘Borrioboola-Gha’ than for the

wellbeing of her own children.45 This is because there is something

deeply disturbing about someone who neglects their own children in

favour of someone else’s. As Tamir agues, such examples are “not

designed to suggest that we have no obligations to non-members in

need […] rather, they stress our intuitive belief that it is particularly

cruel to overlook the suffering and hardships of those we have a

particular reason to care about – our fellow members” (Tamir 1993:

99). The reason behind this lies in the pronoun ‘my’: they are my

family, my friends, my countrymen; only once the basic obligations to


45 See Chapter Four (entitled ‘Telescopic Philanthropy’) of Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

them have been fulfilled do the more general obligations to others

apply. This does not imply that my compatriots are better than others.

Rather, as discussed above in the example of obligations between

nation A and nation B, the first responsibility for other compatriots lies

with their fellow compatriots, not me. Only when it can be shown that

they have failed in their duty would such obligations be passed on to

me.

The final point regards that of obligations towards non-

members. The most important point to be made here is that

nationality is only one of many competing (and often contradictory)

obligations in which people find themselves. Some of these other,

non-national obligations will potentially be trans-national or even

global. As Tamir argues, “if each individual has different circles of

membership, and if there is no one ultimate membership that includes

all others, the distinction between members and non-members

becomes blurred” (Tamir 1993: 114). In other words, those general

obligations to other non-nationals that are not recognised within the

context of a person’s nationality are not necessarily excluded, as they

could easily be picked up within the context of another obligation. By

way of example: as a national of Britain, I may feel inclined to dispose


some of my money and efforts in the help of fellow Britains; as a

member of Amnesty International I may equally devote other

resources to wherever in the world the current obligation is greatest,

regardless of nationality.

It would seem then that the better explanation of nationalism

rests on ethical particularism, but, as argued above, this is by no

means incompatible with objectives of universalism and the

protection of human rights.

Conclusion

In this chapter I wanted to show how it might be possible to reconcile

nationalism and liberalism from an ethical perspective. Following

Miller, I began by making a distinction between ethical universalism

and ethical particularism. From here I went on to argue that attempts

to justify nationalism on universal grounds – namely voluntary

creation and useful convention – do not work. I then went on to look

at the particularist account of justifying nationality. I argued that not

only did this provide specific advantages to the nationalist, it is also

possible to justify ethical particularism in such a way that it is

compatible with liberal theory. Of course liberals may still suspect that


there is a deep incompatibility with the particularist account of

nationalism and the more universal (global) desires of liberalism.

Indeed, there is more work to be done within liberal nationalist theory

to show that the inhabitants of such states would not be indifferent to

humanity in general. However, in agreement with Miller, I believe that

the “onus is on the universalist to show that, in widening the scope of

ethical ties to encompass equally the whole of the human species, he

does not also drain them of their binding force” (Miller 1999: 80).

Once again, even on ethical issues, the main challenge comes down

to a question of a lack of unity on the part of traditional liberalism.


Chapter Four: Nationalism and Multiculturalism

Introduction

Cultural diversity actually needs a concept of what is common

to all the cultures in a given society in order for each individual

culture to recognise itself as different in the first place.

Anshuman Mondal 2004

So far then I have hopefully shown that the support and promotion of

a common national identity and a set of common values – in other

words liberal nationalism - can be of real value to the liberal cause. I

now want to move on to answer the charge that such an approach

runs counter to the liberal ideal of respecting diversity and is therefore

‘imperialistic’. However I want to demonstrate that the opposite is in

fact true, namely that liberal nationalism is a necessary condition for

any sustainable policy of diversity; pursuing a policy of unchecked

multiculturalism runs the risk of undermining the unity necessary for

the survival of liberal states, and without the protection of the liberal

state, there can be no diversity. I will argue and hopefully

demonstrate that liberal nationalism might help both the liberal state

and the demands of various competing cultures to come to terms with


each other by providing a flexible middle ground on which they can

meet.

Liberal States and Multiculturalism

The question is not whether one wants to be a multiculturalist at

all, but the kind of multiculturalist one wants to be.

