Identity, Self-Determination and Secession

Aleksandar Pavkovic, Igor Primoratz, Aleksander Pavkovic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351156066
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Engaging with a range of interconnected and highly topical issues of identity, self-determination and secession, this book examines the import and implications of 'identity claims', and looks into 'identity politics' motivated by such claims, which is becoming ever more salient in democratic and culturally and ethnically heterogeneous states. It discusses nationalism as an important component of identity of individuals and groups, and a position that generates claims of self-determination and secession on the part of ethnic and cultural groups. It also examines patriotism, which until recently seemed to be on the wane, but has undergone a dramatic revival after the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 and the start of a global 'war on terror'. The book offers a typology of facets of patriotism, an assessment of its moral standing, and a critique of the beliefs about the patria it characteristically involves. Also discussed are topics such as political liberalism vs. 'identity liberalism', the ways a liberal society should treat nonliberal communities within it, the role of heritage and remembrance in national identity, the status of national minorities as an issue of equality, arrangements concerning indigenous peoples and intrastate autonomy as an alternative to secession, and whether secession can be a legal act. The book includes contributions by prominent philosophers and political and legal theorists from Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United States.

Introduction

Igor Primoratz and Aleksandar Pavković

This book engages with a range of interconnected and highly topical issues of identity, self-determination and secession. It examines the import and implications of ‘identity claims’, and looks into ‘identity politics’ motivated by such claims, which are becoming ever more salient in democratic and culturally and ethnically heterogeneous states. It discusses nationalism as an important component of identity of individuals and groups, and a position that generates claims of self-determination and secession on the part of ethnic and cultural groups. It also examines patriotism, which had been on the wane before the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 and the start of the global ‘war on terrorism’, but has undergone a dramatic revival since. The book offers a typology of patriotism, an assessment of its moral standing, and a critique of the beliefs about the patria it characteristically involves. Also discussed are topics such as the ways a liberal society should treat nonliberal communities within it, the role of heritage and remembrance in national identity, the status of national minorities as an issue of equality, the legality of secession, and arrangements concerning indigenous peoples and intrastate autonomy as an alternative to secession. These are some of the issues to do with identity, individual and collective, in the focus of current debates at the intersection of philosophy and political theory.

Identity and Identity Politics

According to the traditional understanding of the nature and aims of politics in a liberal and democratic polity, politics is about articulating and accommodating interests of different groups. This portrays politics as dealing with largely mundane matters, most of which are negotiable, and as a process of negotiation that needs to be as rational as possible in order to be as fruitful as possible. However, in recent decades, political life in a number of liberal and democratic countries has also been informed by a different approach: that of ‘identity politics’. The aims sought and the arguments advanced are no longer couched in terms of what a certain group wants, or what would be in its interest, but rather in terms of the identity of the group: who and what its members are, and what recognizing and respecting their identity would require or rule out. This development is welcomed by some, and met with suspicion and apprehension by others, both with regard to the impact of identity politics on democratic processes and practices and with regard to the ways in which it affects the individual. While some see identity politics as indifferent at best, and inimical at worst, to the requirements of universal and impartial justice and equality, others point out that quite a few political organizations representing identity groups have in fact actively and successfully promoted justice and equality for all. While some, focusing on ‘ascriptive’, that is, unchosen, identities, highlight the ways in which group identities constrain the individual, rather than promoting his or her autonomy, others emphasize the importance of the sense of belonging and security such identities provide.

For better or worse, identity politics is an inescapable feature of liberal democracy. As Amy Gutmann has recently written,

Identity groups are an inevitable byproduct of according individuals freedom of association. As long as individuals are free to associate, identity groups of many kinds will exist. This is because free people mutually identify in many politically relevant ways, and a society that prevents identity groups from forming is a tyranny.¹

