Is Nationalism Defensible?

Introduction

What is nationalism? In spite of the popularity of the term there is no generally accepted definition for it. Some authors define nationalism as the belief that every nation should have its own state. (Glover, 1977) Others refer to it as the belief that a nation should be encompassed by a single state. Both notions are present in Giuseppe Mazzini’s slogan: ‘Every nation a state, only one state for the entire nation.’ (Mazzini, cited in Glover, 1997, p.12) All of these views are gathered by Gellner, who defines nationalism as the ‘political principle which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent.’ (Gellner, 1983, p.1) Of course, it would be possible to discuss other dimensions of the phenomenon, such as the moral one. Moral philosophers usually use the term with a different meaning, which is often associated with the issue of national partiality. (Hurka, 1997, Lichtenber, 1997) However, in this paper I will choose to focus on the political debate, and for that reason I shall adopt Gellner’s definition, since I think that it encapsulates what is most fundamental about the phenomenon in question.
Thus, the aim of this essay is to assess if nationalism, as the principle that the political and the national unit should be congruent, can be defended in a philosophical debate. In this essay I will critically examine some of the most relevant arguments used to defend nationalism and judge if those arguments can sustain proper scrutiny. My position will be that nationalist political theories cannot be sustained, since the arguments that support them cannot withstand a comprehensive critique like the one that will follow. In the first section, I will clarify the concepts of nation and state, which are central to this discussion. In section II I examine nationalist arguments in favour of self-determination (the right of every nation to have a state). And in the last section I argue that the state does not need the nation, and that a model based on allegiance to political institutions rather than a specific national group is a far better alternative than a model of political legitimization based on nationalist principles.
The tremendous importance of discussing the issue of nationalism derives from the obvious fact that it is the political force that has impacted the world the most in the last century. (Hall, 1995) From the nationalist movements of the first half of the century, most notably in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, to the rise of national liberation movements across the globe after the Second World War, culminating on the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, nationalism has truly shaped the world. Furthermore, the rise of nationalist parties in almost all western European countries and of separatist movements in Belgium, Canada, Spain, Italy and the UK in the last two decades, powerfully suggest that nationalism is not in decline but perhaps even growing. Not even the accentuated progress of globalization seems to have contributed to dilute the appeal of nationalism. As a topic of political philosophy, nationalism came into focus two decades ago, when the dramatic events in Yugoslavia and Rwanda reminded people of the potential of nationalism to generate incredible disasters in the way of violations of human rights (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) By assessing the main nationalist claims I wish to put into evidence the fact that nationalist excesses like those should and must be avoided, and that that can be achieved by looking at the inadequacies of the nationalist political model and replace it with one that is unlikely to lead to the same terrible results.  


                                                                        I


To begin with, it is necessary to clarify the distinct concepts of nation and state, central to the discussion that will follow.
The latter is easier to define, and a good definition is provided by Max Webber, who asserted that the state is the agency within society which possesses the monopoly of legitimate force. This definition encounters some difficulties, since some entities that are normally considered to be states do not, or did not in fact have a monopoly of force in the territories nominally under their control. However, in today’s world Webber’s definition seems to encompass the great majority of entities that are normally recognized as states, since most states today follow the western model of well-centralized state which is the perfect representation of Webber’s definition. (Gellner, 1983)
The concept of nation, on the other hand, is considerably more difficult to define and has resisted, thus far, a widely recognized definition. I believe that it is important to highlight two central aspects of the concept of nation. Firstly, a nation is not a state. Although in common usage sometimes the term nation is used to refer to a state, this is very different from the concept of nation that I will be referring to it in this paper, which implies ‘identification with and loyalty to the nation in the sense of a human grouping which may or may not be essentially coterminous with a state.’ (Connor, 2004, p.24) In this sense, the nation is a group of people that are united by a sense of unity that does not necessarily derive from belonging to the same state. (e.g.: Quebec, Catalonia, Basque Country, Croatia, Slovenia, Ireland, Germany or Ukraine)        
Secondly, whereas the state is primarily an objective phenomenon, the nation is primarily a subjective one. That is, whereas states exist in the world independently of what people think about them, a nation’s existence is conditioned by whether its members believe that it exists or not. This notion is central to the following definition of nation provided by Gellner:

