Multinational Federalism and Value Pluralism
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Multinational Federalism and Value Pluralism

Ferran Requejo

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Multinational Federalism and Value Pluralism

Ferran Requejo

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About This Book

This book addresses the democratic accommodation of national pluralism through federal rules. The key question is: can federalism be a fair and workable way of articulating multinational societies according to revised liberal-democratic patterns? In recent years, scholarly discussion on this issue has undergone a change. Nowadays, the answer to this question is much more complex than the one that traditional political liberalism and federalism used to give us. In the past, these two political approaches usually addressed the question of political pluralism without seriously including national pluralism in the discussion, a theoretical attitude that has often misrepresented and impoverished the moral discussions and the institutional practices of multinational democratic federations.

Multinational Federalism and Value Pluralism has been awarded the prize for the best book in 2005 by the Spanish Political Science Association (AECPA).

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2004
ISBN
9781134272334

Part I
Political liberalism and multinational democracies

Theoretical aspects

1
The quality of democracy in multinational contexts

Je hay toute sorte de tyrannie, et la parliere, et l’effectuelle. (I detest all kinds of tyranny, those of words and those of facts)
Montaigne, Essais, Book III, Chapter VIII
Federalism is designed to prevent tyranny without preventing governance.
Daniel Elazar, Exploring Federalism, 1987
In certain liberal-democratic federations (or regionally decentralized polities) there is a coexistence between various national groups. Among the national characteristics of these groups living together in a given polity, we can mention the fact that their members recognize themselves as such because they share some cultural patterns. They also share some sense of historical distinctiveness in relation to other groups. They are situated in a more or less clear territory, and display a will to maintain their distinctiveness in the political sphere. When there are different national groups living together within the same federation (or regional state), we call it a multinational federation (or a multinational regional state). This, for example, is the case in Belgium, Canada, India or Spain. These are multinational federations or regional decentralized polities with institutional and regulatory challenges distinct from those faced by uninational federations such as the Germany, Austria or Australia.1
In the first section of this chapter, I will briefly outline certain analytical and moral elements pertaining to the current revision of liberal-democratic legitimacy within multinational contexts which are relevant to democratic federalism. The second section is mainly concerned with the notion of value pluralism as political theory of political liberalism. I understand value pluralism as a theory of the structure of moral normativity in liberal democracies. I defend the greater suitability of value pluralism over its rival theories when one is attempting to revise democratic liberalism from the perspective of the cultural and national pluralism.

Political liberalism and multinational democracies: some analytical and moral shortcomings

Analytical aspects

The disconnection between differing types of theoretical analyses

We could say, in general terms, that there has been little connection between the analyses of federalism, democracy and the various types of nationalism. On the one hand, in comparative federal studies, the distinction is not always made between federal systems that are democratic and non-democratic, or between those which are uninational or multinational. And on the other hand, analyses of nationalism do not usually assess relations with democracy in any great depth, while theories of democracy—particularly those of a more philosophical character—have not paid significant attention to the analysis of federal systems or empirical multinational realities.

National pluralism and democracy

Although we may say that cultural pluralism is a general trend of current liberal democracies, national pluralism is certainly not. It is a reality that is not shared by all democracies. However, despite the fact that national pluralism is a question related with the quality of some democracies, only in recent times has it received sufficient attention in democratic theory. At least three normative and institutional questions must be addressed in these democracies: the constitutional recognition and regulation of national pluralism and minority rights, the self-government of minority national entities and the institutional framework of the polity.

National pluralism and federalism

In comparing the political make-up of federal democracies, we do not find a great many multinational democratic federations. Basically there is Canada, Belgium, India and—to a lesser extent—Spain (which is not, technically speaking, a federation). Faced therefore with these cases, we need to be particularly careful in making judgements, avoiding inferences that are based on limited information, and refraining from generalized conclusions. The basic issue here is that of how to accommodate in the public sphere diverse national realities within the same federal democracy. Distinct national groups are habitually characterized by real and perceptible differences (demographic, linguistic, income-related, cultural, in civil law, etc.) which have consequences for their self-perception, and the ways in which this does not correspond to that of other groups. We also need to bear in mind other factors such as whether or not populations with distinct national identities are territorially intermixed, and the importance of ‘dual national identity’ in relation to the ‘federated entity’ and the ‘federation’.

Normative and national pluralism

In all liberal democracies and federations, decision-makers often find themselves faced with a plurality of competing legitimizing goals and criteria based on different functional or moral perspectives (liberal, democratic, national, technical, etc.). Efficiency, stability, political participation or liberal protection of individual and collective rights and liberties are classical competing goals in all federal democracies that present more complex and intermixed relations in multinational federations than in uninational federations.

