Political Loyalty and the Nation-State (Routledge Advances in International Relations and Politics, 23)

Political Loyalty and the Nation-State

Political Loyalty and the Nation-State evaluates recent claims that states are losing their capacity to determine the political loyalties of their citizens, and that citizens increasingly regard loyalty as a matter of individual choice and political responsibility. At the focal centre of the book lies the question of the extent to which it is possible to invest political principles, such as the rules and procedures of democracy, with a sentiment of loyalty. The authors collected here consider, first, the theoretical issues that arise from the challenge of a proliferation of identifications and demands for the public recognition of social differences, and from the claim that stronger transnational solidarities are needed in a globalizing age. A second approach deals with problems of loyalty arising from the movement of substantial populations around the world, and from attempts to draw loyalty upwards to transnational bodies such as the European Union. Finally, selected case studies of conflicts of loyalty within the state are offered: in Italy with the Lega Nord, in Northern Ireland, and in Russia in its evolution from Soviet Union to the Russian Federation. The book develops a number of key themes concerning political loyalties. The authors show that loyalty can become decoupled from state, territory and nation; that loyalties can be multiple; and that today’s loyalties reflect advanced attitudes towards difference. Michael Waller is Professor Emeritus of European Politics at Keele University. Andrew Linklater is Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics 1 Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis France, Britain and Europe Henrik Larsen 2 Agency, Structure and International Politics From ontology to empirical enquiry Gil Friedman and Harvey Starr 3 The Political Economy of Regional Co-operation in the Middle East Ali Carkoglu, Mine Eder and Kemal Kirisci 4 Peace Maintenance The evolution of international political authority Jarat Chopra 5 International Relations and Historical Sociology Breaking down boundaries Stephen Hobden 6 Equivalence in Comparative Politics Edited by Jan W. van Deth 7 The Politics of Central Banks Robert Elgie and Helen Thompson 8 Politics and Globalisation Knowledge, ethics and agency Martin Shaw 9 History and International Relations Thomas W. Smith 10 Idealism and Realism in International Relations Robert M.A. Crawford 11 National and International Conflicts, 1945–1995 New empirical and theoretical approaches. Frank Pfetsch and Christoph Rohloff 12 Party Systems and Voter Alignments Revisited Edited by Lauri Karvonen and Stein Kuhnle 13 Ethics, Justice & International Relations Constructing an international community Peter Sutch

14 Capturing Globalization Edited by James H. Mittelman and Norani Othman 15 Uncertain Europe Building a new European security order? Edited by Martin A Smith and Graham Timmins 16 Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations Reading race, gender and class Edited by Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair 17 Constituting Human Rights Global civil society and the society of democratic states Mervyn Frost 18 US Economic Statecraft for Survival 1933–1991 Of sanctions, embargoes and economic warfare Alan P. Dobson 19 The EU and NATO Enlargement Richard McAllister and Roland Dannreuther 20 Spatializing International Politics Analysing NGOs use of the internet Jayne Rogers 21 Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World Walker Connor and the study of Nationalism Edited by Daniele Conversi 22 Meaning and International Relations Edited by Peter Mandaville and Andrew Williams 23 Political Loyalty and the Nation-State Edited by Michael Waller and Andrew Linklater 24 Russian Foreign Policy and the CIS Nicole J. Jackson 25 Asia and Europe Development and different dimensions of ASEM Yeo Lay Hwee 26 Global Instability and Strategic Defence Neville Brown

Political Loyalty and the Nation-State

Edited by Michael Waller and Andrew Linklater

First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2003 Michael Waller and Andrew Linklater for editorial material and selection; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-42694-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-43900-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–36973–8 (Print Edition)

Contents

Notes on contributors

ix

Introduction: loyalty and the post-national state

1

M I C H A E L WA L L E R A N D A N D R E W L I N K L AT E R

PART I

Rethinking national loyalty 1 Cosmopolitan loyalties and cosmopolitan citizenship in the Enlightenment

15 17

U R S U L A VO G E L

2 Loyalty and plurality: images of the nation in Australia

27

R I C H A R D D E V E TA K

3 Deterritorialized loyalty: multiculturalism and Bosnia

43

DAV I D C A M P B E L L

4 Conflicting loyalties: women’s human rights and the politics of identity

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JILL STEANS

5 Political loyalty and military disobedience: militarism, pacifism, realism and just-war theory compared B RU N O C O P P I E T E R S

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viii

Contents

PART II

Competing loyalties: minorities, supranational bodies and the state 89 6 Human rights and the shaping of loyalties

91

PAT R I C K T H O R N B E R RY

7 Divided loyalties, empowered citizenship? Muslims in Britain

105

PNINA WERBNER

8 Loyalty and the European Union

123

GERARD DELANTY

9 Wider still and wider may thy bounds be set? National loyalty and the European Union 137 M A RG A R E T C A N OVA N

10 Loyalty to the folkhem? Scandinavian scepticism and the European project 154 P E T E R L AW L E R

PART III

Conflicting loyalties in the state

171

11 Deconstructing and reconstructing loyalty: the case of Italy

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MICHEL HUYSSEUNE

12 National identities, historical narratives and patron states in Northern Ireland

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J O H N B A R RY

13 The paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia

205

M I C H A E L WA L L E R

PART IV

Conclusions

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14 The changing face of political loyalty

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M I C H A E L WA L L E R A N D A N D R E W L I N K L AT E R

Index

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Contributors

John Barry is Reader in the School of Politics, Queen’s University Belfast. His publications include Rethinking Green Politics: Nature, Virtue and Progress (1999), Environment and Social Theory (1999), Sustainability, Citizenship and Environmental Research (2001), The International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics (2001, with Gene Frankland) and Sustaining Liberal Democracy (2002). David Campbell is Professor of International Politics and Director of the Newcastle Institute for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His most recent publications include Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics (1999, edited with Michael J. Shapiro), National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (1998) and Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (revised edition, 1998). He is currently researching the role of the media and visual images in international politics. Margaret Canovan is Emeritus Professor of Political Thought in the School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment at Keele University and author of Nationhood and Political Theory (1996), Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of her Political Thought (1992) and many other publications. She is currently writing a book on the concept of ‘the people’. Bruno Coppieters is Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). He is the author of Federalism and Conflict in the Caucasus (2001), and his edited works include Moral Constraint on War: Principles and Cases (with Nick Fotion, 2002) and Contextualizing Secession: Normative Studies in a Comparative Perspective (with Richard Sakwa, forthcoming 2003). Gerard Delanty is Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of nine books and two edited volumes, including Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (1995), Social Theory in a Changing World (1999), Modernity and Postmodernity: Knowledge, Power, the Self (2000), Citizenship in a Global Age (2000), Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society (2001) and Nationalism and Social Theory (2002). Richard Devetak is Lecturer in International Relations in the School of Political and Social Enquiry, Monash University. He is co-author (with Scott

x Contributors Burchill, Andrew Linklater, Matthew Paterson and Jacquie True) of Theories of International Relations (1996) and is currently working on a book entitled A Genealogy of the International: The ‘Sorry Comforters’ and the Origins of International Relations. Michel Huysseune is a senior researcher in the Centre for Political Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). His main field of interest is the relation between intellectual and political intellectual discourses, with a focus on nationalist movements. His PhD thesis, which he defended in 2001, analyses the intellectual and academic debates sparked off by the emergence of the Lega Nord in Italy. Together with Bruno Coppieters, he has recently coedited Secession, History and the Social Sciences (2002). Peter Lawler is Director of the Graduate Centre in Government at the University of Manchester. His recent publications include ‘The “Good War” after September 11’ (Government and Opposition, 2002); ‘Peace Research, War and the Problem of Focus’ (Peace Review, 2002); ‘New Labour’s Foreign Policy’, in Peter Lawler and David Coates (eds) New Labour in Power (2000); ‘Scandinavian Exceptionalism and European Union’ (Journal of Common Market Studies, 1997); and A Question of Values: Johan Galtung’s Peace Research (1995). Andrew Linklater is Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His main publications are in the area of international relations theory. The most recent is The Transformation of Political Community, which was published in 1998. Current research interests include the sociology of states-systems with a specific focus on the problem of harm in world politics. Jill Steans is Lecturer in International Relations Theory at the University of Birmingham. Her main research interests are in the fields of gender and international relations theory and international political economy. She is the author of Gender and International Relations (1998), co-editor (with Neil Renwick) of Identities in International Relations (1996) and co-author (with Lloyd Pettiford) of International Relations: Perspectives and Themes (2001). Patrick Thornberry is Professor of International Law at Keele University, and rapporteur of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). He is a former chairman of Minority Rights Group International. His publications include International Law and the Rights of Minorities (1991) and Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights (2002). Work in progress includes a monograph on Race and International Law for Oxford University Press. Ursula Vogel is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of Manchester. Her main areas of interest are the Enlightenment and gender studies. She is joint-editor (with Michael Moran) of Frontiers of Citizenship (1991) and (with Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves) of Public and Private:

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Philosophical, Political and Legal Perspectives (2002). Her works appear in numerous other edited collections. Michael Waller is Emeritus Professor of European Politics at Keele University. He is the author of a trilogy of works on communism: The Language of Communism (1972), Democratic Centralism: An Historical Commentary (1981) and The End of the Communist Power Monopoly (1993). His numerous edited books on communist and post-communist politics include Conflicting Loyalties and the State in Post-Soviet Russia and Eurasia (1998, with Bruno Coppieters and Aleksei Malashenko). Pnina Werbner is Professor of Social Anthropology at Keele University. She is the author of ‘The Manchester Migration Trilogy’: The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings among British Pakistanis (1990 and 2002), Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims: The Public Performance of Transnational Identity (2002) and Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult (2002). Her numerous edited collections include Debating Cultural Hybridity and The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe (both with Tariq Modood, 1997).

Introduction Loyalty and the post-national state Michael Waller and Andrew Linklater

Strong feelings of loyalty have underpinned the modern European state throughout its history and have contributed to its remarkable viability. The reasons for the territorialization of loyalty are not hard to find. Persuading its subjects to march to war and to pay its expenses has been a central goal of the modern state. So vital has political loyalty been that states have worked extremely hard to secure it, and they have been prepared to resort to force should sentiment falter or fail. Their preference has been to maintain high levels of customary, though not necessarily conditional, loyalty to the state by developing the familiar panoplies of flags and anthems and putting the educational system to work to instil commitment to the state in the hearts and minds of future soldiers and taxpayers. Fortunately for modern states, loyalty has shown a propensity to snowball. Once the rudiments of loyalty are in place, the ambitious have been inclined to work with them to promote their own political advancement, and they have availed themselves of the symbols of loyalty to mobilize popular support for their own personal ends. Since the rise of what Benedict Anderson (1991) has called ‘print capitalism’, writers and the creative intelligentsia in general have often sought to give voice to the experience, frustrations and aspirations of the nation through their artistic and literary creations. This has had the incidental, if not intended, effect of reinforcing people’s loyalty to the state. In the exceptional circumstances of war, the state’s demand for loyalty has meant the harshest penalties for disloyalty – penalties that are most extreme in the case of mutiny or desertion. But between enthusiasm for going to fight for the state and outright refusal to do so has lain a broad twilight zone of routinized acceptance and pragmatic compliance based on fear of public opprobrium, an unwillingness to go against values that reside in the collective mind as a function of education and socialization, and a powerful desire not to attract the state’s capacity to sanction those who fail to comply with its will, particularly in times of war. Creating and maintaining loyalty, however, has been a difficult and unending struggle for the state. Part of the reason is that the state sought to instil new political loyalties in order to maintain territorial concentrations of power. In so doing it came into competition with other focuses of loyalty of a communal kind – preexisting ethnic, religious and regional loyalties which were usually either local or transnational and which resisted the state’s destruction of local powers and rights

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and the authority of the Church. In many cases these pre-existent loyalties were experienced more or less as social givens and there was less need for local powerholders or the Church to strive to maintain them, although loyalties can seldom be taken for granted and have to be regularly renewed. The modern state did all in its power to meet challenges that could come from above or below, from inside or outside, by claiming the monopoly power to ensure that national loyalties trumped local or transnational identifications and attachments. Its monopoly power in this sphere was an essential counterpart to monopolies asserted in other fields – notably the state’s sole right to control the instruments of violence and to tax the wealth of subjects or citizens. The state has managed to keep other sources of loyalty and potential challengers at bay partly by asserting the natural quality as opposed to the historically produced character of national loyalties. There has, in fact, been a counterpoint between the ultimately naked power of the state and the sentiment that it has contrived to generate for itself as a bounded community. This counterpoint, though it attended in a diffuse way the development of the modern state from its origins, reached a point of clear definition in the French Revolution, which established the concept of the nation. On the one hand the nation constituted a free association of citizens of the patrie, united by the rights, duties and privileges that citizenship guaranteed. To that extent it was a rational, contractual and constitutional affair. But at the same time the revolutionaries managed to invest these new associational arrangements with a massive charge of sentiment. The Breton remained a Breton, but transferred his or her main loyalty to the nation. La république une et indivisible became at one and the same time an association of citoyens and a community of the peuple – the multifarious denizens of the territory. The two categories were coextensive. Loyalty to one was loyalty to the other in revolutionary France, and in the nation-state. The link with the idea of democracy was crucial. The peuple constituted the demos within which rights were contractually guaranteed and the corresponding duties of citizenship were acknowledged. Indeed, at the time the Declaration of the Rights of Man appeared to endow the revolutionary enterprise with a novel and enduring inclusivity. The aggrandizement of the French state through the agency of the grande armée acquired thereby a missionary character which redeemed all the thousands of deaths that the latter’s excursions beyond France’s borders caused, just as shouldering a white man’s burden was thought to justify the aggrandizement of many a colonizing state. Passing time was to reveal the extent of the contradiction between the inclusivity promised by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the way in which the nation-state in fact continued to operate as an engine of exclusivity. The contradiction became clear as the increased mobility of people between states in recent decades – not only of individuals, but also at times of substantial populations – has brought the question of the rights that the host state should accord to immigrant communities sharply into focus. In the context of growing multiculturalism, most states and national populations have been forced to confront the deeply exclusionary nature of national loyalties and symbols.

Introduction

3

This inclusiveness was in any case never complete, and was often more assumed than actually manifested. Moreover, myths of national unity and idealized conceptions of political loyalty were of immense value to the state as it sought to secure and to maintain its monopoly powers, and their rise was always accompanied by implicit threats of coercion or by demonstrations of force. Homogenization of the population was in the state’s interests but, as Anthony Smith (1981) has argued, the process of homogenization was invariably accompanied by ethnic revolts and resistance. These refusals to acquiesce in the creation of national concentrations of power now work in tandem with factors of globalization, and are often just as much a reaction to them as to the dominant national or statist forms of power. The transformation of that early and revolutionary achievement of inclusivity into an effective exclusivity and subsequent challenges to that exclusivity have to be placed in a wider context as financial and productive forces and advances in communications erode the boundaries of the sovereign state. The monopolies that the state has traditionally wielded are under challenge – monopolies in taxation, in the application of armed force, in settling legal disputes, in representing the ‘national interest’ in the wider society of states and in demanding the primary loyalty of the citizenry. Unconditional loyalties to the state are weakened by the strengthening human-rights culture, by the emerging international machinery which is designed to prosecute war criminals and by the parallel erosion of the traditional principle of ‘sovereign immunity’ as illustrated by efforts to bring Pinochet to trial in 1999 and 2000. In fact, unconditional or largely unreflective loyalties to the state have come under a double challenge. First, there is the challenge from above through globalizing economic factors such as the extended global reach of new multinational conglomerates, global financial markets and institutions, through the tourist and the entertainment industries, through technological advances in communications and the media, including the internet, and through the proliferation and increasing political salience of international bodies from the multiplying number of international non-governmental organizations to the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union and the agencies of the United Nations (UN) itself. Second, unreflective or customary loyalties to nation-states are subject to pressures from below, as demands for regional autonomy and devolved power grow stronger. These two pressures are closely connected. More secure in its frontiers in areas where war with its neighbours is a distant and unlikely prospect, and with many of its traditional powers and privileges passing to supranational bodies, the state has less to fear and less to lose in ceding increased autonomy to its regions. Administratively overburdened central governments may also find regional autonomy attractive where concerns about economic efficiency and global competitiveness have replaced an earlier agenda dominated by the need for military competitiveness given the reasonable expectation of imminent war. It is reasonable to conclude that the increased international mobility of significant populations, developments in global media and communications, and the

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ethnic revolt are common to the industrially more advanced areas of the globe. States cannot legislate loyalties to anything like the same extent as their predecessors of even twenty years ago. The timing of the ethnic revolt has been crucial. From early manifestations in the mid-nineteenth century, and since gaining greater prominence as a result of Woodrow Wilson’s views on national self-determination, it has shaped and reshaped political communities dramatically. There has been a fundamental struggle over which of two selves should be determinant – the ethnic communal self or the self owing loyalty to the state. The state’s increasing interference in our lives, together with its homogenizing propensities, has intensified perceptions that it speaks for the dominant nation or culture and not for the citizenry as a whole. The more multicultural and multiracial nature of society that has resulted from the greater mobility of peoples has reinforced this view. The absence of warfare in many states has also played a role, creating opportunities for minority peoples to reassert their rights. The state is less able to override minority loyalties by playing the trump card of claiming that an enemy is at the gates. Globalizing tendencies above the level of the state have their effects below that level, as ethnic groups feel their identity being threatened by new challenges to cultural difference, by devaluing representations of their culture in the form of theme parks and by other manifestations of the more general commodification of the distinctions among peoples. Deindustrialization and the other features of postmaterialism have meant that class inequalities no longer bite to the extent that they formerly did, allowing greater space for expressions of identity politics. Yet recent history in the east of the European continent has seen challenges to the state of quite a different order. In both the former Soviet Union and in Balkan Yugoslavia an unusually rigorous attempt by an authoritarian ruling party to hold together a multiethnic state has ended in the outright collapse of those states. In each case the demise of a formally federal unit has resulted in the creation of new states which have set out to arm themselves with the monopoly powers that the nation-state has traditionally had at its disposal. Moreover, the contours of these new states have tended to correspond with the boundaries of ethnic groups, and the temptation to embark on exclusionary policies has proved difficult in some cases to resist. None the less, the Europe in which these new states are forging their future is one where global factors apply – indeed, it can be argued that the collapse of Soviet-style communism was brought about by the impossibility of isolating the national economy from the capitalist world economy and from its political and cultural dictates, which include popular demands for liberalization and democratization. These cases add fuel, of a perhaps rather exotic kind, to the argument that the monopoly powers of the nation-state – including the capacity to arrange the loyalties of the citizens or subjects – are currently subject to major challenge. Important questions about the future forms and expressions of loyalties, including loyalties to the nation-state, arise in the wake of these challenges. This book considers them in three separate but interrelated ways. The first approach focuses on the challenges to traditional notions of loyalty that are the result of an

Introduction

5

increasing sensitivity on the part of women and national minorities to the exclusionary character of the nation and the state. It considers the conceptual and theoretical issues that arise now that the state’s totalizing conception of national loyalties and political community is being challenged by the proliferation of identities and identifications, by demands for the public recognition of valued social differences and by the claim that stronger transnational solidarities are needed in the most recent phase of globalization. A second approach considers empirical cases where the state has to find ways of accommodating different and competing political loyalties and cannot exercise its traditional monopoly right to subordinate different loyalties to an overarching sense of the nation. The effects of international mobility on traditional ideas about loyalty and community are considered along with the consequences of the rather different phenomenon of efforts to draw loyalty upwards from the state to transnational bodies and to give expression to multiple political loyalties. A third approach considers instances of divided loyalties when the very existence of the nation-state has been at stake, through revolution and its, possibly distant, aftermath, or when it is threatened by peaceful secession or by uncompromising demonstrations of violence. These include the Lega Nord in Italy, Northern Ireland, and Russia from its Soviet phase through to today’s Russian Federation.

Understanding loyalty The term ‘loyalty’ applies to a remarkably wide range of social institutions and practices, including at the most mundane level the phenomenon of consumer loyalty promoted by supermarket chains and commercial enterprises. As this Introduction indicates, the focus in this book is on those meanings that concern the relationship of the state with the communities and individuals that inhabit it and that have been subjected to its sovereign power over a specified territory in accordance with the classical European conception of the state. The emphasis is placed particularly on the changing nature of that subjection and the analytical problems that arise when a growing number of transnational communities and associations blur the conventional boundaries of states, when supranational projects are entertained and when states collapse through an inability to command the loyalty of their populace. A central theme of the book is that the weakening of the nation-state affects the meaning and foundation of loyalties to it and leads to changes in the objects to which it is attached. Complex definitional issues arise at this point. In the discourse of political science, loyalty is closely related to other terms – such as community, obligation, identity and legitimacy – which have been central to the vocabulary of modern politics. Delanty argues that ‘legitimacy, trust and community are the defining tenets of loyalty’; Devetak maintains that loyalty is about obligation and fidelity. All authors suggest that notions of political loyalty have the hallmark of bilateral and reciprocal relations such as those that bound lord and serf in the Middle Ages. For Campbell, loyalty is a ‘tie that binds’ and for Steans it involves a disposition to ‘act in defence of another’. Arguably, the legitimacy of the modern

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state has been in large part a function of its ability to attach such notions of loyalty to something as diffuse as the nation – the imagined community of strangers who will never meet but have been prepared to die in war for each other in the past and for the independent political community to which they belong. States may have been unusually successful in persuading citizens that they are tied to one another by their equal membership of one all-inclusive nation. However, a frequently encountered theme is that loyalties are today multiple, and plural loyalties inevitably overlap in each individual. Another theme of no little importance is that loyalty can be based either on custom, tradition and sentiment or on a far more pragmatic and instrumental calculation of where personal advantage lies and whether it can be maximized by shifting allegiances in part or in whole to other associations. The result is that the precise configuration of loyalties in any single society, or complex of societies, or in any one individual at any given time involves difficult conflicts and balances. Different weightings may be attached to each element in the wider plurality of loyalties, and the balance between sentiment and advantage in the making of loyalty may change subtly or dramatically over time, just as the precise configuration of loyalty will vary from place to place. The ties that bind and that lead one to act in defence of another can have many forms on a continuum running from formal contractual arrangements to informal diffuse communal ties which are more easily mobilized by states or by other claimants on human loyalty. An intriguing question is whether the former is increasing relative to the latter in post-national or post-traditional societies, where individuals are increasingly reflective about their rights and duties and are less likely to respond almost unquestioningly to the state’s demands after the fashion of large sections of national populations at the time of the First World War. This more reflective approach to loyalty, identity and community constitutes one of the great revolutions of modern political life (see, from a different perspective than that adopted here, Fletcher 1993).

Rethinking national loyalty The chapters on ‘Rethinking loyalty’ consider ways in which thinking about the appropriate objects of political loyalties is adapting to a changing world – one in which the nation-state remains central but has a reduced capacity to shape the loyalty of its citizens. From an historical perspective, Ursula Vogel (Chapter 1) notes how in Enlightenment thinking the process of social change that led to the modern nation-state influenced traditional conceptions of political loyalty, and how the political thought of that period remains valuable for an appraisal of how the weakening of the nation-state affects the structure of political loyalty today. It reveals the prescience and continuing salience of the Enlightenment thinkers on the subject of citizenship and humanity. Having exposed how national rituals and ceremonies played their part in enslaving and exploiting the masses, these thinkers envisaged more reflective and inclusive forms of loyalty charged with realizing the ideals of citizenship within the nation-state whilst promoting the vision of an increasingly cosmopolitan society and associated

Introduction

7

notions of world citizenship. Cosmopolitan claims on national loyalty remain important in the modern phase of globalization, and may be increasing in significance with the rise of a powerful international civil society capable of monitoring and checking the actions of states. New thinking on loyalty must reflect changes in social structures no less than the development of new political institutions and affiliations. Richard Devetak (Chapter 2) points out that all forms of obligation are socially structured but, increasingly, they are structured in ways that encourage the multiplication of identities and a plurality of loyalties. Large numbers of modern citizens regard appeals to some single loyalty or communal identity as deeply inauthentic and as an obvious instrument in the acquisition of power. Recalling the gendered nature of citizenship in an age when political loyalties were shaped by the experience of war, Jill Steans (Chapter 4) similarly stresses the existence of multiple points of loyalty in contemporary societies, the artificiality of appeals to national solidarity for many women and the possibilities for new solidarities both within and across nation-states. The configuration of loyalties in today’s circumstances is therefore highly susceptible to change and open to challenge, as Enlightenment thinkers argued at the end of the eighteenth century before modern nationalism transformed conceptions of political loyalty. The combined weight of globalization and fragmentation in the modern world means that conventional assumptions about political loyalty, heavily influenced by state-imposed priorities, have lost some of their substance. However, the process of abandoning established assumptions follows a logic of uneven development. David Campbell’s chapter (Chapter 3) shows how totalizing conceptions of ethnicity and nations, which prevented the development of a civic nationalism or constitutional patriotism open to cosmopolitan sentiments, contributed to the Bosnian War. It shows how the flawed responses of the international community to the conflict revealed a peculiar attachment to the idea that the fusion of sovereignty, territoriality and ethnic nationalism formed part of the natural order of things. An alternative approach which began with the reality of multiculturalism and the multiplicity of identities was possible, but it was rejected for the sake of traditional assumptions about loyalty, community, identity and legitimacy which are losing their appeal in many parts of the industrial or post-industrializing world. These traditional notions of loyalty were to a great extent shaped by warfare and the state’s need to ensure the obedience of soldiers in the field. Bruno Coppieters (in Chapter 5) examines militarist, pacifist, realist and just-war views on the nature of war, and assesses the extent to which the conceptions of loyalty implied in them are relevant to present-day discussions on humanitarian interventions and the laws of war.

External sources of competing loyalties: minorities, transnational bodies and the state There are two major external sources of competition to the state’s traditional understanding of loyalty, citizenship and nationhood. First, the arrival of

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substantial numbers of immigrants in the industrially more developed countries has produced tensions between rival cultures and moralities as well as arguments that the host state can best reconcile these differences by moving from national to multinational conceptions of citizenship (Kymlicka 1995). Second, supranational bodies are competing for the loyalty of citizens of the nation-state – very explicitly in the case of the European Union and perhaps less explicitly in the case of the more influential international non-governmental associations such as Greenpeace. At this second level, the demand is to broaden the idea of national citizenship to include cosmopolitan citizenship which stresses responsibilities for all human beings and for the natural environment. Challenges from within: immigrants and minority nations Two points need to be made about how immigrant communities and minority nations are transforming conventional understandings about political loyalties. First, an increase in the number and size of immigrant communities in many states has eroded the myth of the nation and national unity. Various factors, such as the lingering effects of the end of colonialism, the Gastarbeiter phenomenon and, in the final decade of the last century, the creation of diasporas through the break-up of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, have revealed that unity cannot be secured through invocations of one nation. Some states and movements continue to appeal to one nation – witness the eponymous political party that emerged in Australia in the mid-1990s – and some may hanker for the national-assimilationist policies of the past which were directed at ethnic minorities and indigenous people. But, second, there has been a remarkable movement in favour of recognizing the rights of minorities and first peoples which is tied up with the passing of colonialism and which is arguably one of the most interesting consequences of globalization. As Patrick Thornberry demonstrates (in Chapter 6), these groups appeal beyond the nation-state to international organizations and to transnational human-rights conventions. Groups claiming recognition, noncitizens and now increasingly refugees and those suspected of terrorism all create problems for the state, and their protection on the basis of human rights diminishes the power of states to determine the fate of people on their territory. Mobility is not the only factor that has pressed minority rights on to the mainstream political agenda – nor is longstanding minority status. The same challenge to accepted norms occurs when it is not the group that moves, but the world around it that changes, as with numerous, now minority, Russian populations on the periphery of what was previously the Soviet Union. This has created numerous conflicts of loyalty as new states have been carved out of the Soviet shell, creating, among other things, a Russian diaspora in new or restored states that are intent upon developing a nationalist answer to the question of how their citizens’ loyalties should be ordered. Kosovo is another variation on the theme, with a population forced to move in consequence of forces unleashed in Yugoslavia since the death of Tito. In this case there has been the added complication of foreign intervention.

Introduction

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Diasporas have by definition been marginal to the state. Spread amongst different nation-states, they have served to highlight the latter’s exclusionary nature. Their increasing number and growing international concerns about their expulsion and about forms of discrimination against them reveal heightened sensitivity to the harmful and unjust exclusion of subordinated peoples. Pnina Werbner’s discussion of the Muslim diaspora in the UK (Chapter 7) demonstrates the salience of these issues. Diasporas are often suspected of harbouring disloyal sentiments. For some, the Jews of Europe, Werbner reminds us, were thought to be at the centre of an international conspiracy; for others, they were allied to an international movement aimed at overthrowing the state. Similar Islamophobic sentiments surfaced in Europe following the Rushdie affair and the Gulf War, later amplified by the events of 11 September 2001 and their sequel, in response to what many regarded as a conflict between the religious loyalties of Muslim immigrants and their obligation to respect the laws of their adopted countries. The evidence suggests that the conflict was more apparent than real. Many Muslim jurists stressed that Muslims settled in Western democracies have an obligation to obey the national law, not least because it guarantees freedom of religious practice. Some Muslim scholars in Britain, opposed to secularism, have argued for the continued establishment of the Church of England as a way of sustaining a recognized place for religious beliefs in the public domain. Werbner shows that the struggles of British Pakistani settlers to have Islam recognized publicly in the aftermath of the Rushdie affair have paradoxically underpinned their commitment to lasting citizenship in the UK. Often such groups are strongly supportive of some notion of civic as opposed to ethnic nationalism. They reject restricted and exclusionary conceptions of the nation, but their loyalty to multicultural states which recognize that the rights of persons can exist separately from the rights of members of the nation is not in doubt. Challenges from outside: transnational organizations and associations It is clear that the growing number and power of transnational organizations has had a huge impact on the ability of nation-states to exercise their monopoly powers, but it is not always clear that these organizations are the beneficiaries of transfers of loyalty from the nation-state. Many support the aims of the United Nations and the OSCE, and many supported the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) action against Serbia in Kosovo in 1999, but the ties that bind individuals to these organizations can hardly be described as strong. Those who supported NATO’s actions against Serbia supported what some saw as the state’s increased willingness to take part in a humanitarian war. But few seem to be prepared to risk the lives of co-nationals for the sake of distant strangers, and few seem to be prepared to die for NATO or for Europe in the same way that national citizens have been prepared in the past to die for the state. In the specific case of the European Union, efforts to draw loyalty upwards from its component states have had little success, no doubt because attempts to encroach

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on sovereign powers and rights of the nation have frequently met with strong, if uneven, opposition. This is a matter of great practical concern to the architects of Europe, but it also raises many questions of a theoretical nature, including the extent to which strong loyalties to Europe and a robust conception of European citizenship are possible in the absence of a European identity and where there is an obvious lack of any strong sense of belonging to a European people or demos. Initially these questions arose in a region in which the boundaries of the nation-state were weakening more rapidly than in those parts of the world where the experience of colonialism is far from a distant memory and where the state is a bulwark against the reimposition of alien rule. They arise with new poignancy where the globalizing processes that affected individual members of the European Union now so clearly impinge on the Union itself. That is, the boundaries of the Union are subject to the same forces and influences as those of its constituent parts. Whilst it can be argued that the nation-state has been losing its traditional monopoly powers and the European Union has been one beneficiary of a certain decline of state powers, it cannot be assumed that future efforts to draw loyalty upwards from the state are at all likely to succeed. The association of state and nation, problematic though it is, remains an important determinant of political loyalties and a barrier to radical change. Arguments in support of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ have been put forward in the belief that national democracy loses much of its value under conditions of globalization when so many decisions that affect national political systems are taken elsewhere (Held 1995; Archibugi et al. 1999). But for critics of this image of the future, the nation-state remains the only site for experiments in democratic government that command widespread support. Noting that the European Union has been unable to generate the commitment that he sees as a central component of loyalty, Gerard Delanty (in Chapter 8) asks where affiliations should lie in present circumstances which are perhaps more favourable to the development of cosmopolitan beliefs. His conclusion is that any project to relocate loyalty from member state to the European level can result only in a ‘thin’ form of loyalty: the social complexities of a multicultural Europe and commitments to cultural diversity mean that loyalty to the European Union is unlikely to be more than minimal. Somewhat similar themes are raised in Margaret Canovan’s chapter (Chapter 9), which argues that viable political communities have to accommodate different conceptions of the nation. Although such an approach recognizes that the very idea of the nation is frequently contested, it underlines the point that efforts to build a strong regional international organization still have to deal with the tenacity of loyalty to the nation. Efforts to promote regional forms of co-operation are likely to be frustrated rather than enhanced if they go against the grain of national sentiments. For many observers, however, the appeal of a Europe of post-national states – or a Europe of the regions – is that it will bring an end to violent nationalisms which led to destructive wars without returning political power to a central point and without reinventing totalizing conceptions of loyalty and community. The intriguing question, then, is how national loyalties can mesh with transnational

Introduction

11

solidarities. Alert to the complexities that arise here, Peter Lawler notes (in Chapter 10) that different national communities and regions understand the meaning of globalization and regionalization in very different ways through lenses shaped by distinctive political cultures. The Scandinavian countries attach particular value to social solidarity and social welfare, and regional associations that are hostile to the social-democratic internationalist ethos of Scandinavian societies are unlikely to attract widespread support. At the same time, the experience of Denmark has shown how this loyalty to a regional pattern of welfare can fail to accommodate immigrants whose qualifications to benefit from it are in doubt. In this example, the main tension is not between national and supranational loyalties, but between different visions of supranational associations and how distinctive national identities can be represented within experiments in regional co-operation. These contributions acknowledge the extent to which the question of loyalty to regional political associations is bound up with the question of democratic legitimacy and, as previously noted, with perceptions of belonging to a demos. However, a demos does not consist merely of instinctive loyalties and sentiments. It includes associative bonds of mutual trust that evolve slowly over time and give rise to a particular civic culture whose members prefer self-rule to government by foreigners or strangers. In modern states public responsibilities for welfare have been immensely important for the survival of independent political communities. A specific contract between the citizen and the state regarding welfare provision and access to education has been vital for the survival of loyalties to the nation-state. Whether the citizens trust the citizens of another larger political entity to have this sense of responsibility for them is a question that has to be faced by those who wish to build post-national political communities and loyalties. The question arises at a time when the ties that have bound conationals together within their respective sovereign states are looser and when national commitments to welfare are less secure than they were, given the prevalence of neo-liberal commitments to deregulation, privatization and marketization. Will the commitment to national welfare survive the loosening of the bond between citizen and the state that is evident in many parts of the industrial world? Will commitments to welfare internationalism become a central preoccupation of supranational authorities and provide the foundations upon which stronger transnational solidarities will be built? The answers to these questions are not yet clear, but they serve to remind us that the main objects of human loyalty have to satisfy demands for popular rule or self-government and expectations of basic welfare provision. Despite high levels of public disenchantment with formal political processes and reduced expectations of national governments, large sections of the mass public do not believe there is a viable alternative to the nation-state.

Conflicts of loyalty within the state For diasporas, immigrant groups and internal migrant communities such as Roma, the territory with which they identify in their imaginary may lie outside

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the state in which they happen to live. For others, loyalty attaches to a specific territory within a state and involves a degree of conflict with the institutions of the national state. Such localism or regionalism is as strong a force weakening the nation-state as is the movement of substantial groups across national frontiers. In the case of Catalonia and the two communities of Belgium, regionalism is closely associated with ethnic self-awareness. In some cases regional differences overlap with religious cleavages. We shall encounter examples of both types in the chapters that conclude this volume, which have been designed to provide particularly prominent examples of conflicts of loyalty within the state. The Northern Ireland case has been a combination of cultural incompatibility on the one hand and competing claims of sovereignty on the other. The hostility between the two communities has for many observers the uncongenial effect of setting the main symbols of loyalty in a pre-modern, rather than postnational, mould. John Barry (Chapter 12) shows how far Unionism has been attached, not to the British state as such, but to the Crown, with all its symbols and traditions, and to the Protestant confession. Charges of treachery and betrayal have been the common coin of the Province’s divided discourse, and the instruments used to entrench opposing loyalties. Competing religious and political worldviews, and high levels of mutual hostility, suspicion and distrust, separate this case from straightforward regional demands for increased autonomy from the state, for which perhaps some compromise is more easily found. A different kind of pressure on the state is illustrated by the Lega Nord in Italy, a political movement and party that aspires to detach the more prosperous northern regions of the state from a less favoured south. As Michel Huysseune maintains (in Chapter 11), this is a movement with an unambiguous economic rationale but without the forms of solidarity with which political loyalties have been associated in the past. Its leader, Bossi, has attempted to find a substitute for some pre-existing sense of community by stressing the high levels of productivity found in his proposed Padania. The example illustrates the distinction between identity based on historical solidarities and loyalties based on little more than perceived self-interest. Appealing to a sense of difference from the claimed laziness and unproductiveness of the south has not given the peoples of the northern regions a sense of identity strong enough to eclipse loyalties to the Italian state, however deficient that state may seem to them. The Italian state has thus far withstood this particular challenge, just as it succeeded earlier in accommodating the regional demands of the South Tyrolese. We have noted that loyalties can be mobilized in a number of different ways, which can be placed on a continuum extending from the solidarities associated with appeals to shared ethnicity to entirely pragmatic calculations of personal advantage. In 1915, and as a result of a secret treaty, the South Tyrolese found themselves on the Italian side of a frontier which now ran through Germanspeaking but culturally Austrian territory. Common sentiments united the South Tyrolese in the desire for autonomy. No such sense of community and solidarity underpins Bossi’s regional demands; in this case the appeal is unambiguously to

Introduction

13

economic advantage. There is no prima facie reason why that should not be a satisfactory basis for creating new political loyalties, but new loyalties are rather like new friendships in that they usually lack strong emotional attachment until they have survived real tests and been hallowed by time – or have been sealed by a compact, formal or informal. Either passes muster as loyalty, provided that the elements of commitment and fidelity are present. The examples of the South Tyrol and Padania, developments in Spanish regions such as Catalonia, and the semi-divorce between the two principal linguistic groups in Belgium reveal that many regional loyalties have become stronger during the history of European integration. A very different experience is evident in cases resulting from the disintegration of states as opposed to their closer international integration. On the territories of both the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union a multicultural state committed to eliminating tensions between different national or ethnic group loyalties suddenly collapsed. Ethnic loyalties thereupon blossomed with a force that the previous order had managed to restrain. Elites were provided with an open field for mobilizing ethnic and other solidarities in the course of building new states on the soil of the decomposed regimes. These two cases have had much in common, in particular the fact that during and immediately after the collapse of the state ethnic loyalties were particularly strong and able to dominate all other sources of loyalty. In the longer term, however, differences opened up between the cases. Ethnic loyalties continued to displace other forms of loyalty in the former Yugoslavia, with disastrous results in Bosnia and Kosovo. In Bosnia, efforts to create strong ethnic identifications started in the Titoist period when censuses in Bosnia produced a new category of ‘ethnic Muslims’ in an attempt to press into an ethnic framework respondents whose identity had more to do with religion and a lingering influence of the earlier Turkish rule, with its millet system, than with language or a Croatian or Serb folk memory. The position in the Soviet Union has been more complex, reflecting a vastly greater territory with a much greater range of cultural differences. There, as in Yugoslavia, disintegrating pressures came from ethnic groups, but after the break-up of the Union religious and regional identities increased in salience. At the birth of communist rule the authorities (the Commissariat for the Nationalities working with ethnographers) had accommodated ethnicity in a complex federal structure and done the best they could to find satisfactory dividing lines among populations that were often intermingled (Tishkov 1997). The resulting ‘ethnic federalism’ was therefore highly contrived from the start, but Moscow’s policy towards the numerous ‘nationalities’ throughout the Soviet period provided a territorial basis for the attribution of ethnicity. Michael Waller’s chapter (Chapter 13) shows how this policy left an ominous legacy when the Soviet Union broke apart, since elites within these territories had a secure basis for pursuing both personal and collective aims. There was a natural tendency for those elites to mobilize loyalties to their fiefdom, with a view to securing an increased autonomy from Moscow or, as in the case of Chechnya,

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outright independence. Under Putin this newfound regional autonomy was sharply reined in. At the same time the strong emergence of Russian nationalism shows Soviet nationality policy to have been more inclusive than has generally been remarked upon. The more dramatic consequences of the collapse of such states may be a departure from the Western European pattern of development that suggests the evolution of new, post-national forms of the state. In the latter case, multiple political loyalties have appeared in societies that are increasingly geared to industry and commerce rather than geopolitics and war. In the former, the experience of early modern Europe has been at times repeated in violent conflict to gain control of monopoly powers over clearly demarcated territories in which one dominant form of national loyalty is the desired result. Here are two different trajectories of development following the weakening of state power. There is reason to believe that post-national loyalties will prevail in the constitutionally secure liberal-democratic regions of Europe. But there is reason to fear different outcomes as revived ethnic loyalties seek to fill the gap left by the steady decline or total collapse of state power. These are two of the most fundamental aspects of the making and remaking of political loyalties in the world today.

Note The workshop that produced this collection was supported by the ESRC, grant No. R4512 4444 95. The workshop allocated topics to selected specialists according to a plan that would give the resulting book an integrated structure.

Bibliography Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and the Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Archibugi, D., D. Held and M. Kohler (eds) (1999) Re-Imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press. Fletcher, George P. (1993) Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Held, D. (1995) Democracy and the Global Order: From Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance, Cambridge: Polity Press. Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, A.D. (1981) The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Tishkov, Valery (1997) Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and After the Soviet Union, London: Sage.

Part I

Rethinking national loyalty

1

Cosmopolitan loyalties and cosmopolitan citizenship in the Enlightenment Ursula Vogel

At first sight the title of this chapter will appear fraught with contradictions. The idea of the whole world as a terrain of citizenship makes little sense in that it lacks the necessary conditions of any meaningful interpretation of that concept – a bounded geographical and political space whose inhabitants share a common language, history and culture and are bound together by distinctive laws and institutions. Since there is no global political community that would meet those conditions, we may be left with ‘no more than a sentimental rhetoric of cosmopolitanism’ (quoted in O’Neill 1994: 83). These flaws are compounded if we give cosmopolitan citizenship the further attribute of ‘loyalty’. Although the term is now commonly used to describe the bonds that tie individuals to the nation or their nation-state (Miller 1994), its semantic and historical roots preserve an important element of premodern political relationships of fealty or fidelity – that is, of a contractual yet personal bond between lord and vassal that was confirmed in the oath of loyalty. As an abstract, universalistic and in this sense unrooted construction, ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’ can make no claim on the basic meanings of loyalty. Finally, while scholars of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment will differ considerably about its core meanings and achievements, they would probably all agree that any definition must emphasize the radical critique and destruction of traditional loyalties and, in a way, of the very conditions of loyalty. As Benedict Anderson (1983: 69–71) puts it, the ‘imagined community’ of the nation filled the vacuum left by the Enlightenment’s deconstructionism. This chapter will argue that it is worthwhile to reconstruct the cosmopolitan loyalties of the Enlightenment as a meaningful response to certain experiences of modernity. Their relevance does not, of course, consist in the degree to which they may be seen to have anticipated the challenges and debates of our own time. The very fact that eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism evolved in political and intellectual contexts that preceded the nation-state must rule out any such simple continuity of meanings. What a historical argument can show, however, is that the fixation on the nation-state as the matrix of citizenship must be understood in terms of specific historical circumstances and must therefore be open to the challenge of new meanings. I shall argue that Enlightenment reflections on being a citizen of the world – a Weltbürger or citoyen du monde – are more than

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sentimental appeals to an illusory community and more than testimony to an abstract and apolitical stance (Meinecke 1963: chs 1–7). It would also be mistaken to identify the Enlightenment with one particular concept of cosmopolitan citizenship. Its most familiar formulation and the one with the strongest resonance in political theory today is associated with the legacies of Kant’s attempt to define the conditions that would, over time, lead to the abolition of war. Kant’s project was premised upon and confined to a strictly juridical conception of an international alliance of states and of the gradual evolution of cosmopolitan right (Habermas 1995). This chapter will focus on a number of diverse and philosophically less stringent conceptions of cosmopolitan citizenship and on the role that they played as bridgeheads in the process of enlightenment. The first, preliminary, section will consider some well-known passages from Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France of 1790 (1910: 32–85). Burke’s emphasis on the affective, intimate and familial character of the bonds that link citizens to their national institutions initiated a powerful rhetoric of loyalty that was to reverberate throughout the nineteenth century. He invented, we might say, the template of the ‘Enlightenment project’ which would cast the legacies of eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism into the confines of enduring, if false, dichotomies. Burke pitted sentiment (our ‘untaught feelings’) against reason, concrete and tangible experience against the abstractions of mere speculation, and the rootedness of national identity against rootless universalism. I then turn to Voltaire and Montesquieu for some representative examples of the Enlightenment’s crusade against what we might call ‘pathological loyalties’. The impassioned critique of religious intolerance and the exposure of its intrinsic connection with murderous civil strife and war was predicated upon a cosmopolitan ‘standpoint’ that urged distanced and ironical detachment from any absolute claim on behalf of partial truths, on the one hand, and acceptance of the irreducible plurality and diversity of religions and cultures, on the other. The positive evaluation of ‘patriotism’ by Diderot and Voltaire will serve as evidence that our loyalty to a political community need not be incompatible with, but, on the contrary, will be supported by our simultaneous loyalties as citizens of the world. The final section of the paper will focus on a particular context in which we can observe that the Enlightenment’s cosmopolitan loyalties were not given or static, but evolved in response to distinctive experiences of the time. In the setting of the eighteenth century’s voyages round the world, and in their interpretation by Condorcet and Georg Forster, we shall see that these loyalties developed and expanded in relation to the enlargement of the known world. It is evidence of this kind that speaks most eloquently against the reduction of Enlightenment thinking to the limited resources of abstract rationalism. For, in order to uphold the unity of humankind against the overwhelming impressions of diversity and heterogeneity, reason had to be joined by sentiment, and the language of universal rights had to include the loyalties that pertain to friendship.