(Miller 1999: 131)

Although the term ‘multiculturalism’ is relatively new (it first appeared

in 1957), the appreciation of cultural and social diversity has been

part of liberal theory since its inception (Weinstock 2002, 241). What

is new however is the sheer scale and breadth of diversity in many

modern societies. Diverse group identities may arise from any one of

a multitude of different causes, such as immigration, asylum,

colonisation, state formation, religious beliefs, sexual orientation,

slavery, ethnicity and lifestyle choices (to name but a few). Neither do

these groups represent a homogenous set of members, but tend

instead to “exhibit the same sorts of cleavages in political views and

personal lifestyles as the larger society” (Kymlicka 2002, 331). To

complicate the picture further still, many states contain not one but

several distinct national identities within their borders. All told, such a


fragmented picture of society presents significant challenges to the

established political, social and institutional orders of liberal states. As

a result of these challenges, the concept and policy of

‘multiculturalism’ has been adopted by a number of liberal states as a

way of tackling these issues.

But this is where the recent tensions between liberalism and

multiculturalism begin. If multiculturalism means “the policy or

process whereby the distinctive identities of the cultural groups within

a [multicultural] society are maintained or supported” (OED), then this

policy has recently fallen on hard times.46 For instance, one way of

‘maintaining and supporting’ different cultural groups is to grant them

what Young calls ‘group differentiated citizenship’ (2003a: 223) - in

other words, rights which are based on groups as opposed to

individuals. Such policies have resulted in very concrete distinctions

being drawn between members of different groups. To take an

example from Britain: Sikhs are currently exempted from the Criminal

Justice Act of 1988 that prevents the carrying of knives in public


46 In Britain for example, Trevor Phillips (the current chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and the successor of Bhikhu Parekh) has recently overturned thirty years of British multicultural policy and called for the term to be scrapped. He goes on to argue that, “the word is not useful, it means the wrong things. [It] suggests separateness. What we should be talking about is how we reach an integrated society, one in which people are equal under the law, where there are some common values” (Baldwin 2004: 3). In a separate article, Neil Ascherson claims that multiculturalism is “not a permanent condition” but rather it is a “way-station” to something else: hybridity - a “new kind of urban society which is neither a bouquet of contrasting cultures nor the adoption of the patterns of the old indigenous majority, but a fresh synthesis” (2004: 103).

spaces so that they can carry a kirpan (a religiously symbolic sword

or dagger). Barry calls this the ‘rules-and-exemption approach’ to the

political challenges of multicultural societies (2003a: 249). But how

does the granting of such rights fit with the central tenets of

liberalism, namely that of universal citizenship and equal rights?

While some liberals have argued that (in certain circumstances) the

granting of group rights is supported by liberalism (Kymlicka 2004),

others (Barry 2003a) have argued that such moves contravene the

basic essence of liberalism. From the non-liberal side, some

commentators (Young 1989, Franklin 2002) argue for a more radical

form of multiculturalism, and suggest that in the battle for social

justice for discriminated groups, ‘difference blind’ liberalism simply

isn’t up to the job; while still others (Scruton 1990) offer a form of

‘conservative nationalism’ that is fundamentally opposed to any kind

of multiculturalism at all.

Clearly, there are a lot of opposing issues and concerns

between liberals, nationalists, and multiculturalists, and there is no

room to explore all of the challenges here. Instead, I will limit my

argument to exploring ways in which liberal nationalism might provide

the middle ground on which at least some of the demands from all of


these competing theories could be partially met. But first I will argue

that both ‘radical multiculturalism’ and ‘conservative nationalism’ rest

on the same false premise about the nature of communities and

groups - namely that they are immutable.

Cultural Dynamics

Conservative nationalists tend to see in the claims of minority groups

a threat to the established order of the national community, and as

such they are a subversive, destabilising force. Equally, radical

multiculturalists often treat the claims of minority groups as

unassailable; because the rights of the group are being suppressed

by the dominant culture, then the dominant culture must

accommodate the claims on the grounds of respecting diversity, even

if these claims occasionally run counter to liberal values. However

both of these approaches rest on false premises, namely that cultures

are unchanging entities cast in stone, and therefore immune to critical

assessment or re-evaluation. But this is to ignore the simple fact that

the nature of communities, large or small, is not static but dynamic.