National pluralism, globalization and supra-state polities (e.g. the European Union)

Stateless nations like Quebec, Catalonia, Flanders, the Basque Country or Scotland illustrate the overlap between globalization and national pluralism in western democracies.2 In the European context, there are some difficulties in the empirical and theoretical analysis when we are dealing with concepts like democratic accountability in the supra-state decision-making networks or the notion of European Citizenship (Maastricht 1992, European Convention 2002–2003). Federalism is directly influenced by these supra-state processes. In fact, in liberal-democratic theories, citizenship has been developed and approached from the perspective of the state. Diluting the state monopoly of the principle of territoriality and the competitive dualism between state and non-state nation-building processes are likely two prerequisites for implementing not only a new institutional and democratic accommodation of national pluralism in a more globalized economic and political context, but also a revision of the unitarian-secessionist duality in nation-building processes.

Moral aspects

Globalization and cultural and national pluralism constitute the two main challenges for present-day liberal democracies and federalism. (For the relationship between democratic liberalism and nationalism, see also Nodia 1992; Tamir 1993; Miller 1995; Smith 1995; Caney et al. 1996; Canovan 1996; Keating 1996; MacCormick 1996; Norman 1996; McKim and McMahan 1997; Guibernau 1999; Requejo 1999a; Kymlicka 2001; Requejo 2001a.; Tierney 2004) Both are important for federalism. In general terms, the question of multiculturality and, more directly, the question of multinationality has posed a new agenda of issues for democratic debate. These issues are no longer limited to the language of individual rights and notions of liberty, equality and pluralism in the same way as traditional political liberalism has developed these notions. In fact, we can say that this new agenda has implied the discussion of key elements for a special theory of democratic legitimacy and federalism in multinational contexts that overcomes the traditional approach of seeing national minority rights as unjust, discriminatory and morally arbitrary.
Among the cultural and moral biases that the traditional approach usually displays, the following stand out.

Inequality versus difference

Traditional liberal-democratic theories have usually considered public sphere justice from the perspective of the paradigm of equality (equality versus inequality), in detriment to the paradigm of difference (equality versus difference). In multinational societies it is the concept of equality itself which becomes more plural than in uninational societies. If cultural and national differences are ignored or marginalized, minorities will not be equally treated in relation to majorities, and they will lose recognition and self-respect. In fact, these minorities are treated unequally even when their civil, political and social rights of citizenship are guaranteed. The juxtaposition of the two paradigms of equality and difference is fundamental in the case of national movements which are historical and territorial. It implies a new approach to the notions of dignity and pluralism themselves. The political accommodation of national minorities is now becoming increasingly recognized by most scholars as a claim that must be taken into account within ‘just’ multinational democracies.

The ‘monist’ conception of the ‘demos’

One of the questions that has never been resolved by the different liberal theories of democracy is that of the demos to which they refer. In the majority of liberal-democratic conceptions it is something that is implicitly defined beforehand as the nation-state. We know that in the empirical world, the demos of the democratic systems, including that of federations, have not been usually established from the procedural rules of liberal democracies, but from a historical process full of wars, conquests, annexations, exterminations or marginalizations of whole peoples, and so on, which are a long way from being sound bases for liberal-democratic legitimization. Moreover, these bases usually justify the constitutional rules in universal and impartial terms, despite the implicit and unavoidable assumption of particular cultural values linked to a specific democracy and to the pretended ‘national’ interest of its demos. Under this perspective, the challenge of multinational democracies is ‘one polity, several demoi’. In fact, theories of democracy have traditionally been theories of the democratic state, and they have usually been conceived as based on a uniform demos. Multinational democracies show the need to revise, for moral as well as for functional reasons, some of the traditional ‘stateist’ assumptions that the hegemonic national groups have often imposed under some homogenizing versions of the notions of ‘democratic citizenship’ and ‘popular sovereignty’.

The marginalization of the ‘ethical’ dimension

Within the theories of democratic legitimacy, the existence of at least three dimensions of practical rationality has tended to stand out: the pragmatic (or instrumental), the ‘ethical’ and the ‘moral’. The first is directed towards the satisfaction of goals and objectives. In the political sphere it is characterized by negotiation and compromise, and its main values or guiding principles are effectiveness, efficiency and stability. From this perspective, a federal agreement that satisfied all the parties involved according to the ethical and moral perspective, but which was unstable, could not be described as a good agreement. ‘Ethical’ rationality is linked to the interpretation of specific cultural values and identities that provide a framework for an unavoidable particularist normativity, whether it be a special normative set of values or a specific interpretation of a more general (or ‘universal’) normativity. This is a rationality which is prescriptively characterized by contextual interpretation. This ethical accommodation must be taken into account when regulating the symbols, institutions, self-government or the mechanisms of representation in a multinational federation. If this regulation is mainly based on the cultural components of only one of the national collectivities and excludes or marginalizes the others, it would also be difficult to call it a good federal accommodation. This implies that almost all citizens of the federation feel ‘comfortable’ in terms of identity (and self-esteem) regardless of the national collectivity they feel they mainly belong to: the federation or one of the member states. Finally, ‘moral’ rationality is aimed at the ‘impartial’ and equitable resolution of conflicts by means of a number of principles that aspire to ‘universal’ recognition regardless of the context in which they are applied. A good federal agreement needs to incorporate a clearly liberal-democratic moral dimension. In other words, a dimension that respects and guarantees transcultural human rights, as well as the other principles of the rule of law (the principles of legality, constitutionality, the separation of powers, frequent and competitive elections, civil liberties, etc.).
Liberal-democratic theories have tended to consider normative regulations from the perspective of pragmatic and moral rationalities. The ethical considerations of a historical and linguistic nature, among others, that influence national identities have tended either to be marginalized or relegated to the private sphere (territorial minority national identities), or have simply been accepted implicitly as a kind of hermeneutic horizon of the public sphere (majority or hegemonic national identities). The political institutions have not been culturally neutral, but leaned towards the identities and cultural patterns of the national majority or hegemonic groups. A minimal conclusion is that from liberal premises there has been a tendency to accept and defend from the public sphere, an implicit form of state communitarianism of a ‘national’ nature.