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Edmund Burke: loyalty as a ‘mixed system of opinion and sentiment’ The Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke 1910: 73 for the phrase in the subtitle) grew out of an impassioned speech in the House of Commons in which Burke had condemned the transformation of absolute monarchy by divine right into a constitutional monarchical regime. By levelling the status of king and queen to the status of ordinary humans and fellow citizens, the revolutionaries had destroyed the web of loyalties that marked the unique significance and glory of Europe: ‘But, the age of chivalry is gone’ (ibid.). We need not concern ourselves here with the question whether Burke’s account of the causes of the French Revolution or his invocation of the ‘spirit of fealty’ bore any resemblance to historical facts. What matters is that he grasped the meaning of a ‘revolution’ that had not merely shifted the focus of loyalty from one constitutional regime to another, but changed – and in Burke’s rendering, destroyed – the very foundations of loyalty. In response to the threat that revolutions of this kind would pose to the preservation of the ancien régime all over Europe, Burke invoked, indeed invented, the distinctive quality of the bonds that had for centuries tied Englishmen to their nation. He fused the experience of intimate familial relations – our ‘dearest domestic ties’ (ibid.: 32) – with the profound submission and generous loyalty that connected them with their political institutions. Burke did not conceal that these bonds are constituted and sustained by ‘pleasing illusions’. On the contrary, his aim was to show that without such illusions no political order could subsist because it would lack the means of engaging the affections and hearts of the citizens. It is a measure of Burke’s rhetorical skill that he portrayed political loyalty as if it were but the natural and spontaneous response of human beings to the familial community that had nurtured them. That is, the strategy concealed the extent to which loyalty was constructed and manipulated in a particular situation and for particular ends. The persuasiveness of images that associated loyalty with the strength and authenticity of ‘untaught feelings’ (ibid.: 84) allowed Burke to denounce the new French constitution, and the principles of the Enlightenment to which it was indebted, as the offspring of ‘cold hearts’ (ibid.: 74). His attribution of the ‘empire of light and reason’ to the defects of a merely mechanistic philosophy and its obsession with ‘abstract geometric figures’ (ibid.: 193) (that is, without the formulation of the universal rights of man) was a case of political distortion. But it initiated a long-lasting and powerful reaction that would cast the political legacies of the Enlightenment into the confines of abstract rationalism and apolitical humanitarianism. The Enlightenment, in short, became identified with ‘that sort of reason which banishes the affections [and] is incapable of filling their place’ (ibid.: 74). In the same process emerged a notion of loyalty that centred on the nation-state as the impersonation of the unique characteristics and aspirations that distinguished each people from all others.

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Enlightenment conceptions of loyalty As is the case with many of the Enlightenment’s moral and political concepts, we cannot hope to find a coherent and generally shared understanding of ‘loyalty’. Indeed, most of the texts may not even display that term, and we have thus to rely on an ensemble of related concepts and on specific contexts in which questions of loyalty are played out: intolerance, ‘enthusiasm’, fanaticism and war on the one hand, and on the other patriotism, citizenship and friendship. As regards the conditions of cosmopolitan loyalty, the most fruitful perspective is that of the traveller in foreign lands who has to make sense of practices and beliefs that will be fundamentally different from those of his place of origin. Pathological loyalties I begin with the case of ‘pathological loyalties’ – that is, those unconditional commitments to a particular cause that manifest themselves in persecution, civil strife and war. We need to remember that for the eighteenth century the consequences of religious warfare were still a matter of perturbing memory. The devastations wrought by the Thirty Years War, the Inquisition, the persecution and expulsion of the French Huguenots were, from the perspective of the Enlightenment, examples of manipulated loyalties which converted the selfseeking interests of corrupt elites into mass frenzy and violence. To Enlightenment philosophes such as Voltaire and Montesquieu these events were neither exceptional nor contingent. Rather, they were the necessary consequence of that kind of religious belief that claimed unquestionable truth and superiority for one’s own faith over all others. Voltaire’s attack on orthodox religion as the source of pathological loyalties made use of a rhetorical strategy that judged a belief or doctrine by the chain of its allegedly inexorably practical effects. Absolute faith, impervious to reason, could not but generate the passions of enthusiasm and fanaticism, which in turn would explode in murderous civil strife. Voltaire did not concern himself with the question whether some religious doctrines might have a better claim to truth and thus might be more deserving of loyalty than others. What counted was the tangible suffering that intolerant belief wrought upon human beings. In this context, ‘being a citizen of the world’ did not refer to the rights and obligations of citizenship. It provided an epistemological and moral space outside and above religious divisions and parochial loyalties. In revealing the particularity and the limits of each of the truth claims on behalf of religion, a cosmopolitan standpoint exposed the meaninglessness and, indeed, the absurdity of unconditional loyalty. The entry ‘War’ in Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary (Gay 1962: 301–5) portrays a course of events that is set off by trivial motivations of individual vanity and ends in a disaster for humankind. A petty prince fancies a strip of land far away from home and convinces himself that he has inherited a claim to it from some imaginary ancestor. As he recruits a band of murderers from men ‘who have nothing to lose’, other petty rulers hear about the spoils on offer and march in the same direction. All these chiefs have their flags blessed by willing

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priests: ‘Everyone marches gaily off to crime under the banner of his saint.’ After the butchery is over, the priests will intone a special mass for the victor. It is the same chant, Voltaire remarks, that serves for marriages, births and murder. Those who did the fighting and dying know neither the language (that is, Latin) nor the cause that led them onto the battlefield. All that divides them, and the only sign that tells them which side they are on, is the colour of their uniform and the shape of their caps. The distraught philosopher will mourn the extinction of humanity, gentleness, wisdom and piety. But the final word in the story of deadly loyalties goes to the slain soldier who, at the age of 20, dies in ‘inexpressible torment’, with a last glance at the ruins of his home town and the last sound from the cries of women and children dying under the rubble. Anderson’s investigation of the imagined communities of the nation proceeds from the troubling fact that it was possible, over the past two centuries, ‘for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings’ (1983: 7). The question would have a short answer from Voltaire: human folly and, on the part of ordinary ignorant people, vulnerability to the lure of false loyalties. Tolerance, ‘the endowment of humanity’ (Voltaire 1964: Article Tolérance), is often mistaken for mere indifference. For Enlightenment thinkers it was a distinct virtue insofar as it required the effort of testing the limits of human knowledge and of accepting the frailty rather than the omnipotence of human reason. A cosmopolitan viewpoint enables us to recognize the irreducible plurality and diversity of moral beliefs, bound up as they are in the plurality of religions and cultures across the globe. However, this insight in no way thwarts the capacity for useful interaction and co-operation. Voltaire’s depiction of the London Stock Exchange shows men of different faiths and cultural habits united in the useful business of trading (‘for the benefit of mankind’). At the end of the day some will retreat to the synagogue; others will have themselves baptized, bare-headed and in a big tub of water; a third group will sit in their churches, with their hats on, and await divine inspiration – ‘and all are satisfied’ (Voltaire 1961: 28). The challenges to which absolute or unreflective loyalty will be exposed in the process of enlightenment are often conveyed in the fictional tale of the traveller in foreign lands. In Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1973) two Persian travellers – for the first time away from home – begin their journey in France by seeing and judging everything in negative terms, focused as they are on the difference and deviation from their own relative customs. They are horrified that the French are so uncivilized that they will eat pork and so corrupt that they allow their women to walk in the street without a veil; the pope appears as a great magician who is able to make people believe that three are only one, while his dervishes (bishops) will give dispensation from all the prescribed duties of the Christian religion. As the Persians travel on for months and years their perspective changes. They consider that a man can be a good man although he eats pork and that French women, although immodest and immoral by the standards of the Persian harem, derive knowledge and charm from personal freedom. As regards the truth and practice of religious belief, their judgement comes close to blasphemy: ‘I do not find it surprising that the Negroes paint the devil sparkling white, and their gods

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as black as coal…. It has been well said that if triangles had a god they would give him three sides’ (ibid.: 124). Montesquieu was prudent enough not to publish the book under his own name. It ended up on the index of forbidden texts – not, of course, as the faithful travel account of two pagans who would know no better. The ‘Persians’ were fiction and the confrontation and exposure of different faiths was the work of irony. It was Montesquieu who looked at European manners, institutions and religion as if through the eyes of a foreigner. In these examples the deconstruction of pathological loyalties – those that sustain religious wars and the oppressive order of the harem – does not destroy the conditions of loyalty. Rather, the commitment to particular beliefs is cut down to a measure where they can co-exist with all other such beliefs. Patriotism: legislating good loyalties In the dictionaries of the Enlightenment, ‘patriotism’ (amour de patrie, Vaterlandsliebe) tends to be associated with positive meanings of loyalty. The term does not make claims on behalf of specific ethnic, national or cultural identities, and it knows nothing as yet of the commitment to a nation-state. Patriotism refers to the loyalty that citizens owe to good laws that guarantee their liberty, security and happiness. We can read Diderot’s article on the ‘Legislator’ (1969: Article Législateur) as a manual for legislating good loyalties – those that will foster a spirit of community. In order to make the citizen ‘the friend rather than the slave of the laws’, the legislator must mobilize the useful and generous passions of the individuals who are disposed to further the common good. Diderot leaves no doubt that such aims require the fostering and manipulation of loyalties. That is, the legislator must be concerned to strengthen the spirit of the nation through public ceremonies and public spectacles of a kind that will sustain both the authority of the ruler and the virtues of the citizen. Most importantly, the love of one’s patrie must be such that it is compatible with the recognition of other patries. Patriotism, then, is a measured commitment, and is not to be confused with an ‘enthusiasm’ which stems from the overestimation of one’s own nation and ignorance of neighbouring countries. The more we know about others, the less we have reason to prefer our own good to the detriment of those others. Like most Enlightenment thinkers, with the notable exception of Rousseau, Diderot associated the expansion of commerce with a new climate of mutual self-interest and peaceful co-operation among nations. Future wars, he believed, would be between governments, but no longer between the citizens of different nations. In a similar vein, Voltaire bemoaned the corrupt state of affairs where the good patriot had to be the enemy of the rest of mankind and where the pursuit of illusory gain for one’s country, such as maximal wealth and military power, would invariably entail the losses of others: “The man who wishes his country never to be either larger or smaller, richer or poorer than it is, would be the citizen of the world’ (1964: Article Patrie).

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If this passage affirmed the compatibility of multiple loyalties, in other contexts he emphasized the mere contingency of being born into a particular country. In such instances, the critical question might be put by the fictional European traveller to his travel companion from a faraway place in the world: ‘ “Under which state and form of government would you most like to live?” “Above all, outside my own, in a state where one obeys only the law.” “Where is that country?” “Il faut le chercher” ’ (ibid.: Article États/Gouvernements). Loyalty is a matter of choice, not destiny: it is not difficult to see why in the changed contexts of evolving nationalist loyalties such comments would earn Voltaire, and, by association, the Enlightenment in general, the reputation of shallow rationalism and rootless cosmopolitanism. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, and with the experience of vast numbers of uprooted people in search of refuge, such judgements might shift again. Those who are forced to leave their country under the pressure of violence, persecution or starvation might well agree with Voltaire that the patrie where one could live as a citizen and under no rule but that of laws still has to be found.

Loyalty beyond borders: being a ‘friend of humankind’ In this last section I consider a decisive historical moment in the constitution of cosmopolitan loyalties. It reflects the Enlightenment’s response to the new terrains of experience and knowledge opened up by the voyages of discovery in the second half of the eighteenth century (Marshall and Williams 1982). The voyages of Bougainville and Cook round the world and, in particular, their explorations of the South Sea marked a definitive stage in the succession of great discoveries. They rounded off the world as the habitat of the human species, at least in the sense that they completed the charting of the coastlines of the five continents and dispelled the myth of further vast landmasses in the southern hemisphere. The travel reports of these journeys – one of the most fashionable genres of the eighteenth century – met with an enthusiastic response in the European reading public. Insatiable curiosity with regard to distant, exotic places and their hitherto unknown inhabitants was a characteristic feature of the Enlightenment and can be observed on many different levels of interest, from the scientific and philosophical treatise to serious fiction and popular entertainment (Wuthenow 1980: 16ff.). How did the expansion of the world affect the moral and political discourses of the late Enlightenment and what did it contribute to the enlargement or reorientation of cosmopolitan citizenship (Vogel 2000)? I pursue this question with reference to two seminal texts of the early 1790s: Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau des progrès de l’esprit humain (Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind) (1791; Condorcet 1955) and Georg Forster’s Reise um die Welt (A Journey Round the World) (1790; Forster 1967). Of the two writers only the latter was actually a traveller. He had participated in Cook’s second voyage around the world, and his book was based on the day-to-day entries in his diary and contains a detailed and scrupulously factual account of his observations. It

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also offers – and this is of central relevance in our context – philosophical reflections on the meanings and implications of this new knowledge. Condorcet was, like most philosophers, an ‘armchair’ traveller. But he, too, participated in the enterprise that characterized the philosophical traveller of the time, namely exploring what the considerably enlarged knowledge of the world entailed for our philosophical conceptions of the nature of man and the future of the human race. How could one maintain the unity of the human species in the face of vast difference and heterogeneity? How could one bridge the immense distance that separated civilized and primitive peoples? Condorcet’s philosophical essay on the progress of the human mind made use of the narrative framework of a universal history that included all manifestations of human life and activity, from the earliest forms of hunter-gatherer societies to the successful revolutions of modern Europe and America. Forster’s travel book charted the space between the familiar terrain of eighteenth-century Europe and the Pacific islands that only then, as a consequence of European discoveries, became part of the known world. Both accounts were constructed ‘in weltbürgerliche Absicht’, to borrow the title of Kant’s essay (1964: 33–50). This cosmopolitan purpose can best be conveyed in the form of distinct epistemological, moral and political imperatives: ‘All peoples of the world have the same claim on my good will’ (Forster 1967: 18). There was to be no part of humanity that did not merit the efforts of knowledge or that could be excluded from the community of humankind on grounds of attributes that appeared hardly human – that is, that separated them from us. Second, objectivity in this sense would necessarily imply a willingness on the part of the European travellers to question their own certainties and beliefs (even in matters so irrevocably and undeniably part of civilized life as the prohibition of cannibalism). Third, another barrier to understanding stemmed from the fundamental asymmetry of power in the relationship between the discoverers and the discovered. Even if we abstract for the moment from the impact of colonialism, it was the European traveller and philosopher, and not the inhabitant of the South Sea Islands or of Africa, who initiated the encounter and who collected, ordered and systematized knowledge about the common world in a way that was not accessible – and perhaps in principle not communicable – to the native population. What could transcend the limits of communicability? It is in such impasses that conceptions of cosmopolitan citizenship perform an important function. Commonality in the form of a shared history is established, for example, in the recognition of Europe’s – ‘our’ – responsibility for legacies of colonial exploitation and oppression. Both writers were themselves radical critics of colonialism. Yet they would use the collective ‘we’ to indicate complicity rather than the distance and innocence of neutral commentators. Abolition of Europe’s colonial claims was the first and necessary prerequisite for forging bonds of co-citizenship; assistance in the process of economic and scientific development was another. Something else, however, was needed to support the idea of citizenship beyond the sense of obligation and compensation, and beyond the benevolence of the more powerful partner in relationships of vast inequalities. To put it differently,

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upon what kind of reasons and motivations could the transformation of political relationships draw? In answer to such questions, the reference to cosmopolitan sentiments as the nourishing ground of loyalty plays an important role. They are expressed as the moral sentiment of compassion – ‘this tender feeling of humanity’ (Condorcet 1955: 150) – for the fact of human suffering. They also take the form of civic sentiments such as friendship. ‘Being a friend of humanity’ – ein Menschenfreund (Forster 1967: 12) – this is the disposition that Enlightenment writers impart to the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship. One can, of course, judge the place and importance of cosmopolitan loyalties in quite different ways. They might be seen as an imperfect substitute for the task of guaranteeing the autonomy of individuals and citizens by means of an international legal order. In this respect, cosmopolitan sentiment (understood as sentimentality) would be but a gesture of resignation and a concealed concession that real changes in the power relations between people and states are not possible. One might, however, also consider that, in the context of the Enlightenment at least, friendship and compassion were the most adequate expression of the supporting conditions of cosmopolitan citizenship.

Conclusion This chapter has attempted to show that in the context of Enlightenment thought the notion of cosmopolitan loyalties is neither abstract, in the sense of being empty of concrete meanings, nor merely decorative or sentimental. We have seen that the concept provides a standpoint from which the destructive effects of ‘pathological loyalties’ – that is, of unconditional or fanatic commitments – can be perceived and criticized. The focus on patriotism – or on ‘constitutional patriotism’, as we might call it today – has shown that where citizen loyalty is understood in relation to good laws and civic arrangements it is compatible with plural loyalties: one can be a citizen of a particular polis and, without contradiction, a citizen of the world. Finally, in the expanded geographical and moral space provided by the voyages of discovery we have observed the evolution of a kind of citizenship that associated itself with notions of Europe’s special responsibilities for the legacies of colonialism, on the one hand, and for the transformation of those legacies into citizen bonds, on the other. One can certainly not argue that these experiences and interpretation of cosmopolitan citizenship are of direct practical relevance today. That would be to overlook or wish away the continuing importance of the nation-state as the major terrain of citizenship. But the historical recovery of different dimensions of citizenship would provide us with a broader, more flexible and experimental framework in which to discuss the conditions of multiple citizen loyalties.

Bibliography Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Burke, E. (1910) Reflections on the Revolution in France, London: Dent.

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Condorcet (1955) Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (Esquisse d’un tableau des progrès de l’esprit humain), trans. June Barraclough, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Diderot, D. (1969) Encyclopédie (compact edition), New York: Readex Microprint Corporation. Forster, Georg (1967) ‘Reise um die Welt’, in G. Steiner (ed.) Georg Forster. Werke in vier Bänden, Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag. Gay, P. (1962) Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Habermas, J. (1995) ‘Kants Idee des ewigen Friedens – aus dem historischen Abstand von 200 Jahren’, Kritische Justiz 38: 293–319. Kant, I. (1964) ‘Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerliche Absicht’, in Immanuel Kant: Werke, vol. XI, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Marshall, P.J. and Williams, G. (1982) The Great Map of Mankind: Perceptions of the New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Meinecke, F. (1963) Weltbürgertum und Nationstaat, Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag. Miller, D. (1994) ‘The Nation-State: A Modest Defence’, in C. Brown (ed.) Political Restructuring in Europe, London: Routledge. Montesquieu (1973) Persian Letters, Harmondsworth: Penguin. O’Neill, O. (1994) ‘Justice and Boundaries’, in C. Brown (ed.) Political Restructuring in Europe, London: Routledge. Vogel, U. (2000) ‘The Sceptical Enlightenment: Philosopher Travellers Look Back at Europe’, in N. Geras and R. Wokler (eds) The Enlightenment and Modernity, London: Routledge. Voltaire (1961) Philosophical Letters, Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merill. —— (1964) Dictionnaire philosophique, Paris: Garnier Flammarion. Wuthenow, R.-R. (1980) Die erfahrene Welt. Europäische Reiseliteratur im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag.

2

Loyalty and plurality Images of the nation in Australia Richard Devetak

After winning the women’s 400-metre sprint final at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada, Cathy Freeman did a lap of honour in customary fashion. But in a gesture that was to spark controversy in Australia, Freeman celebrated her victory in a not so customary fashion. She carried two flags on her lap of honour: one, the official national flag of Australia; the other, the Aboriginal flag. She held both proudly aloft as the crowd applauded the first ever Australian Aboriginal gold-medal winner at the Commonwealth Games. As she stood on the track with the two flags draped around her shoulders, proudly declaring allegiance to two flags and two nations, Freeman unwittingly provoked a minor national debate.1 The reactions to this gesture in Australia varied from that of the then prime minister, Paul Keating, who said Freeman had every right to celebrate her Aboriginal heritage, to more reactionary responses of those disturbed by her act of irreverence or impropriety towards the Australian flag. Her detractors said, ‘there is only one flag, and that is the Australian flag’ (The Age, 25 August 1994). They sensed in her gesture ‘tribalism’ and the spectre of ‘separatism’ and national fragmentation (Letters to the Editor, The Australian, 1 September 1994). In short, they viewed her flag gesture as an act of disloyalty to Australia. What is interesting about these criticisms of Freeman is that they are predicated on the assumption that you can only be loyal to one flag. Freeman’s critics contended that she should have declared allegiance exclusively and unequivocally to one flag as her victory banner, the official national flag of Australia. Against Freeman’s doubled or divided loyalties, the critics appealed to the modern norm of loyalty – namely allegiance to a single nation: one person, carrying one passport, declares allegiance to one flag, one nation, one sovereign state. They were of the view that loyalty must be singular and exclusive. This is the dominant conception of loyalty, and it finds its strongest and most frequent expression in allegiance to the modern nation-state. However, there are competing images of the nation and they give rise to different understandings of loyalty. In fact, as we shall see, Freeman’s gesture is entirely consistent with an image of nation that eschews singular, exclusive forms of loyalty.

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Identity crisis? Two conceptions of identity in contemporary Australia Over recent years Australia has been host to many lively debates. Republicanism, Aboriginal self-determination, multiculturalism, immigration and refugee issues have all featured prominently in public discourse.2 What is interesting about these debates is that they all, in one way or another, relate to questions of Australian national identity. The question of how the Australian nation is conceived has become a central and continuing feature of public debate. Broadly speaking, the debate is dominated by two main positions. For some Australians the abovementioned issues portend radical change which threatens to unravel Australian identity, whilst for others they are seen as essential in transforming Australia into a modern, democratically inclusive nation. Each conception adopts a different understanding of what the nation is, what we are being loyal to and how to act loyally. Each also draws upon a different version of history. History and identity are inextricably entwined. There is a vast and complex literature on the relationship between history and identity in Australia, which cannot be dealt with in detail here.3 But a brief account is necessary to show how the competing histories helped to shape two distinct images of Australian identity. As Bain Attwood has argued, ‘meanings of “Australia” and “Australian” are grounded in and formed by historical narratives’ (Attwood 1996: 100). Dominant images of the nation are created in and sustained by historical narratives; these narratives help to define an essence or a set of values which is held to define or characterize the nation. David Carter makes a similar point about the close connection between history and identity. He argues that ‘[a]ny sense of identity, especially national identity, brings with it a particular history we can align ourselves with, or take our bearings from, and which determines our options for the future’ (Carter 1998: 6). On this view, not only is national identity narrated into existence, it is also decidedly political, as discursive battles occur to displace alternative histories and their correlative conceptions of identity. Narrating a new Australian identity? In the early 1990s Australia underwent a deeply unsettling interrogation of its national identity. This debate was in many ways provoked by the then prime minister, Paul Keating who, in a landmark speech in 1992, ended the silence on a crucial aspect of Australian history, namely the dispossession, murder and political exclusion of Aboriginal people since 1788. With a few notable exceptions, this dark side of Australia’s past had generally been written out of history and excluded from public discourse. It was thought to be marginal to the main story of establishing civilization on a harsh and unforgiving land. That the indigenous people were brutally treated to make this civilizational progress possible was generally denied, forgotten or explained away as unavoidable, if tragic. This aspect of Australia’s past was repressed in order to give greater prominence to the triumphs and successes.

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Keating called for recognition that it was we [non-Aboriginal Australians] who did the dispossessing. We who took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised the discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. (Keating 1995: 228) In this speech Keating exposed and recognized the close connection between historical narrative and images of the nation. The dominant version of history, he implied, was complicit with a generalized racism by failing to acknowledge historic injustices. In addition to Aboriginal issues, Keating also spoke passionately, while prime minister of the republic, about ‘Asian engagement’ and multiculturalism. For Keating, these are significant issues because they have the capacity to transform or attenuate closed conceptions of Australian national identity. In fact, on occasion he spoke explicitly of the need to rethink the Australian nation. Speaking to the Global Cultural Diversity Conference in 1995, he argued that the challenge was to ‘create societies rich in cultural, racial and religious diversity in ways which encourage rather than compromise a sense of national identity’ (Keating 1995: 266). He emphasized tolerance as ‘a primary democratic value’, and linked it to a broader set of rights and responsibilities generated by the policy of multiculturalism. What is interesting is that while he puts a premium on national loyalty it is clearly a loyalty tied to values associated with constitutional democracy. Among the responsibilities he identified are: that the first loyalty of all Australians must be to Australia, to its interests and its future; that all Australians must accept the basic principles of Australian society, including the Constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as the national language, equality of the sexes, and the right of every Australian to express his or her views and values. (Keating 1995: 269) As this statement demonstrates, Keating recognized the importance of connecting national loyalty to basic principles of constitutional democracy.4 In fact, loyalty to Australia means loyalty to those principles. By stimulating public debate about national identity Keating intended to forge in Australian society a new, more reflective self-image based on a candid account of Australia’s past and a more inclusive sense of belonging. He could only do this, of course, by appealing to another aspect of Australia’s inheritance, namely principles of justice, the rule of law, human rights and democracy. In Keating’s view these become central to the very idea of the Australian nation.

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Conserving Australia’s ‘golden thread of unity’ This emphasis on change provoked a strong, sometimes virulent reaction to Keating and his vision of the Australian nation. While the parliamentary opposition party – which eventually became the government in 1996 – led the charge, it was an issue that quickly stirred wide public debate. At stake, according to many, was the future of Australia as a unified nation. Against the image of nation advanced by Keating, opponents sought to defend the idea of the nation as ‘one indivisible community of Australian people’ (Howard, quoted in Rundle 2001: 27). Responding to Keating, then opposition leader John Howard condemned Keating’s ‘quite ruthless use of history – or more particularly [his version] of it – as a political weapon’, and he accused republicans like Keating of ‘exult[ing] in debunking Australia’s past’ (quoted in Markus 2001: 92–3). Howard wanted to take questions about national identity out of the public sphere because he thought that this could only be divisive or because it would only prove the lack of such an identity. ‘National identity is, and must remain, in a realm above the partisan fray’, he believed (quoted in Markus 2001: 97). Indeed, for Howard, as we shall see, the nation is an extra-political entity and thus should not be caught up in public debate. Howard rejects the idea that the nation can be subjected to intellectual analysis. In a speech addressed to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in July 1998 he does this by dismissing intellectual reflection on national identity as ‘navelgazing’. Howard argues that the nation is beyond reason and understanding: ‘You don’t write down what it means to be an Australian. You feel what it means to be Australian’ (quoted in Hage 2001: 31). Sentiment and affect, rather than reason, are essential to Howard’s conception of the nation. This leads Howard to conclude that one cannot and should not engage in pointless exercises of ‘trying to enumerate Australian qualities and Australian values’. Instead, he says, ‘you practise them’ (quoted in Hage 2001: 30). Feeling or being Australian does not lend itself to analysis, as there is no rational way of securing agreement about what it is to be Australian. But there are other reasons why Howard rejects the idea of subjecting national identity to scrutiny. He also fears that ‘constant debate about identity implies that we don’t already have one or, worse, that it is somehow inadequate’ (quoted in Stokes 1997: 1). For Howard there is no question about the givenness of an Australian nation. He denies that Australia is in the midst of an identity crisis or that there is anything about Australia’s identity and history to be ashamed of; hence his strong objections to Paul Keating’s version of history and his image of a nation open to transformation. Clearly, Howard wants to immunize the nation against critical interrogation. In the Sir Robert Menzies Lecture of 1996 Howard defended Australian history and identity against what he perceived as the deliberately distorted, hypercritical and self-flagellating account offered by Keating: This ‘black armband’ view of our past reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperi-

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alism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. I take a different view. I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud than of which we should be ashamed. (Howard 1996) It is not exactly that Howard denies past brutalities against the indigenous population; it is just that he encourages Australians to forget them as far as possible and focus on the ‘heroic achievements’. However, by reminding Australians to forget past injustices Howard left himself open to the charge that he was tying a ‘white blindfold’ over his eyes. By rejecting the so-called ‘black armband’ version of history Howard was asserting a positive image of Australian identity, one that emphasized the themes of historical continuity and unity. This is perhaps to be expected from a conservative politician who places himself in the Burkean tradition. Emphasizing the theme of continuity, Howard claimed that Australia has managed to ‘preserve a core set of Australian values…connecting us now, in the last years of the twentieth century, with the early beginnings of the Australian federation almost 100 years ago’ (quoted in Hage 2001: 28). As he put it elsewhere, ‘There is that continuity, that golden thread of unity that hasn’t changed’ (quoted in Hage 2001: 28). One of Howard’s favourite and oft-repeated claims is that ‘the things that unite us as Australians will always be more powerful and more enduring than those things that divide’ (Howard 1998). He places great emphasis on unity and has criticized the Labour government, whose focus ‘so often has been on where we are different – not on what we have in common’. ‘In the process’, he argues, ‘our sense of community has been severely damaged’ (quoted in Markus 2001: 97). This has been a recurrent theme in public debates over Australian identity. Several academics and politicians have expressed similar anxieties that Aboriginal self-determination, immigration and multiculturalism are fracturing Australia’s national unity. The eminent Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey has warned that ‘the everincreasing grants of land to Aborigines is probably a step towards…two nations, or worst of all, two half-nations’ (quoted in Attwood 1996: 115). Keith Windshuttle fears that Aboriginal demands for a treaty and self-determination will lead to the ‘reorganization and even the eventual break-up of the Australian nation’ (Windshuttle 2000: 8). Immigration and multiculturalism are felt to threaten a similar disunity. Blainey has argued that ‘[o]ur current emphasis on granting special rights to all kinds of minorities, especially ethnic minorities, is threatening to disperse this nation into many tribes’ (quoted in Markus 2001: 72). Howard has expressed similar concerns about the policy of multiculturalism. To him the celebration of cultural or ethnic diversity suggests that ‘we can’t make up our minds who we are or what we believe in’. He claims that multiculturalism ‘is in effect saying that it is impossible to have an Australian ethos, that it is impossible to have a

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common Australian culture’ (quoted in Markus 2001: 87). In other words, multiculturalism threatens the nation because it appears to deny the existence of a unified, cohesive nation. These populist views found their starkest and most alarmist expression in the One Nation Party’s Pauline Hanson (Leach 2000). In her maiden speech to parliament in 1996 she said: To survive in peace and harmony, united and strong, we must have one people, one nation, one flag.… I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians…. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos [sic] and do not assimilate…. A truly multicultural country can never be strong or united and the world is full of failed and tragic examples, ranging from Ireland to Bosnia, to Africa, and closer to home, Papua New Guinea. (Hanson 1996: 3861–2) Howard, Hanson, Blainey and Windshuttle see their role as one of restoring a damaged unity or defending a threatened one. The threat to this unity may come from republicanism, immigration and multiculturalism or from Aboriginal self-determination, but the response is always the same: to appeal to a unified nation as if it were a prior and natural thing.

Theoretical debates on national belonging: cultural and political images of the nation In this section the broad contours of two competing images of the nation in theoretical debates are outlined. It is commonplace to distinguish two images or conceptions of the nation: the political and the cultural. The political image is more closely associated with the republican tradition of thought and with constitutional democracy. The cultural image, on the other hand, tends to hold greater appeal for the more conservative or traditional nationalists. As we shall see, the positions adopted in the Australian public debate share a good deal with these two images. The cultural image of the nation The cultural image of the nation is based upon a shared sense or sentiment of belonging together. It is closely related to the image of nation that John Howard draws upon in Australian debates. It is perhaps the dominant understanding in Australia. As Andrew Mason has explained, this refers to a belief or feeling among citizens that there is a special reason why they belong together and ought to associate with each other, and why they owe duties to each other that do not extend to ‘outsiders’ (Mason 1999: 263). This special reason is generally defined as something intuitive – a sentiment, feeling or affect that is not easily or rationally explained. In fact, the affective dimension of politics is central to this image of the nation.

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David Miller, for example, places sentiment ahead of and above reason when it comes to national identity and loyalty. In similar fashion to John Howard, he asserts say that ‘there can be no question of trying to give rationally compelling reasons for people to have national attachments and allegiances’ (Miller 2000: 25). This flows from the Humean approach that he adopts, ‘where our moral and political philosophy bends to accommodate pre-existing sentiments’ (Miller 2000: 32). This approach is posited to reject the idea that loyalty could ever be derived from reason or that a sense of belonging could be fabricated through legal and political means alone. In the same tradition of thought, Edmund Burke has declared that ‘[m]en are not tied to one another by papers and seals. They are led to associate by resemblances, by conformities, by sympathies’ (Burke 1999: 315). The sense of belonging together, he says, arises from ‘obligations written in the heart’ (Burke 1999: 315). Such a view is also apparent in the writing of Katharine Betts. In the context of recent Australian debates she strongly objects to the view that citizens ‘need only agree to abide by the legal procedures governing their state’ (Betts 2002: 57). She places strong emphasis on non-rational or affective elements such as ‘national feeling’ and ‘background sentiment’ (Betts and Rapson 1997: 55). In her view: citizens must feel a special connection with one another if the polity is to work over the long term. In this community kindness and generosity to compatriots are virtues and emotional commitments to the community matters [sic]. (Betts 2002: 58; emphasis added) Social cohesion depends on, and must be rooted in, ‘a sense of belonging to a particular group of people and a territory’, says Betts (Betts and Rapson 1997: 56). It is the emphasis on sharing the same sense of ‘peoplehood’ (Betts 2001), as she calls it, that makes possible social integration in the modern state. Betts argues that ‘a shared sense of belonging to an enduring people’ is a precondition not only of altruism and compassion, but also of basic justice and social welfare. Without this sense of belonging together self-interest and freeriding would prevail (Betts 2002: 58–9). Peoplehood therefore creates special duties for the citizen: it creates a loyalty to the shared national identity which exceeds minimal legal requirements such as paying taxes and obeying the laws. Even more fundamentally, Betts argues that communitarians like her ‘see social cohesion as the foundation which gives us the motivation to want to create rules and obey them’ (Betts 2002: 59). Miller endorses a similar view when he says that citizenship requires trust and loyalty, which in the modern world can only be built upon common nationality (Miller 2000: 87). As one critic describes the position, the assumption here is that ‘the demos of citizens must be rooted in the ethnos of nationals’ if a stable political society is to be achieved (Habermas 1998: 132). The ‘binding force of citizenship’ is thought to be insufficient to generate loyalty unless it is anchored in a prior and shared cultural community. This suggests that political authority and obligation cannot be secured in the absence of a shared sense of belonging together.

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Moreover, because of the valuable status of citizenship, it must be restricted to ‘those who identify themselves with the nation and are carriers of the right cultural identity’ (Miller 2000: 88–9). For Betts, this means that ‘new arrivals’ must ‘identify with the national people’ to ‘become members in heart as well as in form’ (Betts 2002: 59). This leads her to prescribe a policy of singular and exclusive citizenship. Against dual citizenship rights she argues that immigrants should be compelled by law to forfeit other citizenships if they are to take up Australian citizenship. More than simply forfeiting other citizenship rights, however, they must ‘publicly put their old allegiances behind them’ (Betts 2002: 61); they must ‘take active steps to make their renunciation effective’, she says, by discarding other citizenship rights (Betts 2002: 64). This cultural conception of nation implies that loyalty must be exclusive and singular. Plural or shared loyalties come to be viewed as threats to national unity; hence the concerns expressed over Aboriginal self-determination, immigration and multiculturalism in the Australian debate. Built out of a shared feeling of belonging together, the nation therefore becomes the main object of loyalty. It presents an image of a community without difference or division – that is to say, a community identical to itself. Difference is thought only to be acceptable between national identities, not within them. However, the more social cohesion is imagined in terms of a unified peoplehood or ‘People-as-One’, as Claude Lefort describes it (Lefort 1986: 297), the more its logic of exclusion runs the risk of denigrating legitimate cultural differences. The political image of the nation The political definition of nation highlights the formal sense of belonging to a polity, rather than to a cultural-national identity. This conception of nation derives its identity not from shared ethnic or cultural properties, but from civic ties and democratic entitlements. It therefore discards the peculiarly modern expectation that the ‘unity of a self-governing polity’ must correspond to the ‘unity of a national culture’ (Hindess 1993: 39). It also rejects the idea that legitimate polities can be inherited in the form of an authentic and given cultural unity. Instead, the emphasis is firmly placed on the universalistic procedures and institutions that guarantee democratic participation to all citizens. As Mason puts it, belonging to a polity refers to a sense that a citizen identifies with key legal and political institutions and principles, and that loyalty is given to the institutions that guarantee the political life of the society (Mason 1999: 272). Mason argues that this sense of belonging to a polity requires no prior sense of belonging to a homogeneous cultural or ethnic group; different cultural or ethnic groups can share a sense of belonging to the same polity. Indeed, it might be argued that difference and heterogeneity are essential conditions for a democratic polity. Canada, Switzerland and Belgium may be examples where the sense of belonging to a polity is stronger than a shared sense of belonging together (Mason 1999). Other interesting examples can be found in the USA and Australia, societies built on immigration and over the top of indigenous

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peoples. In these societies the political image of nation has been proposed to counter extant forms of exclusionary national identity. Despite some significant disagreements with Keating’s policies, Alastair Davidson provides a useful example of a political image of the Australian nation that resonates strongly with Keating’s ideal. In contrast to the cultural image of nation, Davidson conceives of the nation politically, that is to say as ‘a community of politically aware citizens equal before the law irrespective of their social and economic status, ethnic origin or religious beliefs’ (Davidson 1997: 186). Specifically, Davidson rejects the notion that citizenship depends on belonging to a pre-given national community. Such an approach assumes the prior existence of the community and makes belonging to that community a precondition of who can participate in public life. In an immigrant and colonial context such as that of Australia it is untenable to adhere to a fixed and closed conception of identity, he argues. A sense of belonging should derive from citizenship, not the other way around. Citizenship thus makes possible and enacts a sense of shared political belonging which does not depend on shared ethnic or national origin. This, of course, is at odds with the view of Betts and Miller that before immigrants take out citizenship they must identify with a given people – that is, feel as though they are already ‘members in heart’. Davidson’s clear preference is for a political conception of national identity built around formal rules of democratic citizenship. This, he says, is the most effective and reasonable means of overcoming Australia’s history of racial and ethnic exclusion. The notorious ‘white Australia policy’, introduced in 1901 and not fully dismantled until the early 1970s, functioned to exclude non-white and non-European immigrants from Australia. Simultaneously, the nation’s constitution, also introduced in 1901, functioned to exclude the Aboriginal population from full political participation until 1967 (see Chesterman and Galligan 1997). As Davidson points out, citizenship in Australia has conventionally been based on ‘nationality requirements which, when unpacked, were racist’ (Davidson 1997: 143). In the context of Australian multiculturalism, Davidson argues that unity can be created out of diversity through ‘universalist value-neutral procedural politics’ (Davidson 1997: 257). This follows an argument made by Jürgen Habermas which places emphasis on the reasoned application of moral norms. Habermas argues that modern pluralistic societies have developed forms of constitutional democracy where popular sovereignty and human rights simultaneously serve to produce social integration and a mode of legitimation. Against the ethno-nationalist assumption that a sense of belonging to the same cultural community is essential for binding citizens together, Habermas argues that formal universalistic procedures associated with constitutional democracy are essential for social cohesion. This is the case, according to Habermas, because ‘democratically structured opinion- and will-formation make possible rational agreement even between strangers’ (Habermas 1998: 137–8). Political unity does not rest on a prior cultural unity, but on the constitutional-democratic principles and procedures that enable self-government.

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Habermas acknowledges, however, that integration can only be achieved if there are other dividends. Constitutional democracy, he says, must deliver ‘the material conditions of preferred forms of life’ (Habermas 1998: 118–19). That is, it must realize not just the liberal-democratic menu of rights and civil liberties, but also social and cultural rights and the material conditions necessary for their enjoyment. This approach makes no assumptions about cultural content or conceptions of the ‘good’. Instead, the emphasis falls firmly on dialogical conceptions of justice and right as the authoritative procedures for legitimate rule in pluralistic societies (Rehg 1994). A further point is that the more political unity is achieved through constitutional-democratic procedures, the greater are the prospects that disagreement over the good will be accommodated without fear and without violence (Habermas 1992: 140). Ethnic and cultural diversity need not be viewed as threats to political unity, but, rather, as inescapable aspects of democratic difference. Indeed, it should not be forgotten that conflicting views and interests are as likely within cultural identities as between them. As Habermas reminds us, the important point is that differences or conflicts are resolved within a constitutional-democratic framework, the acceptance of which has little to do with prior cultural attachments. Complicity in the cultural and political images of nation In recent years there have arisen several critiques of the political conception of nation for underestimating the fundamental importance of cultural belonging as a precondition of the modern nation-state. The critique generally takes the view that constitutional-democratic procedures offer a mode of legitimation for societies but that they cannot provide social integration. This is implicit in Betts’s critique of ‘proceduralism’ for being ‘happy to imagine the state without the nation’ (Betts 2002: 57). A more developed argument in the Australian debate is to be found in the views of Miriam Dixson. She argues that the political conception of nation (for her, comprising citizenship and allegiance to a democratic constitution and civic ideals) is incapable of providing social cohesion. It is too ‘thin’ or ‘weak’ to provide continuing social cohesion unless it is ‘deeply rooted in the core culture’ (Dixson 2000: 6). It lacks what she would call ‘emotional depth’ and ‘effective bonding cement’ (Dixson 2000: 7). Nevertheless, Dixson is conscious of the need for nation-states to adopt constitutional democratic modes of legitimation. Her solution is to nominate a given ‘cultural core’ as the representative or bearer of the legitimating procedures. Dixson argues that it is an Anglo-Celtic cultural core which has ‘underpinned Australian culture, its institutions and the nation itself from their origins’ (Dixson 2000: 10). Indeed, she argues that ‘the Anglo-Celtic core culture must continue to function as a “holding” centre for an emerging and newly diverse Australia’ (Dixson 2000: 7). This ‘holding’ function performed by the dominant cultural group will prevent multicultural pluralism from descending into social disintegration. While Dixson recognizes the racial and masculinist nature of Australia’s

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Anglo-Celtic cultural core, at no point does she submit the concept of ‘cultural core’ to critical scrutiny. It is naturalized as an indispensable and legitimate centre of the nation. Interestingly, it is also claimed that constitutional democracies have empirically always been built on deeper and prior senses of cultural-national belonging. Dixson claims that even the political conception of nation contains what it disavows, namely a prior sense of cultural-national identity (Dixson 2000: 73). These arguments are driven by a desire to conceive of the nation or its ‘cultural core’ as somehow prior to democratic politics – in fact, prior to politics itself. They are structured by a binary opposition, where nature is to culture as sentiment is to reason, and as the nation is to the state. In each case the former term is privileged as an original and prior condition of the latter. But Habermas rejects this binary opposition. Drawing on the republican tradition, he argues that nations develop distinctive interpretations of their constitutional frameworks (Habermas 1998: 118). The nation’s own constitutional principles and heritage can form the basis of patriotism. This ‘constitutional patriotism’, as he calls it, would replace ethno-nationalism as a force of social integration (Habermas 1998: 118). Maurizio Viroli advances a similar argument. Like Habermas, he rejects forms of the nation which presuppose the ‘cultural, linguistic, ethnic oneness and homogeneity of a people’ (Viroli 1995: 1). However, Viroli acknowledges more strongly than Habermas that political unity can never be achieved through attachment to abstract, universal ideals alone. It requires an ‘attachment to a particular republic with its particular way of living in freedom’ (Viroli 1995: 13; emphasis added). Nevertheless, he agrees with Habermas that a stable republic does not need a prior ethnic or cultural unity; rather, it needs a unity sustained by patriotic attachment to the ideal of the republic (Viroli 1995: 13). This patriotism takes a different ideal as the object of affection and loyalty. It is not the cultural unity of the people, but the political institutions that sustain the common liberty of the citizenry that are loved (Viroli 1995). Where this approach departs markedly from the cultural image of nation is that it recognizes the political image’s indebtedness to the affective dimension, even if it subordinates this dimension to the procedures of constitutional democracy. Most importantly, though, this approach recognizes that affective ties can be political in origin – that is, citizens can develop emotional attachments to the principles and institutions of constitutional democracy.