Within the liberal context, claims for change should work both ways:

national identities should be willing (over time) to make concessions


to various group claims, while at the same time groups must

recognise the need for a common set of values to underpin social

unity, and be prepared to make some adjustments accordingly. As

such this approach has more in common with a policy of partial

integration than radical assimilation. It is also worth noting that

change is vital, and that any attempt to capture a culture in amber

and preserve it is doomed to pursue a course of both increasing

totalitarianism and certain failure. As Burke said, “a state without the

means of some change is without the means of its conservation”.47

So how does liberal nationalism fit into this complex picture? To

pursue a course of unchecked multiculturalism is a certain recipe for

the dissolution of both state and nation because it is a solvent of

unity. At the same time the national story must be open to revision if it

is to respect the demands of competing cultures. I would suggest that

this is precisely what liberal nationalism can achieve. As Jonathon

Sacks has argued:

We each have to be bilingual. There is a first and public

language of citizenship which we have to learn if we are to live

together […] the more plural a society we become, the more we


47 Quoted by Gordon Brown (Brown 2004).

need to reflect on what holds us together. If we only have our

second language, the language of the group, we have no

resource for understanding why none of our several aspirations

can be met in full and why we must restrain ourselves to leave

space for other groups.48

Miller argues that, “the first language cannot simply be a language of

abstract rights: it must be the language of the national culture” (Miller

1999: 138). As already argued, the national culture must be as thinly

defined as possible in order to make room for as many

comprehensive conceptions of the good as possible. Without a ‘first

language’ there is a danger of developing a society along the lines of

what Amartya Sen has called ‘plural monoculturalism’ (Sen: 2006). A

further advantage of the first language is that it also allows room for

complex, multi-national identities, such as British-English, Irish-

American and the like.

But isn’t there still a problem with nationalism? Isn’t it still true

that the nature of national identity is exclusive? And isn’t a state

which promotes a single national culture guilty of overriding the liberal


48 Quoted by Miller (see Miller 1999: 138).

principle that all cultures should be given equal respect? I will now go

on to briefly discuss these two issues.

Inclusive and Exclusive Membership

It should be an obvious conclusion that the crass definitions of

nationalism that rely on a single factor to determine those who are

‘in’ and those who are ‘out’ are exclusive in nature and wholly

incompatible with even a moderate version of multiculturalism.49

However, constructed correctly, liberal nationalism can not only make

room for more complex responses to questions about identity than

the simplistic either/or model allows, it can also allow room for

multicultural demands.

In defining a more liberal form of national identity we must do

away with the ‘tidy minded’, black and white approach to defining who

is and who is not a member of any given nation. In other words, being

a member of a nation should not be about checking items off on a

shopping list, where finding that you’re missing any single item

implies that you’re disqualified. Instead, liberal definitions do better to

draw on something similar to Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘family


49 I’m thinking here of Norman Tebbit’s infamous ‘cricket test’ approach to deciding nationality.

resemblances’.50 This theory states that “objects denoted by a term

may be tied together not by one common property, but by a network

of resemblances”.51 Unlike families however, the rattle bag of

interconnected characteristics that go towards making up a national

identity are not genetic or ethnic, but cultural.52 In this sense then, it is

not that a people share a single common attribute that identifies them

as a member of a certain nation, but rather that a people share in a

common set of attributes. This is an important distinction: the first is a

means of excluding people (or, from a coercive angle, of assimilating

them); the latter is a means of accommodating people (or integrating

them). In short, having such ‘cultural resemblances’ means that the

people who inhabit a society can recognise in each other certain

common, cultural features which they share, while at the same time

making allowances for the fact that a variety of different perspectives

and interpretations are inevitable. And it is precisely this recognition


50 Miller makes the same point, but uses Wittgenstein’s analogy of the rope instead (see Miller 1999: 27).

51 Taken from Blackburn 1996.

52 It is interesting to note that some commentators still insist that the terms ‘ethnicity’ and ‘culture’ refer to the same thing. Gilroy is wrong to assume that the debate on diversity started by Goodhart is hinged on ethnicity (or more confrontationally, racism), and not culture. Lentin makes the same mistake when she argues that, “It is taken for granted that the concept of multiculturalism refers to the struggle of minority ethnic groups for recognition of their cultural diversity in western societies” (Lentin 2004). Gellner makes a similar mistake (see Miller 1999: 21). But such a definition, because it blurs the distinction between ethnicity and culture, misses the point. There is no reason to suppose that a culture should not by poly-ethnic, as indeed many are - such as in the case of most national cultures.

that helps to support the social cohesion liberal states are more often

than not lacking.