The first two contributions to this volume present two mutually opposed views of the nature and significance of identity politics in liberal democracies. In Chapter 1, Daniel Weinstock argues that identity claims and the kind of politics they generate are indeed dangerous to democracy or, more accurately, to the ideal of ‘deliberative democracy’ that has been propounded by a number of political theorists and that he, too, finds attractive. Advocates of ‘deliberative democracy’ reject the understanding of democratic politics as a search for a modus vivendi that is based on the balance of power, and urge us to aim higher, for a consensus among participants in the process of common, public deliberation on political matters. Weinstock rejects the balance of power/consensus dichotomy, and suggests that these are rather poles of a continuum. He also argues that consensus may not be a realistic aim in ethnically and culturally pluralistic polities, and that we should rather seek a middle-of-the-road solution, which is compromise. Given compromise as the aim of politics, Weinstock goes on to argue, we should desist from both making and admitting identity claims in the political give and take, as they make compromise more difficult than it would be if all parties were to deploy only arguments in terms of preferences, interests and even values. Identity claims are obstructive because they bring into play people’s sense of integrity and self-respect. Once one party has made such a claim, it tends to perceive further call for compromise by the other party as a call for compromising her identity and integrity. Moreover, while satisfaction of preferences, promotion of interests and realization of values are matters of degree, recognition of and respect for identity are not. Making identity claims invokes an ‘all or nothing’ logic, which cannot be good for the prospects of reaching a compromise. Finally, while claims regarding satisfaction of preferences or realization of interests or values are predicated on empirical considerations that are open to falsification, identity claims are not. They tend to bring the debate to a dead end, rather than to promote it.

The other side of the issue is argued in Margaret Moore’s contribution (Chapter 2). Moore does not tackle directly Weinstock’s central argument, but some of what she says does tend to undermine it. She sees identity claims as making legitimate political demands, and engages the critique of identity politics by writers such as Brian Barry and Jeremy Waldron. She tries to show how the worries about the subjective character of identity claims, about their inflationary tendencies, and about their potential to undermine just and equal social and political arrangements and disrupt proper functioning of the political process can be laid to rest, or at least considerably alleviated. Identities are indeed subjective in an important sense, but that does not mean that any preference or interest can be arbitrarily proclaimed a part of one’s identity and made the basis for making demands, or seeking exemptions, in the public arena. Identities have an objective aspect too, and cannot be changed at will, the way one changes hats. Moreover, politics of identity does not trade in mere personal identity claims; to accord special accommodation to all such claims would obviously not be feasible. It rather advances claims of collective identity, which is more likely to be central to the person, both morally and psychologically. Such claims do not, and could not, tend to proliferate quite as much. What Waldron has termed ‘the incompossibility problem’, namely the impossibility of recognizing, respecting, and protecting all different and sometimes conflicting collective identities, is to be solved, or at least mitigated, by Moore’s thesis that identity claims involve an implicit limitation. When I claim that my polity should exempt me from a certain requirement, or provide me with a certain benefit, because that is required by my identity, by who and what I am (say, a Catholic), I thereby implicitly commit myself to acknowledging that others have their identities, different from mine (they are Moslems, or Jewish, or whatever), and that those identities, too, generate similar claims that need to be attended to. Accordingly, the demands I make on the basis of my collective identity have to do with what I (and others sharing this identity) may be required to do, and not about what people with different identities may be obliged to do. Identity politics need not be a recipe for friction and discord; when properly understood and circumscribed, it is rather a plea for toleration.

Within the liberal tradition, a standard way of arguing for toleration (and for exploring its limits) is in terms of individual autonomy. The individual is conceived as having a basic interest in being able to develop her own conception of the good life, to revise it, if need be, and to conduct her life accordingly. This is the basis of the rights of the individual, and also of liberal political morality, including its requirement of toleration. However, various identity groups living in liberal society without being of it look upon this way of grounding the principle of toleration with increasing unease and suspicion. They suspect that liberal insistence on personal autonomy and rational, critical thinking about all subjects, including fundamental religious, moral and cultural issues, is subversive of their way of life. They reject the claim of the liberal state to be neutral with regard to competing conceptions of the good, and perceive it as actually favouring a distinctive — namely, liberal — conception. How, then, should our society, characterized by far-reaching ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, maintain its liberal commitments, and at the same time accommodate nonliberal communities within it?