The ‘loyal supplement’: on the cultural and political ties that bind While political obligation has long been central to political theory, loyalty has rarely been examined in any depth. Judith Shklar is one of the few theorists to address the notion. She suggests that loyalty and obligation relate to two very distinct kinds of political conduct. Obligation she defines in terms of ‘rule governed conduct’ and compliance with ‘laws and lawlike demands’ (Shklar 1993: 183). By contrast, loyalty is ‘deeply affective’ and connotes ‘attachment to

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a group’ (Shklar 1993: 184). In fact Shklar says that it is the ‘emotional character of loyalty’ that sets it apart from the cold reasoning associated with obligation (Shklar 1993: 184). Obligation and loyalty would appear to be commitments required by the political image and cultural image of the nation, respectively. Posing the issue in terms of a strict separation seems problematic. First, as we have seen above in the work of Habermas and Viroli, it is possible to be loyal to a country’s politico-legal institutions. That is to say, the ideals enshrined in political institutions may inspire loyalty as much as they may generate obligations. Second, Shklar may be simplifying too much when she says that loyalty is not rule bound (Shklar 1993: 186). As we shall see, law is already inscribed in the meaning of loyalty, and attachments or ties are intrinsic to obligations. Finally, and most importantly, the cultural image of nation cannot of itself create the conditions necessary for loyalty; it must draw upon resources within the political image of nation. In this respect, political ties become an indispensable supplement to cultural ties. On loyal ties Loyalty is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as: ‘true to obligations of duty, love, etc.’; ‘faithful adherence to one’s promise, oath, word of honour’; ‘fidelity’; ‘faithful adherence to the sovereign or lawful government’. The English word ‘loyal’ was originally transported in the fifteenth century from the French ‘loyal’, which derived from the older version of the word, ‘loial’, a word which carries within it an explicit reference to the law (loi). Indeed, it finds its roots in the Latin legalis. The rare and obsolete word ‘leal’ – meaning loyal, faithful, honest, true – also derives from the same root. This casts some doubt over Shklar’s attempt to distinguish obligation and loyalty in terms of the presence or absence of rules, as loyalty carries a legal inheritance within it. But the more important point is that both obligation and loyalty invoke attachments or ties that bind. Obligation, as the OED defines it, means ‘the action of binding oneself by oath, promise or contract to do or forebear something’; ‘a moral or legal tie binding to some performance’. Loyalty, on the other hand, combines obligation and fidelity and may be defined as fidelity towards obligations. If obligation is concerned with respecting ties that bind (ob-, meaning towards, and ligare, meaning to tie or bind, in the Latin obligare), loyalty describes the faithfulness to those ties. Loyalty refers to faithful attachment; being true to the ties that bind. There is no reason to suppose that these ties must be cultural rather than political. In fact, the discussion which follows suggests that cultural ties are never enough in a modern state, and that political ties are called upon to shore up the incompleteness of cultural ties. The political supplement to the cultural image of nation Betts, it will be recalled, argues that dual citizenship undervalues and undermines loyalty to a single nation (Betts 2002). She puts forward an argument that ‘new arrivals’ ought publicly to renounce previous citizenship rights and that those born into Australian citizenship should be compelled to forfeit it should they wish to take

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up another citizenship. Against the multiplication of citizenships, she argues for the restriction of citizenship to one nation-state. She wants to see the retention of single and exclusive national attachments, rather than their dilution through pluralization. However, she fears that the dominance of ‘proceduralism’ in Australian government is in danger of eroding social cohesion by permitting the collection of multiple national identities. This formal constitutional-democratic approach to politics, she believes, encourages utilitarian forms of belonging that place a low premium on ‘fellow-feeling’, ‘emotional attachment’ and ‘affection and responsibility’ to an ‘enduring people’ (Betts 2002: 57–9). The ‘peoplehood’ of the nation is therefore put at risk by the state’s acceptance of plural attachments. The underlying assumption here is the same as J.S. Mill’s, that ‘a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between themselves and others’ (Mill, quoted in Connolly 2000: 189). The emotional attachments shared by members of the same nation must be coterminous with the territorial limits. Any ‘excessive’ attachments or sympathies that transcend national boundaries represent a threat to the nation’s coherence or unity. Betts’s argument is that a proper sense of national belonging requires the active breaking of transnational ties and sympathies where they exist. Though individuals may be suspended in multiple affective ties, all but those to the ‘national family’ must be undone. Immigrants must actively renounce prior citizenship and foreign allegiances by ‘naturalizing’, she says, and ‘native-born’ Australians must be precluded from acquiring additional citizenships. She believes belonging must be absolute, singular and exclusive; individuals must therefore extricate themselves from shared loyalties by ‘de-naturalizing’ multiple attachments. However, Betts’s emphasis on state-sanctioned ‘naturalization’ processes raises the question of whether loyalty is entirely within the affective dimension of politics or whether it requires a procedural or governmental supplement. The cultural image of nation defended by Betts, Dixson and Miller is predicated on the assumption that sentiments provide the necessary and sufficient ground for senses of belonging. National attachment and fellow-feeling are thought to be sentiments that grow in the hearts of citizens; they are elemental passions and prejudices that pre-exist, or exist independently of, the state’s legal and political institutions. However, by emphasizing the measures governments can and ought to take to uphold singular and exclusive citizenship, Betts is conceding that the cultivation and maintenance of affective national ties requires state intervention. This emphasis on naturalization undermines the claim that national belonging requires deep emotional attachment. Betts wants to say that deep senses of attachment constitute belonging and that these attachments cannot be created or sustained through politico-legal procedures. However, she also wants to argue that naturalization is necessary and sufficient to convert foreigners into Australians. But if loyalty and a genuine sense of belonging require deep emotional attachments, as is implied by the cultural image of nation, then naturalization would clearly be insufficient because migrants would be unable to shed the deep emotional ties to their original nation and cultivate new ones so rapidly. Alternatively, if naturalization processes are sufficient, then a shared sense of belonging clearly does not

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require deep emotional ties. Either way a non-affective dimension is required, not just to legitimate national identity, but to create loyalty through citizenship. Clearly, then, loyalty cannot be fully accounted for in terms of sentiments and affects; it must call upon, and be validated by, politico-legal means and institutions. In fact, citizenship laws are not simply additional supplements that are added to primordial emotional attachments; they supplant or stand in for them. By actively ‘de-naturalizing’ multiple or transnational affective ties, as Betts advocates, governments will produce citizens loyal exclusively to one nation. Betts’s argument thenceforth becomes almost entirely concerned with the way in which citizenship laws shape the sense of national belonging (Betts 2002: 59–68). Burke may have been right to say that loyalty is an ‘obligation written in the heart’, but if it is to be written in the heart there must be an author, which in this case is the state. The affective dimension of the nation therefore requires the very thing it seeks to disavow, namely the binding legal procedures of the state. The state’s ‘papers and seals’, so disparaged by Burke, actually provide supplementary ties to shore up national belonging. By fostering and sustaining the conditions which make loyalty to the nation possible, the political image of nation constitutes what might be called a ‘loyal supplement’, a fidelity to political ties which makes possible loyalty to cultural ties.5

Conclusion: Freeman’s plural loyalties Cathy Freeman’s flag gesture was in no way an act of disloyalty. It was an affirmation of plural, non-exclusive affective ties of both a cultural and political character. One might see in her gesture support for Derrida’s proposition that ‘what is proper to a culture is to not be identical to itself ’ (Derrida 1992: 9–10). To recognize that cultural or national identities are never simply given, self-identical or completely closed is not to deny their existence. Nor is it to deny the affective ties that bind people together in these communal identities. It is to suggest, first, that the appearance of a self-identical nation rests on a loyal political supplement. Second, it is to recognize that differences are present within national communities as much as between them. Third, it is to recognize that affective ties are always already plural.6 Ultimately, attempts to reduce loyalty to an indivisible peoplehood are always likely to fail. The irreducible plurality of attachments that precedes any demand for singular, exclusive loyalty will make those demands impossible to realize fully. Differential modalities of belonging will continue to co-exist, sustaining attachments to different communities with varying strengths of feeling. In fact, democracy and justice may require recognition of these multiple affective ties. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that these affective ties must be ordered in a fixed hierarchy, or that any identity, cultural or otherwise, can claim a legitimate monopoly over loyalty.7 This, of course, offends against the imaginary unity of the modern nationstate and its demand for singular and exclusive loyalty. Cathy Freeman’s flag gesture, while offending the cultural image of nation, endorsed the political image, with its commitment to universal principles of constitutional democracy. It affirmed a different kind of loyalty, namely loyalty to plural attachments.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I am grateful to Paul Muldoon for several helpful conversations and for his insightful comments. For useful accounts of these debates in the context of Australian identity see Manne (2001), Markus (2001) and Stokes (1997). An excellent overview of this relationship is available in Davison (2000). Some commentators go further than Keating and argue that a commitment to constitutional democracy must also include a willingness to submit the constitution to critique and change when necessary (Botsman 2000: 68). See Derrida’s discussion of the ‘logic of the supplement’ (Derrida 1974: 141–64). For a very interesting philosophical discussion that links plurality to cosmopolitanism, see Benjamin (1991). For a comprehensive statement of political cosmopolitanism, see Linklater (1998: chs 5 and 6). I present a short discussion and defence of these ideas in Devetak (2002).

Bibliography Attwood, B. (1996) ‘Mabo, Australia and the End of History’, in B. Attwood (ed.) In the Age of Mabo: History, Aborigines and Australia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Benjamin, A. (1991) ‘Pluralism, the Cosmopolitan and the Avant-Garde’, in Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde, London: Routledge. Betts, K. (2001) ‘Boatpeople and Public Opinion in Australia’, People and Place 9(4): 35–48. —— (2002) ‘Democracy and Dual Citizenship’, People and Place 10(1): 57–70. Betts, K. and V. Rapson (1997) ‘Pride and Commitment: Patriotism in Australia’, People and Place 5(l): 55–66. Botsman, P. (2000) The Great Constitutional Swindle: A Citizen’s View of the Australian Constitution, Sydney: Pluto Press. Burke, E. (1968) Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— (1999) ‘First Letter on a Regicide Peace’, in D.P. Fidler and J. Welsh (eds) Empire and Community: Edmund Burke’s Writings and Speeches on International Relations, Boulder, CO: Westview. Carter, D. (1998) ‘Working on the Past, Working on the Future’, in R. Nile and M. Peterson (eds) Becoming Australia, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Chesterman, J. and B. Galligan (1997) Citizens without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Connolly, W. (2000) ‘The Liberal Image of the Nation’, in D. Ivison, P. Patton and W. Sanders (eds) Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidson, A. (1997) From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Davison, G. (2000) The Use and Abuse of Australian History, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Derrida, J. (1974) Of Grammatology, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. —— (1992) The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Devetak, R. (2002) ‘Signs of a New Enlightenment? Concepts of Community and Humanity After the Cold War’, in S. Lawson (ed.) The New Agenda for International Relations: From Polarization to Globalization in World Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Dixson, M. (2000) The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to the Present, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Habermas, J. (1992) ‘Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections on the Future of Europe’, Praxis International 12(l): 1–19. —— (1998) The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hage, G. (1998) White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society, Sydney: Pluto Press. —— (2001) ‘The Politics of Australian Fundamentalism: Reflections on the Rule of Ayatollah Johnny’, Arena Magazine 51 (February–March): 27–31. Hanson, P. (1996) ‘Maiden Speech to Parliament’, Commonwealth of Australia, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, Official Hansard, 10 September: 3,860–3. Hindess, B. (1993) ‘Multiculturalism and Citizenship’, in C. Kukathas (ed.) Multicultural Citizens: The Philosophy and Politics of Identity, Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies. Howard, J. (1996) ‘The Liberal Tradition: The Beliefs and Values Which Guide the Federal Government’, the 1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture, available at http://home. vicnet.net.au/victorp/liberals/nsw/howard2.html (accessed 5 January 2001). —— (1998) Address to the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council, 20 November, available at Prime Minister of Australia Website, http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/1998 (accessed 5 January 2001). Keating, P. (1995) Advancing Australia: The Speeches of Paul Keating, Prime Minister (ed. Mark Ryan), Sydney: Big Picture Publications. Leach, M. (2000) ‘Hansonism, Political Discourse and Australian Identity’, in M. Leach, G. Stokes and I. Ward (eds) The Rise and Fall of One Nation, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Lefort, C. (1986) The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Linklater, A. (1998) The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the PostWestphalian Era, Cambridge: Polity Press. Manne, R. (2001) The Barren Years: John Howard and Australian Political Culture, Melbourne: Text Publishing. Markus, A. (2001) Race: John Howard and the Remaking of Australia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Mason, A. (1999) ‘Political Community, Liberal-Nationalism and the Ethics of Assimilation’, Ethics 109(2): 261–87. Miller, D. (2000) Citizenship and National Identity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Rehg, W. (1994) Insight and Solidarity: The Discourse Ethics of Jürgen Habermas, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rundle, G. (2001) The Opportunist: John Howard and the Triumph of Reaction, Quarterly Essays, no. 3, Melbourne: Black Inc. Shklar, J. (1993) ‘Obligation, Loyalty, Exile’, Political Theory 21(2): 181–97. Stokes, G. (1997) ‘Introduction’, in G. Stokes (ed.) The Politics of Identity in Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Viroli, M. (1995) For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Windshuttle, K. (2000) ‘The Break-Up of Australia’, Quadrant, September: 8–16.

3

Deterritorialized loyalty Multiculturalism and Bosnia David Campbell

Loyalty’s limits The concept of loyalty carries with it some substantial conceptual baggage. Whether it involves faithful adherence to the sovereign government or the inducements of today’s commercial loyalty schemes (frequent-flyer miles, reward cards and the like), loyalty signifies a tie that binds. As an attachment with obligations that articulates the self to something outside itself, the concept of loyalty as traditionally conceived embodies two key limits (Sills 1968). Understood as arising in the context of a relationship, loyalty inscribes inequality and partiality: ‘Outsiders cannot claim equal treatment with those who are the objects of loyal attachment’ (Fletcher 1993: 7). This limit is the limit of communitarianism, for ‘loyalties circumscribe communitarian circles, all the members of which take others within the circle to be the objects of their concern’ (ibid.: 20). The second limit involves the form communitarianism typically takes. By stressing the importance of membership over relationships, loyalty’s core involves the ‘obligation implied in every person’s sense of being historically rooted in a set of defining familial, institutional, and national relationships’ (ibid.: 21, 23). The concept of loyalty, therefore, is another of those numerous conceptual moments where the political imaginary is framed in terms of ‘the national order of things’ (Malkki 1995). With allied concepts such as citizenship, loyalty is part of an order of representation we might understand in terms of what Derrida calls ‘ontopology’. Ontopology is a neologism which signifies the connection of the ‘ontological value of present-being to its situation, to the stable and presentable determination of a locality, the topos of territory, native soil, city, body in general’ (Derrida 1994a: 82). Such connections – between being and its situation, identity and place, and a people and their community – have been naturalized during the rise of international society. However, the violence implicated in those connections, ranging from the injustices of loyalty oaths to the inhumanity of genocide, demonstrates all too vividly that the ontopological order of representation and its drive for homogeneity is anything but natural, and manifests an inability to live with difference best described by Bauman as ‘heterophobia’ (Bauman 1989: 62–4).

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That said, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to advocate abandoning concepts such as loyalty. Thinking through the challenge posed by this framing of the problem involves more than the simplistic acceptance or rejection of particular propositions. The challenge is how to rethink such concepts so that the violence that inheres within them can be better contested and negotiated. To that end, we have to go beyond the idea that what is required is a tinkering with the appropriate limits of loyalty (Fletcher 1993: 151). Instead, we need to rethink what might be the objects of our loyalty in a hybrid and pluralizing world, and how we might articulate connections to those objects – which themselves might be less objectified and more conceptual – so as to manifest non-violent (or at least less violent) relationships with others. This paper locates that discussion in an exploration of multiculturalism and Bosnia (Campbell 1998a: chs 6, 7). Multiculturalism is more often than not seen as a discourse of Balkanization, something that compromises loyalty to the nation, the state or the nation-state. It is thus opposed on the grounds that fostering its sensibility is likely to produce fragmentation and violence akin to that witnessed in the former Yugoslavia (Hughes 1993). However, by refiguring the idea of multiculturalism we can disclose how the international community’s insufficient response to the Bosnian War – driven by the inability to mobilize action in accordance with conceptions of the ‘national interest’ – was animated by a reliance on ontopological political formulations rather than a multicultural ethos. In this context, loyalty to authorities that operated in terms of loyalty to territorialized identity politics aided and abetted genocidal violence – which suggests that a deterritorialized sense of community as the object of loyalty, matched by a deterritorialization of loyalty as the governing political bond, would have been more ethical.

Multiculturalism beyond the enclave ‘Multiculturalism’ is a concept that derives much of its appeal (as well as the angst it attracts) from being situated in an antagonistic relationship with ‘national’ or ‘state’ identities. For those keen to foster loyalty, ‘multiculturalism’ can be regarded as a problem of competing loyalties (Fletcher 1993: 155–6). It is, to be sure, a concept that is not without problems. Its positioning as antagonistic to the national state has sometimes resulted in a corporatist appropriation of the concept to serve the interests of global market strategies (Eisenstein 1996: ch. 3). Even worse, ‘multiculturalism’ has been implicated in the logic of the allegedly new cultural racism, with its valorization of ‘hybridity’ recalling nineteenth-century racialists, its celebration of difference in the form of ‘culturalism’ instantiating determinate borders of identity, and its critical potential constrained by a disenabling reliance on ‘tolerance’ (Canclini 1995; Young 1995; Appadurai 1996; Duffield 1996). When multiculturalism relies on the logic of individualism (that established individual differences are the basis for respect) or the inward focus of authenticity (that monologically derived characteristics are the basis for identity) it is ripe for an extended critical analysis (Rajchman 1995; Taylor 1992; Connolly 1996).

Deterritorialized loyalty 45 However, as with ‘loyalty’, we need to rethink the concept rather than abandon it. William Connolly has outlined the possibility for this by arguing that there is a productive tension within the idea itself: [M]ulticulturalism…does not merely pose a challenge to national models of state politics and arboreal models of pluralism. It also embodies within itself a quarrel between the national protection of diverse cultural minorities on the same territory and the pluralization of multiple possibilities of being within and across states. (Connolly 1996: 61; emphasis added) The first strain of multicultural thought can produce an apartheid politics in which ontopological assumptions give rise to enclaves organized in terms of essentialized concepts of identity. But the second strain establishes the grounds for a radicalized multiculturalism which, on the one hand, affirms cultural diversity without situating it, while, on the other hand, it recognizes that multiculturalism can itself succumb to an enclave mentality that suppresses cultural interdependence and plurality. The international community’s response to the Bosnian War, most notably in the political anthropology of its diplomatic efforts, manifested the first strain of multicultural thought (Borden 1998: 7). Insofar as we can pretend that the partition of Bosnia into two entities legislated by the Dayton agreement intended a multiethnic Bosnia (as they proclaim), it is an ‘enclave multiethnicity’ they had in mind, where the aggregation of predominantly homogeneous entities with a thin veneer of external unity substitutes for a more thorough complexity. In this sense, the Dayton agreement institutionalized a form of ‘meta-racism’ in which, in place of biological distinctions, ‘culture’ is regarded as a naturalized property such that differences are inherently conflictual or threatening, and apartheid is legitimized as an ‘anti-racist’ solution (Salecl 1994: 12). In this context, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, rather than being outside the European project, is at ‘the forefront of the construction of Europe’ (Baudrillard 1996: 137). In these terms, it can be suggested that the international community initially shied away from making multiculturalism the affirmative political goal for Bosnia for two reasons. In the first place, to mount the case for political assistance to communities throughout the former Yugoslavia which embodied that ethos would require resolving in favour of plurality one of the most hotly contested cultural controversies in the United States and other Western nations. If one endorsed plural and non-nationalist conceptions of political community abroad, the same priorities would have at least to be widely accepted at home. Contrary to Ignatieff ’s claim that European intervention was ‘narcissistic’ and designed to ‘save ourselves’, ‘we’ intervened not to save the ideal of multiculturalism abroad but to shore up the nationalist imaginary so as to contain the ideal of multiculturalism at home (Ignatieff 1996: xi–xiv). But, even more importantly, this failure stems from lack of conceptual resources to think the question of community in other than an essentializing, nostalgic manner. What is perhaps most tragic about the response to the Bosnian

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War is the way we failed – or refused – to see that Bosnia is a community differently conceived, and one which embodies to perhaps a surprising extent the second strain of multicultural thought identified by Connolly (Mahmutcehajic 2000). Some recognition of this came belatedly with the international community’s willingness, following a policy rethink at the end of 1997, to override local nationalist opposition in post-war Bosnia, but the legacy of early ethnic commitments in international policy have proved difficult to overcome (Campbell 1999: 425–8). The difference of Bosnia has been recognized, but most often as a future lost. Although he contributed more than most to the partition of Bosnia, Lord Owen lamented that it is beyond dispute that a Yugoslav identity was developed in parts of the former Yugoslavia and the valiant struggle to keep a multi-ethnic identity alive in besieged Sarajevo will for many always be a benchmark for what might have been. (Owen 1995: 37; emphasis added) Even amongst those who would wish otherwise, the literal and figurative death of complex histories and hybrid identities has been reluctantly pronounced in Bosnia. Thus Robert Hayden has concluded that ‘the multiethnic Bosnia that was once actual, and for that reason prescriptive from the point of view of the international community, no longer exists and thus can no longer be prescriptive’ (Hayden 1996: 796). Conventional readings of the situation seem to lead inexorably to this conclusion, and the evidence amassed in its favour appears hard to question. With ethnic partition in place, nationalist parties victorious, populations increasingly homogenized and ‘ethnic cleansing’ still in operation, there has seemed little alternative to unhappy resignation about the lost possibilities. But as successful as they might appear in Bosnia, the military nationalists and their political allies have not triumphed completely: important elements of heterogeneity persist in both thought and practice. That ‘ethnic cleansing’ (albeit in different modes and a little less violently) is still underway suggests that the nationalist project has not reached its fulfilment. That project, as Hayden argues, ‘has not only been a matter of imagining allegedly “primordial” communities, but rather of making existing heterogeneous ones unimaginable’ (Hayden 1996: 783). Its persistence thus testifies to the ineradicable existence of heterogeneity. Not that the nationalist project could ever be perfectly installed, for the eradication of all difference – given the contingent status of identity, the relational character of difference and the processual nature of society – is an impossibility. In practice this means that, although hundreds of thousands were expelled from their homes, tens of thousands of ‘others’ remained in ‘alien’ territory, while hundreds of thousands of refugees have now returned to ‘alien territory’ (ibid.: 795–6; Agence France Press 2002; Associated Press 2002). While nationalist formulations have seemingly colonized political discourse, non-state groups still pursue civic alternatives. Where individuals are supposed to embody hatred

Deterritorialized loyalty 47 towards the other, many express publicly the desire for co-existence and reintegration. An unhappy resignation at this juncture would, therefore, prevent the reclamation of these and other possibilities. Of course, there have been many overly idealized and naturalized renderings of multicultural Bosnia designed to mobilize the opposition to nationalism (see Rushdie 1994), but what is being argued here is something different. To begin that process, however, requires reflection on ‘the multiethnic Bosnia that existed’ and the manner in which it can still aid judgements about political possibilities and the concept to which we might be loyal. To make that case I want to draw extensively on the ethnographic account provided in Tone Bringa’s (1995) superlative study. As a form of knowledge often overlooked within international relations, Bringa’s anthropology confronts us with the complexities of identity in the former Yugoslavia so often wished away. Most importantly, it demonstrates the lived experience of a non-territorial multiculturalism in Bosnia, one that de-naturalizes ontopological assumptions common to Western political thought.

Multiculturalism and the différance of Bosnia ‘Multiculturalism’ was not necessarily a term prominent in Bosnian discourse. Its use by some Bosnian representatives during the war as a means of mobilizing support in ‘the West’ (a rhetorical strategy that might in retrospect be regarded as unintentionally perverse, given the overriding concern with discourses of coherence in Europe and the United States) cannot automatically be taken as embodying the identity assumptions being articulated here. Indeed, Bringa is careful to note that just as Bosnia was not a historically naturalized tribal war waiting to happen, neither should it be viewed as ‘the ideal example of a harmonious and tolerant multicultural society, where people did not classify each other in terms of “Serb”, “Muslim”, or “Croat”’ (Bringa 1995: 3). The absence of the term, however, does not mean that the contingent and hybrid sense of identity foregrounded by the revaluation of ‘multiculturalism’ is alien to Bosnia. On the contrary, Bringa’s account demonstrates their centrality to the identity marked as Bosnian/Muslim. That pluralized notions can be signified by singular terms that do not require the prefix multi- ‘we’ employ says more about ‘our’ own discourses of identity than those of ‘others’. Moreover, based on fieldwork in the (fictitiously named) central Bosnian village of ‘Dolina’, Bringa’s study shows that sentiments aligned with the radicalized sense of ‘multiculturalism’ were evident even in rural areas beyond the oft-cited urban locations of Sarajevo and Tuzla. But it does so in a way that shows how these notions of what this argument is calling ‘multiculturalism’ are not reducible to simplistic historical narratives that effect a retroactive writing of Bosnia’s essential past so as to support a nationalist future. Instead, Bringa’s account manifests the aporetic relations of identity/difference, analogous to Derrida’s notion of différance, which helped constitute Bosnia and which allow for the possibility of its already existing reconstitution.

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In the Ottoman Empire, especially through the millet system, there existed a communal form that embodied the idea of multiculturalism as the pluralization of the possibilities of being on the same territory. One important element of the empire’s organization was that Muslims were under the direct jurisdiction of the imperial administration, while non-Muslims were in communities (millets) with spiritual heads. This meant that membership of a ‘nation’ was determined by religious affiliation rather than shared language, common territory, history or ethnicity. Most importantly, all these communities shared the same territory within the imperial system – individual millets did not have separate, demarcated territories, even though they did have distinct administrative structures and discrete cultural universes. Millets were thus deterritorialized collective cultural identities based in the first instance on religious identification, albeit with implicit hierarchical notions (ibid.: 20; see also Sugar 1977: ch. 2). The significance of the millet system for Bosnia lies not in claiming that this is the origin or source of a radicalized ‘multiculturalism’, but in recognizing the legacy of deterritorialized identities it gave rise to. The millet system meant that different communities not only shared the same territory; they shared the same economic life and, despite religious differences and their disparate cosmologies, also shared many aspects of social life at the most prosaic of levels (Bringa 1995: 21). Bringa stresses that for modern Bosnia différance was lived and negotiated on a daily basis: To most Bosnians (and particularly to the post-World War II generations) difference in ethnoreligious affiliation was one of the many differences between people, like the differences between men and women, villager and city dweller. It was acknowledged and often joked about but it never precluded friendship. Indeed, for these Bosnians being Bosnian (bosanac) meant growing up in a multicultural and multireligious environment, an environment where cultural pluralism was intrinsic to the social order. Dealing with cultural difference was part of people’s most immediate experience of social life outside the confines of their home, and it was therefore an essential part of their identity. In the village mutual acknowledgement of cultural diversity and coexistence was an intrinsic quality of life and people’s everyday experience, and therefore an important element in the process of individual identity formation. (Bringa 1995: 83) One had in the millet system and its legacies, therefore, a community of similarities and differences, experienced simultaneously on shared territory, which sometimes witnessed violent conflicts but which more often than not managed a productive existence. It thus embodied a mode of being which could not be easily understood in dichotomous terms as separate or mixed, or some straightforward combination of the two. That it was both of these at the same time (symbolized strikingly when it occasionally involved the shared celebration of religious days and combined use of sacred sites) meant that it is more accurately

Deterritorialized loyalty 49 understood in terms of the aporetic relations of identity/difference than any essentialist or reductionist notion (ibid.: 18). It thus manifested what I have previously called ‘radical interdependence’. This was increasingly the case because the similarities and differences were not determined prior to their interaction. They were produced by their mutual interaction, and produced in such a way as to remain in flux. This is evident in the fact that, although contemporary analysts see ethnoreligious identity as being a hard and fast category, Bringa notes that ‘fluid confessional definitions are widely reported in Bosnia far into the twentieth century. Ethnographic data show a nondoctrinal attitude toward religion by Bosnians of all three confessions’ (ibid.: 16). Indeed, perhaps the central theme to Bringa’s study is the way in which being Muslim involves a ‘Muslim being’ that has a complex and sometimes ambivalent relationship with Islam, such that a number of the cultural practices of the Muslim community were regarded by their religious instructors as nonIslamic (ibid.: ch. 6). This ambiguity in the Muslim–Islam identity has been played out in the changing political categorizations in Bosnia. The question of national identity, save for its mention on servicemen’s army identity card, went officially unrepresented in daily life. But every ten years it was prompted by the census, though considering the shifts in census categorizations national identity for ‘Muslims’ was at best fluid (ibid.: 27). Before the war (1992) ‘Muslim’ was not a national category with territorial meaning, even for villagers in rural areas. According to Bringa (ibid.: 21), in the community where she worked this was also shared by others, who employed nonnational terms as their primary and most important symbols. Catholics were thus ‘Catholic’ and not ‘Croat’, and in areas to the north people were often ‘Orthodox’ rather than ‘Serb’. These designations came from and manifested the diverse array of group identities in the former Yugoslavia, understandings that differed considerably from the Western taxonomy of ethnic groups and nations. As Bringa observes, the Yugoslav situation was one in which there was no automatic overlap between nation, state and citizenship of the kind that there is in a place such as the US, cultural pluralism notwithstanding. Accordingly, the ‘Western European conceptualization’ of ‘nation’ and ‘ethnic group’ was inappropriate, overlooked the ‘local conceptualization’, and thereby distorted understanding. As Bringa concludes, ‘terms used officially and increasingly by non-Bosnian commentators such as nations and ethnic groups were not used locally before the war’ (ibid.: 22). The terms ‘Muslim’, ‘Catholic’ and ‘Orthodox’ referred to the idea of nacija. Although translated as ‘ethnoreligious group or nation’, in Bosnia it signifies first and foremost a religious community that does not have a necessary relationship to nationality and territory. A nacija could have a relationship to a national group, but that could be a national group that was one of two types. The first is a narodnost, and is the closest to what in the West would be an ‘ethnic group’. But narodnosti only exist in relation to a larger narod, a ‘nation’ or ‘people’. Moreover, although membership in a narod might have meant having a

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particular nacionalnost (‘nationality’), nacionalnost did not confer citizenship. Citizenship and nationality in the West are more often than not synonymous, but for the former Yugoslavia citizenship was additional to nationality. The Yugoslav citizenry was composed of people of different nationalities for there was no corresponding Yugoslav nation. The significance of this is twofold. Because of the various articulations that are possible between nacija, narod, nacionalnost and Yugoslav citizenship, one’s state, residence or place of birth is not a determinant of identity. In consequence, the territorial dimension to identity is sublimated, and the scope for self-ascription and self-identification is enlarged to the point of being decisive (ibid.: 25). The scope for alternative articulations can be illustrated by considering the changing census categories in which ‘Muslims’ could be located. In 1948 the census permitted one to be a ‘Muslim of undeclared nationality’ – a member of a nacija without a corresponding narod. Alternatively, one could choose the narod to which one belonged, so that ‘Muslim-Serb’ and ‘Muslim-Croat’ were possible. By 1953 those who did not want to be undeclared, or declared in relation to a narod, could designate themselves ‘Yugoslavs of undeclared nationality’, a form of nationalism twice removed. In 1961 a new option was in place – ‘Muslimani u smislu narodnosti’, meaning ‘Muslims in the sense of narodnost’. This marked one step on the ladder to a more clearly defined articulation, which culminated in 1971 with the political recognition of ‘Muslim’ as a narod (ibid.: 27). All this meant that at different times the same people would have slotted into different categories depending on their judgements about which was more appropriate or beneficial (ibid.: 29). Although the nationalization of ‘Muslim’ was officially in place by the early 1970s, with Muslims becoming the sixth of the Jugoslovenski narodi (‘nations of Yugoslavia’), Bringa’s ethnography demonstrates its problematic acceptance outside national political discourse. Moreover, a certain ambiguity about the relationship between the ‘Muslim’ nation, religion and territory was maintained. Partly because Yugoslavia’s leadership wanted to keep some distance between Bosnian Muslims, Islam and the Bosnian republic, the conferring of narod status was made via the ethnonym ‘Musliman’ rather than, say, ‘Bošnjak’. Although that would at first glance seem to confirm the religious affiliation, it reflected, instead, another distinction. As a means of preventing the conflation of ‘Bosnian’ and ‘Muslim’ – a conflation that the West had no hesitation in making during the war – a contrast was drawn between Musliman and musliman. Muslimani were ‘the subjects of the secular, areligious, Yugoslav Bosnian-Hercegovinian republic’, while the muslimani were ‘the subjects of the Islamic community and its bureaucratized organization, the Islamic Association’ (ibid.: 10, 29). The category Muslimani could thus embrace those Bosnians outside Islam, while Muslims beyond Bosnia could be muslimani. A large measure of undecidability was therefore structured into Bosnian/Muslim identity. That undecidability was further exacerbated in relation to the nexus between Bosnian/Muslim identity and the territory of Bosnia. In terms of the political structure of Yugoslavia, the six nations of the federal republic each had a

Deterritorialized loyalty 51 national home in one of the republics, the constitution of which reflected this axis. Except Bosnians/Muslims. The constitution of the republic of Bosnia Herzegovina (as proclaimed in 1974 and amended in 1990) declared that its territory was home to the narodi of the republic (Serbs, Croats and Muslims) as well as members of other nations and nationalities living within it. This not only provided a second territorial home to Serbs and Croats, but meant there was no such exclusive home (as in the case of Serbia and Croatia) for Bosnians/Muslims (Hayden 1992; Bringa 1995: 26; 237n.; Hayden 1996: 790–2). Bringa (1995: 29) argues that in the context of the war Bosnians/Muslims might have been better served had they embraced the territorialization of identity that nationalism espoused and promoted the notion of an exclusive Bošnjak or Bosanac identity. Although both translate as ‘Bosnian’, ‘Bošnjak’ proclaims a historically rooted and culturally distinct sense of self, while Bosanac persists with a regional conception that could accommodate all nacije, narodi and narodnosti. However, the former term, used by the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs, was not as decisive as some of its proponents no doubt hoped. Indeed, ‘Bošnjak’ furthered the undecidability of Bosnian/Muslim identity because it had at one time referred both to residents of the Bosnian province and to Muslims. It was thought to be better suited than Bosanac to the political climate of the time, because Bosanac did not resolve the competing conceptions of identity and relied instead on a geographical sense. Nonetheless, both were the subject of an intense public debate in Bosnia from 1990 onwards. In the context of the rise of nationalism in Serbia and Croatia, Bosnian/Muslim intellectuals revived the idea of Bošnjajstvo (‘Bosnianness’ or ‘Bosnianhood’) and promoted the category Bošnjak. Although the latter term dates as far back as 1166, the notion of Bošnjajstvo did not develop until the end of the nineteenth century as an alternative to Serbian and Croatian nationalism, which was then on the rise. By the early part of the twentieth century Muslims – including those outside Bosnia, such as the Sand¿ak Muslims – referred to themselves as Bošnjak (ibid.: 34). This popular debate was evidence of the search for a formulation of identity which could endow a unique and distinctive sense of community so that a mode of belonging to Bosnia could be articulated and the expansionist claims of Serbia and Croatia be better resisted. Without an historical narrative of ‘Bosnianness’ to match the claims of a naturalized Serbian and Croatian sense of self, supporters of the Serbian and Croatian nationalist projects dismissed Bosnian/Muslim identity as ‘invented’ and therefore ‘unnatural’. In those terms, it was argued, Bosnians/Muslims were ‘in reality’ ethnically Serb or Croat, or both, and therefore not only had no territorial claims of their own, but also should embrace one or other of the nationalist enterprises (ibid.: 31). In this context, it is not surprising that by 1994 the idea of Bošnjak (Bosniac) as signifying a Muslim national sense with territorial dimensions had gained currency, albeit to varying degrees, with the Bosnian political leadership, the international community – who had it written into the constitution of the Bosnian Federation – and the Sarajevo media (ibid.: 34–6).

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The conflation of ‘Bosnian’ and ‘Muslim’ thus seemed complete by the end of the war. As Bringa laments, the Bosnians have apparently been organized into tidy, culturally and ethnically homogeneous categories, and the Muslims seem finally to have become a neat ethno-national category its neighbours and the international community can deal with and understand. They have been forced by the war and the logic of the creation of nation-states to search for their origins and establish a ‘legitimate and continuous national history’. (Bringa 1995: 36) While many of the outcomes of the Bosnian war can be read in these terms, there are also, given the extent and nature of the violence, a perhaps surprising number of developments that manifest the desire to exceed the categorization deemed necessary. That such impulses persist is perhaps less surprising if one considers the different register on which Bosnians/Muslims conceptualized identity. According to Bringa, the ambivalent relationship of Bosnians/Muslims to ethnonationalist discourse stems from the fact that, for them, ‘a myth of origins was neither a part of, nor necessary to, knowing one’s identity:’ This is where the nation-aspiring, ethnically-focused Serbs and Croats differed from the Bosnian Muslims. Among the latter, shared collective identity was not perceived through the idiom of shared blood and a myth of common origins, which is so often invoked in discourses on ethnic or national identity by other European peoples…[the Muslims] referred to their identity in an idiom which de-emphasized descent (‘ethnicity’) and focused instead on a shared environment, cultural practices, a shared sentiment, and common experiences. (Bringa 1995: 30) The collective identity of Bosnians/Muslims (which included many Serbs and Croats) was thus capable of being contested by ethnonationalist Serbs and Croats because it was articulated in ‘a different idiom’, one which could not be accommodated by the prevailing political categories. It was an idiom in which the ontopological assumptions of Western European discourse – academic and political – played no significant role. This meant that instead of the conventional view that a secure identity requires the abjection or sublimation of heterogeneous sources ‘the Bosnians emphasized and added their heterogeneous sources of identity to one another, so that an overarching Bosnian homogeneous identity was never ideologically and institutionally constructed to supersede this’. Bosnians/Muslims therefore operated within a frame that refused a dichotomous and exclusive rendering of identity/difference. Although ‘Bosnian’ was a unifying identity in the sense that it straddled ethnoreligious communities, it did not subsume these differences. Indeed, at its

Deterritorialized loyalty 53 core was the tension between two opposing needs: on the one hand belonging to distinct but parallel ethnoreligious communities and the need to communicate separateness; and on the other the awareness of sharing the same territory, social environment and sets of cultural codes, and therefore of being interdependent and basically the same (ibid.: 32). ‘Bosnia’ is therefore testament to the constitution of an identity that was realized in a community without essence. It is an identity enabled not by closure, but by the aporias abundant in a context of radical interdependence. It is an identity that operated in terms of the care for the complex relationship of identity/ difference many want to advocate. In this context, if we wish to enable deterritorialized conceptions of identity in a globalizing world Bosnia might contain a number of instructive reflections. It would be in some ways perverse, however, if we romanticized the aporetic and differential nature of Bosnian identity. All identities are inherently deconstructible, but, as the Bosnian War so savagely illustrated, Bosnia’s was perhaps more susceptible to deconstruction than most. That susceptibility, however, does not stem from any inherent weakness of non-ethnic, non-nationalist, nonontopological politics. It stems from a particular conjunction of circumstances in which the investments in ethnonationalist politics by actors both internal and external to the situation were too great to overcome easily. When ontopological assumptions abound in Western European and North American politics; when they flourish in academic analyses and media accounts of foreign conflicts; when they inhabit the political imagination of those asked to find a resolution to wars understood in those terms; and when they form the basis of nationalist projects backed by military force in the regions of concern, alternatives are always going to struggle. Investments in different assumptions, however, could produce different outcomes. Moreover, even when those investments are not as great as they might be, alternatives do not disappear, and the desire for them is not diminished, even by a war as horrific as that we have witnessed in Bosnia. Drawing attention to Bosnian identity, therefore, is not to engage in nostalgia for the politics of multiculturalism. It is to appreciate how, even in the face of overwhelming odds, the logic of nationalism and the nation-state cannot eradicate the heterogeneous condition that problematizes it. This is evident through the substantial and increasing rate of ‘minority returns’, where refugees from one ethnic group return to an area from which they were ‘cleansed’ during the war but which is now controlled by a majority of another ethnic group. In 2001 nearly 100,000 Bosnian refugees returned home, and a majority of those were ‘minority returns’. In 2002 the number rose further (Agence France Presse 2002; Associated Press 2002).