The Need for a Common Set of Values

I have argued throughout this essay that a liberal state which

promotes a single national idea and its associated values is not

exclusive or imperialist. Whilst it does ask for some concessions from

minority groups – in that they must ‘buy in’ to some common values

associated with the dominant culture – it does not ask them to do this

in a way that forces them into a position of total assimilation. Within

liberal nationalism, the national idea is ‘thin’ enough to allow for more

fully comprehensive conceptions of the good to be built on top of it.

This not only has the advantage of allowing minority groups a ‘way

in’ to the dominant culture, liberal nationalism can also function as a

‘gateway’ between different conceptions of the good. Radical

multiculturalists should, I think, accept this point. As Munira Mirza has

argued:

There was a rejection of the idea of a coherent universal

narrative, or a set of values applicable to everyone. This was

claimed to be exclusive on the grounds that it excludes


minorities. That kind of identity politics is about affirming people

and making them feel valued on the basis of their difference.

This in turn leads to diversity training and the proposition that

people in the workplace need to feel valued and respected

because of their difference. The argument is that you can train

people to respect other people because of this difference.

However, I would argue that this emphasis on difference is

actually more divisive because it says to people that they can't

have anything in common with the person next to them and that

they can't overcome the kind of cultural and ethnic background

that they have. It constantly emphasises to an individual that he

or she is a minority and does not share the same values of

others.


Conclusion

I began this chapter by exploring the policy of multiculturalism and

how this could conflict with liberal theory. I then went on to argue that

the policy of radical multiculturalism is incompatible with a sustainable

liberal state. Instead we should be looking to explore issues of

diversity within a common framework, and that common framework is

a national idea. Indeed, the final stop of radical multiculturalism may

be the state of affairs outlined by Ferdinand Mount. Quoting England

as an example, Mount argued that the country could become, “one

giant cultural mall in which we would all wander, free to chose from a

variety of equally valuable lifestyles, to take back and exchange

purchases when not given satisfaction or simply to window shop”.53 I

concluded that the promotion of a common set of values is not

imperialistic or repressive with regard to minority groups; rather that

such a state of affairs helps to provide a stable building block for a

variety of competing comprehensive conceptions of the good, which

in turn yield a stable infrastructure within which cultural diversity can

flourish.


53 Quoted by Gordon Brown in his address at the British Council Annual Lecture (see Brown 2004).

Conclusion: Beyond Neutrality

In this essay I have tried to argue that the liberal dependence on

political solidarity alone is insufficient for a sustainable liberal state.

As such, given the current magnitude of the liberal crisis and the

associated problems of unity and legitimacy, there is I believe an

urgent need for liberal states to cross the threshold and go ‘beyond

neutrality’ in order to re-establish the commitments of their citizens.

For liberals this means accepting the findings of the theory of liberal

nationalism and promoting and supporting a more fraternal sentiment

among co-nationals, one which is built on both political and social

unity. The stakes are high: the failure of liberal states to engage in

these issues is potentially catastrophic. Warning shots are already

being fired:

I think the [7/7] terrorists were looking for meaning too. They

can't find it here; being British is so discredited in this country

that they look for that identity elsewhere. But the most

compelling thing about the al-Qaeda identity is its victimhood

status; it is the ultimate logic of multiculturalism, with its claim

that it represents an oppressed minority.


Munira Mirza 2005

What liberal states need is akin to something Etzioni has called

‘diversity within unity’. National unity allows us to feel that we are part

of the same team, without necessarily signing up to or agreeing on

every principle: even within a team there can be a dispute about the

right tactics to employ.

I have hopefully shown why the concept of liberal nationalism is

worth defending (because it helps support social cohesion), and how

such an account of nationalism might sit with the principles of

liberalism and the liberal state. I have argued that, rather than

undermining liberal values, liberal nationalism actually underpins

them. From here I have looked at my account might be justified

ethically (particularism). I then went on to discuss the associated

concept of multiculturalism, and suggested that liberal nationalism

might provide the middle ground between liberalism and

multiculturalism, and as such provide the groundwork for a

sustainable policy of diversity. The conclusion is that if social

cohesion matters, then so does the concept of liberal nationalism;

liberal states should be looking to adopt progressive, liberal versions

of nationalism before the pressures of finding ways of living together


makes us come unstuck, leaving the back door open to nationalism of

more extreme forms. As such, nationalism becomes a necessary

prejudice, without which our “tolerance is left unguarded by

conviction, and falls prey to the ever vigilant schemes of the

fanatic” (Scruton 1990, 273).


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