Two men are in fact of the same nation if and only if they recognize each other as belonging to the same nation. In other words, nations maketh man; nations are the artefacts of men’s convictions and loyalties and solidarities. A mere category of persons (say, occupants of a given territory, or speakers of a given language, for example) becomes a nation if and when the members of the category firmly recognize certain mutual rights and duties to each other in virtue of their shared membership of it. It is their recognition of each other as fellows of this kind which turns them into a nation, and not the other shared attributes, whatever they might be, which separate that category from non-members. (1983, p.7)

As Gellner admits, this broadly voluntaristic definition of nation is not totally adequate, since it fails to show what elements, other than sense of membership, contribute to forming a nation. Yet, I am compelled to adopt Gellner’s as a working definition precisely because it avoids directly attributing other criteria to the nation. This is because the defining characteristics of a nation tend to vary in each case, to the extent that, other than a shared sense of belonging, to every other criterion that has been proposed to define the nation there are clear empirical counter-examples, as has been famously demonstrated by Ernst Renan, who concluded that a nation is a “daily plebiscite”, since its existence depends on a shared belief that its member belong together, and a shared wish to continue their life in common.
 (Renan, cited in Miller, 1995)


                                                                        II

    In this section I will examine some of the most relevant arguments proposed in favour of the principle of national self-determination, which consists in that every nation has the right to have its own set of political institutions. I shall examine 3 of the main arguments in favour of the principle of national self-determination. The first one is grounded on social justice, the second on the expression of collective autonomy and the third on national culture.
Let us begin by analysing the argument from social justice. This type of nationalist argument has been endorsed, among others, by David Miller, who has defended the view that national belonging generates a series of binding obligations that extend to all the members of the nation. Miller claims that nations are communities of obligation, in the sense that their members recognize duties to meet the basic needs and protect the basic interests of other members. Yet he acknowledges that nations are large and impersonal communities, and that without a mechanism to enforce the duties that nationalities creates, those obligations will hardly be fulfilled satisfactorily by the members of the nation. Hence, Miller argues that the nation needs to have a state that is able to develop and regulate a set of institutions which together allocate rights and responsibilities to people in the way that their conception of social justice demands. (Miller, 1995)
Miller’s argument is sound as long as we accept that the first premise is true: that nations are ethical communities. However, as I will attempt to demonstrate next, such a claim cannot be sustained.
Miller argues that nations are, among other things, ‘ethical communities’ (1995, p.49). He defends the moral significance of nationality by adopting a particularist view of ethics, in contrast to the more popular (at least in contemporary moral philosophy) universalist view. While universalist ethics is based on a set of universal principles which are applicable to all people at all times, moral particularists argue that morality flourishes in concrete relationships that give meaning to our lives. (Pojman and Fieser, 2006) Miller rejects the universalist approach to ethics because of two reasons.
In the first place, he argues that adopting a universalist ethical stance ‘involves driving a wedge between ethical duty and personal identity’ (Miller, 1995, p.57), since the universalist must abstain from taking in consideration vital components of his identity such as who he is, where he comes from, and which communities he is attached to, when making moral decisions. For instance, a person is commonly not expected to treat a member of his family or one of his friends in the same way as he is expected to treat a stranger.
 Secondly, Miller claims that the universalist approach ‘rests upon an implausible account of ethical motivation’ (p.57), since the ordinary man will not feel motivated to make moral choices solely based on pure moral reasoning, rather than influenced by his particular circumstances. This is important because an ethical theory must have practical ambitions in the sense that it aspires to be the theory which people will use to guide their activities. But if an ethical theory embodies a view of the subject which is far removed from people’s common understanding of it, then it will very likely fail to guide people to act in accordance. (Miller, 1988)
Hence, Miller argues in favour of a particularist approach, according to which the concept of nation as an ethical community becomes more plausible. From a particularist approach, nationality, as other communities to which one belongs, creates special obligations that are different from the general obligations that one owes to humanity in general. Miller puts it like this:

Because I identify with my family, my college, or my local community, I properly acknowledge obligations to members of those groups that are distinct from the obligations I owe to people generally. Seeing myself as a member, I feel a loyalty to the group, and this expresses itself, among other things, in my giving special weight to the interests of fellow- members. So, if my time is restricted and two students each ask if they can consult me, I give priority to the one who belongs to my college.’ (1995, p.65)