New political bonds Recognizing and supporting a sense of political community that exceeds the national order of things requires a refigured sense of loyalty. In its traditional

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form, loyalty is a political bond enabled by a commitment to the priority of sovereignty. But if a radicalized sense of multiculturalism transgresses the sovereign conceptualization of both the individual and the state – which, it was argued above, is always already the case in Bosnia – then a new political bond which exceeds citizenship and fosters that radicalized sense of multiculturalism and the community to which it gives rise is required. But as with Bosnia, this new political bond might already be said to exist. It might be what Derrida calls ‘a new International’: There is today an aspiration towards a bond between singularities [not ‘political subjects’ nor even ‘human beings’] all over the world. This bond not only extends beyond nations and states, such as they are composed today or such as they are in the process of decomposition, but extends beyond the very concepts of nation or state. For example, if I feel in solidarity with this particular Algerian who is caught between F.I.S. [Front Islamique du Salut] and the Algerian state, or this particular Croat, Serb or Bosnian, or this particular South African, this particular Russian or Ukrainian, or whoever – it’s not a feeling of one citizen towards another, it’s not a feeling peculiar to a citizen of the world, as if we were all potential or imaginary citizens of a great state. No, what binds me to these people is something different than membership of a world nation-state or of an international community extending indefinitely, what one still calls today ‘the nation-state’. What binds me to them – and this is the point; there is a bond, but this bond cannot be contained within traditional concepts of community, obligation or responsibility – is a protest against citizenship, a protest against membership of a political configuration as such. This bond is, for example, a form of political solidarity opposed to the political qua a politics tied to the nation-state. (Derrida 1994b: 47–8) The bond of which Derrida speaks is akin to that identified by Lingis when he asks, ‘Is there not a growing conviction, clearer today among innumerable people, that the dying of people with whom we have nothing in common – no racial kinship, no language, no religion, no economic interests – concerns us?’ (Lingis 1994: x). It is a political bond, enabled not by the absence or irrelevance of the nation-state, but by its continuing power and our agonistic relationship with it. It is a political bond, therefore, which recognizes that we are connected by the practices of government, but that we struggle with the strategies of governmentality that try to contain our freedom (see Campbell 1998b). This understanding owes much to Foucault’s historicized defence of human autonomy vis-à-vis the various practices of governmentality that regulate selves and their behaviours. Part of the justification for the inescapable nature of resistance to Foucault’s conception of power comes from an appreciation of the historical emergence (in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, alongside the new arts of government) of various practices concerned with ‘the art of not being governed’, a ‘sort of general cultural form, at once moral and political [and] a

Deterritorialized loyalty 55 way of thinking’, an ‘art of not being governed, or of not being governed in this particular way, or at this price’ (quoted in Ivison 1997: 142). Foucault’s most obvious articulation of this attitude came through his activism in association with Bernard Kouchner and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) as part of the committee Un Bateau pour le Vietnam in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Eribon 1991: 267). Kouchner, a founder of MSF and later a French minister for humanitarian affairs in the administration of President Mitterrand, had sent a team of doctors on board the ship L’Ile de lumière to assist the ‘boat people’ fleeing Vietnam (ibid.: 278–9). In June 1981, as part of an alliance with Médecins du Monde and Terre des Hommes under the banner of the Comité International contre la Piraterie, Foucault and others protested the violence of piracy against those who had fled Vietnam but had not yet been embraced by the regime of refugee protection. At a press conference in Geneva, Foucault offered a statement articulating the position of those protesting: We are here only as private individuals, who have no other claim to speak, and to speak together, than a certain shared difficulty in accepting what is happening. I know full well, and we have to face facts, that there is not much we can do about the reasons which lead men and women to prefer leaving their countries over living in them. That fact is simply beyond our reach. Who, then, commissioned us? No one. And that is precisely what establishes our right. It seems to me that we must bear in mind three principles which, I believe, guide this initiative, like the many others which have preceded it (the L’Ile de Lumière, the Cap Anamour, and Avion pour le Salvador, but also Terre des Hommes, Amnesty International). 1

2

3

There exists an international citizenry, which has its rights, which has its duties, and which promises to raise itself up against every abuse of power, no matter who the author or the victims. After all, we are all governed and, to that extent, in solidarity. Because they claim to concern themselves with the welfare [bonheur] of their societies, governments have arrogated to themselves the right to draw up a balance sheet, to calculate the profits and losses, of the human misfortune [malheur] provoked by their decisions or tolerated by their negligence. It is a duty of this international citizenry always to make an issue of this misfortune, to keep it in the eyes and ears of governments – it is not true they are not responsible. People’s misfortune must never be the silent remainder of politics. It founds an absolute right to rise up and to address those who hold power. We must reject the division of tasks which is all too often offered: individuals can get indignant and speak out, while it is governments which reflect and act. It is true that good governments like the hallowed indignation of the governed, provided it remains lyrical. I believe that we must realize how often, though, it is the rulers who speak, who can only

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This piece was not published until after Foucault’s death, and it was the newspaper Libération which in June 1984 gave it the title ‘Face aux gouvernements, les droits de l’homme’, describing it as a new declaration of the rights of man (Keenan 1987: 20–1). Although this would seem to have reduced Foucault’s argument to a liberal humanist understanding, the title accurately reflected the fact that the ‘right’ which Foucault theorized as productive came from no one or no place except recognition that ‘we are all governed and, to that extent, in solidarity’. As such, it made clear the way in which Foucault’s perhaps surprising deployment of a discourse of rights was a revaluation of liberal and humanist terms enabled by the agonistic and radically interdependent relationship with practices of governmentality rather than the pre-existing character of subjects with inherent rights. This sense of a political bond, while it recognizes the significant contribution of non-state actors, is not inherently anti-state. It is activated by the reduction of the political to the state, and seeks the contestation of imperatives associated with all specific political configurations (including potentially those of a non-state kind). As with the other concepts discussed here, the question is not a matter of being for or against, accepting or rejecting, particular options. As Slavoj ¯i¿ek has noted, although critical social movements have regularly condemned the state as the source of the problem rather than the solution, it is possible to see Bosnia as the utopia of state abolition realized via the violent operation of the nationalist imaginary. In response to this, argues ¯i¿ek, [It is] necessary to draw what at first glance seems a paradoxical, yet crucial conclusion: today the concept of utopia has made an about-face turn – utopian energy is no longer directed towards a stateless community, but towards a state without nation, a state which would no longer be founded on an ethnic community and its territory, therefore simultaneously towards a state without territory, towards a purely artificial structure of principles and authority which will have severed the umbilical cords of ethnic origin, indigenousness and rootedness. (¯i¿ek 1993) If what results from that is a state, it is a very different state from that assumed by the state-centric discourses of comparative politics and international relations. It might be a ‘state of minorities inhabited by a general ethos flowing

Deterritorialized loyalty 57 from multiple cultural sources…where most constituencies recognize the contestable character of the beliefs most fundamental to their identities, using such reciprocal recognition to bridge multiple lines of difference’ (Connolly 1997: n.20). What is required, therefore, is an effort ‘to think of “community” through a space which does not structure essentialized identities’ (Rose 1997: 14). Central to this effort is a revaluation of loyalty, in terms of both the object to which one is loyal and the concept that enables a relationship to that object.

Bibliography Agence France Press (2002) ‘Nearly 100,000 Bosnian Refugees Returned to Their Homes in 2001 – UNHCR’, 15 February, available at http://www.unhcr.ch/cgibin/texis/vtx/home?page=news (accessed 20 August 2002). Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Associated Press (2002) ‘Bosnia: Refugee Returns Increasing, Says U.N. Agency’, 14 May, available at http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home?page=news (accessed 20 August 2002). Baudrillard, J. (1996) The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner, London: Verso. Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Borden, A. (1998) ‘The Lesson Unlearned’, War Report 58 (February–March): 6–8. Bringa, T. (1995) Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Campbell, D. (1998a) National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. —— (1998b) ‘Why Fight: Humanitarianism, Principles and Poststructuralism’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27: 497–521. —— (1999) ‘Apartheid Cartography: The Political Anthropology and Spatial Effects of International Diplomacy in Bosnia’, Political Geography 18(4): 395–435. Canclini, N.G. (1995) Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, trans. C.L. Chiappari and S.L. López, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Connolly, W.E. (1996) ‘Pluralism, Multiculturalism and the Nation-state: Rethinking the Connections’, Journal of Political Ideologies 1: 53–73. —— (1997) ‘Drugs, the Nation and Free Lancing: Decoding the Moral Universe of William Bennett’, Theory and Event 1; available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ theory—and—event/v001/1.1connolly.html. Derrida, J. (1994a) Specters of Marx, trans. P. Kamuf, New York: Routledge. —— (1994b) ‘Nietzsche and the Machine: Interview with Jacques Derrida by Richard Beardsworth’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 7: 7–66. Duffield, M. (1996) ‘Symphony of the Damned: Racial Discourse, Complex Political Emergencies and Humanitarian Aid’, Disasters 20: 173–93. Eisenstein, Z. (1996) Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts in the 21st Century, New York: Routledge. Eribon, D. (1991) Michel Foucault, trans. B. Wing, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fletcher, G.P. (1993) Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships, New York: Oxford University Press. Hayden, R.M. (1992) ‘Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics’, Slavic Review 51: 654–73.

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—— (1996) ‘Imagined Communities and Real Victims: Self-determination and Ethnic Cleansing in Yugoslavia’, American Ethnologist 23(4): 783–801. Hughes, R. (1993) The Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America, New York: New York Public Library and Oxford University Press. Ignatieff, M. (1996) ‘Introduction: Virtue by Proxy’, in A. Danchev and T. Halverson (eds) International Perspectives on the Yugoslav Conflict, Houndmills: Macmillan. Ivison, D. (1997) ‘The Disciplinary Moment: Foucault, Law and the Reinscription of Rights’, in J. Moss (ed.) The Later Foucault, London: Sage. Keenan, T. (1987) ‘The “Paradox” of Knowledge and Power: Reading Foucault on a Bias’, Political Theory 15: 5–37. Lingis, A. (1994) The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, Bloomington, IL, and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Mahmutcehajic, R. (2000) The Denial of Bosnia, University Park, PM: Pennsylvania State University Press. Malkki, L.H. (1995) ‘Refugees and Exile: From “Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 495–523. Owen, D. (1995) Balkan Odyssey, London: Victor Gollancz. Rajchman, J. (ed.) (1995) The Identity in Question, New York: Routledge. Rose, G. (1997) ‘Spatialities of “Community”, Power and Change: The Imagined Geographies of Community Arts Projects’, Cultural Studies 11: 1–16. Rushdie, S. (1994) ‘Bosnia on My Mind’, Index on Censorship 23 (May/June): 16–20. Salecl, R. (1994) The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism After the Fall of Socialism, London: Routledge. Sills, D. (ed.) (1968) International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 9, New York: Macmillan Company and Free Press. Sugar, P.F. (1977) Southeastern Europe Under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1804, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Taylor, C. (1992) ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in A. Gutman (ed.) Multiculturalism and The Politics of Recognition: An Essay by Charles Taylor, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Young, R.J.C. (1995) Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London: Routledge. ¯i¿ek, S. (1993) ‘Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa’, available at http://www.nettime.org/ desk-mirror/zkp2/staat.html (21 August 2002).

4

Conflicting loyalties Women’s human rights and the politics of identity Jill Steans

This chapter explores conceptions of political loyalty in the context of both the nation-state and emerging ‘post-national’ or transnational expressions of community, focusing specifically on women’s human rights. To rethink the nature of identity, community and loyalty beyond the state and nation is to unpack the complex processes by which social and political identities are forged and mapped; how the boundaries of community are carved out through practices of inclusion and exclusion; and how political power is legitimized, and feelings of attachment and loyalty are engendered and mobilized. The first section concentrates on the connection between political loyalty and the nation-state. The principle of sovereignty confers a singular identity on the state and legitimizes its claim to be the political community to which citizens owe their primary loyalty. The state speaks and acts in the interests of its people, who, while in many respects socially diverse, possess a single collective identity as members of the citizen body. Historically, political loyalty has largely been conceived as the disposition to act and speak in the interests and defence of the (nation-)state. The ultimate test of loyalty has been the willingness of people to defend the state, particularly in times of war. The linkage between the state, political loyalty and warfare means that, in consequence, the structure of communities has assumed gendered forms, and traditional conceptions of loyalty themselves have been highly gendered. The second part of the chapter turns to the emergence of a human-rights culture, in the form of a transnational community bound together by normative commitment to universal human rights, and to how this has to some degree transformed ideas about political community and loyalty. The end of the cold war, ongoing processes of globalization, and the rise of new social movements and networks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based on universal ideologies such as human rights have encouraged the emergence – or re-emergence – of cosmopolitan conceptions of identity. Human rights set out the relationship between the state and the individual, demarcate the limits of state power and, in some cases, empower citizens to make claims or demands upon the state. Human rights afford equal status to all people regardless of how they are situated within a set of social relations, and so can work to undermine claims made in the name of culture or identity and subvert systems of justice based on

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traditional roles and social status. The section then moves on to illustrate how developments in the discourse and practice of human rights are changing ideas specifically about women’s citizenship. This is not to suggest that the expansion of human-rights culture is leading to the demise of sources of identification and loyalty founded on ideas about the primacy of national or cultural identity. Indeed, a central theme in the chapter is that the growth and expansion of human-rights culture is occurring in a world of diverse conceptions of identity and community and often competing attachments and loyalties. Women often experience conflicting loyalties because human-rights claims continue to be counter-posed in opposition to culture and other expressions of group identities. Thus the issue of women’s human rights is often deeply politicized and contentious. The third section of the chapter explores in more depth the continuing relevance of discourses of identity – particularly national identity, or ‘national culture’ – to questions of political loyalty. The final part of the chapter turns to possibilities and problems that arise in establishing a globally applicable and acceptable standard of human rights among peoples who are socially, ethnically and culturally diverse. Where women’s human rights lead to conflicts between universalist ideals and the particular claims of culture, these can only be reconciled through dialogue. A consensus on a core set of human rights that all women should enjoy and that should be protected by states might arise, for example, from ongoing dialogues between states, international and regional bodies and NGOs, which occur in a variety of forums and contexts. In such discussions, dominant discourses on identity, community and loyalty that privilege the rights of the group over individual women when and where these are perceived to be in conflict can serve to marginalize issues of women’s human rights. This section concludes with brief reflections on some of the main forums in which human rights and citizenship are now being debated, highlighting emerging opportunities for women’s NGOs to engage in dialogue and influence policy-making and law-making processes, and the obstacles that remain to the realization of women’s human rights in practice.

Gendered states, gendered loyalties The power of discourses on the state and sovereignty has been such that questions of loyalty have been seen to be intimately tied up with discourses and practices that affirm the territorially bounded sovereign state as the most significant expression of political community and identity. The notion that the nation-state may be threatened by hostile ‘others’ and must be defended from attack has provided a particularly powerful sense of shared political purpose and served as a forceful means of mobilizing loyalties (Campbell 1992; Chapter 13 of this volume). Citizenship has been linked to an obligation to defend the state, and this linkage has in turn been used to justify ‘second-class’ citizenship for women (Epstein 1991). In the West both conceptions of citizenship and the possession of citizenship rights have been profoundly gendered. Historically, women were excluded from citizenship rights and thus from the political community – as, indeed, were many other

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groups – on the grounds of differences held to be in some way morally relevant (Linklater 1998). In the West the actual possession and enjoyment of rights were initially limited to certain social groups and classes within states. The Enlightenment ushered in a period in which ‘all men’ were held to share a universal human subjectivity, were rational and so possessed inalienable rights. However, whilst ostensibly founded on a universal subjectivity, rationality was held to be a masculine characteristic. Ideas about ‘female nature’ encouraged a functionalist attitude to women, in that women were treated not as autonomous subjects able to determine their own interests, but, rather, as serving the ends of others.1 In the nineteenth century, liberal feminists in the West challenged the construction of gender differences that justified unequal treatment. Demands for women’s rights challenged the public/private dichotomy which served to make women the victims of the arbitrary power that men wielded in the family (Okin 1979; Elshtain 1981; Coole 1988). However, in many cases it was not until the twentieth century that the notion of extending rights of citizenship to women became widely accepted among political elites, often in the face of growing protest or rebellion (Gaete 1993).2 In many Western societies, mass warfare and conscription transformed expectations among returning servicemen about what they might demand from the state. Loyalty was rewarded with an expansion of citizenship rights to include many groups previously excluded, and an expansion of the meaning of citizenship to embrace the health and welfare concerns of ‘an ever-growing circle of people’ (Fraser 1984: 208). However, as notions of citizenship expanded, in the sense of both a broadening franchise and a wider conception of rights or entitlement, states continued to treat men and women differently. In many cases, the mobilization of women to support the war effort was rewarded with the extension of political rights to women – the right to vote, for example – where they did not previously exist (Braydon and Summerfield 1987). However, with respect to other aspects of citizenship the state continued to justify different treatment on the grounds of gender differences that were held to be either natural and immutable or socially relevant (Linklater 1998). At the end of the war women were encouraged to return to the home. Women’s citizenship came to be mediated through the patriarchal family structure; their primary ‘duty’ was to bear and raise children (Crompton 1999: 65; Dominelli 1991) The first loyalty of the ‘good woman’ was then to her family and particular children, not directly to the nation or to humanity.

The expansion of human-rights culture As a number of contributors to this collection note, new forms of political community are emerging, among them NGO networks that are ‘post-national’ or transnational in nature and in the forms that they take. Debates about citizenship and human rights are now taking place in a variety of contexts and sites. The reconstitution of the world political order on the basis of global citizenship and human rights is far from being fully realized in practice, as will be elaborated below. Nevertheless, in the post-war period there has been a gradual acceptance of the principle of human rights and a gradual expansion of the domain of human-

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rights law. At different periods the actual content of human rights has been disputed, but today there is a large degree of consensus among governments across the world that certain rights are universal and so should apply regardless of the national context in which they are claimed. Today, in most countries, human rights can be claimed either through constitutional guarantees or, if these are absent, by appeals to international conventions (Meyer 1998; Chapter 6 of this volume). Human-rights claims are increasingly entering into national political discourses, influencing the terms of political debate and providing a standard against which to judge the actions of governments. In many non-Western countries human rights have emerged as an ideology of resistance against authoritarian regimes, gradually occupying the centre stage in political struggles (Gaete 1993). Thus, the normative idea associated with human rights seemingly gathered political momentum in the late twentieth century. While the implementation of human-rights conventions in states across the world is uneven and incomplete, the growth in and expansion of international humanrights law is nevertheless an impressive achievement (Meyer 1998). Moreover, the spread of international human rights, evidenced in the expansion of a transnational legal discourse on them and the implementation of international human-rights law in a growing number of societies, cannot be viewed simply as a reflection of Western cultural and political dominance. Since the United Nations (UN) was established, in 1945, there has been a gradual development of human-rights law that recognizes the equal moral worth of each human being. Human-rights treaties recognize the right to self-determination and as such reflect, to some degree, the priorities of newly independent states. The latter have also been able to use human-rights discourse as a weapon in their struggle for the recognition of social and economic rights and for a right to development (Meyer 1998). In recent history many Western democracies have been compelled to come to terms with the reality of multiculturalism and have recognized that minorities not protected by individual rights might have certain group rights or privileges, thus expanding the meaning and the substantive content of human rights (Kymlicka 1995; Chapter 6 of this volume).3 Many postcolonial states have signed up to international human-rights covenants. Mernissi (1987) argues that after quasi-independence Muslim states seeking recognition by colonial powers were eager to sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights and to assert that respect for fundamental freedoms was central to the spirit of their constitutions. In many newly independent Muslim countries the reinterpretation of Islam by ‘loose constructionists’ who sought to modernize societies without wholly discarding traditional legal sources gave rise to new laws, many of which improved the status of women (Piscatori 1980: 149; see also Afkhami 1995). Today there is ‘no uniform Islamic perspective on human rights. There is rather a multiplicity of perspectives, coalesced loosely around traditionalism and modernism, which account for the differing positions in domestic legislation and towards international law held by Islamic States’ (Piscatori 1980: 152). Even fundamentalist states have been forced to negotiate the contradictions that emerge between what is ostensibly demanded by culture, tradition and reli-

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gion and the need to provide better socio-economic conditions to consolidate support for regimes. Hoodfar claims that this has led to some flexibility and sophistication in co-opting competing ideologies and embracing some facets of modernization if this is seen as necessary for the survival of particular regimes. Consequently, women living under Islamic law have found that some spaces have emerged to challenge aspects of fundamentalism, notably its ‘vision of Muslim women’s roles and rights’ (Hoodfar 2002: 1). Identities are formed and mapped on to symbolic and political identifications that might be at once narrower and wider than the nation-state. Similarly, human loyalties are increasingly sub-state and transnational. In the aftermath of the Second World War the experience of Nazi atrocities served to galvanize NGOs around human-rights issues, marking the beginnings of what has subsequently become a transnational human-rights movement. Since the early 1990s women’s groups and NGOs, organizing on a transnational basis, have embraced the agenda of women’s human rights. Openly debating gender issues in international forums has unsettled conventional ideas about boundaries – what is public or private, for example, or what issues and areas of life are essentially an internal matter for sovereign states or, conversely, an international concern. Universal human-rights culture has opened up spaces in which women can question what the state, nation or cultural group can demand of them and what they might now demand from political communities. The UN continues to provide an important forum in which to develop further human-rights law. UN conferences also provide opportunities for NGOs to play an active role in this process. At the Fourth UN Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, many governments invited selected NGOs to participate in the official preparatory process and in some cases co-opted NGOs onto official government delegations. Thousands more women were able to participate in the accompanying NGO forum. Where women activists lack access to power in specific countries they can use global forums such as the Beijing conference to press their demands and exert pressure on national delegations, or use NGO networks to publicize their cause. At the same time, technological advances have made it easier for people to engage in political activities across territorial, geographical, class, gender and ethnic boundaries. Rapid technological advancements in communications have extended the organizational reach of women’s movements, making them global in scope. Adopting a rights discourse to promote the status of women is not entirely unproblematic, for a number of reasons, not least of which is the problem of gender bias in both the conception and granting of rights historically (Palmer and Bottomley 1996).4 However, human rights are generated to a great extent by struggles to appropriate meaning, and in adopting the language of human rights women’s groups have transformed the concept of ‘rights’ to address fundamental threats to security in relation to women’s lives (Bunch 1995; Gaete 1993). The potential of human rights is now beginning to be realized in imaginative reinterpretations of rights that accommodate gender differences and respond to the realities of women’s lives. Demands for women’s rights are political demands, in the sense that they necessarily involve engaging with both the policy-making and legislative

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apparatus in divorce law, family law, employment, taxation and welfare policy. As such, rights claims can provide the catalyst for further social and political change. There is a growing number of international treaties that deal with aspects of women’s human rights. The promotion of women’s human rights is now a central objective in the work of many UN bodies and agencies. Chinkin argues that the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) marks an important breakthrough since it attempts to break down the public/private divide which has justified devaluation of women in general. The Convention articulates an international standard for what is meant by ‘equality between men and women’ that goes beyond formal equality by requiring equality of access and opportunity. As such, it recognizes that women’s rights can be meaningless unless attention is paid to the economic, social and cultural context in which they are claimed (Chinkin 1999). After a period during the 1980s when the international women’s movement was significantly divided (at the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993 and the Beijing conference of 1995) there was a high degree of consensus across cultures concerning fundamental rights for women. As Nussbaum points out, Chinese women complained at Beijing that ‘Confucian values’ often served as excuses for sex discrimination in employment and other areas of life. Similarly, some Indian women argued that cultural norms of the good and pure woman served as a means of controlling sexuality in the interests of cultural continuity (Nussbaum 2000). However, whatever the achievements in respect of women’s human rights there is still a significant discrepancy between aspirations and reality. For example, CEDAW is also notable for having a low number of ratifications, a high number of reservations and a disappointing record of implementation. In some cases this discrepancy is accounted for by continuing resistance to the very idea of gender equality and an insistence by political elites that the rights of the group must prevail over those of the individual where these are in tension. A strategy favoured by conservative opponents of gender equality has been to contest the very use of the term ‘equality’ in major conventions covering women’s human rights and lobby for the adoption of the term ‘equity’ – the equitable distribution of assets and resources in correlation with existing social responsibilities – instead (Chinkin 1999). For example, at the Cairo Conference on Population and Development, issues of reproduction were couched in terms of reproductive rights but, again, this language was strongly opposed by some delegations, notably those of the Holy See and some Islamic states (Hartmann 1995). The same strategy was adopted at the Beijing conference, although ultimately the language of rights and equality was accepted by most delegations (United Nations 1996).

Political loyalty and issues of identity The legitimacy of Western states and, indeed, of many postcolonial states is now grounded in respect for rights as the ultimate measure of the good society. The constitutional guarantee of rights increasingly serves as the basis on which polit-

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ical obligation can be secured. However, one does not have to look very far or hard to find evidence in the post-cold war world order of the continuing relevance in politics of nationalist identities or of cultural, ethnic and religious conflicts. It may be that, as Anderson contends (1983), it will require a monumental shift in the political organization of the world, akin to the emergence of the nation-state system, before nationalism ceases to be the dominant expression of identity and community, and the primary source of political loyalty. In the meantime, demands for human rights will continue to be in tension with what the ‘national interest’ demands, or what is held to be for the good of the community as a whole. While the appeal of rights discourse is growing, it still seemingly does not engender the same powerful sentiments of loyalty to the collectivity as discourses on nationalism generate. As Anderson notes, nationalist discourses appeal to powerful symbols of national identity and unity, and invoke bonds of community not only among the living, but between the living and the dead and among the as yet unborn members of the group (ibid.). The boundaries of the state continue to be made and remade by discourses on national identity, while the exercise of state power is legitimized by appeals to symbols of ‘national unity’ and invocations of a ‘national interest’. It is to the state and one’s fellow nationals that one owes ultimate allegiance. Nation-building projects ‘result in imaginative construction of official national unifying ideologies’ that aim to ‘install a common national ethos among diverse citizens’ (ibid.: 240). Nationalist articulations of identity aim to transform cultural, class and other differences into a collective social identity and mobilize loyalty to the state and to fellow ‘nationals’, most of whom, ironically, are strangers one will never meet. The intimate connection between state power and particularistic conceptions of identity and community explains, perhaps, the central paradox or contradiction at the heart of the nation-state. Human rights exist irrespective of the social, or indeed national, context in which people live. On the other hand, the state continues to employ particularistic criteria to exclude certain social groups and peoples from citizenship rights and so demarcate the boundaries of political community (Linklater 1998). The idea that the boundaries of states coincide with the boundaries of a distinct cultural group has also profoundly influenced ideas about political legitimacy, authority and loyalty (Lawson 1998). Indeed, nationalism characteristically draws upon appeals to a shared cultural heritage. Moreover, cultural relativism is still invoked in their defence by political elites who resist the notion that human rights can be used to judge and condemn particularist stances. Cultural relativism undermines the idea that there are genuinely universal human rights. Rejecting the notion of a transcendental or universal subject, a single ‘truth’ or conception of the ‘good’ gives rise to the idea that normative criteria on what is good or just, or what constitutes a right, must emerge from the value systems of specific societies. Identity is held to be forged in relation to a series of ‘others’ and in connection with some greater social order and moral framework that gives meaning to one’s life (Taylor 1989). Identity and subjectivity can be viewed

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as constituted by a process in which one’s life and relationship to others are comprehended within certain horizons of social and cultural meaning and knowledge available at given historical moments (McNay 1992). People might define their identity partly by their religious commitment, or in relation to cultural or national traditions that provide the horizon within which they try to determine what is good, worthwhile or what ought to be done. From this perspective, underlying questions of identity are moral questions and dilemmas, but ones that cannot necessarily be solved in universal terms (Taylor 1989). The privileging of the interests of the nation, cultural group or religious community undermines human-rights claims, particularly in relation to women’s human rights. This is because gender, sexuality and the family have been, and continue to be, of great symbolic importance in the construction and reproduction of national identities and state boundaries, and in ensuring the cultural continuity of specific communities (Jayawardena 1986; Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989; Kandiyoti 1992; Chatterjee 1993). Women who have participated in nationalist independence struggles have been able to challenge existing gender relations and create new identities for themselves. This is particularly evident where nationalist movements have embraced secularism and modernization, and where independence has often brought new constitutional guarantees and rights for women. However, even where nationalist movements seek to reconstitute the social and political order on a radically different basis, women still bear the burden of being the mothers of the nation, their bodies being used to reproduce the boundaries of the national group, transmit its culture and become the privileged signifiers of national or cultural difference (Kandiyoti 1992: 429). Therefore states continue to be heavily involved in regulating what are often held to be private decisions – concerning, for example, whom one may marry and the legal status of children – in the interests of reproducing the nation or cultural community. What this means is that where rights of citizenship have been extended to women in nation-states old and new, the construction of group identity has continued to be articulated in ways that can infringe women’s rights as enfranchised citizens (ibid.). Women do not always and everywhere experience culture and tradition as oppressive. Within many cultures and social orders the notion of dignity is preferred to rights. Dignity does not necessarily imply equality, since it might be seen as an aspect of age, gender and kinship relations. Moreover, human dignity can be realized and protected in various ways. In certain cultural contexts, the meanings attached to femininity and female dignity can serve to give women social power that translates into particular claims to resources. Moreover, some aspects of culture and national identity are clearly embraced and enjoyed by women. Nor can it simply be assumed that all women share a singular collective identity and common interests by virtue of their gender alone. Questions of culture, identity and difference have been at the core of feminist theory. Much Western feminism has, historically, constructed non-Western women as ‘other’, implicitly accepting that the advancement of women will be furthered by embracing the values of the West (Mohanty 1988). To assume that women in the non-Western world are neces-

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sarily oppressed and disadvantaged by cultural beliefs and practices is to view the world through the eyes of one immersed in Western values and, moreover, to assume that these values are necessarily superior. Nevertheless, adopting a strong cultural relativist position on human rights is also problematic, for a number of reasons. Identities and identity groups are neither essential nor clearly bounded, but, rather, fluid and multi-layered. Similarly, the idea of a distinctive national, religious or cultural identity disguises internal differences within nations marked by gender and class, and glosses over the significance of subcultures and minority groups. Positing some imagined homogeneous community belies the degree of contestation that can and often does exist on issues of culture and on what tradition requires (Nussbaum 2000). It is not easy to differentiate between expressions of identity and community that have genuine substance and legitimacy and the appropriation of discourses of culture and tradition to serve the interests of certain social groups or elites (Lawson 1998). Mernissi claims that the denial of women’s rights in Islamic societies, where fundamentalist forces have great influence, is not rooted in religious doctrine or an Islamic tradition as such, but in conflicts that arise between women’s rights and the interests of a male elite. In many states where fundamentalist Islamic movements are strong, the ‘metamorphosis of Muslim woman from veiled, secluded, marginalized object, into a subject with constitutional rights’ has been interpreted as a threat to the hierarchy that organizes politics and relations between the sexes, and has unsettled the scale of values that constituted male identity (Mernissi 1987: 40). Fundamentalist Islamic scholars claim that the exclusion of women from political rights is a condition for safeguarding Muslim identity and so they require women to ‘return’ to their place – confined, marginal and subordinate, in accordance with the ‘ideal of Islam’ (ibid.: 40). Fundamentalism is a ‘return’ to the past, to tradition, ‘to an order that no longer satisfies everybody, especially many women who have never accepted it’ (ibid.: 40). Women, and indeed men, are not unreflective about existing values and practices. Identities appear settled because they are embedded in a complex net of social conventions, structures and practices, and ‘involve deep-rooted investments on the part of individuals and historical practices which limit their transformability’ (McNay 2000: 18). It is the ‘social embeddedness of subject formations’ that makes ‘identity appear settled and durable’ (ibid.: 18). Cultures are dynamic and changing. At certain moments agents can have considerable influence in reshaping expectations and identities and in facilitating the emergence of new frameworks of social organization. Moreover, people and communities have always been open to ideas from other societies and cultures. The ‘social and cultural meaning and knowledge available’ to people is not confined to the boundaries of nations or states. Human rights, democracy and indeed feminism are today to some degree all ideas that are known ‘inside’ most societies (Nussbaum 2000). However, discussions of women’s human rights in specific societies are not easily disentangled from wider political, cultural or ideological conflicts.

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Consequently, women’s human rights are often a highly politicized and contentious issue. This is evident in a number of Muslim societies, where the status of women and the denial of rights to women have been pointed to in sections of the Western media as evidence of a cultural divide, or ‘clash of civilizations’. The juxtaposition of the oppressed, in this case Muslim, woman and the emancipated Western woman disguises a variety of lived realities and experiences among diverse groups of women in both Western and Islamic countries. Said warned against constructing a monolithic Muslim identity that disguised a variety of realities (quoted in Piscatori 1980). However, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, Islam is being constructed as a singular source of political meaning, identification and loyalty that is by its nature a ‘problem’, a threat to Western liberal values. This discourse on the ‘barbarism’ of the Islamic ‘other’ can play into the hands of conservative or fundamentalist forces. In such circumstances, women’s rights can easily be represented as Western cultural arrogance, an attack on Islamic values or the misguided project of Muslim women ‘brainwashed by Western propaganda’ (Mernissi 1987; see also Honig 2002: 4; Ahmed 1992). When the ‘imagined community’ of the nation, cultural group or religious community is authorized as the most authentic unit of collective identity, it is often men in positions of power who are able to define its meaning (Chatterjee 1993). It is not unusual to find that women who actively campaign for women’s rights are stigmatized, and accused of disloyalty to the group and of betraying cultural or national identity (Helie-Lucas 1988). Thus, whilst acknowledging that issues of culture and difference are central to conceptions of identity and community, it is important not to reify culture, and one must continually problematize homogenized and static conceptions of identity. Moreover, it is important always to question a claimed authentic voice of the collective, be it the state, the nation, the ethnic group, the cultural minority or the ummah. The authentic voice can be used to disguise internal diversity and to circumscribe political discourse and debate through the stigma of ‘betrayal’ and the construction of dissent as ‘disloyalty’.

Negotiating boundaries, negotiating rights Women’s human rights cannot be separated from issues of culture and difference. However, there are now active networks of women’s NGOs and activists held together by a shared identity, cause and politics of solidarity that to some degree cut across national, ethnic, cultural and religious boundaries. Women’s human rights are also now embedded in international conventions and promoted in national, regional and global contexts and forums. What is emerging from this process is a continuing ongoing debate about what women can demand and how states, regional and international organizations and NGOs can further facilitate the expansion of human-rights law specifically with respect to women. The notion of dialogue is appropriate and valuable because it is through dialogue and discussion that one might establish what is universal across different

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experiences (Phillips, quoted in Gaze 1997). Benhabib argues that the notion of dialogue is helpful in negotiating cultural and other differences because it involves a shift away from universalizable conceptions of the subject or the good life to a focus on the procedures that need to be in place before a genuine, open and inclusive dialogue can begin. The establishment of transnational and global public spheres further enlarges the realm of politics that comes under the dominion of dialogue and consent. There is nothing Western about this if the commitment to dialogue as a means of resolving conflicts is widely accepted. This form of radical proceduralism is also powerful, in that it demystifies implicit agendas and can challenge the normative underpinnings of discourse from the standpoint of gender (Benhabib 1992). Through dialogue, it is possible to establish a set of rights that have considerable international normative universality. One might then specify the human rights that should be afforded to all women, whilst perhaps allowing some flexibility in the concrete ways in which these rights are implemented. This requires groups with common interests to surmount national differences and agree on collective principles. An international women’s human-rights agenda can emerge from this process which simultaneously recognizes cultural difference and the commonality of women as a group (Peters and Wolper 1995). The language of rights is useful because it is premised on a basic human equality and because it empowers woman as autonomous subject with a voice. The basis for establishing a consensus on core human rights already exists in the form of conventions such as the UN Declaration on Human Rights, along with conventions that deal specifically with women’s rights, such as CEDAW, which, despite resistance in some countries, many states have now ratified. The development of human-rights law can be furthered by attempting to identify something akin to a rights tradition in non-Western societies – rights that might not be identical to Western rights, but are broadly and functionally equivalent (A’ la Mawdudi 1980). The question then arises of the significance that should be given to the notion of culture in the construction of a normative moral order (Wilson 1997). A concept of women’s human rights as a wide-ranging but flexible set of general principles or standards can then be formulated that leaves some space for interpretation. Allowing for some flexibility and diversity in the way that rights are implemented makes a concession to a weak form of cultural relativism insofar as some rights will be accepted as universal, whilst different cultures will maintain the ability to provide for rights through different means. This avoids the problem of this being perceived and presented as a ‘civilizing mission’ on the part of the West (Legesse 1980). At the Beijing conference it was recognized that the ‘full realization of all human rights for women and the fundamental freedoms of all women are essential for the empowerment of women’, but it was also conceded that the significance of national and religious particularities and various historical and cultural backgrounds must be borne in mind, and that full respect for various religious and ethical values should contribute to the full enjoyment by women of their human rights (quoted in Chinkin 1999). The cultural context cannot be

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ignored by feminists, since development projects and similar initiatives designed to promote the status of women have often failed because they have paid insufficient regard to cultural variety and particularism (Nussbaum 2000). Moreover, as noted above, the assumption that women are always disadvantaged by cultural practices or necessarily experience culture as oppressive has been challenged by women in non-Western countries. Nevertheless, the problem still remains that flexibility in implementing conventions may ultimately be used to continue prioritizing the right to religion or the protection of the family over the rights of women, even where women are clearly not content. Women’s human-rights activists have noted that at the ‘Beijing plus five review’ of progress held in New York in 2000 some governments were obstructing the implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action, employing a strategy of seemingly accepting the language of human rights, but seeking to undermine protests by women’s groups at grass-roots levels in their own countries. Culture continues to be invoked to justify such restrictions on women’s security and women’s autonomy and choice. Resistance to women’s human rights remains particularly evident in the area of male violence against women, especially when it involves a partner or family member in the domain of reproductive rights (Human Rights Watch 2001). When arguing that dialogue is essential to the development of women’s human rights, it is important to ask who gets to participate in dialogue, who gets to articulate what culture demands, and whether and when the family or the group interests are more important than the interests of individual women. It then becomes pertinent to ask whether and to what degree women or NGOs promoting women’s human rights are currently able to participate in dialogue. In which forums? And under what conditions? It is beyond the scope of this chapter to engage in a detailed discussion of issues of access and participation. However, what is strikingly clear from the emerging literature on governance and human rights is that whilst women’s human rights have been widely embraced by international and regional institutions, states and NGOs since the early 1990s, there are still major obstacles to their realization in practice, not least of which is the continuing marginalization or silencing of women in public discourse.

Notes 1 2

3

And, one should add, rights of self-determination to those peoples subjected to colonial rule or imperialist domination. In her recent book, Okin (1999) argues that there are inherent contradictions between group rights and women’s rights and, moreover, that the extension of group rights threatens to roll back many of the gains made by feminism in the West. Okin’s position has been criticized on a number of grounds: see, for example, contributions to the debate on Okin’s work by Parekh (2002), Yael (2002) and Honig (2002). However, liberal proponents of multiculturalism have accepted that there might be tensions between group rights and individual rights, and that where conflicts arise dissenters should have the ‘right of exit’ (see Kymlicka 1995). While philosophers asked ‘what is man’s potential?’ and ‘what is the best form of political community in which man’s potential could be realized?’, in relation to women the question posed was ‘what are women for?’ (Coole 1988).

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The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has long played a key role in promoting women’s human rights by preparing recommendations for the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to promote women’s rights in the political, social and educational realms. This work has been supplemented in many specialized agencies such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The 1993 General Assembly Declaration on Violence against Women is also a valuable document to the extent that it affirms women’s rights and makes violence against women an international issue. In the wake of the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994 and the Fourth UN Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, these issues, along with issues of control over reproductive function, have begun to be articulated explicitly as human-rights concerns (see Chinkin 1999).

Bibliography A’ la Mawdudi, A. (1980) Human Rights in Islam, London: Islamic Foundation. Afkhami, M. (ed.) (1995) Faith and Freedom: Women’s Human Rights in the Muslim World, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Ahmed, L. (1992) Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso Books. Benhabib, S. (1992) Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics, Cambridge: Polity Press. Braydon, G. and P. Summerfield (1987) Out of the Cage: Women’s Experiences in Two World Wars, London: Pandora. Bunch, C. (1995) ‘Transforming Human Rights from a Feminist Perspective’, in J. Peters and A. Wolper (eds) Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, London: Routledge. Campbell, D. (1992) Writing Security, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Chatterjee, P. (1993) The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chinkin, C. (1999) ‘Gender, Inequality and International Human Rights Law’, in A. Hurrell and N. Woods (eds) Inequality, Globalization and World Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coole, D. (1988) Women in Political Theory: From Ancient Misogyny to Contemporary Feminism, Hemel Hampstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Crompton, R. (ed.) (1999) Restructuring Gender Relations: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dominelli, L. (1991) Women Across Continents: Feminist Comparative Social Policy, Hemel Hampstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Elshtain, J. (1981) Public Man, Private Woman, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Epstein, C. (1991) ‘In Praise of Women Warriors’, Dissent 38: 421–2. Fraser, D. (1984) The Evolution of the British Welfare State, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Gaete, R. (1993) Human Rights and the Limits of Critical Reason, Aldershot: Dartmouth. Gaze, B. (1997) ‘Some Aspects of Equality Rights: Theory and Practice’, in B. Galligan and C. Samford (eds) Rethinking Human Rights, Sydney: Federation Press. Hartmann, B. (1995) Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control, Boston, MA: South End Press.

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Helie-Lucas, M. (1988) ‘The Role of Women During the Algerian Liberation Struggle and After: Nationalism as a Concept and as a Practice Towards Both the Power of the Army and the Militarization of the People’, in E. Isaksson (ed.) Women in the Military System, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Honig, B. (2002) ‘Complicating Culture: A Response to Susan Okin’s “Is Multi-culturalism Bad for Women” ’, available at http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR22.5/honig.htm. Hoodfar, H. (2002) ‘Bargaining with Fundamentalism: Women and the Politics of Population Control in Iran’, available at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/rt21/globalism/ hoodfar.htm. Human Rights Watch (2001) ‘Women’s Human Rights’, available at http://www.hrw.org. Jayawardena, K. (1986) Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World, London: Zed Books. Kandiyoti, D. (1992) ‘Identity and Its Discontents’, Millennium 20.3: 429–43. Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lawson, S. (1998) ‘The Culture of Politics’, in R. Madmen and C. Mackerels (eds) Culture and Society in the Asia-Pacific, London: Routledge. Legesse, A. (1980) ‘Human Rights in African Political Culture’, in K.W. Thompson (ed.) The Moral Imperative of Human Rights, Washington, DC: University of America Press. Linklater, A. (1998) The Transformation of Political Community, Cambridge: Polity. McNay, L. (1992) Foucault and Feminism, Cambridge: Polity. —— (2000) Gender and Agency, Cambridge: Polity. Mernissi, F. (1987) The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, New York: Addison Wesley. Meyer, M. and Prugl, E. (eds) (1999) Gender Politics in Global Governance, London: Rowan & Littlefield. Meyer, W.H. (1998) Human Rights and International Political Economy in the Third World, Westport, CT: Praeger. Mohanty, C. (1988) ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse’, Feminist Review 30: 61–88. Nussbaum, M.C. (2000) Women and Human Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Okin, S.M. (1979) Women in Western Political Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— (1999) Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Palmer, S. and A. Bottomley (eds) (1996) Feminist Perspectives on the Foundational Subjects of Law, London: Cavendish Publishing Limited. Parekh, B. (2002) ‘A Varied Moral World’, available at http://bostonreview.mit.edu. BR22.5/parekh.html. Peters, J. and A. Wolper (eds) (1995) Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, London: Routledge. Piscatori, J.P. (1980) ‘Human Rights in Islamic Political Culture’, in K.W. Thompson (ed.) The Moral Imperatives of Human Rights, Washington, DC: University of America Press. Taylor, C. (1989) The Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, K.W. (ed.) (1980) The Moral Imperatives of Human Rights, Washington, DC: University of America Press. United Nations (1996) Final Report, Fourth United Nations Conference on Women NGO Forum.

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Vargas, V. (1999) ‘Latin American Feminism in the 90s: Reflections by Gina Vargas’, Gina Vargas interviewed by Nira Yuval-Davis, International Feminist Journal of Politics 1(2): 300–10 Wilson, R. (ed.) (1997) Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives, London: Pluto Press. Yael, T. (2002) ‘Who Do You Trust?’, available at http://bostonreview.mit.edu?BR22.5/ tamir.html. Yuval-Davis, N. and F. Anthias (1989) Woman, Nation, State, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

5

Political loyalty and military disobedience Militarism, pacifism, realism and just-war theory compared Bruno Coppieters

The relationship between war and ethics can be assessed from various perspectives. Militarism, pacifism, realism and just-war theory represent the major views on the ethical nature of war and political order (Coppieters and Fotion 2002: 1–22). Each of these lines of thought on the ethics of war presupposes a specific understanding of the legitimacy of a political authority and of its bonds with individuals and groups. The particular comprehension that each of these positions has of these ties includes, furthermore, a particular view of the military virtues of loyalty and obedience. Consequently, they defend opposing positions on the right to military disobedience and conscientious objection. In what follows, I shall analyse these four positions on the ethics of war, and, more specifically, the implications that their conception of the principle of a legitimate authority and of the virtue of loyalty may have on their understanding of citizens’ rights not to perform a military duty and of the right of individual soldiers to disobey orders. Finally, the chapter will assess the extent to which the conceptions of loyalty implied in these four positions are relevant to present-day discussions on humanitarian interventions and the laws of war.1

Militarism None of the four noted positions denies that war is terrible, but only militarism defends the view that the horrors of war create positive values for society. War has here a primary moral significance. Virtues such as heroism, the sense of personal sacrifice, discipline, courage and virility can only be preserved and strengthened through the horrors of war. Without such a challenge, the state and society at large are open to decay. Nor, without war, would the individual find any moral fulfilment. For militarists, war makes Men out of men. One of the virtues of war is the sense of discipline that it fosters; obedience to political authority permits the individual to express his loyalty to the nation and to the community. In militarist regimes, political authority is generally the preserve of a single leader. Obedience has to be absolute; it tolerates no exception. There is no possible tension between legitimacy, loyalty and obedience. Those who question the legitimacy of the regime – or, worse, who disobey the political authority – must be considered disloyal to the nation.