In Chapter 3, Geoffrey Brahm Levey examines two approaches to this problem. One is ‘identity liberalism’, advanced by authors such as Bhikhu Parekh or William Galston. This approach proposes to replace the value of autonomy by some other basic value, such as identity or diversity. Levey argues that ‘identity liberals’ set out to dethrone autonomy as the governing value only to reinstate it under some other heading, for instance, as bound up with the political virtues of good citizenship. The other approach discussed is that of political liberalism, whose classic statement is the book by John Rawls with the same title. Here autonomy is retained as a basic value, but only as a purely political ideal, valid within the public sphere. It determines the public status of individuals, their human and civil rights and obligations. At the same time, political liberalism refrains from endorsing autonomy as a comprehensive ideal, a conception of the good aiming to regulate human life in all its aspects. Individuals are left free to pursue their own conceptions of the good in their private lives, and within their families and identity groups they belong to. Levey finds this position too unsatisfactory, at least so far as the liberal understanding of the self is concerned. One cannot very well be a communitarian in private life and a liberal in public life: one’s self cannot be both embedded in one’s collective identity, unable to stand back from it and judge it and its requirements critically, and also maintain one’s autonomy in relation to that identity, one’s capability of assessing and reassessing it rationally and critically. At the same time, Levey concedes that political liberalism may prove more accommodating to nonliberal identities at the level of legislation and public policy.

Can there be further latitude for nonliberal identities within liberalism? The self, as understood by liberals, is characterized by the capacity of ‘rational revisability’. No end is exempt from critical examination and revision; in the words of Will Kymlicka, ‘I can always envisage my self without its present ends’.² Does this mean that the liberal self not only has to be characterized by rational revisability, but also has to understand itself as so characterized? Levey argues that rational revisability need not be self-conscious. He is thus advancing a thesis that has an air of paradox: there is some space for nonliberal identities and ways of life in the murky area of nonliberal attachments and practices that are revisable, but are not known to be so by the individual concerned. One may wonder whether members of communities adhering to nonliberal values and practices are likely to see this as the kind of toleration they are hoping for.

Identity, Country and Nation

When asked who and what one is, one usually mentions one’s nationality, the country one stems from or lives in, the polity whose citizen one is. These are normally important parts of one’s identity, and discussions of identity need to provide some account of the ways in which we relate to them, as individuals and as groups. This means that such discussions need to include the topics of nationalism and patriotism. Both subjects were almost completely neglected in philosophy and political theory for a long time. The renewed interest in them is due to several reasons, some theoretical and some practical. Both nationalism and patriotism present good test cases for pursuing the debates in moral philosophy between advocates of universal morality and adherents of more particular, local attachments and commitments, and the debates in political theory between liberals and communitarians. At a more practical, political level, the last decades of the twentieth century were marked by a dramatic revival of nationalism in several parts of the world. More recently, there has been a resurgence of patriotism in the United States and some other countries that see themselves as being under attack by global terrorism.

Discussions of nationalism and patriotism are often made even more difficult than they have to be by a confused and confusing usage of the two terms. Nationalism, in particular, means many different things to different people. Igor Primoratz (Chapter 6) suggests a simple way of distinguishing between nationalism and patriotism in terms of the object of the identification, loyalty and special concern involved. That is either natio or patria: either one’s nation (in the ethnic, rather than political sense of the term), or one’s country and polity. This, of course, still does not tell us just what a nation (in the ethnic sense) is; on that, too, there is a wide range of views, some of which are discussed in the contribution by Tony Coady (Chapter 4), together with the normative, moral and political implications these views are taken to have. Coady finds the variety of answers to the question ‘What is a nation?’ so confounding that it leads him to doubt the very existence of what the word is presumed to stand for. Such doubts are not laid to rest when some advocates of nationalism write that ‘a nationality exists when its members believe that it does’.³ What cannot be doubted is the attachment of the nationalist. Now this attachment, whether to something real or to a fiction, is often taken to ground far-reaching moral and political claims. It is claimed that the individual has highly important moral duties to his nation: to live in accordance with, promote and defend its values and traditions, and to exhibit special concern for its welfare, beyond whatever concern he may have for humanity at large. It is also claimed that a nation is entitled to self-determination, meaning its own independent, sovereign state. This, in turn, is taken to generate further duties on the part of the individual: to help strengthen and defend the nation-state, if it is in place, or to help set it up, if it is not. Coady examines these moral and political claims on behalf of the nation and nation-state, and finds them all implausible.

Beyond that, both Coady and Simon Keller take to task nationalism and patriotism, respectively, for offending against the ethics of belief. Even if the existence of a nation is not a fiction, many of the beliefs a nationalist holds about it — about its virtues and achievements, about its present and its history — are deeply flawed in various ways. They are typically driven by interest, above all political interest, rather than attained and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Index