Miller’s assertion that belonging to a community entails being partial in regard to the members of the community of which one is a part of has indubitable strength, since it builds on most people’s common belief that we should acknowledge some special obligations to family, friends, partner and co-members of exclusive organizations.
Yet, it is far from evident that nations can be seen as communities of the same kind as families, colleges or states. Once again, we should go back to the notion of nation as a community of which one is a part only when one believes that that is the case. In this sense, nations are quite different from the communities that I just mentioned. Nations differ from organizations such as colleges, country clubs and states in the sense that membership in those organizations is based on the assumption that the member consents in a number of obligations (amongst which some forms of preferential treatment towards co-members) in return for a number of privileges (including being treated in a preferential way by other members). There is nothing wrong with this. Yet, membership of nations is not based on consent but on involuntary characteristics, such as blood and culture. In this sense, it is akin to the family. But not quite. While the members of the same family are linked by objective ties of blood, the members of a nation are essentially connected by a collective belief in their nationality. In this sense, nations are in fact nothing more than “imagined communities” (Anderson, 2005) whose existence depends on the beliefs of its members. And mere belief hardly seems to provide a sufficient basis for constructing one’s identity or to ground serious moral demands, capable of defeating the usual moral demands of impartiality. (Miscevic, 2001)
Furthermore, Miller seems to suggest that descriptive facts, about the way people reason, have the power to determine normative facts, such as the way people should reason and behave. The fact that people have a tendency to show partiality towards their con-nationals can in no way justify them doing so. This would be the same as to say that, because owning slaves was a generalized practice in many civilizations throughout a substantial period in the history of Man, slavery should be deemed justified.
If the nationalist cannot come up with another argument in favour of the ethical significance of nationality, it seems as there are no good reasons to accept it over the demands of moral impartiality. We can then conclude that the central premise that nations generate binding moral demands which should be necessarily enforced does not hold. As such the whole argument based on the ethical significance of nationality fails.


A second argument used to justify the principle of national self-determination is based on the notion of collective autonomy. The argument can be put in the following terms: The first premise is that ‘people have an interest in shaping the world in association with others with whom they identify’ (Miller, 1995, p.88). The second premise is that a group of people who see themselves as a nation need a state in order to fully control their collective destinies. The conclusion is that people who identify with each other as a national community should be permitted to have their own state.
We should begin by questioning the first premise of the argument, since it relies on a conception of human nature that we have good reasons to be suspicious of. First, ‘it supposes that people have an interest in shaping the world in association with others with whom they identify’ (Miller, 1995, p.88). This is somewhat speculative, as Miller himself admits. Yet, the idea does have some appeal. What is most problematic, however, is that the argument relies on the assumption that people are primarily interested in “shaping the world” with their co-nationals, rather than any other group of people with whom they identify. This latter assumption cannot be accepted. For it to be true, the nationalist would need to prove that people’s primary focus of identification is the nation, which, as I will demonstrate next, he cannot do.
Let us begin by considering the following nationalist claim: ‘the only way in which individuals can realize themselves to the full is by identifying with the nation, serving it, obeying its customs, and unreflectively celebrating its greatness’ (Tamir1993, p.17) This argument has been identified by cosmopolitan Judith Lichtenberg who phrased it in slightly broader terms and named it “the flourishing argument”. She defines it as ‘the belief that human beings need to belong to or identify with some group beyond their immediate family or, in any case, that they flourish when they do’ (Tamir1997, p.160).
As Lichtenberg recognizes, the flourishing argument seems ‘to capture something undeniable’ (1997, p.161). Nevertheless, there are a number of reasons why we should doubt of the ability of this argument to prove that a person needs to identify with or belong to a nation in order to thrive. Most importantly, the nationalist must explain is why the nation is the best unit of identification/belonging. (Lichtenberg, 1997)  After all, there are a number of other entities that can hypothetically function as foci of identification and communities of belonging. Namely, the city where one was born, grew up or lives in, the province of birth or residence, the state of which one is a citizen or a resident, the continent or macro-region to which one feels most attached (e.g., Europe, Africa, the Arab World, the West) or even the whole of humanity. In what way exactly does the nation provide something in the way of identity that all those elements combined fail to produce?
  As Nenad Miscevic points out, ‘it is prima facie unclear why the nation should have such a special role in building an individual’s identity in comparison with all kinds of more local or universal, or simply incommensurable competitors. Mere assertion certainly cannot replace argument, and mere assertion is what one gets from quite a few pro-nationalist authors’ (2001, p.229). Even so, Miscevic identifies two possible nationalist answers to this problematic question.
The first one is that the nation incorporates various underlying traits that are to a good extent specific to that nation and distinguishes its members from the members of other nations. In this sense, the unique value of the nation as an identity-provider-community seems to derive from specific cultural traits such as a common language. Miscivic recognizes that this is a sensible proposal, since for many people their language is indeed an important part of their identity. However, Miscevic points out that the argument has a fatal flaw, ‘it is not general enough’ (2001, p.231). Concerning linguistic identity, for instance, ‘in all cases in which language is not the central distinctive trait, it fails to justify the ethno-nationalist program. Worse, it suggests that in all these cases ethnic identification itself is defective, lacking the central feature’ (2001, p.231). This would be the case for Austrians/Germans/Swiss Germans, most Arab nations, Serbs/Muslims/Croats, most nations in America and Africa as well as some other nations. We see then that in many cases linguistic identity does not seem to be a central or even a part of the national distinctiveness. This sort of reasoning can be applied to any particular element of identification usually assigned to nations, since there are always counter-examples that reveal that, whatever the criterion chosen, it cannot be found in all nations. This point has famously been made by Ernest Renan, who, in his essay What is the Nation?, highlighted the inadequacy of language, race, religion, geography and a community of interests to function as a single criterion that can be applied to distinguish every nation. (Renan, 1992) This becomes an even greater problem if we consider that every time that a nation does not share a national trait seen as central to identification, the very concept of national identity loses meaning. Miscevic uses the following examples to illustrate this:

If language is indeed so deeply important for identity, but Muslims and Croats share a language without sharing a national identity, then national identity is shallow. If a system of values is deeply important for identity, but Quebecois and Anglophones share values without sharing an ethno-national identity, then the latter is indeed shallow. (Miscevic, 2001, p.232)

We see then that the more the nationalist insists on the importance of a particular distinctive trait that nationality provides, the more he becomes vulnerable to the inevitable examples of cases in which that trait is not part of a national identity. Thus, the nationalist attempt to justify the centrality of nationality to personal identity on the basis of a particular trait fails under proper scrutiny. (Miscevic, 2001)
            The second way open to the nationalist is to try to ‘ascribe identity-providing power to the ethno-national “form of life” as such, regardless of particular features that underlie it in particular situations’ (Miscevic, 2001, p.233). This is a bold claim, since the nationalist must be able to prove that nationhood is decisively more successful as an identity provider than the other elements of identification against which it must compete. Yet, it seems quite unlikely that the nation can indeed perform the task of providing an identity and represent a specific way of life better than any competing element. Let us resort once more to an example provided by Miscevic, since it illustrates this claim rather well:

Being a German (nation), being a Bavarian (micro-region), or being Germanic (macro-region), taken in isolation from the particular traits that constitute each of them, seems to offer equally attractive foci for identification. There is nothing special about being a German-as-such, in contrast to being a Bavarian-as-such, that would a priori make the German- that is, the national-option preferable for young Hans in his search for a stable identity in comparison with the Bavarian-regional-one. Hans can equally well choose the cultural, all-Germanic option, identifying himself indiscriminately with a macro-culture which has produced Goethe, Beethoven, Berg, Schoenberg, Brentano, and Hegel, without weeding out the specifically Austrian, non-German part.’ (2001, p.234)

            This example helps us to appreciate how the nationalist is unable to explain how exactly the nation provides a better focus of identification than its competitors. Thus we should discard the nationalist’s claim that nations provide a unique and better element of identification than competing elements. As such, we should now begin to doubt if the nation can give us something in terms of identity that we otherwise would not acquire from the other entities with which we identify. At this point it certainly seems that national identity, far from being an essential part of personal identity, is a rather contingent one. Since the identity premise is indefensible, the whole argument from collective autonomy collapses.        