Political loyalty and military disobedience 75 Concrete examples of militarism are to be found in diverse forms in various cultures over the centuries. A classic expression is located in the writings of Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the General Staff of the Prussian Army from 1857 to 1887. In his words, war is deeply tragic but inescapable and forges the greatest social virtues: Eternal peace is a dream and not even a beautiful one, while war is an element of God’s world order. In war, the most noble virtues of man unfold, which would otherwise slumber and become extinct: courage and abstention, loyalty to one’s duty and willingness to make the sacrifice of one’s life; the experiences of war are a lasting influence, strengthening a man’s ability for all future. Yet who would deny that every war, even a victorious one, inflicts painful wounds on every people? For no conquest of land, no milliards can replace human lives and weigh heavier than the sorrow of the families; war is an overwhelming craft. (Moltke 1994: 217) Militarism describes a basic ideological structure, where war is considered both as inevitable and as favouring individual virtues and social values. It was part of some of the leading ideologies of the twentieth century. Militarism was manifest in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, in pre-war imperial Japan, and in Soviet Russia during the period of so-called ‘war communism’ in 1918–21 and at the height of Stalin’s reign of terror. Some fundamentalist religious movements aiming at the creation of a theocratic regime through violent means may also be called militaristic. Militarism is thus a common feature of regimes with opposing ideological systems, reflecting very different social and political interests. The war of extinction against the Jews in Nazi Germany or the class struggle against counter-revolutionaries, kulaks and nationalists in the Soviet Union were, for instance, very different types of war. They are commonly thought to exhibit the virtues of discipline, loyalty, sense of sacrifice and courage, and the value of solidarity. Moreover, the absolute obedience to the Führer in Germany, to the emperor in Japan or to the Communist Party and its leader in the Soviet Union may, in a general sense, be described as characteristic of militarism, without these types of political ties thereby having the same political or social meaning. However, an uncritical use of the concept of militarism should not be allowed to obscure the profound differences between militaristic political regimes. The national socialist view of foreign and domestic policies may indeed be considered as militaristic. The Nazi leadership did not consider war as a solution of last resort, to be used exclusively when peaceful means were exhausted. It is true that Adolf Hitler managed in 1938 to destroy and to annex Czechoslovakia by using strong political pressure against Britain and France. Hitler did not think, however, that his diplomatic success in signing the Munich Agreements was a morally superior option to the use of outright force. Yet the Soviet leadership had a very different conception of war. Militarism was a characteristic of Stalin’s domestic policies when he ruled over the Soviet

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Union from the second half of the 1920s until 1953. He was profoundly convinced that the construction of a socialist society would lead to a sharpening class struggle, where the Communist Party had to enforce its vision of a dictatorship of the proletariat with increasingly violent means. For Stalin, militarism concerned primarily the class struggle against counter-revolutionaries, kulaks and nationalists, and not Soviet foreign policy. Stalin made serious attempts to avoid the use of military force against other countries through diplomacy. These political means included proposals of compromise. Outright force was used only when minimal objectives could not be reached – as in the so-called Winter War against Finland in 1939. From a militarist perspective, as noted, any questioning of the legitimacy of political authority is tantamount to disloyalty to the political community. Nevertheless, the fact that militarism excludes every right to question the legitimacy of political or military orders does not mean that such questioning did not take place. Such examples abound in militarist regimes, including in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. When it became clear to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in November 1942 that Germany was losing the African theatre of war, he demanded of the Führer’s HQ that he be given the fullest freedom of action to organize the retreat of his forces. Rommel wished to delay decisive military operations in order to transfer most of his troops to Europe, leaving only a small part of his army in Africa to cover the retreat. The Führer, however, ordered Rommel to stand firm and to throw all his remaining forces into the battle. Hitler thus conveyed a moral message quite different from Rommel’s strategic sense of what should be done. Rommel recalls Hitler’s message as follows: In the situation in which you find yourself there can be no other thought but to stand fast and throw every gun and every man into the battle…. It would not be the first time in history that a strong will has triumphed over the biggest battalions. As to your troops, you can show them no other road than that to victory or death. (Freedman 1994: 35) This order expressed a clear primacy of moral over military concerns. In Rommel’s words (ibid.: 37), it was propaganda that explained the issuing of this ‘crazy order’: it was the custom at the Führer’s HQ to subordinate military interests to those of propaganda. But Rommel and his generals did not then challenge the legitimacy of the Führer’s authority. They were loyal to the regime and executed the instructions given, which inescapably led to the German military defeat in the Battle of El Alamein. The execution of this order was a tragic choice for Rommel. He was loyal not only to the Führer but also to his troops. This conflict of loyalties in preparing for the Battle of El Alamein explains his deep regret at having executed Hitler’s order. In the future he would be ready to evade such regulations in his conduct of operations:

Political loyalty and military disobedience 77 We were completely stunned, and for the first time during the African campaign I did not know what to do. A kind of apathy took hold of us as we issued orders for all existing positions to be held on instructions from the highest authority. I forced myself to this action, as I had always demanded unconditional obedience from others and, consequently, wished to apply the same principle to myself. Had I known what was to come I should have acted differently, because from that time on, we had continually to circumvent orders from the Führer or Duce in order to save the army from destruction. (Freedman 1994: 35) It may be concluded from this section that the use of the concept of militarism in a concrete historical analysis does not exclude a differentiated analysis of political regimes and of their leading ideologies. This basic pattern of attitudes and presuppositions is compatible with many political stances. It does not permit us to overlook the profound differences between the Soviet and the Nazi types of militarism. The concept of militarism describes, furthermore, a set of loyal attitudes towards political and military authorities which excludes in principle a critical assessment of their legitimacy and a right to disobey. The application of this principle in a concrete historical context, such as the relations between Rommel and his Führer before the decisive Battle of El Alamein in 1942, shows, however, that militarism does not exclude a conflict of loyalties, or even the determination of subordinate military commanders to circumvent orders.2

Pacifism The second position on the ethics of war calling for analysis is pacifism – both in its religious and in its secular version. We are confronted here with the opposite worldview to that of militarism. Moreover, the terms ‘legitimacy’ and ‘loyalty’ in pacifism take on a meaning different from that which they carry in the cases of realism and just-war theory, which remain to be analysed. There are two main types of pacifism: religious pacifism and non-violent civilian resistance. They are logically distinct but historically closely related. Pacifism as a secular movement emerged in the twentieth century. It was strongly influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, whose thinking was religiously inspired. From the perspective of Christian pacifism, both the legitimacy of the state and the duties that a citizen owes to a state derive from the scriptures. This type of religious pacifism has historically taken two main forms: the ‘ancient’ pacifism that existed in the first centuries of the Christian church; and the ‘modern’ pacifism of the Mennonites, Quakers and others. For modern Christian religious pacifism, as it emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the state was a legitimate institution. Religious pacifists recognized the state and its government as a necessary vehicle of social order and considered themselves loyal citizens. But in their view the authority of the state did not extend to questions of individual conscience. They placed severe limits on the exercise of the legitimate

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authority of the state, limitations that were based on the principle of a separation of Church from state. Pacifist principles prohibited them from taking up positions in government and particularly prohibited them from performing those state duties that necessarily included the use of force, such as military service. They thus placed particular limits on loyalty to the state. These limitations were the result of the fact that religious pacifists were loyal not only to the state but also to their religious community. There was thus a severe tension between the religious and political loyalties of religious pacifists. Loyalty and obedience are central concepts in Max Weber’s definition of a sect, and he used them in a historical analysis of Quakers and Mennonites, among other cases. In his view, ‘church’ designates a type of organization that encompasses all believers. ‘Sects’, on the other hand, are composed exclusively of believers convinced that they have been ‘born again’. The baptism of adults in many Protestant circles symbolizes this type of religious identity (Weber 1972: 150ff., 220ff.; Coppieters 1990: 308–60.). This voluntaristic character goes together with an enhanced degree of loyalty towards the community and obedience to its rules. For members of pacifist sects, it was, for instance, impossible to perform military service without putting oneself outside the community. The refusal of military service was therefore not necessarily inspired by individual conscientious motives, but was, rather, a consequence of membership in a pacifist community. The conflict between political and religious loyalties led in the Mennonite community in Western Europe to a shift of political attitudes, especially during the nineteenth century. This community then gradually gave up its refusal to undertake certain civic duties such as military service (see Hershberger and Crous 1973: 899ff.; de Ligt 1934: 335ff.). No such process of political assimilation took place in tsarist Russia, however, where the autocratic system did not permit a political integration of the Mennonite community. Opposition to the state was not part of religious pacifist teaching. Religious pacifists did not even oppose military policies as such or the conscription of citizens who were not part of their own religious community. But they did not want to participate themselves in these activities. For many governments, such as the Dutch government in the sixteenth century or the revolutionary Jacobin government under Robespierre, or even the Bolshevik government of Lenin in 1919, this position was acceptable. In those three cases, religious pacifists were considered as loyal citizens, despite their refusal to perform certain civic duties. They were thus granted the legal privilege of not performing military service. But for many other governments such a position was simply unacceptable. Religious conscientious objectors have been severely repressed up to the present day. The absolutist prescriptions of pacifism are also to be found in a secular variant. From the perspective of civilian non-violent resistance, injustices do not justify the use of force. Injustices should be resisted by civilian and non-violent forms of political action only. The concepts of legitimate authority, loyalty and the right to conscientious objection or to disobey military orders are defined in this absolutist normative framework. The legitimacy of political authorities

Political loyalty and military disobedience 79 depends on their ability to respect those principles. Loyalty to one’s own community does not cancel the universal moral obligation not to kill, but calls for other forms of resistance to injustices. Pacifists demand a maximal extension of the rights to refuse military service and to disobey military orders.

Realism Realism connotes an attitude to war that includes a specific understanding of political authority, loyalty and the rights to conscientious objection and disobedience to military orders. It acknowledges the horrors of war, but does not ascribe any positive or negative moral value to it. War is considered to be inevitable, due to the state of nature in which states and nations find themselves. In the realist view, war and morality belong to different worlds. Realists make a judgement concerning the legitimacy of the use of force from the perspective of the national interest, and not from the perspective of the common good of humankind. Loyalty to the nation is a core value in the realist view of war and peace. A political regime may be considered to be legitimate if its policies realize the national interest. Loyalty to the nation does not mean here that the legitimacy of state policies cannot be questioned. In some cases, the right to dissent may even include the right to disobey military orders. It is true that realism may also be found in dictatorships that do not accept political criticism or any other questioning of the legitimacy of the regime. Realist motives, for instance, played a dominant role in Stalin’s foreign policies. But realism as a fundamental attitude towards the relationship between morality and war does not imply logically – as militarism does – that the legitimacy of a regime or of military policies cannot be questioned. Realism, as a philosophical position, accepts in principle a tension between the acceptance of the legitimacy of a political authority and its orders, on the one hand, and loyalty on the other. The legitimacy of a regime or of particular military policies may be questioned without this questioning being perceived as necessarily an expression of disloyalty or opposition to the national interest. There are various realist views of the relationship between morals and the use of force. Realism is a rather heterogeneous position. Some do not consider military policies as necessarily devoid of moral considerations, but believe that these considerations are, in the last resort, rooted in particular views on the interest of the nation. One encounters also the realist argument that moral considerations are ultimately dependent on particular national interests if they are to have an effective impact on political decision-making. It is further possible to defend a realist view concerning a decision to go to war, and not in respect of the rules to be observed in war. The military ethos may, moreover, be understood as a necessary component in increasing the combat-readiness, discipline and mutual trust of the troops. Seen from this realist perspective, military morals increase overall operational efficiency. Realists may prescribe that moral considerations have to be acknowledged by the legislator as a given reality. Political authorities have, indeed, to take into

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account public attitudes or the moral positions of individual soldiers. They may otherwise be confronted with severe political opposition to their military policies or with revolts within the army.3 But also, in such a perspective politics and morality belong to basically different worlds. From a realist point of view, the existence of moral values among the public and the troops has to be acknowledged, without moral imperatives necessarily prevailing in political decisions on war and peace. But, despite such a variety of realist positions, the basic realist logical pattern is quite straightforward as concerns the relationship between attitudes towards legitimate authority, loyalty, conscientious objection and military obedience. Under certain conditions, and to a certain extent, realism allows that a right to conscientious objection and a right to disobey orders may be made legal. Not moral criteria, but the national interest prescribe to what extent such liberality is to be allowed. Soldiers who are forced into the army against their will and convictions generally perform poorly. The duty to serve the nation may then best be fulfilled by an alternative civilian service in the national interest. This means that a liberal legislation on conscientious objection may be created in accordance with realist prescriptions independently of the moral considerations of the lawgiver. But the lawgiver may also consider circumstances in which such a right is not in accordance with the national interest and therefore oppose such liberalization. This means that realism may be in accord with conscientious motives, but not necessarily so. According to Nigel de Lee, the British military tradition does not consider the right of the government to command the obedience of the military as absolute. Limitations may be justified according to the criterion of the public interest. He refers to various examples in British military history where the interference of politicians in the conduct of military affairs went against state interests and was consequently legitimately disobeyed or circumvented (Lee forthcoming). The right to disobey particular orders may thus fit into a realist conception of military obedience. This is also true in the case of unlawful orders. To the extent that the respect for national legislation and international obligations is in the national interest, it is the duty of every soldier to refuse to perform any act that infringes the law. But the realist argument may also justify a breach of humanitarian principles and even the perpetration of war crimes. An example may be drawn from Belgian military history, as described by Jacques Verhaegen. In 1975 the Ministry of Defence issued a ruling on military discipline (‘A2’) which stated that ‘in the event of military operations, the superior is justified [in issuing an order that manifestly leads to the perpetration of a crime or an offence] if it is established that in the circumstances he cannot act otherwise in order to safeguard an interest vital for the nation’ (Verhaegen 2001: 28). According to the Belgian General Staff, this ruling permitted, in particular circumstances, extreme measures such as torture or the execution of civilians as long as the ‘vital interests of the nation were at stake’ (ibid.: 28). It was not until 1982 that this manifestly illegal article was rescinded. Fortunately, Belgium was not involved at

Political loyalty and military disobedience 81 the time in any major military operation. Its troops were therefore not confronted with extreme circumstances that engaged the vital interests or the survival of the nation. This good fortune – and not the existence of legal constraints – explains why at the time no war crimes were committed that would have had to be covered by the Belgian military authorities. It may be concluded from this particular example – where the instruction allowing extreme measures in extreme circumstances was manifestly inspired by realist motives – that realism permits the performance of war crimes on the basis of the national interest.

Just-war theory Just-war theory has given a particular meaning to the concepts of legitimate authority and political loyalty. According to the just-war tradition, war is only legitimate when it is morally constrained. The jus ad bellum principles deal with all the necessary conditions that have to be fulfilled in order to justify the use of military force: the use of military force should have a just cause; it should be implemented by a legitimate authority; it should be guided by good intentions; it should be proportionate to the aim; it should be a last resort; and it should have a reasonable chance of success. The jus in bello principles include the rules that have to be respected during a war: the use of force should discriminate between combatants and non-combatants, and it should be proportionate to the aim. The concept of legitimacy is central to all the jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles, including those of a more prudential nature (such as the jus ad bellum principles of ‘chance of success’ and ‘last resort’). No war may be considered as just (or legitimate) if one of the principles in each set has not been respected or has been overruled without reason. This reason should have a moral character. Neither military necessity nor political opportunity justifies exceptions to this rule. The function of the just-war concept of legitimacy is to address the question of how opposed forms of loyalties and moral commitments which may potentially contradict one another have to be reconciled. Just-war theory, conceived systematically for the first time by Saint Augustine (AD354–430) as a synthesis of religious prescriptions with classic philosophical and juridical principles, has its intellectual origins in an attempt to overcome the tension between religious and political loyalties. Augustine distanced himself from the pacifist Christian tradition through a reinterpretation of the scriptures. His principles of just cause, legitimate authority and right intention were meant to legitimate and to restrict the use of force by political authorities, without rejecting the religious obligations of a Christian towards God and humanity. Augustine’s doctrine of the legitimate use of force demonstrated how true believers could behave as loyal citizens of their political community. The emergence of the Westphalian system of sovereign states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries expressed a shift in loyalty away from the religious authority of the Church towards the political authority of the state (Hyde-Price 2000: 30–3). This shift found a further expression in the seculariza-

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tion of the just-war tradition. Whereas the Christian doctrine of the legitimate use of force addressed the question of how to resolve the tension between political and religious loyalties, the just-war tradition in its secularized form addressed the question of how allegiance to the state can be brought into conformity with a moral commitment to humankind. The various jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles acknowledge the relevance of national interests but frame them in a universalistic normative system. A distinction should be made here between the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello sets of moral principles concerning their application to the question of military obedience. In respect to jus in bello, just-war theory prescribes that obedience to military orders remains subordinated to the duty of soldiers to humanity and to humanistic principles. This duty also has a legal character, to the extent that it is inscribed in international humanitarian law. Just-war theory does not address directly the question of a right to conscientious objection. In some countries with a strong conservative Christian tradition, such as Belgium or Hungary, the political authorities and the Catholic Church have for a long time invoked the doctrine of a just war to oppose a liberalization of legislation on conscientious objection. But just-war theory does not in principle exclude individual conscientious motives leading to a refusal of military service. By stressing the need for severe moral constraints on the military actions of political authorities, it may even favour respect for the moral convictions of individual conscripts. The question of how the jus ad bellum principles should be applied by individual conscripts and soldiers in times of war is more difficult to answer than the corresponding question concerning the two jus in bello principles. In some situations, such as the First Chechen War in 1994–6, a substantial number of Russian officers opposed the military intervention in Chechnya in various ways – including refusing to accept responsibilities or to carry out orders (Lieven 1998; Kashnikov and Coppieters 2002). Their criticism was largely based on jus ad bellum principles such as legitimate authority (‘the Russian authorities do not respect the constitutional provisions concerning the use of force on its own territory’; ‘the use of force against Russian citizens is illegal’), right intentions (‘the objective of the war is based on the particular interests of the political elite rather than on the realization of a just cause’); chance of success (‘the Russian army is utterly unprepared to face Chechen fighters’), proportionality (‘the evil consequences of the military intervention outweigh its possible moral benefits’) and last resort (‘methods short of war such as a blockade of Chechnya should have been used’). But such a situation, where a great number of soldiers refuse to carry out orders, is quite extraordinary, and has to be considered as the expression of a deep political crisis. According to Anthony Hartle (forthcoming), the question of the extent to which soldiers should oppose an unjust war waged by their own side is difficult to answer as far as jus ad bellum is concerned. Soldiers may, as much as any other citizen, have their own opinion on the constitutionality of the political decision to wage war, on the intentions of their government when going to war or on the

Political loyalty and military disobedience 83 respect or non-respect of the other jus ad bellum principles. It is, however, impossible for an individual soldier to claim higher authority in these cases, whereas a refusal to carry out military duties would go against fulfilling professional responsibilities. This situation is very different from the one concerning the application of the jus in bello principles. In the case of an illegal order, a refusal to comply is, on the contrary, part of the fulfilment of military duties. Not to oppose such an order may in particular cases even lead to criminal prosecution.

The positions compared A comparison of the conceptions of loyalty and legitimacy to be found in militarism, pacifism, realism and just-war theory, and the effect of their ethical presuppositions on their views of the right to refuse military service or military orders, leads to the following conclusions. First, just-war theory and religious pacifism, contrary to realism and militarism, impose moral constraints on the legitimacy of the use of force. For religious pacifism, the constraints on the authority of the state in matters of individual conscience are absolute, whereas the moral constraints defined by just-war theory are only relative. There is also an absolutist secular variant of pacifism. Militarism and realism do not consider moral constraints on war, but these positions are inspired by motives that are opposed to each other: militarism is a moral conception of war, whereas realism assumes that morality cannot override international relations. Second, in just-war theory loyalty to the state is not based on religious prescriptions, as in religious pacifism, or on the defence of particular national interests, as is the case with realism, but on the universalist conception of the state as a legal instrument which is committed, as part of the international community, to the common good of humankind (Coates 1997: 126–8). Such a universalist claim is also to be found in secular pacifism but not in militarism, where the particular interests of a political, religious or racial community prevail. Third, militarism does not question the legitimacy of a political regime that is based on its ideology. Such a critical approach is possible in the cases of realism and just-war theory. These two positions accept a tension between loyalty and legitimacy. A citizen has the right to question the legitimacy of military policies without ceasing to be loyal to his nation or state. There are various forms of pacifism. Each defends a different view on the legitimacy of political order. Some pacifists do not question in principle the legitimacy of the existing political order, whereas others would state that the use of force delegitimizes political authority. Fourth, according to religious pacifism the state has, in principle, the legitimate authority to use force, but this authority does not extend to an obligation on religious believers to perform military duties. In this perspective, conscientious objection for religious motives is a basic right. Such a clear statement on the legitimacy of the use of force and the right to conscript citizens for military duties is not to be found in just-war theory. The theory refers primarily to the rights and duties of political authorities and addresses clearly and explicitly

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individual rights and duties only in the two jus in bello principles. Individuals have not only the right but also the duty to disobey orders when they go against the humanitarian principles of proportionality and discrimination. Constraints on war are also imposed by realism, but from a non-moral perspective. Both the limitations on the use of force and the right of conscripts or the military to dissent depend here eventually on the definition of the national interest. From this particular perspective, realists may profoundly disagree with the regime’s policies, including its war policies. They may also favour a liberalization of the legislation on conscientious objection or a further development of international humanitarian law. But realism may also – contrary to just-war theory4 – justify the breach of humanitarian principles, and even of international war conventions, when the basic interests of the nation are said to be at stake.

Evolution in the four positions The brutal experience of the Second World War led to a marginalization of militarism in public discussions on foreign and military policies. Since then the militarist glorification of war has been denied political legitimation in Western societies. No established scholar advanced such positions in academic institutions, in contrast to Germany, for instance, before the Second World War. Extreme right and xenophobic parties in countries of the European Union at present do not claim that loyalty and certain other moral virtues can only be revived on the battlefield, as was claimed by their predecessors in the 1930s. Pacifism remains an important position in many public discussions on the question of war and peace. The refusal to perform military service out of pacifist conscientious motives is widespread in those Western countries where conscription is still in force. Pacifism may have a constraining effect on the war policies of some political parties, due to anti-war attitudes among their electorates and memberships, but the influence of pacifism extends no further than that. The limited influence of pacifist ideas is even to be noticed among parties that are traditionally perceived as being part of the peace movement. The participation of Green parties in government in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries such as Germany or Belgium did not make these countries less supportive to military interventions by the Atlantic Alliance once they could be judged to be humanitarian interventions. The Green politician Joshka Fischer has, as a German minister of foreign affairs, consequently used arguments in favour of humanitarian intervention that were close to the just-war tradition. His justification of the 1999 war against Yugoslavia – and of Germany’s stance as a loyal member of the Atlantic Alliance – was based on principles such as just cause, proportionality and last resort. In discussions on the use of force, the realist and the just-war discourses remain most prominent. As demonstrated above, both realism and just-war theory may – depending on the circumstances, and for different reasons – have a constraining effect on warfare and on the toleration of conscientious objection. The two types of discourses are distinct, even if they may be used to defend

Political loyalty and military disobedience 85 similar interests or if their application may lead to the same conclusions in practical matters. It should also be noted that the primary focus on national interests in the case of realism and on the interests of humankind in just-war theory does not exclude the acknowledgement of moral considerations by realism or of prudential considerations relating to the national interest by just-war theorists. Realism is a popular theory among political elites. It is also easy to find political leaders who make use of the moral and prudential principles that are found in just-war theory. But it is more difficult to find government leaders referring explicitly to the theory as such – one exception being President George Bush Senior’s justification of the war against Iraq in January 1991 (Hartle 2002: 165). But foreign policy discussions about how to reconcile the defence of the national interest with the universal values of peace and justice encounter the same basic questions that pit realists against just-war theorists. It can be shown that political initiatives and arguments based on national interests intermingle with those based on the interests of humankind, but this complementarity does not obviate the necessity of choosing between the two forms of interest. President Richard Nixon was an admirer of Woodrow Wilson – even asking to have his desk placed in the Oval Office (Kissinger 2001: 248) – but followed a foreign policy giving first priority to the national interest. The American administration under President Bill Clinton tried to satisfy both approaches on a more equal basis. Clinton himself first justified the military intervention of the Atlantic Alliance in Kosovo on moral grounds by stating, on 22 June 1999, that the United States had the right to stop a massive violation of human rights and that it intended to use that right if it was in its power to do so. But an administration official declared a few days later that, besides moral justification, the United States was also defending its strategic interests in the region (see Ceulemans 2002: 210). Arguing against those who consider the two positions to be mutually exclusive, Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration, wrote that the worldwide defence of democracy is to be considered quintessentially a defence of the true national interest: ‘It is the basis for asserting, in rebuttal of some self-proclaimed realists’ insinuations to the contrary, that American values and interests reinforce each other’ (Talbott 1996: 49). With the end of the Clinton era, the relationship between the national interests of the United States and the interests of the world community at large was further redefined. Various positions were to be found in this debate. According to Condoleeza Rice, the national security adviser of President George W. Bush, the United States should ‘proceed from the firm ground of the national interest and not from the interests of an illusory international community’ (quoted in Wolf 2002: 13). Such a position has been challenged by the argument that the exceptionally broad interests of the United States as the world’s first ‘hyperpower’ give the concept of a national interest a specific meaning. Martin Wolf has written that the United States should define its interests in function of this hegemonic position: The more narrowly it conceives its interests and the more indifferent it is to the desires of others, the more it will fail to secure the world it wants and the

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The concept of loyalty derives its meaning from both nationally and universally defined interests. In this case, too, realism and just-war theory disagree on the primary interest. Henry Kissinger’s position on NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 is a good illustration of this point (see Kissinger 2001: 260–73). Kissinger defended a realist view of loyalty. His primary focus was the national interest, but he also took universal interests into consideration. In his view, the way in which Western governments delivered an ultimatum to the Serbian leadership at the Rambouillet conference could only lead to war. The humanitarian impulses motivating Western policies merited respect, but the aim of preserving a multinational and multicultural state with the help of military force was not in the American national interest. Furthermore, the Atlantic Alliance should not have disregarded the doctrine of national sovereignty. Its humanitarian intervention went against NATO’s traditional justification as a military alliance for the sake of collective self-defence. But, despite these criticisms, Kissinger remained loyal to the American administration once the war started. He considered that the same national interests on which he based his criticism of American war policies made it necessary to support these policies in times of war: Despite many reservations, I supported the Kosovo operation after it began in many television appearances because I felt that failure of such a major NATO enterprise would have been the worst possible outcome. But military success did not alter my unease over NATO’s decision to demand the dismemberment of a state with which NATO members were still maintaining full diplomatic relations and with which NATO had concluded an agreement on Bosnia only two years previously. (Kissinger 2001: 263) In the Introduction to this volume, the editors describe the many difficulties that the state has today in instilling and maintaining loyalty. Each of the four positions concerning the relationship between morals and war requires specific state policies in order to generate political loyalty. Religious pacifism requires the separation of state and Church and the toleration of conscientious objection in order to permit double loyalties towards the religious community and the state. Secular forms of pacifism, such as that promoting non-violent resistance against evil, require a political transformation of the state and of society on moral grounds that goes far beyond such types of reform. Without such changes, political loyalty towards the state cannot be expected in anything more than a restricted form. Militarism also requires a radical transformation of the state and of society on moral grounds, but based on principles that are completely at odds with the pacifist position. Loyalty to the state is here only imaginable as loyalty to one single authority to which citizens owe blind obedience. Such a type of

Political loyalty and military disobedience 87 loyalty involves the readiness to sacrifice one’s own life and that of others. In the case of war, this may – if not opposed by subordinate commanders – lead to the sacrifice of one’s own troops after a military defeat, as demonstrated in the case of Hitler’s command of military operations in Africa during the Second World War. The primary focus on the national interest in realism and on the interests of humankind in the just-war tradition does not exclude a certain balance between particular and universal interests and values. Such a balance permits a differentiated view of loyalty and guarantees a pluralistic debate on foreign policy issues, particularly on the question of war and peace.

Notes 1 2

3

4

I wish to thank Nick Fotion and Carl Ceulemans for their comments on this chapter. An earlier version is to be found in the Journal of Professional Ethics (forthcoming). Other cases of conflicting loyalties may be shown in the case of Erwin Rommel. Rommel refused to follow an order from Hitler of 18 October 1942 that said that all commandos captured behind German lines had to be executed. According to Fotion (forthcoming), Rommel justified his disobedience by appealing to traditional military practice. The role of domestic opposition against the Vietnam War in the American military defeat is a well-known example of this first eventuality. A more recent example of the second case is to be found in Israel’s military operations in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2002. In February, the Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant-Gneral Shaul Mofaz, declared that the country would face serious destabilization if the rebellion of reservists refusing to serve in the occupied territories was allowed to spread. In his view, the authorities had to address this problem with urgency (Financial Times, 2–3 February 2002). These two examples demonstrate that it may be fateful for political leaders to neglect the moral sphere. The question of the extent to which just-war theory could justify the breach of its principles in cases where the survival – as opposed to the interests – of the national community is said to be at stake is not addressed in this contribution.

Bibliography Brock, P. (1981) The Roots of War Resistance: Pacifism from the Early Church to Tolstoy, New York: Fellowship of Reconciliation. Ceulemans, C. (2002) ‘The NATO Intervention in the Kosovo Crisis’, in B. Coppieters and N. Fotion (eds) Moral Constraints on War: Principles and Cases, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Coates, A. (1997) The Ethics of War, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Coppieters, B. (1990) ‘Die pazifistischen Sekten, die Bolschewiki und das Recht auf Wehrdienstverweigerung’, in R. Steinweg (ed.) Lehren aus der Geschichte? Historische Friedensforschung, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Coppieters, B. and N. Fotion (eds) (2002) Moral Constraints on War: Principles and Cases, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. de Ligt, B. (1934) La Paix créatrice, vol. 2, Paris: Marcel Rivière. Fotion, N. (forthcoming) ‘The Anatomy of a Command’, Journal of Professional Ethics 10. Freedman, L. (ed.) (1994) War, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Hartle, A. (2002) ‘The Gulf War, 1990–91’, in B. Coppieters and N. Fotion (eds) Moral Constraints on War: Principles and Cases, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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—— (forthcoming) ‘Obedience and Responsibility’, Journal of Professional Ethics, 10. Hershberger, G. and E. Crous (1973) ‘Nonresistance’, in The Mennonite Encyclopedia, vol. 3, Scottdale, PN: Mennonite Brethren Publishing House. Hyde-Price, A. (2000) ‘Reflections on Security and Identity in Europe’, in L. Aggestam and A. Hyde-Price, Security and Identity in Europe: Exploring the New Agenda, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan. Kashnikov, B. (forthcoming) ‘Six Motives of Justified Disobedience: A Case Study of the First Chechen War’, Journal of Professional Ethics, 10. Kashnikov, B. and B. Coppieters (2002) ‘The First Chechen War 1994–96’, in B. Coppieters and N. Fotion (eds) Moral Constraints on War: Principles and Cases, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Kissinger, H. (2001) Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Towards a Diplomacy for the Twenty-first Century, New York: Simon & Schuster. Lee, N. de (forthcoming) ‘British Approaches to Military Obedience: Pragmatism, Operational Necessity, and Moral Dilemmas’, Journal of Professional Ethics, 10. Lieven, A. (1998) Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. Moltke, H. von (1994) ‘Doctrines of War’, in L. Freedman (ed.) War, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Sakwa, R. (forthcoming) ‘Chechnya: A Just War Fought Unjustly?’, in B. Coppieters and R. Sakwa (eds) Contextualizing Secession: Normative Studies in a Comparative Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Talbott, S. (1996) ‘Democracy and the National Interest’, Foreign Affairs 75(6) (November/December): 47–63. Verhaegen, J. (2001) ‘Le Refus d’obéissance aux ordres manifestement criminels’, in Le Refus d’obéissance à un ordre manifestement criminel. Séminaire de Droit militaire et de Droit de la guerre, Session 2000–2001, Brussels: Séminaire de droit militaire a.s.b.l. Weber, M. (1972) ‘Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus’, in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, vol. 1, Tubingen: Mohr. Wolf, M. (2002) ‘Exporting the National Interest’, Financial Times, 24 July.

Part II

Competing loyalties Minorities, supranational bodies and the state

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Human rights and the shaping of loyalties Patrick Thornberry

States have sought a variety of ways in which to shape the loyalties of citizens and mobilize them in a spirit of national solidarity and against internal and external threats – real, imagined or constructed. At the same time, the activities of governments co-exist with a panoply of human-rights standards that condition the legitimacy of state action. The chapter addresses elements in state attempts to exercise ‘traditional’ control over domestic loyalties, to secure jurisdictions against the ‘others’ of the imagination, and appraises the enterprise in the light of standards of human rights. Of course, human rights and states do not stand as polar opposites. The emergence of international norms has resulted primarily from their elaboration and adoption by states; the interconnection may be even more profound bearing in mind that state self-descriptions as Rechtstaat or democracy are vital to contemporary validations of governance. However, the progressive expansion of norms and mechanisms and the growth of a critical civil society signify that the control of ‘meanings’ by states is not absolute, that the texts do not ‘belong’ only to governments in right of ‘authorship’. While states are still prime movers in the making of international human rights, the reading of standards relates to a global constituency, domestic readings of rights are confronted by international bodies, and all are subject to indefinite Derridan processes of différance – texts in constant flux, the arrival of the definitive understanding forever postponed. The phenomena of texts taking on a life of their own, of obligations undergoing an apparently incessant process of normative expansion and international pressure to implement these constantly reconfiguring norms throw up acute dilemmas for governments. However, whilst processes of interpretation threaten to escape the clutch of the state, there is scope for states to influence the shape and content of the narratives and to elevate local languages to the plane of global grammar. This chapter shows how contemporary international standards address three figures who may in different ways be marked by governments with the taint of disloyalty: the recognition-claiming group, the immigrant and the potential traitor – the ‘sleeping’ terrorist, of whom there are apparently many more since 11 September 2001 than governments had previously realized. The figures present challenges to the unities and the traditional monopolies of the state – especially those of allegiance, control of borders (inside/outside distinctions) and

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the use of force. Loyalty questions may surface in the context of almost any human-rights norm, including, for example, derogations from norms following the proclamation of a national state of emergency. Calls for loyalty carry grave dangers in terms of human rights. The approach here is to explore emblematic human-rights norms while not attempting a complete legal account. It is postulated that when the figures merge in the soul of the state into an indefinable shadowy and traitorous ‘terrorist’, the defence of rights is thrown into sharpest relief and the nature of the challenge merits a diversified response from the human-rights community. Exegeses of loyalty as such have not filled the pages of the human-rights literature – like quarks and neutrinos, notions of loyalty pass largely unseen and unacknowledged. This is changing since 11 September, in the wake of a sharp precipitation of patriotism and analogous legislation threatening basic norms.

The recognition-claiming group Through a loyalty lens, we can see that loyalty issues suffuse the development of specific ethnic-community rights. Minority rights functioned before the United Nations (UN) age as states of exception to principles of cuius regio, eius religio, embracing counter-principles of conservation, tradition and stability by exempting specific populations by treaty from the necessity of wholeheartedly embracing new rulers – religion and all. The exemptions were validated by treaties and customary principles such as conditional recognition and, less certainly, humanitarian intervention, targeted largely against the Ottomans. Principles of exception were gradually extended to groups defined in terms of language and ‘nationality’, in line with the development of nationality consciousness, and generalized under the League of Nations regime. Loyalty to the host state was not specifically requested in the League treaties and declarations, but was implied in provisions on citizenship and in the principle expressed in a text of 1930 that ‘majorities must be just and generous, and minorities must be loyal’ (Thornberry 1991: 167). The alleged disloyalty of German populations supporting the interests of the Reich in the era of the League of Nations determined the immediate future shape of minority rights, ensuring that specific rights for groups would have a difficult passage in the new world order. Accordingly, specific minority rights receive no mention in the UN Charter or in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, replaced by the utopian concept of human rights for all on a non-discriminatory basis. The gradual recognition of specific rights in the new era required the transcending of the loyalty hurdle. Definition A preliminary question generated in part by the loyalty matrix is how minority groups should , if possible, be defined ‘universally’. This raises immediate issues of control of the grammar of rights, of the power to decide. The UN SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities at

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one time proposed that ‘loyalty’ be incorporated as part of the definition of minority rights. Having warned of the risk, in any strategy for defining minorities, of ‘fomenting amongst them a disloyalty to the State in which they live’, the Sub-Commission proposed that any definition of ‘minority’ should include the phrase ‘such minorities must be loyal to the State of which they are nationals’ (Capotorti 1991: paras. 22–3), a phrase which was rejected as being essentially political and as having no place in a definition (ibid.: 166–7). There is still no generally accepted definition of ‘minority’ in international law, nor, it may be said, of ‘people’, including indigenous people. This leaves it open for states to take a restrictive line, closing down the number of groups regarded as minorities or even denying that there are such groups on their territory. The most famous example is constituted by France, which, in the case of the very basic minority rights provision in Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights declares that it shall not be applicable as far as the French Republic is concerned. France appears to have an aversion to the notion of differentiated citizenship in the context of the unity and indivisibility of the nation under the Constitution, and a particular aversion to the term ‘minority’. International law adopts the principled position that the existence of minorities is a question of fact not of law.1 This lapidary statement does not resolve the issue of definition, but signifies a relationship between international law and state prerogatives. It suggests that states will not be able to justify every restrictive claim, and makes it clear that in dialogues on the existence of groups the state will not necessarily have the final word. On the contrary, by engaging in treaty relationships and other international legal ones, the state submits itself to judgments based on international standards. The definition of minorities continues to vex governments and international organizations. Much of the ferment on definition concerns the second of our two figures – the immigrant or non-citizen. How this figure fits or does not fit into the ‘minority’ is addressed in the present chapter. Belonging The loyalty issue raises a further question of how to address claims by individuals to ‘belong’ to a group other than the state or nation. There are at least two polarities in the human-rights representation of the relationship between individual and community. The first attributes membership on the basis of characteristics, typically set out in a definition; the other places primary emphasis on individual choice. These correspond to notions of identity as given or primordial and identity as constructed or chosen (Cohen 1999). A third element, the role of the group in admitting or refusing membership, can also enter the equation, and this element has been emphasized by indigenous groups (Martinez-Cobo 1986: paras 378–80). The questions are interwoven with issues of individual and collective rights as they affect the notion of ‘belonging’, rather than with the rights to be exercised. The Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities addresses the question in Article 3, paragraph 1:

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The provision propels choice in the direction of individual preferences. But whilst it is clear that in the Framework Convention no one belonging to a minority may be denied or compelled to exercise minority rights – both of which are issues of free choice – ‘membership’ is not described as entirely the subject of self-identification. Article 3.1 coheres with other references to self-identification in international law which attempt to balance subjective choice against the ‘givens’ of social existence, though the criteria of minority identity in a particular case may be fluid and leave considerable room for assertions of individual preference. How the balance is to be struck is important. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination takes the view that membership of a group ‘shall, if no justification exists to the contrary, be based on self-identification by the individual concerned’.2 Such an approach places the issue in the realm of justification and argument, and effectively places the burden of justifying denial of membership on the state authorities. It seems clear that international law generally does not privilege extravagant assertions of belonging, but places individual preferences in the context of reason and argument while discouraging interference with private choices. In some contexts, notably in connection with indigenous peoples, the continued viability or coherence of the group is a pertinent consideration. International standards should be understood in the light of contemporary perceptions of the fluidity of identity, to which may be added the possibility of changes in individual self-perception. Considerable violence to principle would be done by attempting to lock individuals permanently into ethnic boxes even when these are the result of initial choices (Kukathas 1995). Communities and rights A second issue with implications for loyalty is how to devise a technique of rights that both allows and limits self-expression – raising the question of individual and collective rights. International rights pertaining to minorities have generally opted to follow the path of individual or personal rights rather than a corporate conception of group rights – which could be applied against members of the group as well as being available for its external protection. So even if the object of the instrument is conceived as that of group protection the validated rightholder is the individual. Accordingly, the Framework Convention’s title and preamble outline the object of the Convention as the effective protection of national minorities, affirming the value of cultural diversity. The object of protection is conceived in holistic terms – protection of national minorities. On the other hand, the language of rights is strongly personalist: rights of persons are the medium through which the objective of protection is to be achieved. The

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dichotomy between the beneficiaries of protection and the ascription of rights is a commonplace of contemporary texts on minority rights, while instruments on indigenous peoples exhibit a stronger preference for the collective in the ascription of rights. The hand of state control and pressure is clearly evident in the individualization of minority rights. Separatist sentiment Minority rights stay clear of self-determination, at least in formal terms, while intellectually there may be considerable slippage between ‘minority’ (no right of self-determination per se) and ‘people’ (right of self-determination), and in practical terms a minority may aspire to secession and independence. Rights of the indigenous, at least embryonically, are shaped in terms of self-determination, though indigenous groups often point out that control over interactions with the outside world, rather than secession, is the aim. One element in the leverage exercised by states over the development of contemporary human rights is the lacuna when it comes to self-determination, since international law, whatever it is, is not a suicide club for states. Outside the colonial context, and in more vague terms, in consequence of gross violations of human rights such as genocide there is no general right to external self-determination – to break away from existing state structures. Internal self-determination is another matter, and the case for its acceptance as a principle of international law is strong, even as its prescriptions are vague – participation by the demos in processes of governance, or just ‘democracy’. While the spectre of secession may disturb any government, in some cases it is bundled together with other challenges to national unity, raising particular issues for states that opt for a homogeneous national concept. Two among many recent cases involving Turkey before the European Court of Human Rights call up the ghosts in a vivid manner. In United Communist Party of Turkey (UCPT) and Others v. Turkey,3 the applicant party (the UCPT) contested the party’s dissolution by the Turkish Constitutional Court. The state’s application to the Constitutional Court claimed that the UCPT sought to establish the domination of one social class over the others, had included the word ‘communist’ in its name, and had carried on activities likely to undermine the territorial integrity of the state and the unity of the nation. The Constitutional Court rejected the state prosecutor’s submissions on the first issue, but upheld the others on the grounds that Turkey was unitary, indivisible and there was only one nation. The Court averred that by asserting the existence of ‘two nations’ in Turkey, Turks and Kurds, the UCPT’s programme ‘was intended to create minorities, to the detriment of the unity of the Turkish nation’. The Court decided that there had been a violation of Article 11, agreeing with the European Commission of Human Rights that political parties were within its protection even if their activities ‘are regarded by the national authorities as undermining the constitutional structures of the State’. The Court was impressed by the UCPT’s commitment to peaceful and democratic debate on the ‘national’ question, as expressed through its documentation,

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observing that one of the principal characteristics of democracy is the possibility it offers of resolving a country’s problems through dialogue. In Freedom and Democracy Party (OZDEP) v. Turkey,4 the applicant party was dissolved because it was alleged to have promoted terrorism and advocated the creation of a Kurdish state. The programme of the party made a number of references to the right of ‘our peoples’ (Turks and Kurds) to self-determination, to ‘oppressed peoples’ and so on, stating that it ‘will fully respect the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination so that a democratic solution [to Turkey’s difficulties] based on the self-determination and equality of peoples can be found’.5 In finding a violation of Article 11, the Court read OZDEP’s programme as reflecting something like a concept of ‘internal self-determination’ (Cassese 1995), in line with developments elsewhere in international law: The passages in issue present a political project whose aim is in essence the establishment – in accordance with democratic rules – of ‘a social order encompassing the Turkish and Kurdish peoples’…. It is true that in its programme OZDEP also refers to the right of self-determination of the ‘national or religious minorities’; however, taken in context, these words do not encourage people to seek separation from Turkey but are intended instead to emphasize that the proposed political project must be underpinned by the freely given, democratically expressed, consent of the Kurds.6 It is clear from this that the overriding principle preferred by the Court is the protection and advancement of democracy, and that the preferred form of democracy is that which offers participatory structures to relevant groups or peoples. The Court has stated that democracy is the only political model contemplated by the Convention, and that the preferred form of democracy is pluralistic and deliberative (Koh and Shue 1999).