The defence of the nation-building process in all liberal democracies

All liberal democracies have, in practice, defended and continue to defend cultural particularisms of a linguistic, historical, etc, nature. In multinational democracies, there is a coexistence of different nation-building processes which are at least partially competitive among themselves. There will probably be political consequences for a notion of nation-building based on the application of a ‘universalistic’ legitimizing language to a particular state group that itself possesses a plurality of national groups (see Linz 1993).3
To sum up, the debate that has taken place since the early 1990s has shown the cultural limits of traditional liberal theories and the partiality of the theoretical interpretations and practical applications of values such as freedom, equality, autonomy, pluralism or dignity in multinational federalism. In reality, we always argue from the position of cultural inheritances that have facets of both a universal and particular kind, and which fashion the individual identities that, in large part, come to us preformed. Understood from this point of view, the majority of claims made by stateless democratic nationalisms (i.e. Catalan, Scottish or Quebecois) represent a deepening of the universal suppositions of political liberalism, and particularly of the values of equality, liberty and pluralism. The key task is to understand that, in a multinational democracy, a plural set of public spheres coexist, as well as different processes of nation-building. This is an idea that affects current discussions of whether federalism, or some of its variants, offers an adequate framework from which to proceed to a practical and constitutional accommodation for multinational polities in which diverse processes of nation-building share the same arena. In this way, the political and constitutional regulation of this specific kind of pluralism thus becomes a demand of liberal and federal normativity themselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Value pluralism and political legitimacy

Value pluralism: two analytical strategies and four kinds of theories

Let us start with two observations of a more general nature. First, when one is attempting to ‘improve’ liberal democracies, both ethically and functionally, in relation to cultural and national pluralism, two strategies may be used:
  • In the first, we may place ourselves within the theoretical tradition of political liberalism in order to be able to point out the limits, biases, prejudices and partial interpretations that it displays both in its ethical and anthropological aspects and in its constitutional and institutional aspects—such as federalism. This perspective allows us to carry out a theoretical revision in order to refine liberal values themselves and the legitimation of democracies as well as permitting us to put forward a number of proposals for practical reform that are more suitable for refining liberal values.4
  • In the second, we may use liberal tradition as one of many possible approaches in order to build democratic polities that go beyond western liberalism and which are more in tune with the normative, linguistic, historical and cultural diversity of contemporary societies.
In terms of political theory, the first strategy attempts to create a liberal theory of cultural and national pluralism. The second strategy is designed to produce a more ambitious multicultural theory of democracy and political liberalism.5
Second, it is possible to identify four general types of theory, including liberalism, in relation to how they understand the internal structure of moral normativity—in other words, its basic ontology:
  • monist theories
  • culturally pluralist theories
  • pluralist theories without fully rank-ordered values (value pluralism)
  • pluralist theories with fully rank-ordered values.
By monist theories I mean those that defend that only one way of life is the best—a way of life that is based on a value that is considered to be a priority and which is preferable to any other way of life. Moral monism normally understands its position to be (1) the most ‘rational’ or ‘human’, (2) of universal application, both for the members of any given collective and for humanity as a whole, and (3) based on a conception of ‘human nature’, which is given a moral-ontological superiority over any differences of a cultural and national origin that individuals or groups display. According to these kinds of theories, the good life cannot be lived differently from that which is defended: there are no equivalent good ways of life (for example, Plato or usual interpretations of monotheistic religions).
In contrast, culturally pluralist theories establish the impossibility of any anthropology (or ethics) that fails to take into account the cultural characteristics that define individuals and groups. Inevitably, any conception of the good way of life will depend more on the particular cultures of a given group of individuals than on any characteristics that may be shared by all of them. Humanity itself and its moral answers are plural. Cultures, and their particular ‘centres of gravity’ (Herder), are normally understood here to mean autonomous, global, separate, valuable, static and more or less homogeneous groups that should be preserved by each collective (ex. Vico, Herder).
On the other hand, pluralist theories without fully rank-ordered values, or value pluralism, defend the existence of a multiplicity of heterogeneous values that cannot be reduced to a single value, nor to a permanent and universal order of priority for all individuals and for all cases (I. Berlin is obviously the main reference here).6
Finally, pluralist theories w...

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