The third argument in favour of national self-determination is the one that justifies it on cultural grounds. Once more, Miller will be my point of reference, even though the argument of culture has been explored by many other pro-nationalist authors, notably Yael Tamir (1993) and MacIntyre (1994). Miller presents the argument as follows: 1) It is reasonably clear that distinct national cultures do exist. 2) It is valuable to the members of the nations in question that their national cultures continue to exist. 3) Since the state is the agent that can most likely guarantee the preservation of a national culture, than nations have a good claim to constitute their own state in order to preserve their unique national culture. (Miller, 1995)
The culture argument is one of the most commonly used weapons in the nationalist’s arsenal when it comes to justify national self-determination. And it should be recognized that the argument has some strength, since it draws on the force of the reasonably popular notions that distinct cultures should be preserved and that individuals have a right to culture. (Tamir, 1993) Yet, as I will try to demonstrate, there are important reasons why we should reject it.
Firstly we should question the soundness of the assumption that the nation is culture’s basic unit. (Miscevic, 2001) I believe that a strong case can be made in favour of both the supra-national and the sub-national characters of contemporary culture. Consider the American national culture. Now consider the specific(sub-national) culture of Louisiana, which be easily differentiated from generic American culture. Just because the culture of Louisiana is markedly different from generic American culture, and unique in the world, does it mean that a new state should be created to protect the culture of Louisiana? Furthermore, what should the nationalist make of the fact that, even in the absence of a state of Louisiana, the culture of the region has thrived? I have used the example of Louisiana, but I could have used countless other examples to demonstrate the same fact: that culture can be seen as primarily sub-national, just as it can be seen as primarily national. In addition, it must be taken into account that, in the age of globalization, culture is becoming increasingly more global and less local. Not only that, a key feature in the modern world is that cultures interact constantly and their evolution is a product of that interaction. (Tully, 1995, cited in Miscevic, 2001) As a result, to think of cultures as strictly national, independent of each other, is to ignore the important fact that “national cultures” are part of a more meaningful and coherent supra-national phenomenon. To give just a few examples, in the world of today most spectator sports, with only a few exceptions, are important parts of the culture of many very different nations (e.g. Rugby, Cricket, Volleyball, Football, Basketball); music also can be understood in terms of language and styles much better than it can be understood in terms of nation (e.g. Anglophone music, Spanish-Language music, classical music, rap). On the other hand, phenomena like the internet or videogames, are very much global in nature, and are much more a defining element of a particular generation than of a specific nation.    
After considering that it is just as (if not more) compelling to think of culture(s) in sub-national and supra-national terms rather than in strictly national terms, the premise that distinct national cultures exist loses much of its relevance, and the presumption that culture is fundamentally national is shattered. Yet, something else can be said against the national cultural argument for national self-determination. It regards the second premise of the argument: it is valuable for individuals that their national cultures continue to exist. Indeed it is true that for many people that the preservation of what they regard as their culture is important. But, as we have seen, the kind of culture that matters to a person is just as likely to be sub-national or supra-national as it is likely to be national. Furthermore, the fact that to feel part of a culture is important to many people does not mean that their culture should be preserved by remaining always the same. As Buchanan puts it, the right to cultural preservation ‘cannot be a right to cultural stasis- a right to preserve a culture just as it is at present. The basis of the alleged right is the good that cultural membership achieves for individuals, and this good does not require an unchanging culture. For the same reason, an appreciation of the value of cultural membership cannot by itself even support a right to the continued existence of any particular culture’. (Buchanan, 1995, cited in Miscevic, 2001, p.163) Hence, we should see the right to culture not as the right to preserve in its totality and indefinitely a certain culture, but the right to have a certain culture. But that culture need not be strictly national. In the modern world, in fact, culture is increasingly likely to be supra-national or, like in the case of Louisiana, sub-national.        
                                                                   