Non-citizens The question of the citizenship of minorities has troubled the development of international standards. In the Framework Convention there is no formal requirement for minorities to have the citizenship of the state, so that the text may also be described as relatively open in this respect, even if state practice is often narrower. In principle, human rights are the prerogative of all, and not just of the citizen. There are pockets where citizenship is required for their exercise, notably in the political realm, and there has been caution in extending rights principles to each and every category of person under all circumstances. However, standards of human rights in general have been faithful to their universalist or cosmopolitan inspiration. A key expression of the cosmopolitan approach to human rights and the non-citizen is the principle of non-discrimination. The general UN standard-setting treaty in this respect is the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which emerged in the 1960s but is still very much in force. Despite its universal

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reach, the Convention is cautious on the citizenship question. For example, Article 1.2 provides that it ‘shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences between citizens and non-citizens’. However, distinguishing between various groups of non-citizens on racial grounds will clearly engage the prohibitions of the Convention. In General Recommendation XI (1993), CERD reminds states parties that Article 1.2 must not be interpreted to detract from rights and freedoms enunciated in other instruments – that is, it must respect the broad cosmopolitan imperative of human rights and not lower general standards of protection. In recent years CERD has made explicit observations on the basis of possible discrimination against non-citizens to many European and other governments (Weissbrodt 2002: paras. 3–17). Much of the Committee’s work is now taken up with ‘population-flow’ questions, despite the provision cited above. The CERD mandate clearly comes into its own when formal or ostensible citizen/non-citizen distinctions made by governments have the effect of distinguishing in practice between racial and ethnic groups in violation of the Convention. International standards explicitly cover asylum-seekers, refugees and migrant workers, but, implicitly, all the human-rights bodies have drifted into a jurisprudence to address the non-citizen. The European Convention on Human Rights has developed an extensive canon of practice in the area of arrest and trial, detention, and deportation of aliens, as well as in the areas of family, privacy, freedom of expression and political participation.7 The question of the non-citizen and Europe has become a pressing matter, particularly in the light of immigration from outside Europe and the cultural and other questions thereby raised, not just by the assassinated Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn targeted in particular immigrants of a fundamentalist persuasion, notably adherents of Islam, who challenged the liberalism of Dutch society. However, his points are racist at least in part – the Netherlands has its Christian fundamentalists, who do not appear to have been targeted, and intolerance is not the prerogative of any particular religion or ethnicity. One may sense a racist aura in many such arguments. Clashes between universal human-rights principles and restrictive policies of fortress states are probably only in their infancy: states will resist the implications of ‘racism’, and human-rights bodies will not, it is hoped, lose their courage in pointing it out. The race implications of globalization are now a major preoccupation. ‘Culture’ is now added to the racist armoury as a kind of disloyalty to Western ideals, even when many expressing those ideals do not put them into practice. International norms suggest mediation and dialogue, and there are probably enough standards in the canon to make the process meaningful.

The terrorist and the patriot In the wake of the attack on America with the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, in the UN-proclaimed Year of Dialogue among Civilizations,8 we were treated to a jumble of discourses. Media favourites have included war, just war, jihad, crusade, clash of civilizations, terrorism, Islamic

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terrorism, the defence of democracy, and Manichean discourses such as the ‘axis of evil’ speech of US President Bush. Some of these public discourses were swiftly dropped, notably President Bush’s deployment of the term ‘crusade’ (Williams 2001), one capable of evoking the demons of history in the Middle East. Statesmen also took pains to avoid the hypotheses of wars of religion (for example Blair 2001) and ‘the clash of civilizations’ (Huntington 1993), and even though the prime minister of Italy expressed confidence in the superiority of the West he issued a (partial) retraction soon afterwards. Triumphalism was to be avoided but remains a temptation for Western leaders and publics. The events of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington also contributed mightily to the development of loyalty discourses in many countries. The developments are summed up by a UN special rapporteur on terrorism: Since 11 September 2001 the fight against terrorism has become one of the priorities for all intergovernmental systems…as well as for a number of countries…in the aftermath of 11 September…this fight…has experienced a staggering acceleration. Significant legislative and other measures and decisions have been taken at the national and international levels. A great many initiatives are also underway…in particular with regard to the definition of the crime of terrorism, legal cooperation and extradition, restrictions on the right to seek asylum. (Koufa 2002: para. 17) UN work on terrorism was already well established before 2001. For example, there were already some 12 UN conventions dealing with various aspects of terrorism; four of the conventions are connected with aviation.9 Two conventions have entered into force recently – against terrorist bombings and on the financing of terrorism (ibid.: para. 34). The major developments of the day are the reactivation of the work of the Ad Hoc Committee established pursuant to General Assembly resolution 51/210 of 1996 to elaborate a comprehensive convention on international terrorism and, a fortiori, Security Council resolution 1373 (2001). After 11 September, Security Council resolution 1373 led to the setting up of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the Security Council, which by the end of May 2002 had received reports from 160 states and the European Union. Within the 1373 framework, many states have either adopted new criminal legislation or are in process of doing so (ibid.: para. 29). Developments following the resolution may place a considerable strain on human rights. In one segment of the resolution, the blending of identities into one dangerous ‘other’ is particularly manifest in the paragraphs whereby states are asked to take appropriate measures in conformity with national and international law, including international humanrights standards, before granting refugee status, for the purpose of ensuring that the asylum-seeker had not planned, facilitated or participated in the commission of terrorist acts, and to ensure that refugee status was not abused by the perpetrators (and so on) of terrorist acts. Of course, the reference to human-rights law

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is welcome, but the provisions will clearly strain the fabric in relation to ‘others’ from outside the realm, in case they should destroy it from within. In Human Rights: A Uniting Framework, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, among many voices of concern, stated that Despite global uncertainty, it is essential for everybody to uphold the universal human rights standards that were created collectively. Acts, methods and practices of terrorism aim at the destruction of these standards. That is why it is essential that all States implement the operational measures sought by the Security Council…in a manner consistent with human rights. At the same time, building a durable global human rights culture, by asserting the value and worth of every human being, is essential if terrorism is to be eliminated. In other words, the promotion and protection of human rights should be at the centre of the strategy to counter terrorism.10

Human rights and the stranger The brief sketches of three ‘others’ above illustrate some of the ways in which overweening demands for loyalty are contestable from a human-rights standpoint. In the case of the ethnic or other claiming community, the lines are drawn very much in favour of the integrity of the state. Although there is no prohibition of self-determination as secession, there is a battery of contextualizing norms that make claims very difficult to sustain. The end result of the freewheeling breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union has not been the adoption of a sanctified norm of secession on an ethnic basis. On the contrary, approaches are, if anything, more cautious and moderated. The tendency – naturally favoured by most states – is towards so-called internal self-determination, and (perhaps the same thing) towards pluralist and participatory democracy. Unitary, homogenizing states are gradually loosening the structures to permit this diversity – though, as the case of Turkey shows, such a process may cause enormous strain. States have not, however, entirely succeeded in exorcising the ghost of collective rights, which arise as natural expressions of group claims. Neither has the state entirely succeeded in monopolizing identity in cultural terms, where selfidentification is increasingly recognized as a norm. The question of denying group existence increasingly slips from the control of the state, as doughty defenders of the ‘no minority’ position are exposed to international and domestic criticism. Resilient principles of international law – such as ‘the existence of minorities is a question of fact, not a question of law’ – may assist particular dialogic outcomes. Total denials of group existence emerge uneasily in an age replete with examples of wanton destruction of populations in the light of some dehumanizing or genocidal project or other. Consequently, recognition of diversity within states is increasingly reflected in constitutions and laws, and such expressions of acceptance of diversity are welcomed by international bodies. Recognizing the legitimacy of self-ascription as a member of an ethnic group

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and at the same time accepting that such identification does not expel individuals from the ‘nation’ may ameliorate the stresses of divided loyalties, facilitating the emergence of fresh and empowering paradigms of identity. In the case of the immigrant or asylum-seeker, existing principles of international law have come under considerable pressure, in the light of moves to protect economies from overt or incipient racism and xenophobia, or, more charitably, in the light of attempts to defend local communities from the negative effects of globalization. International awareness of the non-citizen issue is pronounced, but action is relatively limited and constraints on state action arguably less effective; in addition, the cosmopolitanism of human rights is only imperfectly expressed in the area of citizenship, which still manifests elements of reserved domain. Nevertheless, the human-rights framework contains powerful moral and practical principles, such as the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of race, colour and so on, which must be accounted for in government readings of the boundaries of the permissible. The amorphousness of the ‘racial discrimination’ concept is both a hindrance and a help, in that while state practices may have racial overtones there is usually the possibility of denying them, using arguments of economics, protection of local wage levels, avoidance of overcrowding and so on. Discrimination, it should also be remembered, does not prohibit every distinction one might make between populations, but only arbitrary and indefensible distinctions which have the clear effect of lowering the human-rights treatment of affected groups. The regulation of migration is one of the challenges of the age, and there are many advances on international and domestic fronts. Issues are difficult in the Pim Fortuyn situation, when incomers bring with them values allegedly inconsistent with the values of the host nation. This must, however, also be set in a human-rights context: standards are not committed to entirely free expression in the fields of culture and religion; there are limits, admittedly fluid, which should be respected. The mordant wit might even argue that the corpus of human rights is almost as rich in limitations as it is in positive principle. Loyalty to the host country should not be demanded to a higher standard of the noncitizen than of the citizen, although when citizenship is granted to the immigrant normal incidents of that citizenship will apply, and the human-rights principles couple the maintenance of a distinct identity with rights to facilitate participation in the new society. Matters are at their most difficult when, as observed in the introduction to this chapter, the two figures above merge into the third – the terrorist, the ‘shadow of the gunman’. It is not inherently surprising that Security Council resolutions should call for special caution in relation to immigrants and asylum-seekers, though in the case of the USA, or indeed any threatened state, terrorism from within may engage the authorities as much as terrorism from without. Terrorism and patriotism issues did not commence with 11 September and will outlast its effects. Nevertheless, the post-11 September situation has produced a raft of new legislation and practice in many states, including the lugubrious Patriot Act in the USA (Herman 2002) and the extension of the discriminatory practice of ‘racial profiling’ to the ‘ethnic profiling’ of immigrants from selected (mostly

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Arab) countries.11 Human-rights organizations report increases in arrests and detention of suspects, which cannot always be exempted from the taint of racism. ‘Separatists’ feel the lash of reaction: the ‘war against terrorism’ facilitates the settling of domestic scores and the turning of blind eyes. Burdens fall disproportionately on immigrants, on those who are different, on those who question authority, on those who claim self-determination. In the interests of a largely illusory ‘security’, formerly liberal policies give way to automatic detention at points of entry, expulsions follow detention, and public opinion is brought into line to recognize new and amorphous ‘threats’, conflating, where convenient, ‘within’ and ‘without’. Patriotism, doubtless in line with a ruling political conception, becomes the order of the day; the boundaries of disloyalty are correspondingly enlarged, the ghosts of Salem haunt the congress of politics and witchcraft stalks the unwary. The human-rights response to all this must be as diversified as the threats to its fabric. The indivisibility of human rights should be the axiom, especially because it addresses the nexus between denial of economic and social rights and the emergence of terrorism. One of the contexts for the rage in the Islamic world is the perception of the double standards of Western powers. There is, for example, little or no cloak of legality for the continuation of aggressive Allied actions in Iraq – predating the 2002 crisis – or for Israel in relation to the Palestinians. The commitment of the West to spreading democracy is not inconsistent with toppling inconvenient regimes. What we do has effects in the world, whether we speak of the acts of persons or states. Terrorists do not emerge out of a pure fog of hatred of freedom and democracy. There are reasons; there are contexts for understanding which can co-exist with condemnation of acts of terror. We are not witnessing a war of religious inspiration, but the (internally contested) use of Islam as a language of the dispossessed (Bruce 2002). Justice encompasses social justice, including the eradication of profound social inequalities and deprivations. Rights talk can in turn be linked to an ethic of responsibility (ICISS 2001) – a responsibility to care, a responsibility to protect and to provide the conditions for human flourishing. It seems that in some regions all they hear from the West is the mirthless laugh, Beckett’s (2001) risus purus, ‘the laugh that laughs – silence please – at that which is unhappy’. Threats to the fabric of human rights require a vigilant and active civil society and a principled response on the part of human-rights professionals. In her report to the UN on terrorism and human rights, Koufa hints at a trahison des clercs in more than one paragraph, whereby unnamed ‘scholars are now defending positions that would have been considered unreasonable…a year ago, positions strongly rejecting many of the basic principles of international law, international human-rights law and humanitarian law’ (Koufa 2002: para. 61). We are not helped in this by the emergence of a unipolar world, especially one in which a superpower adopts an apparently rejectionist course threatening the authority of the rule of international law. Neither are we assisted by the blighted autonomy of an international human-rights law still so intimately bound up with the state, so dependent on the state for its existence as a fact in the world, so

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threatened when the clerks of the law fulfil their calling as apologists for the state (Koskenniemi 1989), obsequious to the last. ‘Loyalty’ is a member of a family, a sibling of ‘fealty’, ‘allegiance’, ‘fidelity’ and other relatives. It is a family resemblance – the terms are not synonymous. If ‘fealty’ is essentially feudal, and ‘allegiance’ has a mostly political connotation, ‘loyalty’ is closer to ‘fidelity’, except that it is more completely personalized and may suggest devotion. In essence, we recognize a profoundly personal commitment when we speak of loyalty – to a person, nation or institution. As Devetak notes in Chapter 2, we may also recall the genealogy of ‘loyalty’: Latin legalis, and Old French loialté among the forebears, emphasizing a law-like aspect, a normativity. If its ideal type is monolithic, language permits us to recognize the strain and anguish of divided or conflicting loyalties, which may or may not be reconcilable. In our distressed and changing world, issues of divided loyalty characterize a modern or postmodern condition, a Zeitgeist, and represent real human dilemmas for vast numbers of people.

Conclusion The present chapter has focused on attempts by the state to monopolize and render productive the loyalty of citizens, situating such attempts in a humanrights frame, appraising some techniques and principles of contestation. Apart from the fact that much reactive legislation carries inherent dangers, it should be clear that there cannot in human-rights principle be grounds for demanding a higher loyalty from some groups over others, and that human rights are not premised on any such professions. Nor should the sentimental aspect of loyalty be forgotten – love of state and nation is not simply to be commanded; rather, it must be earned. The chapter also scratches the notion of loyalty to human rights, whatever that may be, at least partially in detachment from the facilitating and destroying state; such an incipient loyalty may feel better to the wearer when human rights do not degenerate into an ethnocentric projection.12 Perhaps the human rights to which this appeal is made are, in their best light, no more than a discourse of recognition and respect of an inclusive humanity, refusing to close the gates of loyalty in the faces of others, keeping in mind that, in Lyotard’s words, ‘what makes human beings alike is the fact that every human being carries within…the figure of the other. The likeness they have in common follows from the difference of each from each’ (Lyotard 1993: 136).

Notes 1 Greco-Bulgarian Communities case, Permanent Court of International Justice (Series B, No. 17), 1930. 2 General Recommendation VIII 1990; text in UN Doc. CERD/C/365. 3 No. 19392/92, Judgment of 30 January 1998. 4 No. 23885/94, Judgment of 8 December 1999. 5 Judgment, para. 8. The Constitutional Court, in dissolving OZDEP, made the interesting observation that the Turkish Constitution ‘did not preclude the celebration of

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difference but forbade propaganda based on racial difference…aimed at destroying the constitutional order’ (Judgment, para. 14; emphasis added). Judgment, para. 41. European Convention on Human Rights, Add. 2, paras. 23–57. The United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1998 – by resolution 53/22, November 1998, reaffirmed by resolution 54/113 of February 2000. Convention on Offences and Certain other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft 1963 (the Tokyo Convention); Convention for the Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, 1970 (The Hague Convention); Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation, 1971 (The Montreal Convention); Protocol on the Suppression of Unlawful Violence at Airports, etc., 1988. Human Rights: A Uniting Framework, para. 55. ‘Arabs and Muslims Fingerprinted at American Airports’, Guardian, 2 October 2002. Consider the case decided by the European Court of Human Rights in July 2001, Refah Partisi (The Welfare Party) and Others v. Turkey. Here, the Welfare Party, which had been dissolved by the Turkish Constitutional Court, had, through its leader Erbakan and others, proposed the abolition of secularism in Turkey and its replacement by a plurality of jurisdiction-exercising religious communities (legal systems) and the introduction of Sharia (Islamic) law for Muslims. In a sweeping statement on the Sharia, the Court asserted (para. 72) that It is difficult to declare one’s respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on Sharia, which clearly diverges from Convention values, particularly with regard to its criminal law and criminal procedure, its rules on the legal status of women and the way it intervenes in all spheres of private and public life in accordance with religious precepts…. In the Court’s view, a political party whose actions seem to be aimed at introducing Sharia in a State party can hardly be regarded as an association complying with the democratic ideal that underlies the whole of the Convention.

Bibliography Beckett, S. (2001) Watt, cited in Jonathan Swift: Poems Selected by Derek Mahon, London: Faber & Faber: xvii–xviii. Blair, A. (2001) Speech to Parliament on 4 October, available at http://www.pm.gov.uk/ news. Bruce, S. (2002) Fundamentalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Capotorti, F. (1991) Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, New York: United Nations. Cassese, A. (1995) Self-Determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, R. (1999) ‘The Making of Ethnicity: A Modest Defence of Primordialism’, in E. Mortimer and R. Fine (eds) People, Nation and State: The Meaning of Ethnicity and Nationalism, London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Herman, S. (2002) ‘The USA Patriot Act and the US Department of Justice: Losing Our Balances?’, Jurist: The Legal Education Website, available at http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ forum. Huntington, S. (1993) ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, Foreign Affairs 72(3): 22–49. ICISS (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty) (2001) The Responsibility to Protect, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.

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Koh, H.H. and R.C. Shue (1999) Deliberative Democracy and Human Rights, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. Koskenniemi, M. (1989) From Apology to Utopia, Helsinki: Lakimiesliiton Kustannus. Koufa, K. (2002) Terrorism and Human Rights, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2002/35. Kukathas, C. (1995) ‘Are there any Cultural Rights?’, in W. Kymlicka (ed.) The Rights of Minority Cultures, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lyotard, J.-F. (1993) ‘The Other’s Rights’, in S. Shute and S. Hurley (eds) On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993, New York: Basic Books. Martinez-Cobo, J. (1986) Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1986/7/Add.4. Packer, J. (1993) ‘On the Definition of Minorities’, in J. Packer and K. Myntti (eds) The Protection of Ethnic and Linguistic Minorities in Europe, Abo/Turku: Abo Akademi University. Thornberry, P. (1991) International Law and the Rights of Minorities, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Weissbrodt, D. (2002) The Rights of Non-Citizens, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2002/25/ Add.1. Williams, H. (2001) ‘Crusade is a Dirty Word’, The Guardian, 19 September.

7

Divided loyalties, empowered citizenship? Muslims in Britain Pnina Werbner

Diaspora and Islam By definition, a diaspora is a transnational network of dispersed subjects, connected by ties of co-responsibility across the boundaries of empires, political communities or (in a world of nation-states) nations. Diasporas are thus deterritorialized, and yet complexly spatialized, imagined communities whose members conceive of themselves despite their dispersal as sharing a collective past and common destiny, and hence also a simultaneity in time.1 In existing beyond the nation-state, with its fixed boundaries and clearly defined categories of inclusion and exclusion, of participatory rights and duties, citizenship and loyalty, diasporas as scattered, uncontained and uncontainable minorities have historically been the target of racialized and xenophobic nationalist imaginings. Thus Jews in the diaspora were conceived in the racist imagination as the nefarious leaders of both communist and capitalist international conspiracies, a hidden, malignant presence in the body politic of the pure nation. More recently such imaginaries have been transposed by the extreme right on to the new Muslim diasporic presence in Europe. Writing about Scandinavia, Tore Bjorgo reports that in its racist discourses migrants and asylum-seekers are represented by the Scandinavian right as ‘pioneers’ in a Muslim army of conquest. According to this theory, the ‘socalled refugees’ have come to establish ‘bridgeheads’ for Islam in Norway. This is part of an evil Muslim conspiracy to establish global Islamic rule. (Bjorgo 1997: 60) For Scandinavian neo-nazis, the plot is even thicker: ‘Immigration is presented as a strategic weapon in the hand of “the Jews” in their ongoing race war against “the Aryans”’ (ibid.: 62).The neo-nazi assumption is thus of an alliance between Jews and Muslims in which the latter have become the instruments of a Jewish will to global domination. Although such conspiracy theories are openly expressed only by a small minority in Europe and the West today, there are other, apparently more acceptable, discourses which nevertheless presume an irreconcilable and unbridgeable

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cultural, if not racial, gulf between ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’. Political scientists such as Huntington, for example, have argued that in the aftermath of the cold war the real confrontation lines in a globalizing world, ‘far more fundamental than differences among political ideologies and political regimes’ (Huntington 1993: 25), will be ‘civilizational’, in particular religious (ibid.), above all between Islam and the West (ibid.: 25). If Orientalism by Edward Said (1978) critically deconstructed false occidental stereotypical discourses of a monolithic Islam, such an essentializing oppositional dualism between Islam and the West continues to be invoked as a political reality of the present moment, the product of inescapable historical animosities and currently incompatible political cultures or basic moral and social assumptions: In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to central Asia…. Islam has bloody borders. (Huntington 1993: 35; emphasis added) From a Muslim perspective, a similarly unbridgeable, apparently eternal, opposition is invoked in an ambivalent discourse of hubris and defensiveness. In this narrative Islam is constructed as both victim and last remaining adversary of a hegemonic, dominant West (Ahmed 1992; Malik 1996). Since the Rushdie affair, Westerners have come to be constructed as secretly harbouring a medievalinspired vision of implacable enmity between Christendom and Islam; an alleged Western demonization invoked by the Muslim press and in the speeches of local Pakistani subaltern activists in Britain (Werbner 1994). Since the Iranian revolution a corresponding demonization of the West has marked the discourses of global Muslim leaders such as the Ayatollah Khomeini or Saddam Hussein. Fear of Muslims, Islamophobia, takes more quotidian forms as well, of course, embedded in stereotypical assumptions and pronouncements regarding the status of women in Islam, arranged marriages or the inherently fanatical, violent and irrational tendencies of Muslim leaders and their followers (on Islamophobia, see Runnymede Trust 1997). The further point of such discourses is that these alien qualities and attributes have come to be implanted in the Western body itself, no longer simply confined to its ‘bloody boundaries’ but extending within and across them. A substantial Muslim diasporic presence has emerged in Europe and the West, and even some Western liberals, who pride themselves on their enlightened tolerance, appear concerned about the capacity of this culturally alien presence, as they see it, to ‘integrate’. Indeed, Charles Taylor, in advocating a ‘politics of recognition’, excludes Muslims from straightforward incorporation into the multicultural consensus on the grounds that ‘[f]or mainstream Islam, there is no question of separating politics and religion the way we have come to expect in Western liberal society’ (Taylor 1994: 62). Such doubts have surfaced especially since the Rushdie affair, the Gulf War and, most recently, 11 September, all of which seemed to expose the chasm between so-

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called Western ‘values’ and Islamic ones. (In the Gulf War Muslims in Britain expressed open support for Saddam Hussein.)

9/11 11 September 2001 was, in the perception of the West, cataclysmic. In appearing to threaten the world order it generated a Manichean discourse of good and evil. Muslims settled in the West were in danger of being scapegoated for the crisis. In Britain the news that young British Pakistanis had joined the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan led to a debate about whether these young men should be tried for treason or some other criminal offence.2 The debate reflected a growing moral panic about the limits of liberal multiculturalism. As Hugo Young, a journalist for the Guardian newspaper, put it, multiculturalism, can now be seen as a useful bible for any Muslim who insists that his religiocultural priorities, including the defence of jihad against America, override his civic duties of loyalty, tolerance, justice and respect for democracy. (Hugo Young, Guardian, 6 November 2001: 18) Counter-statements by Muslim leaders that these young radicals were merely a tiny, unrepresentative minority failed to convince fully, pitched as they were against reports of widespread support by British Muslims for the Taliban (4 in 10 thought it right to fight for them according to a Sunday Times poll reported in the Mirror3), almost total condemnation by Muslims in Britain of the war in Afghanistan (as many as 80–100 per cent were reported to be against the war, in different surveys), widespread perception that the war was an attack on Islam and equally pervasive denial that the West had proved its case against bin-Laden. Following the revelations of the antagonisms of young Muslims in the West to the Western alliance, the ‘loyalty debate’ in Britain took on a momentum of its own, carried forward by surveys, TV forums, radio phone-ins and newspaper letter columns. An Asian weekly, Eastern Eye, attempting to counter such claims of disloyalty, announced as its front-page caption in giant letters that ‘British Asians are Proud to be British’. This followed a survey in which Asians and Muslims were asked if they felt ‘loyal’ to Britain. About 90 per cent claimed that they did.4 British ministers such as the Home Office Secretary David Blunkett unveiled schemes for new immigrant education in citizenship and warned of the need to disperse Muslim ‘ghettoes’.5 Another minister, Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, cautioned that religious schools ‘must integrate in the community’.6 Such authoritarian state responses gloss over the tragic predicament of a diaspora caught between deeply felt loyalties at a historical moment not of its own making. Most British Muslims witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers on television, sitting in their living rooms, with the same helpless sense of horror as Western spectators. As it emerged that it had been organized by an obscure Islamist, Osama bin-Laden, and his al-Qaeda clandestine global network,

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it seemed that the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West predicted by Huntington had finally materialized. At that moment diaspora Muslims in the West became symbolic victims of a global mythology, caught in a spiral of alienation and ambivalent identifications that no local protestations of innocence could counter. Since 9/11, global images of terror have invaded every home in Britain, France, Germany and the US. They reveal the terrible vulnerability of Muslim diaspora communities in the West, who are susceptible to being essentialized as fanatical and irrational, a potential fifth column in a clash of civilizations. In the past British Pakistani Muslims had always been a vocal minority, demanding equal citizenship rights, never afraid to speak their minds even if their opinions – support for the Iranian fatwa against Salman Rushdie or for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War – were out of line with British popular sentiments. They felt sufficiently secure in Britain to express their political opinions, however contentious, without fear. Indeed, in their own public arenas, in the diasporic public sphere they had created for themselves, British Muslims articulated familiar visions of apocalyptic battles between Islam and the West, especially the USA, the source of all evil. So, too, they used Islamist rhetoric to attack Middle Eastern regimes, criticizing them for their corruption and weakness in the face of the West.7 But the scale of the devastation in New York City initially silenced them. Nevertheless, as American bombing in Afghanistan assumed its fearful, monotonous pounding, so familiar from Vietnam, Cambodia or the Gulf War, and as scenes of wounded Afghan refugees and on-the-ground devastation filled television screens, the usual British Muslim transnational identity politics, with its anti-American and anti-Arab regime rhetoric, reasserted itself, but with one important difference. This time the diaspora joined a growing British peace movement critical of the war or the way it was being fought. Muslims could share the same anti-American, anti-war rhetoric with others in the society. Rather than being seen as deviant and out on a limb, diasporic Muslims succeeded in creating alliances with local activists – the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the English left, anti-globalization lobbyists, pacifists. Muslim, mostly Pakistani, spokespersons were young and articulate. But the sentiments and discourses had not really changed. Global images of terror, violence and fanaticism are contagious. As the world watched bin-Laden and the Taliban condemning the West and calling for its destruction, or witnessed Muslim crowds in Pakistan and the Middle East burning American flags and Bush effigies in a violent display of hatred, it was hard for ordinary Englishmen and women not to associate these images with their Asian Muslim neighbours next door. Nevertheless, a Guardian/ICM poll found that 82 per cent of Britons had not changed their feelings towards British Muslims and 88 per cent thought it unfair to link them to the terror attacks, according to an NOP/Daily Telegraph survey (Guardian, 12 October 2001: 4). Tony Blair, the British prime minister, stepped in at the very start of the crisis to declare that Islam was a religion of peace and that the Koran did not condone

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suicide bombings. The battle was not, he assured Muslims and the public at large, between the West and Islam, but against a small number of evil individuals, terrorists. By now Huntington’s clash of civilizations – or its denial – had become the jargon of politicians and the media. In denying the validity of this dualistic vision, whether seen from a Western orientalist perspective, or a Muslim occidentalist one8, the aim of the present chapter is twofold: first, to highlight the rise of an alternative contemporary debate about the rights and obligations of Muslims as minorities which is currently animating Muslim and Western scholars, clerics and activists; and, second, to argue that Muslim diasporic transnational mobilization, including even the conflicts surrounding the Rushdie affair, the Gulf War or the war in Afghanistan, have been key moments in the development of a Muslim British civic consciousness and capacity for active citizenship. Far from revealing ambiguous loyalties or unbridgeable cultural chasms, British Muslim transnational loyalties have challenged the national polity, I argue, to explore new forms of multiculturalism and to work for new global human-rights causes. At the same time, such mobilizations have been part of the learning process of becoming a politically effective diaspora. In the long run, then, the Muslim diasporic presence in Britain is a potentially enriching one, and particularly so as the state moves to becoming a post-national, multicultural polity.

(Dis)loyalty to the post-national state Of course, the question of exclusive national loyalty or patriotism, self-evident in an age of nationalism, has been rendered ambiguous by the globalizing thrust of late modernity and its continuous blurring of national boundaries. When T.H. Marshall formulated his theory of citizenship in the 1950s (Marshall 1950) it was still possible to conceive of the liberal state as commanding the state economy for the sake of all citizens, within a single, circumscribed national ‘community’. By the late twentieth century it was no longer just economic migrants or transnational diasporics that challenged the all-embracing validity of national boundaries; multinationals, the press and media, the entertainment industry, international feminist or green movements, human-rights groups, terrorist organizations, website subscribers, publishers, tourists, the UN, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and international peace courts all now transcend or transgress national boundaries. None of these groups and institutions is exclusively loyal to its polities or national causes. Many of them use international networks with the aim of mobilizing support for the sake of achieving internal national reform. Moreover, in an age of relative peace, armies are no longer people’s armies and, with the collapse of communism, they are increasingly becoming professional organizations, remote from the daily concerns of most citizens. Patriotism and national loyalty now sound like the archaisms of a lost past. In these circumstances, short of being a paid spy or terrorist, what could it possibly mean to be disloyal to the nation? On the surface, 9/11, the Rushdie

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affair and the Gulf War all highlighted, in quite different ways, the possibility of such disloyalty and the limits of national tolerance. In the Rushdie affair, Muslims in Britain came close to denying the jurisdiction of British law when they supported the Ayatollah Khomeini’s death sentence against the author – on the grounds that apostasy was punishable by death according to the Koran. They appeared to endorse a fundamental assumption in Islam that the law of God takes precedence over manmade laws. Moreover, the law they invoked was a drastic negation of enlightened legal norms and values. Not only did it deny the sanctity of free speech; it also seemed to deny the right to freedom of religious conscience on which Muslims’ own citizenship in Britain rested. After 9/11 the majority of British Muslims supported the Taliban (at least initially) and some were even willing to go and fight for them, against the Allied forces. Yet whether these young men would be charged with treason remained an open question. The overwhelming tendency was to regard them as young and ‘misguided’. In the case of the Rushdie affair, against the construction of an unbridgeable clash of values, it has been argued that at stake was not the sacrosanct nature of British law or even freedom of speech. In Britain, neither is absolute (see Lee 1990; Wilson 1991). Indeed, in a post-national era rights activists deny the absolute jurisdiction of any national law that attacks basic human rights. Moreover, Muslim law itself has always been subject to interpretation and reinterpretation, and it is doubtful whether Koranic injunctions about apostasy are as absolute as the Ayatollah’s fatwa seemed to imply. Sadik J. AlAzm, a Syrian scholar, makes the point that a fatwa’s most common function is the circumvention of the application of the letter of the law to avoid unnecessary injury to life, limb, property, family, community, and so on. This is why a good mufti is invariably a bad Muslim. (Al-Azm 1991: 21) It was the unprocedural way in which the so-called fatwa was issued, without the usual lengthy legal reasoning normally expected, that made it so hard, Al-Azm argues, for the fatwa to be rescinded (ibid.). In fact, despite this limitation the Iranian government in 1998 revoked the death sentence against Rushdie. We need also to remember that the main protestors against the author and novel, South Asian Muslims, were convinced at the outset of the affair that there existed in Britain a law banning books likely to stir religious hatred, such as the one passed in 1924 under the Raj in British India and retained after independence in postcolonial South Asia (see Metcalf 1996: 14). The issue was thus not, ultimately, a legal one at all. The affair was (and to some extent remains) a political confrontation over the symbolic status of Islam in the world and in Britain, a matter of honour and shame, a judgement against a perceived act of communal betrayal and treachery, of diasporic disloyalty. Rushdie, a cunning and sneaky traitor, a sell-out who had insulted his community by ridiculing its sacred symbols, deserved to die.

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At the beginning of the affair, during 1989, British Muslims were not only hurt and enraged by the novel; they also felt responsible to the transnational Muslim ummah for the author’s act of perfidy. By late 1990, however, matters had changed radically: I was told by Pakistani friends that there was little Muslims in Britain could do about Rushdie. They were obliged, as UK citizens, to abide by the law of the land. This, they explained, was laid out by Islamic law itself (even though, they added, if Rushdie had been in a Muslim state he would still deserve to die). This realization was part of a growing debate, as we shall see, regarding the status and conduct of Muslim minorities in the West. Like the Rushdie affair, open public support for Saddam Hussein or Osama bin-Laden cannot be construed simply as acts of Muslim disloyalty, either to Britain or Pakistan (both countries were members of the international alliance). It was, however, undoubtedly a gesture of protest: against the pusillanimity of corrupt, undemocratic Muslim regimes in the Gulf; against Western greed and double standards, and particularly US support for Israel’s persistent refusal to fulfil United Nations (UN) resolutions regarding Palestinian rights. Osama binLaden and Saddam Hussein became heroes because they were willing to stand up to and resist the West9, acts that the president of Iraq repeated once again, even more successfully, in 1998. Although their motives were in several ways quite different, there were many Western activists other than Muslims who also protested against the war (see Norris 1992). Yet Muslims were perceived as a potential fifth column by some: mosques were daubed with graffiti, while Arab residents were rounded up by MI5.10 It is perhaps significant that during all these international crises, despite the openly vocal, public protests by British Pakistanis, it was North Africans, Palestinians and other Middle Eastern Arabs, including Iraqis and Iranians, who continued to be regarded as prime suspects by the security forces. No Pakistani was arrested, not even Kalim Siddiqui, leader of the Islamic Party of Great Britain, who had close links with Iran, even though he called openly for the death of Salman Rushdie in several public meetings in Britain (see Werbner 1996, 2002). Siddiqui was investigated by the police but no charges were ultimately made against him.

Muslims and Christians in a postcolonial world Rather than constituting an implacable, eternal opposition between Islam and Christendom or democracy, the place of Muslims as citizens and minorities in the West is one currently extensively debated by Muslim scholars and activists attempting to extend and adapt Islamic law to contemporary realities. The contemporaneity of the debate in the Muslim world has only recently been highlighted in an important article by Wasif Shadid and Sjoerd van Koningsveld (1996b), and I base my discussion primarily on their work and that of Bernard Lewis (1994). An original division made by Muslim jurists between dar al-Islam and dar alharb or dar al-kufr – between the Land of Islam and the Land of War or Unbelief – suited a time when the Muslim community was small or expanding. It laid down that Muslims were obliged to migrate to a Muslim-ruled land in cases of

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conquest, and should not linger or settle permanently in non-Muslim lands (see B. Lewis 1994; Shadid and Koningsveld 1996b). But historically the vast spread of Islam, the medieval and modern European colonial conquests and reconquests of Muslim-populated lands and, from quite early on, the emergence of ungodly usurpers and lay dynastic rulers in the Muslim world all made the injunction to migrate to a Muslim land virtually unachievable. Muslim scholars began by adapting a third category – dar-el aman or dar al-ahd, the Land of Security or Treaty, originally formulated as a guideline for Muslim travellers or traders living temporarily in lands friendly to Islam – to other circumstances (Shahid and van Koningsveld 1996b; B. Lewis 1994: 9). The condition for remaining in such lands was that Muslims be allowed to practise their religion openly and freely. The debate concerned the jurisdiction of Muslim judges, and here a spectrum of opinions emerged on the issue. According to Lewis, there is an apparent limitation on the freedom of worship granted to Muslims, as to all believers, in Western democracies. Islamic worship, he argues, is not a matter just of personal practice but of exercising public authority and domination, of jihad, promoting the true faith and persuading others to do so. Not all juridical schools, however, follow this line of reasoning. In particular, the Hanafis, to which most South Asian Muslims in Britain (by far the majority Muslim presence in the UK) belong, are satisfied by basic tolerance as a condition for permanent stay (ibid.: 13). Yet the key dilemma for the Muslim jurists, according to Lewis, remains the absence of communal jural autonomy in Western democracies in matters of personal law, a right routinely granted by Muslim states to religious minorities, or dhimmis, residing under their jurisdiction (ibid.: 15–16). Moreover, there is no precedent in Islamic law for voluntary migration to a nonMuslim land, which typifies most Muslim settlement in the West today (ibid.: 17). While Lewis wonders whether Muslim immigrants in Christian and postChristian lands, as he puts it, are aware of these debates, he nevertheless concludes that the arguments highlight ‘the capacity of the tradition, in the past, to confront new problems and respond to them in unexpected ways’ (ibid.: 17). Ahmed Andrews shows that in colonial India following the fall of the Mughal Empire similar debates animated the discourse of the ulama, the learned scholars (Andrews 1996). The point of Shadid and van Koningsveld’s article is to demonstrate that this debate is an ongoing one and not – as Soheib Bencheikh, a Muslim modernist Algerian theologian living in France, would have it – a radical break from the past: ‘a new theology has to be elaborated…. It is up to us to demonstrate in France of today that Islam is really a universal religion’ (Shadid and van Koningsveld 1996b: 86). Shadid and van Koningsveld reject as confused and illinformed a series of claims made about Islam by a variety of Muslim and Western scholars, and which ignore new developments in Islamic thought regarding the postcolonial Muslim presence in non-Muslim states, and especially the West (ibid.: 88). They identify in the first instance a spectrum of juridical views that were developed by jurists on the position of Muslim minorities under colonial rule. These ranged between two radically opposed interpretations of jihad, as either expansive or defensive. The most recent development in this

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ongoing argument, they propose, has come with the rise of Islamism during the postcolonial period. Islamists define the Muslim territories themselves as having lapsed into Unbelief, jahilia, and their debate surrounds the permissibility of the use of violence to overturn illegitimate regimes. In a comprehensive review of the Muslim scholarly debate, Shahid and van Koningsveld demonstrate that all these current and prior arguments feed into contemporary postcolonial Muslim discussions concerning the status, duties and responsibilities of Muslims residing in the West (ibid.: 94 passim). The various views expressed can be ordered into four main approaches: 1

2

3

4

The ‘pragmatic’ approach, which argues that religious freedom in the democratic West, the right of Muslims to practise and defend their moral values publicly, makes Britain, as we have seen, a Land of Treaty rather than of War, and thus also a land of permissible settlement and naturalization, one in which Muslims should participate actively in political life, observe the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen, perform military service and accept prevailing secular rules and family laws. Islam as a universal religion can and should, according to such views, be practised anywhere (ibid.: 95, 99, 103–7). Muslims may even join battles against aggressive Muslim states in the case of territorial disputes (ibid.: 105, 107). The ‘utopian’ view, espoused by Kalim Siddiqui, which advocates the creation of a unified and legally autonomous Muslim community in Britain and the West as part of an expansive, transnational Islamic ummah. According to this view, Muslims are obliged to pay taxes and abide by the law of the land as long as this does not conflict with their loyalty to Islam (as in the case of the Rushdie affair), but they should also assist Muslims elsewhere in their struggles (ibid.: 96, 99). Against Siddiqui’s call for communal self-regulation of Muslim personal law, a more feasible arrangement currently emerging in Europe is the institutionalization of Islamic councils of religious scholars able to advise on Islamic law or suggest decisions on a strictly voluntary basis, much as rabbinical courts do (ibid.: 107). Surveys show that most European Muslims do not want a separate statute of Islamic family law (ibid.: 108). The ‘modernist’ approach, which rejects the validity of the opposition between the Lands of Islam and War as being inapplicable to present-day Muslim as well as Western countries, and attempts to replace it with a new terminology. The key relation that in this view (as expressed, for example, by the Muslim jurist Mawlawi) should obtain between Muslims and nonMuslims is not strife but preaching. Most of the world is thus dar al-dawa, the Land of Preaching (ibid.: 96–8). Indeed, some scholars advocate living in non-Muslim lands for the sake of dawa. At the same time, minority Muslims are enjoined to ensure Muslim education in order to pass on Islam to the next generation (ibid.: 100). The ‘traditionalist’ view, occupying a marginal position, which adheres to the old division between the Lands of Islam and War and is held by a few

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With the exception of this final view, we find in these international debates among Muslim scholars an attempt to engage with and accommodate Western democratic values within the framework of Islamic law. Rather than eternal enmity and incommensurability, their views highlight a shared juridical approach to reinterpreting the law in order to adapt it to the realities of everyday life. This is also evident in the political participation of Muslims in South Asia and Britain. Looking back at the political scene in South Asia, Ahmed Andrews argues that Muslim religious parties have historically participated actively in colonial and postcolonial politics without, with one exception, demanding an Islamic state (Andrews 1996: 120–1). It is this history, he proposes, rather than the problematic of an Islamic state, that affords the best understanding of South Asian Muslim political activity in the UK (ibid.: 121). In Leicester, Muslims who join political parties or are active in local-authority politics defend their involvement on the grounds that in Britain they are granted religious freedom. Indeed, Andrews was told, political participation was a duty towards the wider society, as well as a strategy to safeguard Islam (ibid.: 125).

Religious pluralism and symbolic citizenship In reflecting on these highly positive, practical agendas for participatory citizenship, the trauma of the Rushdie affair and the principled questions it raised about Muslim loyalty seem to have been forgotten or buried. Yet the affair left a bitter legacy of suspicion and a sense of alienation which remain as a trace in all British Muslim politics. At the same time, the affair also engendered, in my observation, a new consciousness of citizenship as a legal struggle for rights and as a subjective commitment to permanent settlement. The affair was thus a kind of watershed. From the Muslim point of view, it generated a demand for the extension of the blasphemy law to afford protection to the religious feelings of Muslims and other religious minorities in Britain. From a liberal, secular and feminist point of view, it generated a counterdemand to abolish the blasphemy law and disestablish the Church of England (see Wilson 1991; Connolly 1995).

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This has led to an interesting scholarly debate about the role of the Church and of denominational schools in integrating Muslims and enhancing their symbolic citizenship in Britain. The thrust of the argument is that, paradoxically, the established Church and voluntary-aided denominational schools have been, for religious minorities, key institutions of social integration into British society. The nemesis of religious pluralism, of civic toleration and sympathetic recognition of freedom of worship is here defined not as religious fundamentalism but as secularism. Secularism, according to this view, has become ‘fundamentalist’ and intolerant and thus incapable of affording due protection and symbolic recognition to truly pious religious minorities such as the current generation of British Muslims. In this spirit, Phillip Lewis, a historian and anthropologist of Muslims in Britain, who is also the Inter-Faith Advisor for the Anglican Bishop of Bradford, argues that the integration of Irish Catholics into British society began, paradoxically, when they were granted state subsidies for separate Catholic schools (P. Lewis 1997: 128). This symbolic gesture of acceptance was recently, in January 1998, extended for the first time to two Muslim schools, after a prolonged and in many ways bitter campaign.11 Lewis argues that The Irish Catholic experience in Britain is significant in that it highlights a continuing failure of progressive thought to anticipate the importance and tenacity of religion as a component of ethnic identity, and the possibility of maintaining multiple identities. (P. Lewis 1997: 129) Churches in England, Lewis points out, have generated and thus contributed to the complex associational network comprising civil society that underpins British democracy. The fact, moreover, that the state funds army chaplaincies, media programmes, university theology students and lord mayors has meant that religion in Britain has not been ghettoized. Most significantly, ‘the Anglican establishment has been pluralized to make space for other Christian denominations, without in the process being privatized’ (ibid.: 140). Thus, Tariq Modood, in a parallel argument, points out that the Church has been ‘relatively open to the prospect of sharing public space, even establishment itself, with other groups’ (Modood 1995: 1). This includes participation by representatives of different religious faiths in civic occasions and state ceremonies, and advocacy that leaders of all the main faiths be represented alongside the Church in the House of Lords (Modood 1995; see also P. Lewis 1997). The Church has been active in fostering inter-faith institutions and joint committees with the purpose of maintaining dialogue (P. Lewis 1997: 141–2). This was particularly important during the Rushdie affair, when, Lewis points out, ‘communities were threatening to polarize into mutual incomprehension’ (ibid.: 142). The crucial implication of Lewis’s argument is that in their legitimate engagement with Britain’s political and civic order religious minorities both incorporate and are incorporated into the civic culture of their newly adopted society.