III


Let us now consider the last avenue open to the nationalist. Instead of arguing that the nation, through its very existence, justifies the creation of a state, let us now consider the reasons why, according to some nationalist authors, the state needs the nation. I would like to consider the 5 arguments of this type that I find most relevant. I will adopt the terminology used by Moore, who calls this sort of argument instrumental arguments (Moore, 2001).
The first instrumental argument in favour of nationality I wish to consider is Moore’s “gellnerian argument”. Moore argues that a careful reading of Gellner’s theory of nationalism suggests that “national identity is ineluctably bound up with modernity; and that it is precisely the features of modernity – mass literacy, standardized modes of interaction, mass education, a bureaucratic state, and so on – that give importance to cultural and national forms of identity” (Moore, 2001, pp. 76-77). According to Moore, two implications can be drawn from Gellner’s theory of nationalism. The first is that “there are aspects of the transition from agrarian to industrial (modern) societies that explain why cultural and national forms of identity have assumed importance (Moore, 2001, p.77). The second and most important one is that, given the nature of modern industrial states, there are substantial benefits that derive from situations where “the national and cultural boundaries of the state in part coincide with that of the political unit” (Moore, 2001, p.78).
The second argument in favour of instrumental nationalism I wish to consider is the “social justice argument”. It consists on the assertion that a sense of shared identity is instrumental in guaranteeing that policies of social justice (including economic redistribution) are accepted by the citizens of a state. This argument has been endorsed by a number of influential political philosophers such as Moore, Galston, Brian Barry, Mill and David Miller (Moore, 2001).
The third argument I wish to consider is the “democratic governance argument”. A generic version of this argument is well represented by Mill’s discussion on nationality in Considerations on Representative Government where he argues that democracy can only flourish where the boundaries of government coincide with that of nations. He supports that notion by suggesting that “among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion necessary to the workings of government, cannot exist” (Mill, 1861, cited in Moore, 2001, p.86). A more specific version of the argument is proposed by Moore, who argues that nationality is a particularly important requisite in terms of representation in the context of representative democracies. She claims that, on the one hand, it is a requisite of a representative democracy that those who are represented identify with each other and with their representatives at least up to a level in which the representatives can still be seen as legitimate representatives of those they represent. On the other hand, in the contemporary world nationalities are the most important source of identity and belonging, and hence are in a unique position to grant the community the level of union required by the functioning of a representative democracy. (Moore, 2001)
The fourth argument I want to highlight is what I shall call the “trust argument”. This argument basically consists in the following assertions: 1) To function well, a state, specifically a democratic one, needs its citizens to trust each other to a certain degree. 2) Nationality is an important source of trust. 3) Nationality is important for the functioning of the state.
Finally, let us consider the “stability argument”. It consists in the notion that multinational states are more unstable than states that are associated with only one nation. It is closely linked with the “trust argument”, since it presupposes that trust is always lacking between different national groups. This argument is well illustrated by the following quotation by Miller: “[In states lacking a common national identity] politics at best takes the form of group bargaining and compromise and at worst degenerates into a struggle for domination. Trust may exist within groups, but not across them (1995, pp 92-93).


Firstly, we should question the argument that associating the state with a nation brings stability. Consider that nations are not objective entities, since their existence relies on the belief of a group of people that they form a particular nation. Thus, any nation is contingent, since if the people did not think of themselves as part of the nation, the nation would not exist. According to the nationalist “argument from stability”, the nation brings stability to the state, since when there are more than one nation in the same state, it is likely that the national groups will not trust each other and a conflict may erupt that can threaten the peaceful coexistence between the citizens of the state. But if the conditions for polarization on national grounds did not exist in the state in the first place, obviously there would be no stability problem caused by nations. This indicates that the nation might be the original problem, and not the solution; and that problem can be avoided precisely by thinking in state, rather than national lines.
Furthermore, if a sense of shared nationality promotes trust between individuals of the same state, the potential of generating distrust between different nations is far greater. The trust argument would only be valid for those few states where it is clear that there is no more than one nation. For all other states, a far more realistic expectation is that feelings of national belonging are likely to produce strong cleavages between the people who live inside the state’s boundaries. And even in the cases of states which do not have more than one nation nationality still creates a significant problem: although nationals/co-citizens trust each other more they are likely to do so at the expense of acquiring greater distrust of non-nationals/non-citizens, which can give rise to terrible consequences. National partiality generates a dynamic of discrimination that often leads, in practice, to disastrous results. By making the state the tool of a particular nation, the nationalist condemns the non-nationals to a fate of discrimination, exclusion or even, sometimes, physical extermination. A number of examples can be drawn from real life to illustrate this: the identification of the German state with the German nation and the following exclusion of Jews and Gipsies during Nazi rule; the identification of the Sudanese state with the Arabs in Sudan and the consequential exclusion of African Sudanese tribes which led to conflicts in Southern and Western Sudan; the identification of the South African state with white settlers and the exclusion of black people, which led to the Apartheid regime; the identification of the Rwandan state with Hutus, which led to the exclusion of Tutsis and culminated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide; etc... This list could be extended almost indefinitely and constitutes a powerful proof of how states that are identified with a nation often end in disaster, provoked by the inevitable exclusion of the people that are not members of the privileged nation and live within the state. This leads me to believe that an adequate theory of the state should reject the temptation to link state and nation.
Finally I wish to dismiss the assumption that only nationalism (as in identification of the state with the nation) can perform the duties that the social justice, democratic governance and trust arguments highlight. Such assumption is in my view unwarranted, since a committed form of patriotism can perform the same functions, without producing the undesirable consequences that I attributed to nationalism. Thus, I support the view that we should advance towards a model of non-nationalist patriotism, based on the respect for the political institutions to which one is committed and on the denial of any ethical obligations of partiality that supposedly derive from belonging to a nation. Such a view is supported by authors such as Habermas (1998) and Viroli (1995). Habermas proposes a Patriotism of the Constitution (Verfassungspatriotismus), consisting “on loyalty to the universalistic political principles of liberty and democracy embodied in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany” (Habermas, 1990, cited in Viroli, 1995, p.170). “Unlike nationalism, constitutional patriotism separates the political ideal of the nation of citizens from the conception of the people as a pre-political community of language and culture. This form of patriotism recognizes the full legitimacy and moral worth of different forms of life and is committed to the inclusion of difference cultures within the framework of the republic.” (Viroli, 1995, p.170). A political model on the lines of Habermas’ constitutional patriotism has the power to offer citizens a powerful element of unity and at the same time avoid the dialectic of discrimination produced by national partiality and the internal divisions that arise from tensions between different national groups within the same state, especially when they have the intention of constituting their own state. In his book For Love of Country Maurizio Viroli, emphasises that patriotism has the power to compete with nationalism for people’s affection, albeit by different means. Viroli argues in favour of a concept of patriotism as a common love of liberty and a rejection of the celebration of a sense of one’s group uniqueness. Viroli suggests that citizens can learn to love a republic, when that republic consistently shows sign of good governance and of being able to protect the interests of its citizens. Furthermore, in democracies where the citizens take an active part in the governance of the republic, they come to see the good of the republic as their own to a considerable extent (Viroli, 1995). Both Habermas and Viroli emphasise the potential of patriotism to capture the loyalty of people through universal values that are not exclusivist, thus avoiding the nefarious consequences of political entities which are guided by principles of nationality. At the same time, they make a good case for the power of patriotism to command people’s affections, and thus convincingly assert that patriotism can replace nationalism as the uniting element of any state.
I wish to conclude by making a final point. Constitutional patriotism should not be allowed to function as an instrument to legitimise the unwarranted exclusion and discrimination of those who are not citizens of the state. It should operate together with an international system that recognizes that which nationalism denies: that all men are made equal and have the same inalienable rights. It is not the object of this essay to establish how such an international system should be, but a critique of nationalism would not be complete without at least pointing to a solution to the violations of human rights that derive from the competition between states. Also, it follows from the rejection of the principle of national self-determination that sovereignty should not be a prerogative of nations, or in any case, of nation-states. If the protection of the rights of Man is better ensured by a model of shared sovereignty between states, than it should be acknowledged that there is no good reason why we should insist that the sovereignty of states must be absolute. Quite the opposite, the recognition of the equal rights of all men demands that those rights are protected accordingly, which may not be possible in a world where states are totally sovereign. Pogge for instance, has argued that human rights are best protected by a system of shared sovereignty between several levels of government, including sub-state as well as supra-state institutions, rather than a system of rigid state sovereignty. (Pogee, 1992) If this is true, a change in the structure of the international order would be welcomed. The EU, in particular, can be seen as a pioneering entity in the shift towards a model of shared sovereignty like the one Pogge suggests.

Conclusion

I have argued that a theory of political philosophy based on the principle of nationality is not defensible. In the first section my aim was to demonstrate that the nation and the state are clearly discernible entities. In section II I looked at the main arguments used to justify the claim that each nation should have its own state. I believe that I have proved that those arguments cannot be defended and that, therefore, the claim is indefensible. I concluded in section III by showing that associating the state with a particular nation brings more harm than good. Furthermore, it is possible to envisage a theory of political philosophy that rejects the principle of nationality, thus avoiding its crucial disadvantages, but at the same time offers everything that is tempting about nationalism such as loyalty to the (political) community. Such a theory must be based on the kind of patriotism devised by authors such as Habermas and Viroli.


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