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Hence, rather than ghettoizing and marginalizing minority religions, or disaggregating them into discrete communities in the hope that their religiosity will ‘dissolve’ and vanish, public and civic recognition for Islam and other minority religions leads to the negotiation of a new participatory public order. It is an order built on the acceptance that religious minorities are a permanent feature of the national landscape. In upholding this consensual arrangement the established Church fulfils a crucial mediatory and leadership role vis-à-vis the state and the wider society. Against such a view, in a reply to Modood, Clara Connolly, an active member of Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF; the feminist organization established in the wake of the Rushdie affair) lists a series of reasons why the apparently pluralist nature of the present established Church nevertheless encourages and underpins intolerant groups and practices (Connolly 1995). First, she argues, any multi-faith consensus would be likely to discriminate against women given the biases of most religious faiths on matters of gender. Religious leaders are almost invariably men. Women and gays in British society are protected by hard-won libertarian laws unconstrained by Church teachings. However tolerant the Anglican Church is, it opens a door to conservative Christians: it is they who insisted on legislating for an act of daily Christian worship and religious education in state schools, despite the plural character of the student population. In a basically secular society, Christianity is grasped in Britain, Connolly argues, not as a living practice but as a cultural signifier of the nation. It is a symbolism that excludes non-Christians. It can be used by racists to define areas of privilege and segregation for themselves as ‘Christians’, meaning, euphemistically, ‘white’ (ibid.: 4). With Britain still officially a ‘Christian’ country, unpopular governments may invoke Christianity (‘back to basics’) in the hope of winning electoral support. Connolly’s more conflictual vision of pluralism thus differs from Modood’s or Lewis’s consensual view: WAF’s demand for a secular state is not made because we assume that, in itself, it is the guarantor of pluralism and equality. Rather, we believe that it is one pre-condition, among many others, of a pluralist and egalitarian future. (Connolly 1995: 4) One of the oddities of British society that Connolly does not consider is that the nation’s secularism may be the product of small doses of religion at an early age. Indeed, the relation between secularism and religion is clearly more complex than earlier liberal theories separating private worship from the public sphere of politics envisioned. Elsewhere Modood invokes the spectre of religious communalism becoming an aggressive form of electoral politics as a potential consequence of revoking the establishment of the Anglican Church and the tolerant status quo it entails in favour of what he calls a ‘triumphal secularism’ (Modood 1994: 63; 1998: 392–8). He fails, however, in my view, to explain why India, whose model of secularism he approves for according public recognition and support for all religions (ibid.: 394), and the USA, whose aggressive separa-

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tion of Church and state he rejects (Modood 1994: 69–70), both appear to have fostered extremist religious political organizations such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or Moral Majority and the Jewish Defence League. The same could be said of Israel, where the toleration of religious pluralism has engendered highly intolerant religious parties. At the same time, Modood, not surprisingly, also rejects French secularism for its homogenizing thrust and ‘arrogant illiberalism’ (ibid.: 68; see also Modood 1996, 1997). Clearly, the extent to which religious communities within nation-states feel themselves to be threatened or marginalized by the political process or come to form powerful economic-cum-political interest groups is not determined simply by civic arrangements. Religious corporatist representation, such as that existing in Britain and advocated by Modood, cannot in itself explain the brand of universal Christian humanism that dominates public discourse in Britain, or the relatively relaxed secularism of the majority of British citizens. These are necessarily grounded in more complex processes of economic redistribution, consensusseeking and responsiveness to grass-roots and public activism (Turner 1990). Indeed, the WAF–Modood debate highlights the fact that Western democracy is not simply an ordered liberal paradise in which religious, literary, individual, familial and civic domains of action and belief can be kept discrete: it is a conflictual, negotiated order between organizations and groups seeking influence and presence, as well as rights and safeguards, vis-à-vis each other and the state. In this struggle the recent memory of literary censorship, racism and sexist or religious intolerance in the West itself constitutes a hidden narrative which liberals continue to contend with. This is a point made by Sadik J. Al-Azm in a brilliant essay on The Satanic Verses and the Rushdie affair. On a tour of the US in 1989 he was struck by the ignorance of American students regarding their own society’s still very recent banning of such classics as Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer or James Joyce’s Ulysses. This ‘historical amnesia’, he proposes, feeds into an essentialist vision not only of Islam, but also of their own society, a self-congratulatory smugness in which Such practices as religious tolerance, democracy, the right of free speech and all that goes with them are really Western values, which other adjacent cultures (especially Muslim societies and cultures) find alien, repelling and generally antithetical to their most authentic values, cherished beliefs and honored heritage. (Al-Azm 1991: 42) To hear American students speak, one would think that the West had never known the bloody practices of intolerance, persecution and religious bigotry and that the Muslim non-West had known nothing but the fanaticism and repression of the Ayatollahs and their like. (ibid.: 43)

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According to Al-Azm, a series of internal ‘Rushdie affairs’ in the Arab world (he lists 12 authors by name, among others, on p. 30), a succession of books, incidents and controversies has had a cumulatively liberating impact on recent and contemporary Arab thought, culture and life in general, bringing previously untouchable subjects within the compass of critical thought, autonomous reason and world debate. (ibid.: 33) This is probably, he suggests, why the response of Arab states to The Satanic Verses was so muted and low key. Indeed, despite official accusations of apostasy and trials for blaspheming against Islam in Arab countries, none of the offending authors have lost their lives or suffered serious injury (ibid.: 34). Al-Azm thus regards the publication of transgressing novels such as The Satanic Verses as necessary moments of crisis on the way to a more liberal, open and ‘desensitized’ Muslim polity, just as these novels were in the West not very long ago. He castigates Christian bishops and cardinals as well as Jewish chief rabbis for their condemnation of the novel, and for the sympathy and support they expressed for protesting Muslims, in which they chose to ignore the fact that the protestors were calling for the death of an author (ibid.: 2–3). There are other ways of thinking about such novels. Webster, for example, has argued that blasphemy is a double-edged tool which encourages fundamentalism, and that what has emerged in the West is a form of authorial self-censorship in which offensive attacks on religion are mostly avoided (Webster 1990; see also Lee 1990). I do not want to enter here into the vast controversy over the Rushdie affair (for an extensive review, see Werbner 1996). My aim has been simply to point out that whatever the political tensions between the Middle East and the West, and however much these feed into relations with Muslim minorities living in the West, such divisions cannot be understood as cultural or civilizational. Christendom and the Caliphate are both definitively dead. To the extent that Muslims in the West are construed as dangerous and essentially alien, this is part of a broader racist and xenophobic discourse. While they may be struggling to gain symbolic recognition for Islam in Britain and the world, this struggle cannot be grasped apart from their critical views about the injustice inflicted on Palestinians by Israel – with the connivance of the international community; nor can it be understood apart from their critique of illegitimate Muslim regimes in the Gulf, propped up by the West, or the struggle for equal rights in Britain, a struggle in which the Church and others are increasingly partners. Since the early 1990s British Muslims have shifted their activism away from such hard, insoluble cases as 9/11, the Rushdie affair or the Gulf War, to work for achievable agendas in Britain, as we saw above, but also to lobby for transnational Islamic causes involving more transparently evident human-rights violations: Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir. This new phase, which I turn

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to next, is one in which South Asian Muslims in Britain have rediscovered themselves as a Muslim diaspora (rather than simply a Pakistani or South Asian one). The fight for transnational human rights is one that also empowers them as active British citizens.

Conclusion Political lobbying for symbolic recognition and specifically targeted causes, both national and transnational, appears to me to be the route British Muslims, as an increasingly self-conscious diaspora, are progressively adopting. The process is still in its very early stages and lacks the sophistication and clout accumulated by other diasporic lobbies operating in Western democracies. In many European countries Muslims still lack basic citizenship rights. Even in Britain, where their basic citizen rights are assured, British Pakistani protests often seem very general and diffuse, directed as much at an absent USA as at a present British state. Yet these experimentations with democracy are, I propose, part of a learning process on how to gain political influence as a minority group in a democratic society. Such influence necessarily needs to enlist the support of Muslim academics and publicists such as Tariq Modood, Yasmin Ali, Akbar Ahmed or Aziz Al-Azme, who are consulted as experts by the media. It must forge alliances with concerned academics, liberals, the Church, and publicly minded activists. It must reach local politicians, civil servants and members of parliament. It must also at the same time be cognizant of the new conceptualization of Muslim minority citizenship by Islamic jurists. It has to mobilize Muslim members of British political parties, such as municipal councillors or party activists. And, above all, the success of such lobbies will rest on the ability of volunteers and business people to organize and fund alliances of communal leaders and associations. The challenge is one of combining protest and accommodation (see Werbner 1991). At present such alliances are fragmentary and shot through with factional and sectarian rivalries. Only occasionally, as in the Rushdie affair, have Pakistanis in Britain united for civic action, and such unities tend to be short lived. But the signs are there of a new orientation towards active citizenship. The question of ‘loyalty’ in the post-national state, implying as it does some kind of exclusive commitment, cannot capture the complexity of commitments implicit in such transnational alliances, orientations and lobbies. What can be said is that these are increasingly challenging and helping to shape a new British political culture – and perhaps also, in the long run, new international orientations.

Notes 1 Fieldwork among Muslims in Britain was conducted in the years 1975–9, 1987–90 and 1993–5, with grants from SSRC UK, ESRC UK and the Leverhulme Trust. Their generous support is gratefully acknowledged. 2 Guardian, 20 November 2001: 6. This followed statements to that effect by the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon (Guardian, 30 October 2001: 3) and a debate in the House of Commons on the topic broadcast live on satellite.

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3 Sunday Mirror, 4 November 2001: 7. The poll was apparently conducted outside a large mosque after prayers. 4 Eastern Eye, 23 November 2001: 2–3. The survey showed that 90 per cent of all Asians and 87 per cent of Muslims felt ‘loyal’ to Britain (ibid.: 6). 5 Eastern Eye, 9 November 2001: 2. 6 Guardian, 14 November: 13. 7 On the diasporic public sphere, see Werbner 2002. 8 Arguably, in critiquing orientalism Said essentialized the Occident, and occidental scholars in particular, as uniformly complicit with the imperialist project, thus denying the different shades of opinions, internal arguments and public dissent characterizing European scholarship (on occidentalism more generally, see Carrier 1995). 9 For an analysis of British Muslims’ response to the Gulf crisis, see Werbner 1994; see also Ahmed 1992 and McLoughlin 1996. 10 In what came to be widely recognized as a bungled and poorly informed operation. 11 In a new move in April 1998, Liverpool City Council decided to open a primary school which would be local-authority administered but with a strong Islamic ethos, Islamic assemblies and religious education, and a significant number of Muslim governors. The school is located in a high-density Muslim residential inner-city area (Guardian, 29 April 1998: 7).

Bibliography Ahmed, A.S. (1992) Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise, London: Routledge. Al-Azm, S.J. (1991) ‘The Importance of Being Earnest about Salman Rushdie’, Die Welt des Islams 31: 1–49. —— (1994) ‘Is the Fatwa a Fatwa?’, in Anouar Abdallah (ed.) For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim Writers in Defense of Freedom of Speech, New York: George Braziller. Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Andrews, A. (1996) ‘Muslim Attitudes Towards Political Activity in the United Kingdom: A Case Study from Leicester’, in W.A.R. Shadid and S. van Koningsveld (eds) Political Participation and Identities of Muslims in Non-Muslim Countries, Kampen, the Netherlands: Kok Pharos. Anthias, F. (1998) ‘Evaluating Diaspora: Beyond Ethnicity?’, Sociology 32: 557–80. Bjorgo, T. (1997) ‘ “The Invaders”, “the Traitors” and “the Resistance Movement”: The Extreme Right’s Conceptualization of Opponents and Self in Scandinavia’, in T. Modood and P. Werbner (eds) The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community, London: Zed Books. Carrier, J. (1995) Occidentalism: Images of the West, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clifford, J. (1994) ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 302–38. Connolly, C. (1995) ‘WAF Replies to Tariq Modood’, Women Against Fundamentalism 6: 3–4. Ellis, P. and Z. Khan (1998) ‘Diasporic Mobilization and the Kashmir Issue in British Politics’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24: 471–88. Emmett, A. (1996) Our Sisters’ Promised Land: Women, Politics and Israeli–Palestinian Co-existence, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso. Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Huntington, S.P. (1993) ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, summer: 22–49. Lee, S. (1990) The Cost of Free Speech, London: Faber & Faber.

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Lewis, B. (1994) ‘Legal and Historical Reflections on the Position of Muslim Populations Under Non-Muslim Rule’, in B. Lewis and D. Schnapper (eds) Muslims in Europe, London: Pinter Publishers. Lewis, P. (1997) ‘Arenas of Ethnic Negotiation: Co-operation and Conflict in Bradford’, in T. Modood and P. Werbner (eds) The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community, London: Zed Books. McLouglin, S. (1996) ‘In the Name of the Umma: Globalization, “Race” Relations and Muslim Identity Politics in Bradford’, in W.A.R. Shadid and S. van Koningsveld (eds) Political Participation and Identities of Muslims in Non-Muslim Countries, Kampen, the Netherlands: Kok Pharos. Malik, I.H. (1996) ‘Reply to Pnina Werbner’, Current Anthropology 37 (Supplement Issue): S75–7. Marshall, T.H. (1950) Citizenship and Social Class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Metcalf, B.D. (1996) ‘Introduction: Sacred Words, Sanctioned Practice, New Communities’, in B.D. Metcalf (ed.) Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Modood, T. (1994) ‘Establishment, Multiculturalism and British Citizenship’, Political Quarterly 65: 53–73. —— (1995) ‘Beware of Secular Intolerance’, Women Against Fundamentalism 6: 1–2. —— (1996) ‘ “Race” in Britain and the Politics of Difference’, in D. Archard (ed.) Philosophy and Pluralism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1997) ‘Introduction’, in T. Modood and P. Werbner (eds) The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community, London: Zed Books. —— (1998) ‘Anti-essentialism, Multiculturalism and the “Recognition” of Religious Groups’, Journal of Political Philosophy 6: 378–99. Modood, T. and P. Werbner (eds) (1997) The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community, London: Zed Books. Norris, Christopher (1992) Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Purdam, K. (1996) ‘Settler Political Participation: Muslim Local Councillors’, in W.A.R. Shadid and S. van Koningsveld (eds) Political Participation and Identities of Muslims in NonMuslim Countries, Kampen, the Netherlands: Kok Pharos. —— (1998) The Impacts of Democracy on Identity: Muslim Councillors and their Experiences of Local Politics in Britain, PhD thesis submitted to the University of Manchester. Runnymede Trust (1997) Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, Report of the Runnymede Trust Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, London: Runnymede Trust. Said, E.W. (1978) Orientalism, London: Penguin. Shadid, W.A.R. and S. van Koningsfeld (1996a) (eds) Political Participation and Identities of Muslims in Non-Muslim Countries, Kampen, the Netherlands: Kok Pharos. Shadid, W.A.R. and S. van Koningsfeld (1996b) ‘Loyalty to a Non-Muslim Government: An Analysis of Islamic Normative Discussions and of the Views of Some Contemporary Islamists’, in W.A.R. Shadid and S. van Koningsveld (eds) Political Participation and Identities of Muslims in Non-Muslim Countries, Kampen, the Netherlands: Kok Pharos. Taylor, C. (1994) ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in A. Gutmann (ed.) Multiculturalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tololyan, K. (1996) ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment’, Diaspora 5: 3–36. Turner, B.S. (1990) ‘Outline of a Theory of Citizenship’, Sociology 24: 189–218.

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Webster, R. (1990) A Brief History of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship and ‘The Satanic Verses’, London: Orwell Press. Werbner, P. (1991) ‘Introduction: Black and Ethnic Leaderships in Britain: A Theoretical Overview’, in P. Werbner and M. Anwar (eds) Black and Ethnic Leaderships in Britain: The Cultural Dimensions of Political Action, London: Routledge. —— (1994) ‘Diaspora and Millennium: British Pakistani Global–Local Fabulations of the Gulf War’, in A. Ahmed and H. Donnan (eds) Islam, Globalization and Postmodernity, London: Routledge. —— (1996) ‘Allegories of Sacred Imperfection: Magic, Hermeneutics and Passion in The Satanic Verses’, Current Anthropology 37 (Supplement Issue): S55–86. —— (2002) Imagined Diasporas Among Manchester Muslims: The Public Performance of Transnational Identity Politics, London and New Mexico: James Currey/School of American Research. Werbner, P. and M. Anwar (eds) Black and Ethnic Leaderships in Britain: The Cultural Dimensions of Political Action, London: Routledge. Wilson, A.N. (1991) Against Religion: Why We Should Try to Live Without It, London: Chatto & Windus. Yuval-Davis, N. (1997) ‘Ethnicity, Gender Relations and Multiculturalism’, in P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds) Debating Cultural Hybridity, London: Zed Books.

8

Loyalty and the European Union Gerard Delanty

Until recently the question of loyalty to the European Union (EU) was not an issue. The legitimacy of the EU rested on the prior legitimacy of its member states, who could rely on the loyalty of their citizens. The EU thus profited from the alleged legitimacy of the nation-state. A second reason can also be given for the apparent irrelevance of the question of whether citizens need be loyal to the EU. Since its origin in the period after the Second World War the primary justification of the EU – or the European (Economic) Community as it was then called – was co-operation between sovereign states, in particular France and Germany. Neither Schuman nor Monnet, its founders, regarded the EU as anything more than an alliance of states for economic and political co-operation. If there was a higher principle of justification it was undoubtedly the need for peace in the aftermath of the devastation of the Second World War. Perhaps, too, there was a certain sense of loyalty to the values of European civilization. But this was not a very tangible category, and insofar as the EU remained more like an organization than an institution loyalty did not matter. We are no longer in this situation today. The memory of the Second World War is now distant for the majority of Europeans and the prospect of the Western European states going to war among themselves is virtually unthinkable (although they may get involved in someone else’s war, in which case loyalty will be a useful resource). With the obsolescence of these older justifications for European integration, we are forced to ask the question of what is the present justification of the EU. In a new century and millennium, the cultural and political heritage of the nineteenth century and its system of sovereign states, which cast its shadow over the twentieth century and its world wars, is also receding and new forces are emerging. Of these, and of particular salience in the present context, is the question of globalization and the alleged decline in the sovereignty of the nation-state. It is possible that the challenge of globalization is now replacing peace as the primary justification of the EU. Yet we do not have a clear rationale for the EU in terms of a model of loyalty, though it appears that loyalty is increasingly shifting away from an identification with territory and the state and coming to rest on other more ‘cosmopolitan’ reference points, as Habermas and others have argued. Traditionally, political loyalty has been to either territory, state, party, ethnic group or the imaginary community of the nation. The EU fulfils none of

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these categories in an obvious way; it is not a specific territory, other than that of the member-states, which is constantly changing as new states join and currently expanding into post-communist space; it is not a state in the conventional sense of the term but a supranational and regulatory agency; the parties that operate in its parliamentary space are largely juxapositions of national ones; and it clearly is not based on an ethnic substratum but is culturally highly diverse in terms of ethnicities, regions and nationalities. Indeed, much of ‘Europe’ contains the ‘nonEuropean’ and diverse and often competing loyalties. With the enlargement project now underway, the diversity of the EU will increase, and perhaps, too, conflicts over loyalty will increase. Aside from the obsolescence in the idea of peace as a primary justification for the EU, the other two factors noted above are also becoming increasingly questionable. The extent of the operations of the EU has gone beyond the model of inter-state co-operation. The EU has become something like a regulatory order which can undermine national sovereignty (Majone 1996). This ‘neo-functional’ model is now more or less the reality of European integration. The inter-state level is, of course, still the main dimension, but there is no denying the tremendous transformation of national sovereignty by the EU (Weiler 1999). With respect to the first-mentioned point, the nation-state itself is now under greater duress than in the period following the Second World War. Aside from the impact of globalization, the legitimacy of the state is also being internally eroded as a result of the rise of a new regionalism, various kinds of nationalist movements and, with the crisis of the welfare state, the apparent inability of the state to maintain the provision of collective goods. There is also another reason why the question of loyalty is a major challenge for the EU. Loyalty today is becoming increasingly conditional and can no longer be regarded as a durable resource to be tapped by political elites. Loyalties can be recalcitrant and unpredictable, and this is especially the case where political elites are perceived as having betrayed democracy. Today more than ever loyalties are refracted through democracy and cannot be simply derived from the uncritical values of duty, patriotism or obedience. Under these circumstances the question of loyalty can no longer be confined to the prior legitimacy of national states or traditional kinds of patriotism but penetrates to the heart of the EU, whose jurisdiction now touches individual citizens. In sum, then, on the one side the national states are losing their command over the loyalty of citizens and, on the other, the EU is forced to compete with the ailing nation-state for the diminishing resources of loyalty at precisely the time when democratization has become one of the major stumblingly blocks to further European integration. The problem the EU faces is severe: to compete with the nation-state for the increasingly scarce resource of loyalty and at the same time build the foundations upon which democratic forms of loyalty can be expressed. We might quite well wonder, then, how the EU – itself inherently undemocratic – can achieve a sufficient measure of loyalty when the much better equipped nation-state is frequently unable to maintain the continued loyalty of its citizens. Will the legitimation crisis that Habermas (1976), in the

Loyalty and the European Union 125 early 1970s, thought was endemic to late capitalism now extend to the supranational? Or, to follow Niklas Luhmann, are loyalties irrelevant and anachronistic categories no longer relevant to the complex bureaucratic polity that the postnational state today has become (Luhmann 1990)? Can the EU benefit from the forms of cosmopolitan loyalty emerging in Europe and the rest of the world? This is the question to be addressed in this chapter. The main argument is that a limited, or ‘thin’, kind of cosmopolitan loyalty is possible beyond the traditional class, ethnic and national loyalties but in the long run it will have to create ‘thicker’ forms of solidarity based on social values such as welfare. The chapter begins with a working definition of loyalty in terms of three central components and then moves on to examine the changing nature of loyalty, which is applied to the EU in the section which follows. Finally, the prospects for a post-national conception of loyalty which would be relevant to the EU are considered.

Theorizing loyalty and the state In the most basic sense, loyalty concerns the non-contractual ties that bind individuals to a community, in this case the political community. To speak of loyalty presupposes a degree of belief in the legitimacy of the political order, a trust in its institutions and sense of community: legitimacy, trust and community are the defining tenets of loyalty. According to Max Weber in his classic account of legitimacy, power must be converted into authority if is to appear legitimate (see also Beetham 1991). No political order can rest on force alone. States need the loyalty of their citizens. For Weber, legitimate authority in modern society was almost entirely based on the formal rationality of legal procedure, a position that ultimately tends too much in the Hobbesian direction of law and order. However, we can, following Habermas, add to this that a belief in the legitimacy of authority must also rest on a principle of justification (Habermas 1996). Authority must be capable of being rationally justifiable in the face of opposition. This communicative dimension allows authority to be challenged and to be always open to revision. In this sense, then, loyalty is more of a Lockean than a Hobbesian idea since it recognizes the contingent nature of authority, which is never final but revisable. Legitimacy is thus not mere legality, but an essentially democratic process involving public deliberation. It rests on three conditions, which effectively define democracy: the rule of law (in this case, constitutionalism or liberal democracy), the representation of social interests (electoral or representative democracy) and citizenship in the sense of participation in civil society (republican democracy) (see Touraine 1997). The claim that is being made in this chapter is that democratically achieved forms of legitimacy are increasingly becoming a condition of loyalty. Loyalty is thus not a residual category in citizenship, as it was, for example, in T.H. Marshall’s (1992) theory of citizenship. In Marshall’s theory, the state earns the loyalty of citizens by bestowing on them certain rights and entitlements, but beyond that loyalty is largely a passive quality of citizenship. Today, in contrast,

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as is reflected in many communitarian political theories, loyalty is less a passive condition, as it was for Marshall, and is more integral to citizenship as an active condition. The upshot of this is that legitimacy has become more and more contingent on a whole range of factors beyond the procedural dimensions of law and the state. It is thus difficult to be loyal to something that is not democratically legitimate. To a degree, too, legitimacy can be secured by efficiency – one of the major foundations of EU legitimacy – but in the long run this does not produce the legitimacy that can secure enduring loyalties. Second, loyalty extends beyond legitimacy in that it is based on a belief in the basic reliability of the political system and this is ultimately something that goes beyond democracy. In practice no political order could function in a complex modern society if every action had to be democratically legitimated. With the growing complexity of organizational systems and the ‘abstract’ nature of society (Giddens 1990; Luhmann 1990), contemporary society is coming to rely on trust to an ever greater extent than in earlier societies, where power could be more visible. This is something a whole range of theorists have recognized. Trust depends on the paradoxical suspension of the demand for constant legitimation but is not reducible to blind faith. We trust institutions because we feel our interests are best served by them. Trust and the pursuit of interests are thus closely connected. It was one of Durkheim’s (1964) central arguments that solidarity in modern society can only be based on relations of co-operation between groups whose interests are best served by generalized rather than particularistic values. In earlier societies trust bound masses to elites, but in our advanced societies trust is invested less in elites than in complex organizational systems. It may be suggested that trust is an essential ingredient, even condition, of loyalty. Loyalty requires the existence of what might be called a responsible state. The state must provide public goods, such as the social goods of welfare, education and a basic infrastructure for society (transport and communications, for example); ownership, in whole or in part, of certain natural endowments and of certain economic resources; and security for citizens against internal and external threats. It is a basic condition of loyalty to the state that the state is a responsible actor, even if its opponents are irresponsible. Third, in addition to trust and the existence of democratic political institutions, loyalty is also articulated in the form of a sense of community or collective identity, here understood as belonging. Loyalties cannot be so easily secured without a sense of belonging. This can take weak and strong forms. Where group ties are very strong, perhaps underpinned by a dominant ethnicity or religion, a sense of belonging will be stronger and able to secure more durable forms of loyalty. As far as loyalty is concerned the idea of membership of a shared political community is clearly the most important dimension to community, but other factors, too, play a role, such as common cultural bonds. But most modern polities can at most rely on weak forms of belonging based on political rather than cultural community. In these cases political community cannot so easily be translated into a single culturally defined community. It may be suggested that the dimension of community in loyalty depends on the degree to which political community can be related to different kinds of cultural commu-

Loyalty and the European Union 127 nity. Thus, different cultural communities, such as different ethnic groups or different regional communities, who may share little culturally, can in principle have a sense of belonging to the political community of the wider polity. This will depend partly on the kinds of values of the political community – whether they are inclusive or exclusive. A general point made by contributors to this volume is that loyalties are rapidly changing today and some of the existing loyalties are no longer reliable resources to be exploited by the state. Apart from the fact that loyalties are now multiple and frequently overlapping, they have become contested, volatile and can take radical forms. Traditional forms of loyalty are giving way to forms of legitimation and loyalties that are inseparable from democracy. This is one of the major changes in the nature of loyalty. Traditional loyalty was a sentiment that was largely outside the political culture of democracy, but today emotional content is entering more and more into the language of politics. Loyalties are emotional and subjective, and as such they have powerful resonances in the contemporary political culture. In view of these considerations, what can be said about loyalty and the state? Can the post-national European ‘state’ command any loyalty? First, a few remarks on the capacity of the state to exploit the discourse of loyalty. There is no doubt that states can tap the loyalty of citizens, as the case of the final round of the French presidential election in 2002 demonstrated. Despite charges of corruption and disloyalty, Jacques Chirac won the support of virtually the entire opposition on grounds of loyalty to the democratic values of the French Republic that his opponent, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was endangering. But while this was indeed an exceptional episode, it nevertheless demonstrates how volatile and indeterminate the category of loyalty is. In this case the extreme right was also able to claim the mantle of loyalty to the nation and secured one of the largest electoral mandates that an extreme right-wing party has attained in recent times. Loyalty was central to all of this, demonstrating the argument, made above, that loyalty has become a fundamentally contested category in politics today. But what is significant is not just the contested nature of loyalty, but that it has become to a very significant degree de-referentialized of any normative content. It is not easy to specify the nature of loyalty and whether it pertains to a category of the nation or to the state. Le Pen appealed to the nation, while Chirac appealed to the state. Especially in the first round of the election, a significant number of anti-Chirac voters came from supporters of the left. Devoid of tangible referents, loyalty can be exploited by different groups to serve different interests. The upshot of this is that no group can control the fact that loyalty no longer has any clear meaning but has become contingent. Chirac and Le Pen were not using the idea of loyalty in the same way and nor were their respective voters; for each the other was disloyal, and for the voters other kinds of loyalties played a role. It was not a case of one being more loyal than the other, as might have been the case in more traditional contests in which patriotism was one of the stakes in the political game but in which the rules where relatively clear. This point is crucial for an understanding of the problem of loyalty to the EU, since it

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demonstrates that there are no stable categories out of which loyalties can be made. The very category of the nation is no longer a clearly definable entity, and insofar as a transnational and post-national polity such as the EU tries to emulate it it will inevitably run up an even larger loyalty deficit. In sum, the ‘ideal typical’ conception of loyalty argued for in this chapter is one that can be theorized in terms of legitimacy, trust and community, but these no longer exist in a stable relation to each other and are not easily harnessed by the state. We now need to consider the precise changing nature of loyalty, in particular as this pertains to the post-national context of the contemporary European polity.

The EU and dilemmas of loyalty The general conditions of loyalty and the major changes in its composition outlined, the problem of loyalty beyond the nation-state can be discussed more specifically with respect to the EU, and the extent of a disjuncture between the conditions of loyalty and the existing political culture of the EU can be examined in some detail. First, taking the question of legitimacy and, more generally, democracy, it is apparent that the EU is at best a second-order democracy. The main institutions – the Council of Ministers and the European Commission – are not answerable to the citizens in the way national governments, to a degree, are. Whilst having wide-ranging autonomy, especially the Commission, they are answerable to national governments, although to a rapidly diminishing extent. Thus the civic tradition of democracy does not apply to the political culture of the EU. Aside from the legal autonomy of the European Court of Justice, the only exception to this is the European Parliament, which has a direct relationship with European citizens. However, the Parliament is not comparable to national parliaments, having merely the power to set agendas but not legislate. The fact is that there is no European constitution other than a diffuse set of treaties. This absence of a constitutional principle of sovereignty is undoubtedly related to the widespread lack of belief in the inherent legitimacy of the EU, which ultimately depends on the power of its member states. As a result, the much discussed democratic deficit arises (Siedentop 2000). To be sure, the EU can claim a degree of legitimacy based on legality, but this does not extend into a deeper sense of legitimacy beyond legality. Especially since the Nice Treaty, it is increasingly being recognized that the formal legality of the EU is not enough for it to be the source of any significant commitment on the part of the public. The EU now needs stronger arguments to justify the significant changes that the enlargement project will bring. Without a clear commitment to any specific values, the democratic deficit is now in danger of developing into a deeper crisis of loyalty. Looking more broadly at the political culture associated with the EU, there is the wider problem of civil society. This is an area in which the EU cannot compete with the nation-state, which has always been connected in some way with civil society. Civil society emerged against the absolute state – in the essen-

Loyalty and the European Union 129 tially public space between the depoliticized private realm and the state – and eventually came to be institutionalized in the form of modern citizenship and a status of rights. But this was a discursively achieved process; it did not simply happen. The problem for the EU is that civil society still exists only within national societies. There is no European public sphere extensive enough to give simple expression to forms of democratic engagement capable of generating new loyalties. According to Habermas (1989), public discourse was historically the most important dimension to the formation of civil society and the shared political culture of the public sphere. Even European citizenship as codified by Maastricht is based on the prior recognition of national citizenship. Consequently the EU is unable to secure a significant degree of commitment, which can only come from a flourishing civil society. This, however, is not to ignore some of the substantive gains European citizenship has achieved, although whether these can be the basis of loyalties is doubtful (see Eder and Giesen 2001). Second, taking the dimension of trust the situation is less clear cut. There is nothing to indicate that citizens do not trust the EU or that the EU is not a responsible state. In fact this might be a source of strength, particularly given the historical reputation of the nation-state. The EU has been a leading voice in the institutionalization of sustainable environmental policies and has done much to enforce civil rights in many of the member states, especially in the area of work and the rights of women (Meehan 1993). However, one of the weaknesses of the EU, as far as loyalty and trust are concerned, is its failure to create a welfare state. The welfare state has been the great achievement of the modern state, and supranational agencies cannot compete with it. Thus as far as the provision of public goods is concerned the nation-state is able to procure a degree of legitimacy, trust and commitment that the EU cannot easily compete with. The social question of solidarity is one of the major weaknesses of the EU, whose social programme has been very weak. Despite the Single European Act, the project of European integration has largely been one of economic, legal and political steering. But it is in the dimension of community that the most severe problems arise. There is no substantive basis to Europe as a cultural community in the view of many critics (Smith 1995). Lacking the crucial asset of a shared language, the diversity of national and regional culture in Europe, it is argued, makes a shared sense of a culturally rooted identity impossible. There is, of course, the historical memory of Christendom, but this is more likely to be an obstacle to loyalty than an asset, given that the European countries are now committed to some degree of multiculturalism and that the cleavage between confessions is becoming less salient than that between all religious beliefs and secularism (Delanty 1995). At the most, if we use these conventional yardsticks perhaps Europe can claim some loyalty from intellectuals and the professionally mobile. But for the majority of citizens, who are not polyglots, there is little in the ideal of a common European cultural identity as an aspiration. The diverse nature of the populations of the EU makes any simple appeal to community impossible. But this does not mean that there cannot be a European identity that might be the source of loyalties. Before taking this point up in the next section, a few further remarks can be made.

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In the transnational context of the EU loyalties are no longer based on conservative values such as duty, deference to authority and obedience, but have become more and more discursively articulated. Until recently, as noted earlier, loyalty expressed fairly conservative values of patriotism as a moral and affirmative resource for the state to secure basic obedience. The dominant language of loyalty today in Europe is one not of conservative values but of liberal and democratic demands for solidarity and legitimacy. Moreover, the fact that loyalties have also become more and more conditional is evident in the way European publics are becoming more sceptical of political elites, who are having to contend with loyalties that are volatile and can easily be withdrawn if conditions change. This is evident, for instance, in the very variable nature of public opinion as monitored by the Eurobarometer. Euro-scepticism is now a major public discourse in virtually every European country (Tiersky 2001). Originally, in the formative period of European integration, it expressed the anti-European values of the major social-democratic parties, but in the course of the 1980s and 1990s, as the left embraced European integration, it became increasingly an ideology of the nascent neo-right, which in many countries moved against Europe. Today it is a wide and popular discourse that does not easily fit into any one political position. No longer an ideology of specific political elites, the Euro-sceptic discourse expresses the concern of many groups in almost every European society that the project of European integration is losing its connection with basic loyalties. While the European elites blame the masses for not being loyal to Europe, the truth is that it is the elites who are now being portrayed as disloyal. As Christopher Lasch has argued in the American context, the betrayal of democracy is now being blamed on elites, while in the past it was the elites who blamed the masses (Lasch 1995). Europe, in short, has now become a focal point for all kinds of discourses of loyalty, from environmentalism, nationalism and humanitarianism to right and left ideologies. In sum, it would appear that the EU is unable to tap the power of loyalty, which is still a major resource of what remains of the nation-state but which also extends beyond the limits of national governance. With respect to the three components of loyalty noted – legitimacy, trust and community – the EU is able to score high on legitimacy, insofar as this is based on formal procedural legitimacy in the Weberian sense, as well as on efficiency. But it is weak on deeper democratic forms of legitimation; it is low on trust, except in relation to the condition of responsible government, and especially so with respect to social commitments; and it is weak on community and collective identities. But does this exclude there being something like a cosmopolitan kind of loyalty that might correspond to a post-national polity such as the EU? In the next section some indication as to cosmopolitan forms of loyalty is given.

Post-national loyalty? The analysis in this chapter is indeed pessimistic: the EU cannot realistically be based for the foreseeable future on a significant sense of loyalty comparable to

Loyalty and the European Union 131 what the embattled nation-state can still command. Are there any other prospects for the EU to gain the loyalty of citizens? The main thesis offered here is that the EU will have to secure different kinds of loyalties from those to which the nation-state typically appeals. Insofar as loyalty is seen as a pre-existing resource, there is no chance of the EU gaining much of it given the problems outlined in the foregoing. Traditional forms of loyalty will in any case be more likely to be used against the EU than for it. Instead, one must foresee a series of trade-offs involving the loss of some kinds of loyalties but a gain in others. What are the chances of a post-national, cosmopolitan form of loyalty emerging? It can hardly be denied that there are identities that are not nationally specific and in many ways are quite European rather than British, French, German and so on. These may not take the ‘thick’ forms that the Euro-sceptics assume must be the defining characteristic of collective identities. Undoubtedly there are ‘thick’ kinds of European identity, although it is difficult to see them having a role to play in shaping loyalties of significance. The idea of a European cultural heritage commands only minimal loyalty, and not to a degree that can be easily mobilized. Euro-elites, such as the Euro-federalists and many champions of European integration, have frequently made appeals to the cultural achievements of European history in order to forge a collective identity for the culture-bereft EU. Such attempts have found their way into European cultural policy, but are not the basis of strong forms of loyalty (Shore 2000). However, looking beyond these official attempts to forge a European collective identity, the Euro-sceptic criticism neglects certain forms of identification and cultural codes that are increasingly taking shape and which might be termed transnational, in the sense of being specifically European. There is growing evidence that more and more people are identifying with Europe, making it a focus for identity. The Euro and other examples from material life, such as sport, education exchanges, architecture and cityscapes and tourism, point to a tendentially European way of life in the sense of common patterns of life, symbolic structures and transnational discourses across Europe. A sober look at the prospects of a European identity might indicate that a European society is emerging in a slow and very diffuse way and producing new kinds of attachments and loyalties. An interesting example of these generalized forms of identity and their associated loyalties is the emerging European public sphere. This is not a public domain that can be compared to national public spheres, but, rather, takes the form of discourses that are common to many societies (Eder 2000; van de Steeg 2002). What is distinctive about this European public sphere is not so much the existence of a transnational forum – although such developments are not insignificant – but the emergence of Europe-wide forms of communicative competence, discourses, themes and cultural models within different national contexts. The rise of transnational governance in Brussels and the emergence of new networks for the mobilization of opposition and of organized interests has been of major importance in shaping inter-societal exchanges, which in turn

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have had an impact on transnational governance. But what is really significant is the inter-societal cross-fertilization that is occurring on the social and cultural level in the institutionally unique circumstances of the EU. It is on this level of public discourse that loyalties of a quite novel kind can be generated. The European public sphere differs from conventional public spheres, whether national or transnational, in that it is polyvocal, articulated in different languages and through different cultural models, and occurs in very different institutional contexts. But what makes it unique is that it is based on certain common issues and interconnecting debates in which the community of reference becomes increasingly diluted and, as it does so, is reconfigured. But it is also evident that the kind of loyalty that might be associated with processes of Europeanization is one that is highly conditional and contingent on a whole range of factors that are not anchored in a pre-existing consensus. Perhaps the best chance for Europe is to provide more spaces for such forms of loyalty to emerge. In some of his final writings, Pierre Bourdieu wrote about the need for labour to consolidate on a Europe-wide basis and give expression to new solidarities (Bourdieu and Grass 2002). At the moment this remains very intangible, especially given that the national level has been by far the more important in the experience of most forms of collective mobilization. Castells concluded his major three-volume work on the information age with the argument that something like a European social project is emerging around the defence of certain social and political values (Castells 1998: 333–4). He stresses the need to see this as a struggle, in the sense of something that has to be fought for. In his formulation of this, loyalties, solidarities and modes of belonging are central to the creation of a European society. In sum, whilst a ‘thick’ European form of loyalty remains unlikely, as the Euro-sceptic critics claim, this does not preclude the possibility of viable ‘thin’ kinds of loyalty emerging in European public discourse. There is no reason why the concrete reality of many cosmopolitan expressions of loyalty, such as loyalty to humanity, to the earth, to future generations, and to justice cannot be the basis of a distinctively European identity, in the sense of one that is not derivative of national identity but based on more generalized reference points. These are forms of loyalty that are being constructed in public discourse and do not simply reflect an already established loyalty. In the absence of a clearly definable thick loyalty of a distinctively European nature, a ‘thin’ kind of loyalty is perhaps more viable. The best theoretical conception of this is Habermas’s argument concerning ‘constitutional patriotism’ (Habermas 1994). Constitutional patriotism, as the normative content of post-national identity, refers to an identification with democratic or constitutional norms and not with the state, territory, nation or cultural traditions. Originally advocated in the context of German debates on the viability of national identity under the conditions of late modernity, it is relevant to the wider European debate about the possibility and the limits of a post-national Europe. Habermas’s argument was twofold. On one side, critical and reflexive self-confrontation has become an irreversible condition in contemporary society.

Loyalty and the European Union 133 On the other side, there is the simple fact that modern society is characterized by a great deal of cultural diversity, making it impossible for social integration to be built on a single cultural identity. The result is that modern societies must devise forms of identity that correspond to the diversity of their populations. Forms of loyalty defined in terms of constitutional patriotism thus presuppose only a limited degree of common identification. Indeed, social integration is possible through the fact that the legal system is neutral vis-à-vis cultural communities while at the same time recognizing the diversity of the different forms of life. One of the concrete implications of this argument is that post-national identity is compatible with multiple identities, since constitutional patriotism only requires identification with normative principles of argumentation. In fact, Habermas’s conviction is that, as a result of the accelerated rate of change in modern societies, cultures will survive only if they adapt themselves to the principles of discursivity and critique. Habermas (1992: 12; also 1996) cites the examples of the United States and Switzerland to provide evidence of societies where constitutional principles were institutionalized and have reached common acceptance without being rooted in citizens sharing the same language or ethnic background. In the context of a democratized EU, a new concept of democracy would have to be created to accommodate a degree of unity in diversity. But the Habermasian thesis differs from liberal arguments about multiculturalism. Where liberalism seeks to accommodate diversity in a common public domain, Habermas argues for a stronger and more transformative kind of dialogue. Whilst being essentially ‘thin’ in comparison to ‘thick’ expressions of identity, it is far more extensive than, for example, John Rawls’s (1987) notion of an ‘overlapping consensus’, in that it sees public discourse as productive of new kinds of identities and loyalties rather than simply accommodating those that already exist. In this view, particularistic traditions – often based on a strict separation of the private and the public – would not have to be given up, but could be made flexible. This, of course, presupposes an ability to relativize one’s historical traditions. Habermas does not in fact see that as the insurmountable problem since there are adequate historical and contemporary examples of self-critical and reflexive identities and cosmopolitan loyalties. Habermas’s example of Switzerland is not, then, the best case of cosmopolitanism conceived of in terms of reflexive forms of communication. Habermas argues that a liberal immigration policy is an essential part of the task of defining the new Europe. It could be mentioned in support of his position, as John Rex (1996) has argued, that immigrants do not come with non-negotiable identities, but have, in fact, complex relationships to both the country of origin and the home country (see also Kastoryano 2002). What is interesting in Habermas’s reflection on the future of Europe is the implication that immigration can in fact challenge the cultural identity of Europe and open up the possibility of a post-national identity: in a multicultural Europe, all that needs to be expected of its citizens is a minimal commitment to constitutional norms and not to cultural traditions. This implies, furthermore, a radical commitment to a discursive notion of democracy. While Habermas’s formulation of this is somewhat abstract, it does

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suggest a political culture of openness and self-critical communities which recognizes diversity as a positive feature of European societies and from which new loyalties might be generated. Drawing on Habermas, then, a view of loyalty might be conceived which is articulated through discursively mediated identities and critical dialogue. On this view, one can simultaneously be a European and member of an ethnic community or nation. If we see the emergent polity in this way the main objection to Habermas’s conception of constitutional patriotism can be overcome, namely that it is too decontextualized. At the European level, given the cultural diversity of Europe in terms of both ethnic and national diversity, there can be no substantive cultural identity. There is no denying that a constitutional patriotism can be only a minimal or ‘thin’ kind of loyalty, but it is a foundation for loyalty nonetheless. As remarked earlier, and reiterated by the editors and several contributors to this volume, in the multicultural societies that now exist in Europe many people have several loyalties – loyalties to different groups and even to different societies – without this meaning that these loyalties are irreconcilable. Loyalties, like the identities upon which they are based, can be negotiable and flexible, and, moreover, they are rarely fixed for long but can shift along with generational change. Thus, loyalties in Europe today are less likely to be ranked in a hierarchy of allegiances from family and kin, to friends and colleagues, to the national community. The state no longer commands an exclusive demand on loyalties as other more cosmopolitan kinds of loyalty come into play, and yet the state is more and more dependent on loyalty as a form of legitimacy. In the case of the EU legitimacy is now inescapably bound up with the capacity of the EU to generate forms of solidarity. It is in this respect that thin forms of identity alone will be insufficient. Without the thick dimension of solidarity the EU will not gain the degree of trust that will be essential to a meaningful kind of loyalty. Will Hutton (2002) has convincingly argued that one of the most important contributions the EU can make is to revive the European belief in the social contract and public-action works. Three clusters of values define Europe in his view and distinguish it from Americanization: the stakeholder view of property, the social contract and the commitment to the public realm. Despite the differences between them, European countries share a basic commitment to forms of solidarity that have been lost in the United States and hardly exist in other parts of the world. To enhance these social values will be critical in shaping post-national solidarities.

Conclusion Thin forms of loyalty exist on the European level and are very different from national forms of loyalty that generally presuppose a pre-existing loyalty. The specifically European forms of loyalty identified in this chapter do not operate on the latter assumption. These forms of loyalty are highly contingent on certain conditions being fulfilled and take the form of a processual discourse. While thick loyalties will take a long time to consolidate, for the moment thin forms of

Loyalty and the European Union 135 loyalty are more in evidence. The chances of these new European forms of loyalty developing should not be exaggerated, but nor should they be denied, as many of the Euro-sceptics would have it. In this regard a really central question is exactly how divisive cultural identity is. Does the deepening cultural differentiation of Europe necessarily lead to deep cultural divisions that might make a cosmopolitan form of loyalty impossible? As is suggested by some recent American debates, culture may in fact be less divisive than is often thought because there are also powerful integrative forms of communication going on (Smelser and Alexander 1999). Of course the European situation is different, but the question of the actual extent of the divisiveness of culture cannot be avoided. The critical issue is thus whether the European public sphere can provide a new kind of political community for citizenship which is based on pluralization and need not necessarily lead to ‘culture wars’. In this view, conflict is not necessarily always adversarial. Despite the apparent rise of nationalism and xenophobic sentiment in Europe, there is much to suggest that other kinds of identity, along with cognitive and symbolic models, are also operative, diluting the resurgent nationalism, which is now entering a post-national phase in which nationalism is no longer the dominant force in the state project. An example of this, and of how post-national loyalty can allow new kinds of solidarity to arise, is a discourse of war that is emerging in Europe that is very different from that in the United States, and that may become a very significant factor in shaping new European loyalties in a more critical key. It is a point of more general validity that wars cannot easily be led by states relying on the unconditional loyalty of the population. This was very apparent in Britain during the offensive against Afghanistan in 2002, when the government had to monitor carefully public support for a ‘postmodern’-style war. This experience was repeated later that year in the UK as well as in most European countries amidst widespread public opposition to war against Iraq. Again, this is an example of the contingent nature of European loyalties and their increasing role in the legitimation of politics. It may be speculated, in conclusion, that dialogic forms of loyalty, as described by Habermas, will be more and more relevant to the EU in the context of the enlargement project. The prospect of military conflict has not entirely disappeared from the EU, as the enlargement project demonstrates. While the present composition of the EU of 15 countries has more or less solved the problem of war, this may not be the case in a not too distant future with a possible 27-member EU. The Turkish–Cypriot conflict is one obvious example of a potential military clash involving major issues of loyalty. Aside from the question of such major military clashes, there are many other examples of potential conflicts of loyalties that the EU will have to address. As the EU expands into quite different kinds of society it is unlikely that simple appeals to ‘unity in diversity’ will suffice to resolve potential clashes over loyalties. It is not too far-fetched to propose that the strengthening of dialogic and reflexive kinds of loyalty, along with social solidarities, will become crucial in the future.

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Bibliography Beetham, D. (1991) The Legitimation of Power, London: Macmillan. Bourdieu, P. and G. Grass (2002) ‘The “Progressive” Restoration: A Franco-German Dialogue’, New Left Review 14 (March/April): 63–77. Castells, M. (1998) End of Millennium, Oxford: Blackwell. Delanty, G. (1995) Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality, London: Macmillan. Durkheim, E. (1964) The Division of Labour in Society, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Eder, K. (2000) ‘Zur Transformation nationalstaatlicher Öffentlichkeit in Europa’, Berliner Journal für Soziologie 10: 167–84. Eder, K. and B. Giesen (eds) (2001) European Citizenship: National Legacies and Transnational Projects, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Giddens, A. (1990) Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, J. (1976) Legitimation Crisis, London: Heinemann. —— (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge: Polity Press. —— (1992) ‘Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections on the Future of Europe’, Praxis International 12: 1–19 (republished in Habermas 1996). —— (1994) ‘Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State’, in A. Gutmann (ed.) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge: Polity. Hutton, W. (2002) The World We are In, London: Little, Brown. Kastoryano, R. (2002) Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lasch, C. (1995) The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, New York: Norton. Luhmann, N. (1979) Trust and Power, New York: John Wiley. —— (1990) Political Theory and the Welfare State, Berlin: De Gruyter. Majone, G. (1996) Regulating Europe, London: Routledge. Marshall, T.H. (1992) Citizenship and Social Class, London: Pluto Press. Meehan, E. (1993) Citizenship and the European Community, London: Sage. Rawls, J. (1987) ‘The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 7: 1–25. Rex, J. (1996) ‘National Identity in the Democratic Multi-cultural State’, Sociological Research OnLine 1: 2, available at http://www.socresonline.org.uk/1/2/1.html. Shore, C. (2000) Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration, London: Routledge. Siedentop, L. (2000) Democracy in Europe, London: Penguin. Smelser, N. and J. Alexander (eds) (1999) Diversity and its Discontents: Cultural Conflict and Common Ground in Contemporary American Society, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Smith, A. (1990) Nations in the Global Era, Cambridge: Polity Press. —— (1995) Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, Cambridge: Polity Press. Tiersky, R. (ed.) (2001) Euro-Skepticism: A Reader, London: Rowan & Littlefield. Touraine, A. (1997) What Is Democracy?, Boulder, CO: Westview. van de Steeg, M. (2002) ‘Rethinking the Conditions for a Public Sphere in the European Union’, European Journal of Social Theory 5: 497–517. Weiler, J.H.H. (1999) The Constitution of Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9

Wider still and wider may thy bounds be set? National loyalty and the European Union Margaret Canovan

A survey conducted in Southeast Asia to investigate the international reputation of the European Union (EU) found (so it is said) that people in that part of the world who had heard of the EU at all tended to think it was an insurance company. Perhaps this is not altogether wide of the mark. Europhiles have often reminded us that the EU is our insurance against the return of war in Europe, while one can imagine British Euro-sceptics grumbling that we pay enormous amounts to insurance companies for very little return. A more useful way to think about the parallel, however, may be to see it as highlighting the limitations of the EU as a body politic. Like an insurance company, it may be a worthy organization but it does not on the whole inspire loyalty. So far, at any rate, little European patriotism has developed, and few European citizens think of the EU (rather than their state or, in some cases, a smaller region) as ‘our country’. Some critics of modern politics would argue that there is nothing much to choose in this respect between the EU and states like the USA, Britain or France. Whatever disguises they adopt, all of them, according to this view, are essentially instrumental organizations unable to claim any allegiance deeper than brand loyalty. In the words of Alasdair MacIntyre, being called upon to die for the modern state is like dying for the telephone company (MacIntyre 1988: 149). Empirically, however, this is plainly false. Despite the impact of globalization on the one hand and ethnic fragmentation on the other, some of the states at present in existence do inspire attachment. We do not need to call on the postSeptember 11 surge in American patriotism to illustrate this point; we need only take note of the widespread unease within the EU about further transfers of powers from nation-states to the centre. Many of these states are experienced by significant numbers of their citizens as ‘our’ state, meaning that (regardless of our views about the government in power) we feel ourselves to be members of a people to whom the state belongs. In other words, whereas the EU is not a nation-state, some, at least, of its components are. What is nationhood, and is it something that could exist at the level of Europe? Most of the discussion in this chapter will be concerned with the complexities of nationhood in general, while in the later part I will use the example of Britain to make some points about the flexibility of national identity and its capacity for expansion and for contraction. It may be as well, however, to

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begin by underlining why nationhood matters in the political context of European integration.

National loyalty and political power Despite aspirations to ‘ever-closer union’, the EU’s pretensions to act as a single polity in world affairs were embarrassingly exposed during the 1990s by the failures of European intervention in Yugoslavia. One response has been to point out that institutions hampered by national vetoes cannot be other than feeble, and to suggest that the answer lies in building a true European federation. According to this line of argument, a United States of Europe with a European Federal Government would be able to wield the collective power of Europe in foreign and defence affairs, saving Europeans from the shame of having to call in the USA whenever a serious crisis occurs. No sooner is such a vision articulated, however, than its implausibility seems apparent. The Europe of the EU is certainly more than a ‘geographical expression’ (in Metternich’s dismissive phrase), but it is a very long way from attracting the kind of overarching loyalty that would enable a single government to take decisive action on behalf of the whole, let alone to order a pan-European military force into battle. Any putative European government that tried to do so would provoke wrenching national hostilities inside the Union, beside which current discontents about ‘our’ farmers or ‘their’ corrupt practices would be insignificant. While conceding this point, some Europhiles argue that the answer lies in overcoming ‘the democratic deficit’ by strengthening the European Parliament to make it a body equivalent to the US Congress, so that distant European policymakers would be held truly accountable to our elected representatives. But this argument evades a highly significant feature of representation, which is that for political representation to be legitimate election itself is not enough: that which is represented needs to be some kind of meaningful entity of which most electors recognize themselves to be part. Except in face-to-face situations, elected representatives cannot represent us as individuals, but only as members of collectivities, whether organizations, interest groups or territorial entities. If a stronger European Parliament were not to be what Edmund Burke called ‘a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests’, but were to concern itself with ‘the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole’ (Burke 1834: 180), it would have to represent Europe as a political collectivity. The problem is that, in contrast to America (which Congress can reasonably claim to represent, despite anti-federalist stirrings in some places), there is little sign of the birth of any such overarching European collectivity for Members of the European Parliament to speak for (Hayward 1995). To underline the point: unlike the USA (and like the former Yugoslavia) the EU is not a nation-state. I shall turn in a moment to the vexed question of what a nation-state is; whatever the answer to that question, however, it is as well to realize that (whatever their limitations in a world of global economic and military insecurity) nationstates have great political advantages. Ceteris paribus, a polity sustained by a sense

‘Wider still and wider’: national loyalty and the EU 139 of common identity and the loyalty that it engenders will be stronger than one without such underpinning: better at maintaining internal peace, mobilizing for war, achieving democratic legitimacy through the recognition of an elected government as our government, sharing resources among our people, and mobilizing the collective power to take effective action (Canovan 1996). Examples of the political advantages of such common identity, and of the problems created by its absence, are ready to hand in the experience of the ex-communist states of Eastern Europe. Poland, with a strong sense of national identity, was infinitely better placed to surmount the tendency towards post-revolutionary disintegration than Yugoslavia, without it. The ways in which such national power may threaten others are obvious, and fear of the power of German nationhood in particular accounts for much of the impetus behind the construction of European institutions, just as fear of resurgent Russian nationhood has had a good deal to do with the enthusiasm for joining the EU shown by the new states to Russia’s west. Nevertheless, political entities cannot do without power, and those interested in Europe’s prospects cannot afford to ignore the fact that national loyalty has proved to be one of the most effective ways of mobilizing power so far discovered. But what is it? What is a nation?

What is a nation?1 As Hugh Seton-Watson wisely said, ‘many attempts have been made to define nations, and none have been successful’ (Seton-Watson 1977: 3). The response of many students of politics has been to dismiss the whole topic of nationhood as something too foggy and confused to be worth bothering about. In view of the enormous political significance of nationhood, however, this is unwise. I shall argue that political significance and difficulty of definition arise from the same source, namely the extreme complexity of nationhood as a phenomenon. Two sorts of complexity will concern us, one of which is due to the fact that nations are historically contingent, fluid and highly variable phenomena, and therefore hard to generalize about. Apart from the complexities that arise from this sheer variety, however, complexity is of the essence of nationhood. What makes nations powerful and at the same time hard to understand is that they mediate between and hold together apparently opposed areas of experience, so that apparently contradictory descriptions seem simultaneously to fit them. In approaching this difficult topic it will be helpful to look at some of these apparently incompatible ways in which theorists have tried to apprehend nationhood, each of which grasps part (but only part) of the phenomenon. When the victors of the Second World War set up a forum in which the leaders of the world’s states could meet, they called it ‘the United Nations’. To have called it ‘the United States’ would no doubt have invited confusion, but there is in any case a great deal in English usage to support the identification of ‘nation’ with ‘state’. It is not just that relations between states are ‘international relations’; within that familiar discourse, states have ‘national’ anthems, played when their ‘national’ team wins an Olympic medal; possessors of state passports

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have a ‘nationality’; and appropriation of industries by the state has historically been called ‘nationalization’.2 In other words, our ordinary use of language encourages us to think of states and nations as equivalent. The virtue of this approach is that it does remind us that nations are political phenomena. It is important to keep this in mind, because the first move that serious analysts of nationhood usually make is to turn the spotlight away from political institutions by distinguishing nations from states, pointing out that the two cannot be the same thing. Many states have existed or still do exist that cannot reasonably be described as nation-states (the Habsburg Empire, the USSR, Liechtenstein, Yugoslavia). Conversely, nations have existed and still do exist without corresponding to states. Examples on this side of the case are more contentious, but consider, for example, the Polish nation in 1914 or 1940. If some of the ‘United Nations’ are not really nations at all, only states, what is it that they lack? One of the most venerable answers focuses on culture. At the time of the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century, French conquest provoked German intellectuals like Fichte into articulating a Romantic nationalism according to which each people has its own Volksgeist, which expresses itself through its own particular language and culture, and which deserves political recognition in its own state. A great many nationalists and analysts of nationalism ever since then have understood nationhood in cultural terms, sometimes focusing specifically on language (as in the Welsh case), but more often drawing on a wider conception of culture, what Yael Tamir calls ‘patterns of behaviour, language, norms, myths and symbols that enable mutual recognition’ (Tamir 1993). Few analysts would now interpret such phenomena as expressions of a Volksgeist, and in view of the fluidity of modern cultures and societies it is increasingly hard to specify just what ‘norms’ or ‘patterns of behaviour’ are (say) characteristically English. Where now are the ‘solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays…suet puddings and red pillar-boxes’ that signified Englishness to George Orwell in 1941, or his ‘crowds in the big towns, with…their bad teeth and their gentle manners’ (Orwell 1957: 64)? The analysts’ emphasis therefore tends to shift from defining nationhood in terms of the longstanding features of a particular culture towards looking for the signals that for the time being enable a particular group of people to recognize one another as belonging together. Many theorists have in consequence argued that what constitutes nationhood is not culture as such, but, rather, this mutual recognition in itself. In accordance with this approach, much contemporary writing about nationalism maintains that what makes a set of people a nation is not so much the objective possession of a shared culture or polity as their national consciousness. As David Miller puts it, ‘national communities are constituted by belief: nations exist when their members recognize one another as compatriots’ (Miller 1995: 22). There can be no doubt that this stress on consciousness is true to life, and is in many cases a highly significant political fact. All the same, there are pitfalls down this road, for it can, as Eric Hobsbawm observes, ‘lead the incautious into extremes of voluntarism’ (Hobsbawm 1990: 8). Saying that nationhood is all in the mind can give the misleading impression that it is purely a matter of indi-

‘Wider still and wider’: national loyalty and the EU 141 vidual choice, and that national identities can be created and dissolved at will. There are two reasons why these subjectivist conclusions do not follow from the fact that nationhood depends upon common consciousness. In the first place, nations are collective products of consciousness: even if the nation I belong to is all in the mind, it is not all in my mind, and I cannot alter the situation by an act of will. Most obviously, I cannot simply decide on my own to become a member of another nation – say, to become Polish or German – since recognition by others is a crucial aspect of national identity. Under modern conditions, it quite frequently happens that particular individuals find themselves caught between two such identities, for example as a result of intermarriage. If they are lucky they may be able to choose, but they may also be unlucky and find themselves rejected by or under suspicion from both sets of compatriots. Second (and closely connected with this point), nations are not set up deliberately, like clubs, but are inherited from the past by members who are normally born into membership. Although nations exist in the mind, that apparently flimsy identification is passed down through families and experienced as something given. Nations vary a great deal in the ease with which they adopt incomers: Germany has historically been reluctant to accept the children of Gastarbeiter as citizens, but prepared to welcome Volksdeutsche whose ancestors migrated to Russia centuries ago. However, the emphasis placed on blood is simply a matter of degree: even a nation of immigrants like the USA, which accepts new members from every gene pool on the globe, nevertheless passes on newly acquired nationality through inheritance. Since membership of a nation is normally a matter of birth, then, is it misleading to focus our attention on subjective consciousness? Should we think of nations essentially as ethnic groups? Anthony Smith has argued persuasively that although modern nations are much more inclusive and heterogeneous than ethnic groups they do have ‘ethnic origins’, in the sense of being built in each case around an ‘ethnic core’ that continues to perform a vital role in providing the nation with the historic depth that a modern polity needs if it is to function properly (Smith 1986). Clearly, modern nations like Britain or France (let alone the USA) are a very long way from anything resembling primordial ethnic homogeneity, and even those nearest to such a model, like Japan, nevertheless incorporate longstanding ethnic differences. But it is true not only that within any given nation many fellow nationals will be blood relations, but also that nations depend upon the symbolism of kinship for much of their emotional appeal, especially the atavistic loyalties and appeals for sacrifice that draw legitimacy from the ‘motherland’ or ‘land of my fathers’. The resonance of this strain of ethnic nationalism has in recent years been particularly evident in the Balkans, but it is at the same time an undeniable element in the nationhood of more settled Western nations who like to think of themselves as being beyond that kind of tribal barbarism. On the other hand, it can easily be objected that much of the kinship invoked in national loyalty is ‘imagined’ kinship (Anderson 1983), and that a good deal of it is always distinctly fictitious. Should we therefore be looking at yet another, more sceptical, account of nations, one which understands them, not as atavistic

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communities of blood, but in much brisker and less credulous terms to do with the use of myths to serve the functional requirements of modern society and the universal imperatives of economic change? One general theory of nations and nationalism holds that the nation is a product of modernization, an ersatz community that has come into existence to meet the needs of modern society. According to this account, nations are entirely inauthentic in their own terms, but are nevertheless functionally indispensable. To quote the most influential exponent of this thesis, Ernest Gellner, ‘nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist’ (Gellner 1964: 168). Various versions of this general approach emphasize different aspects. One hinges on the functional needs of a modernizing economy, which have given language, culture and education a new significance. To quote Gellner again, ‘[u]niversal literacy, mobility and hence individualism, political centralization, the need for a costly educational infrastructure’ all conspire to put such questions on the political agenda of industrial society and ‘impel it into a situation in which political and cultural boundaries are on the whole congruent’ (Gellner 1983: 110). Gellner emphasizes that, although nationalists always see themselves as fighting to preserve their ancestral traditions, what this process leads to is actually the creation of unified national cultures with little relation to the myriad folk cultures they replace. Even France, for example, often seen as historically one of the most authentically homogeneous and monoglot nations, was a patchwork of peasant communities with narrow horizons and mutually unintelligible dialects until railways and conscription turned ‘peasants into Frenchmen’, in Eugen Weber’s phrase (Weber 1979), and mobilized national loyalty. If nations and nationalism are as artificial and inauthentic as Gellner maintains, why do ordinary people respond with so much enthusiasm to their appeals? How are we to account for the apparently irrational intensity of many national loyalties? This question can also be answered in terms of modernization. The explanation is that (as Simone Weil put it) we have to love the nation because there is nothing else left for us to love (Weil 1952: 109). Most of the local, occupational and religious communities to which people were formerly attached have dissolved, leaving individuals with nothing to turn to except the ‘imagined community’ of the nation (Anderson 1983). Yet another version of modernization theory can connect the functional needs of modernizing economies and the emotional needs of modern populations by focusing on the political opportunities nationalism offers. According to this account, politicians see in nationalism a heaven-sent opportunity to mobilize a following for the capture of state power and the rewards that go with it: a capture, moreover, that can be presented as legitimate in terms of the prevailing ideology of national self-determination. John Breuilly is the foremost exponent of this analysis of nationalist politics, maintaining (in terms that might, for example, have a good deal of relevance to the rise of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia) that ‘Nationalism is not the expression of nationality…rather, an effective nationalism develops where it makes political sense for an opposition to the government to claim to represent the nation against the present state’ (Breuilly 1982: 382).

‘Wider still and wider’: national loyalty and the EU 143 There is much that is salutary in the astringent approach and debunking tone of the various theories of nationalism as modernization. Questions nevertheless arise. For one thing, if the nationalism of the past two centuries has (as Gellner maintains) been all about the functional requirements of a national economy, then should it not be fading from view now that national economies are too small to cope with a global market? On this theory, the European single market should be carrying with it a fervent new linguistic Europeanism (perhaps based on Esperanto, but more plausibly on English), and national attachments and national languages should be sinking out of sight as local peasant dialects did a century ago. It becomes very hard to understand Welsh, Basque or even French nationalism from this point of view. Furthermore, while Breuilly’s theory of nationalism as political opportunism can certainly shed considerable light on the break-up of Yugoslavia (especially when the perennial attractions of opportunities for violence are taken into account) (Ignatieff 1994), this kind of instrumental explanation does make it difficult to understand the sheer intensity of national loyalties. Might there not be more to this than instrumental economic and political considerations – matters of status and dignity, for example? This is the thesis of Liah Greenfeld, for whom ‘national identity is, fundamentally, a matter of dignity’ (Greenfeld 1992: 487). Greenfeld argues that most nationalisms have been reactive, a matter of trying to assert collective dignity against the power of a nation or nations already in existence – the colonized against the colonizers, Russia, China and Japan against the West, Germany against France, France against England. She maintains that it was in sixteenthcentury England that the process started, with the invention of a new kind of political community in which nobles joined with commoners to assert a collective superiority to the rest of mankind. Furthermore, she turns the tables on the ‘modernization’ theories of nationalism by arguing that, far from modernization generating nations, it was in fact nationhood (specifically, English nationhood) that generated most of the features that we know as modernity. It did so by creating a kind of society in which the traditional barriers between nobles and commoners were transcended in common membership of a ‘people’ and that ‘people’ acquired enough solidarity to replace the king as the bearer of sovereignty. This in turn made possible the development of modern democracy, revolution and populist politics. According to Greenfeld’s striking thesis, ‘it is nationalism that has made our world, politically, what it is’ (Greenfeld 1992: 21).

Nations as mediators Looking back over these many different accounts of nationhood, we may be reminded of the fable of the four blind men touching an elephant in different places and identifying it each in terms of the particular bit he could feel. Consider the suggestions we have encountered about where we should focus our attention if we want to understand what it is that constitutes nationhood: •

the state, with its institutional and territorial structure;

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On the face of it, we might suppose that the nationalist elephant being described by the various theorists (a large and dangerous beast, docile when properly handled, but capable of doing a great deal of damage to its environment) could not possibly be the same animal. We seem to be confronted by a series of dichotomies. Is a nation essentially a political entity, typically a state? Or is it essentially a community held together by language and culture? Is it constituted by birth or by choice? Is it a politicized version of ethnicity or a matter of individual identification? Are nations natural or artificial? Are they immemorial or recent products of modernization? Are they a universal social form or contingent historical products? Are they essentially instrumental or fundamentally concerned with dignity? These apparently fruitless debates themselves point to an answer, which is that nationhood is a mediating phenomenon, the strength of which is precisely that it holds together all the apparent alternatives just listed. Thus, a nation is a polity that feels like a cultural community; it cannot exist without subjective identification and individual commitment, but it is nevertheless experienced by individuals as a destiny transcending individuality; it turns political institutions into a kind of extended family inheritance, although the kinship ties in question are highly metaphorical and manipulated for political ends; it is a contingent historical product that feels like part of the order of nature; it is artificial and contrived, but it deeply implicates the dignity or shame of its members. In other words, nationhood is hard to define, not because it is confused and nonsensical, but because it is extremely subtle. A phenomenon as complex as this is extraordinarily hard to describe and analyse, and we cannot reasonably expect to capture it in a brief definition. Indeed, even to look for such a definition is to invite misunderstanding if it is the very complexity of nationhood that has made it such a formidable political force. This complexity is consistently underestimated because it is of the essence of nationhood to seem simple and straightforward. Where nationhood exists it looks ‘natural’, and as a result we fail to notice what a remarkable political phenomenon it is. The fusion of the political and the familial creates an enduring ‘we’ that can be mobilized for opposition or that can form the basis of a strong and stable body politic, giving the state unity, legitimacy and permanence because it is ‘our’ state. A nation-state that governs, coerces and taxes (as all states do) is able to do so in the name of the same collective ‘people’ who have to put up with these ministrations. This central mediation between state and

‘Wider still and wider’: national loyalty and the EU 145 community is linked with other mediations between the individual and the collective, the mundane and the sacred, the present and the past. As members of a nation, individuals are tied into a collective order that is at one and the same time an intimate community of birth and something grander and more demanding, a transcendent entity that comes down from the past and can call for sacrifices to take it into the future. The nation is modern, but it is also immemorial; artificial, but it seems natural. My thesis is, then, that the phenomenon of nationhood is hard to grasp conceptually because of the complex web of mediation that lies at its heart and makes it such an effective mobilizer of popular loyalty and political power. There are, of course, other ways in which people can be mobilized and power generated, notably through ideological parties or (as 11 September 2001 reminded us) through religious organizations. One of the reasons why nationalism is so formidable, however, is that, once established, it requires neither ideology nor organization to function. Looking at the resurgent national loyalties of populations indoctrinated over decades with the message of international socialist brotherhood, we might indeed compare nationhood to a battery, which, once charged, can store power invisibly, ready for future use. The lurking presence of this ‘power from the people’ evidently has great relevance for the future of Europe. However, the account of nationhood given here does not in itself necessarily imply that projects for European integration are inexorably doomed by the existence of national differences. For not only is nationhood an intrinsically complex phenomenon in itself, but it is also highly variable, both laterally and temporally, and is capable both of contraction and of expansion. Nations differ from one another in the form and style of their nationhood. Attempts have often been made to sort them into categories, and especially to distinguish the so-called ‘civic’ nationalism of the more Western nations from the ‘ethnic’ nationalism further east. This distinction contrasts those cases (like England or France) in which nationhood grew as part of the formation of a territorial state, and was therefore closely associated with political and legal institutions, with others in which there was no identification with any existing state and the nation was defined by folk culture and descent (Smith 1991: 9–13). The implication of the distinction is often that ‘civic’ nationalism counts as members all those who are legally citizens of the state, and is therefore consistent with ethnic and cultural plurality, whereas the ‘ethnic’ kind defines membership in terms of blood and is therefore inherently more exclusive, more inflexible and less liberal. But such classifications are unhelpful, for a number of reasons. For one thing, ‘civic’ nationhood itself contains a strong element of ethnicity or imagined kinship, or both (Yack 1996). For another, there is too much selfcongratulation in the use of this sort of classification, implying that ‘our’ nationalism (having originated from territorial states) is liberal and civilized, whereas ‘theirs’ (being a matter of common blood) is racist and primitive. Just how far east ‘they’ begin is a matter of taste: Andrzej Walicki has pointed out, with some indignation, that the Polish nation (for example) has as good a claim

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as some further west to be counted as a member of the ‘civic’ variety (Walicki 1982: 13, 67–9). Apart from the futility of inviting nationalist controversy about whose nationalism is the best, dualist classifications oblige those who use them to play down the very significant differences within each category. The supposedly ‘civic’ nations, Britain, France, the USA, Switzerland, Denmark and the rest, are in fact all very different from each other. Furthermore, nationhood of all varieties is not static but dynamic. Every nation is a contingent historical product and, however immemorial and natural its nationhood may feel, each has changed and is changing in complex and contested ways. In the context of a discussion of future prospects in Europe this has important implications. Europhiles are occasionally tempted to look enviously across the Atlantic and to see the (relatively) multicultural USA as a model for their projected United States of Europe. In view of the historical depth of many existing European identities, however, an immigrant society like the US may offer a misleading example. A parallel closer to home might perhaps be found in what may at first sight seem an unlikely quarter: in the story of the emergence of the British nation, a story that demonstrates the way in which (given the right circumstances) new super-nations can grow out of the merger of smaller ones and still feel natural and attract loyalty.

English/British nationhood Wrapping oneself in the Union Jack (literally or metaphorically) has in recent years been a political tactic associated with chauvinists hostile to the EU without and to immigrant communities within the United Kingdom.3 We therefore tend to think of British national loyalty as a narrow and exclusive form of identity, insular in all senses of the word. But the history of English/British nationhood is in fact a history of inclusion as much as of exclusion, first of the growth of an inclusive English nationhood, and then of its further expansion into British identity. Contrary to the widespread and oft-repeated assumption that nations are a purely modern phenomenon (for example, Hobsbawm 1990: 14), it seems clear that English nationhood was well established by the end of the Middle Ages, if not before (Hastings 1997; Reynolds 1984: 272). But this nation was in no sense an expression of primordial ties of blood, including as it did people of Norman, Saxon, Danish and Welsh stock who had literally been at one another’s throats in the fairly recent past. This common identity was powerfully confirmed by the triumph of Protestantism in the course of the sixteenth century, bringing a widespread conviction that England had a special divine calling. A large proportion of the population, poring over the gruesome illustrations in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, could celebrate the special English witness to divine truth and echo the cleric who asserted that ‘God is English’ and called upon Englishmen to thank God seven times a day that they had not been born mere Italians, Frenchmen or Germans (Greenfeld 1992: 60). Recoiling from this exclusive chauvinism, we may easily fail to notice how inclusive Englishness was, taking in not only scions of different ethnic stocks, but

‘Wider still and wider’: national loyalty and the EU 147 also (and at the time much more significantly) nobles and commoners. Liah Greenfeld argues that the crucial move in the formation of national identity (a move taken first, in her view, in England in the sixteenth century) was the overcoming of vertical status differences. A new elite found a new way of asserting their own dignity, not by marking themselves off from the common people (as nobles usually did), but by associating the people with them in a common superiority to the rest of the world (ibid.). By the seventeenth century, then, English nationhood was already ethnically and socially inclusive by the standards of the time. The subsequent expansion of English into British identity carried the nation even further away from anything resembling primordial ethnicity. The relation between the larger and the smaller identity is extraordinarily confused and baffling. To the irritation of Scots, Welsh and Irish, modern English people (including academics) regularly fail to notice whether they are talking about England or Britain and use the names and their corresponding adjectives interchangeably – a matter of considerable significance in itself. Long before the inheritance in 1603 by James VI and I of both the Scottish and the English Crowns, the kings of England had claimed the whole island of Britain as their rightful dominion. The incorporation of both kingdoms in 1707 into a Union dominated by the larger and more prosperous partner set the stage for the gradual expansion of Englishness into a wider national identity. Linda Colley has traced the emergence in the course of the eighteenth century of a new ‘British’ nation composed of English, Scots, Welsh and (some) Irish, and has stressed the dialectical relationship between cohesion within the kingdom and confrontation without (Colley 1992). Almost continuous warfare against Catholic France, culminating in national mobilization against the threat of Napoleonic invasion, was by far the strongest unifying force, involving not only a sense of common danger but also the practical loyalties generated by the employment of large contingents from the minority nations in the army and navy. Apart from pride in and concern for ‘our’ boys, there were plenty of other ties to encourage a new consciousness of British identity in the late eighteenth century, such as internal trade and labour migration within a single market, and the spread of a common language and culture fostered by the circulation of newspapers. Significantly, Colley shows that British nationalism grew from below, long before it occurred to anyone in government to try to encourage such sentiments. The conquest of a worldwide empire in which all the British nations shared did much to reconcile them in a common sense of superiority. England was always the dominant partner, and despite occasional evidence of a Little-England reaction against the migrants from the peripheries, the effect was that the boundaries of Englishness became elastic and the difference between ‘English’ and ‘British’ often imperceptible – at any rate to the English. From the point of view of the other nationalities, this has often seemed to demonstrate the arrogance of English people, who talk as if they have failed to notice their Scottish or Welsh fellow subjects. It must have been that sort of insensitivity that prompted an advertiser in the personal column of the Times newspaper in November 1914, a time of national crisis, to this exhortation:

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Nevertheless, it is undeniable that, compared with English nationhood in the Elizabethan age, English/British national identity had by the mid-twentieth century become remarkably inclusive. The best evidence of the way in which Englishness had expanded is the genuine confusion long felt by most English people about what the boundaries of their national identity actually are, in spite of the strength with which that identity is felt. That confusion was compounded by the fall of the British Empire and the influx of emigrants from the Commonwealth. There are now increasing signs that this history of inclusion may have run its course and that disintegration is now under way, reminding us that for all its air of immemorial givenness nationhood is in fact never fixed. Assimilation of recent immigrants seems more difficult than in the past; Northern Ireland has become ever more detached from mainland Britain; distinct Scottish nationhood has been confirmed and strengthened by the re-establishment of a Scottish Parliament; and a lesser measure of devolution and the revival of the Welsh language may perhaps do the same for Wales.4 This process of unravelling may be hastened by the decline in the fortunes of the monarchy, which had over the previous two centuries played a vital role in holding together the United Kingdom while soothing sub-national susceptibilities. Nevertheless, the English themselves have yet to learn to distinguish Englishness from Britishness and to perceive differences of national interest. It is remarkable that financial transfers from England to Scotland and Wales (the stuff of nationalist politics in many countries) have yet to become an issue in English politics. The lesson to be drawn from this brief disquisition on the complexities of British nationhood is that the democratic legitimacy and political power made possible by nationhood are not determined or limited by primordial ethnicity. Whatever its current prospects, Britain has in the past functioned effectively as a nation, and has felt like a ‘natural’ political community, even though its contingency was blatantly obvious. In other words, because nations are not natural but are products of history, it is sometimes possible for previously distinct and hostile nations to be integrated into a new, overarching identity which may then function in a thoroughly authentic way. An interesting question therefore arises: could a similar expansion of nationhood happen on a larger scale? Does the growth of British nationhood offer any suggestions about the prospects for a new European identity that would attract pan-European loyalty?

Nationhood and European identity The first point to be noted here is that the British nation was not deliberately constructed. As Linda Colley has shown, in its formative stages the national identity was not fostered by the state but grew up informally and largely uncon-

‘Wider still and wider’: national loyalty and the EU 149 sciously, long before the days when an explicitly nationalist discourse became influential across Europe. In other words, it may be unsound to deduce from the fact that nations are not natural the conclusion that they must therefore be artificial, in the sense of being open to deliberate construction and reconstruction. There is no doubt that national identities can change, and they can certainly be influenced by those with power over education and the media; as Michael Billig has vividly shown, the public culture of modern states ‘unflaggingly flags’ national identity, reminding us constantly, but at a subliminal level, who ‘we’ are by reporting the activities of national sportsmen, the national government (normally referred to just as ‘the government’) and even the national weather (Billig 1995). But it is very doubtful whether a deliberate attempt by the European Commission to manufacture a European identity by similar means would be successful. Attempts at ‘nation-building’ in ex-colonial states with entrenched ethnic differences have had very little success, and it is striking that even the resources of totalitarian dictatorship were not able to merge Estonian or Chechen identity into allegiance to the Socialist Motherland. Any concerted attempt to use the media to impose a single European identity on French and Dutch, Greeks and Danes would risk setting off a series of nationalist backlashes that would wreck prospects for integration. But if deliberate construction of a European super-nation is almost certainly impossible, are there not more realistic prospects of a gradual and informal growing together of the nations, rather as happened in the British case? Such a prospect certainly cannot be ruled out. It is clear, for one thing, that acceptance of the wider identity in the British case had a great deal to do with prolonged sharing in a single economy and a common polity. It helped that the economy was largely prosperous and the polity often victorious, but in the early days there must have been a great many British subjects, particularly those from the regions further from London, who viewed the Union in a predominantly instrumental way as a source of protection and opportunity – much as Greek olive-growers, Spanish fishermen and French farmers see the EU today. What helped them or their descendants to acquire a deeper level of loyalty was probably (as has so often been the case in nation-formation) the fact of confrontation with a common enemy. British nationhood was formed largely in opposition to the French, in the course of a century of wars. At the present time it is hard to imagine a corresponding mass mobilization of Europe. Nevertheless, the degree of European integration so far achieved owes a great deal to the cold war and the perceived threat from the East, and it is always possible that a renewed sense of common peril (in the form, perhaps, of militant Islamist governments in control of the Southern Mediterranean) might provide the necessary foil. An important lesson to be drawn from the British case, however, may be that although pre-existing nations united to form a new identity they did not unite on equal terms. What happened was, to put it crudely, that England, the dominant power, expanded to become Britain; the Lowland elite in Scotland (prompted partly by fear of the wild Highlanders to their north) took a calculated decision to join the victor and share the spoils; the Welsh and the Protestant Irish made

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the best they could out of a situation over which they had little control, and Catholic Ireland suffered domination but remained unassimilable because its identity was starkly incompatible with that of the Union. In other words, the history of Britain bears out Anthony Smith’s (1986) thesis that a nation needs a ‘core’ around which to grow (though in this case the core was national rather than ‘ethnic’ in any primordial sense). A possible implication of this parallel is that if a European nation were to come into existence it would have to grow on somewhat similar lines, not as a union of equals, but through the expansion of the largest and strongest component: Germany. Clearly, one consideration that is crucial here is the way in which the identity of this core component is imagined. A core nation that thinks of itself in a stridently exclusionary way (as German nationalists have done in times past) would be most unlikely to be able to bind other nations to itself in a new overarching identity: on the contrary, it would simply provoke rival nationalisms. One of the reasons why England was able to expand into the more inclusive identity of Britishness was that it was already identified with the wider cause of Protestantism, in which the rest of the king’s subjects (except Catholics, most of them Irish) could join. Interestingly, there are indications that present-day German identity is in some ways rather well fitted for the role of core component in a new European nation. Helpfully, the German elite is already strongly European in culture and seems to be prepared to think of itself interchangeably as ‘German’ or ‘European’, at a much earlier stage in the process of integration than the English came to think of themselves as interchangeably ‘British’. In reacting against the association of traditional nationalism with Nazism, German political thinkers have since the Second World War developed the notion of ‘constitutional patriotism’. This was adopted in the days of national division to refer to a loyalty to the liberal-democratic quasi-constitution of the post-war Federal Republic, distinct from and opposed to a nationalism freighted with territorial claims. But for anti-nationalists like Jürgen Habermas this is an essentially universalist form of loyalty, a commitment to ‘abstract procedures and principles’ that is readily extendable from Germany to Europe, or more generally to ‘the West’ (Habermas 1989, 1996). Even for Germans with less fear of national pride, the cause of ‘Europe’ can be seen as a noble, supranational cause in the service of which national honour can be vindicated, just as ‘Britishness’ was legitimated in the eighteenth century as the bearer of Protestantism. Furthermore, history could easily be pressed into the cause. In preparation for its expansion into Britishness, England had ready to hand versions of history according to which her kings had immemorially laid claim to the whole of the British Isles. Germans/Europeans have ready to hand the history of a Holy Roman Empire that invariably included Germany but that at various times over the centuries included most of the present area of the European Union, even (if one traces it back to Charlemagne) France itself. Mention of France must, of course, remind us how hypothetical this scenario is. To date, the French elite seem to have calculated, rather like the Scots in 1707, that their interests are best served by getting close enough to their most

‘Wider still and wider’: national loyalty and the EU 151 formidable neighbour to be able to steer it in the right direction; however, there is no real parallel between the fully fledged nationhood of France and the situation of Scotland at the start of the eighteenth century. The desire at that time of the Scottish Lowland elite to join forces with England recalls instead the Northern Italian desire to use closer ties with Europe north of the Alps as a way of shaking off the backward South. By contrast, the case of France raises in acute form the issue of language and national identity. Britain coalesced as a nation using the language of the largest and strongest component. If the analogy were to hold, a new European identity based on expanded Germanness would have to express itself in German, a result that could come about only if the French were prepared to swallow what to many of them would seem like the end of civilization. In any case, the present trend is for English, rather than German or French, to become the European lingua franca. What, though, of Britain’s role in a future English-speaking United States of Europe? Might there not (according to Tony Blair’s dreams) be an opportunity for Britain to play the lead? Is it not the manifest destiny of the nation that expanded from England into Britain to expand further to embrace Europe, while still retaining its links with the rest of the Anglophone world? In the words of the imperialist anthem, Wider still, and wider, may thy bounds be set: God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet! But the crowds who sing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ so fervently each year at the Last Night of the Proms in London do not dream of that sort of Greater Britain. Instead they bear witness to a Little-Englandism quite out of tune with the song’s imperialist sentiments. To the frustration of Europhiles in the British political elite, the English people steadfastly refuse to think of themselves as Europeans. It is conceivable that Scots, Welsh and (both kinds of) Irish might rediscover ancient ties with the European continent and become integrated into a roomier super-national home. But present form suggests that England could not lead any such project and may be as hard to assimilate into a new European nation as Catholic Ireland was into Britain. These speculations force us, in other words, to recognize yet another of the intractable ambiguities of nationhood. On the one hand, it is a phenomenon of kaleidoscopic fluidity, capable of expanding, contracting and changing its form, sometimes within a remarkably short time, while retaining its aura of immemorial authenticity. On the other hand, at any particular juncture there are limits to its flexibility; national loyalties can suddenly and unpredictably solidify into an unexpectedly rigid barrier to expansive political schemes. No analysis of the political prospects for Europe can afford to ignore its power.

Notes 1

The arguments presented here are more extensively set out and defended in Canovan 1996.

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Margaret Canovan When that process was reversed on a large scale by Mrs. Thatcher’s government in the 1980s it was called ‘privatization’ rather than ‘denationalization’, perhaps indicating a sensitivity to the national susceptibilities played upon by the original move. Commenting on the project in Tory Euro-sceptic circles to persuade John Major’s government to fight the election of 1997 on a patriotic and anti-European platform, Sir Geoffrey Howe is said to have remarked that this would be wrapping oneself in the flag prior to burial at sea. Note that these narrower national identities are no more (if no less) authentic than British nationhood. The present Scottish and Welsh nations have grown up inside the United Kingdom and (despite the universal nationalist practice of reading present concerns back into the past) did not pre-date it.

Bibliography Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Billig, M. (1995) Banal Nationalism, London: Sage. Breuilly, J. (1982) Nationalism and the State, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Burke, E. (1834) ‘Speech to the Electors of Bristol, 3rd Nov 1774’, in The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, vol. I, London: Holdsworth & Ball. Canovan, M. (1996) Nationhood and Political Theory, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Colley, L. (1992) Britons; Forging the Nation 1707–1837, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cunningham, H. (1986) ‘The Conservative Party and Patriotism’, in R. Colls and P. Dodd (eds) Englishness: Politics and Culture 1880–1920, London: Croom Helm. Gellner, E. (1964) Thought and Change, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. —— (1983) Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell. Greenfeld, L. (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Habermas, J. (1989) ‘Historical Consciousness and Post-traditional Identity: The Federal Republic’s Orientation to the West’, in S.W. Nicholsen (ed.) The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate, Cambridge: Polity. —— (1996) ‘Citizenship and National Identity’, included as Appendix II in J. Habermas Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hastings, A. (1997) The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hayward, J. (ed.) (1995) The Crisis of Representation in Europe, London: Frank Cass. Hobsbawm, E. (1990) Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ignatieff, M. (1994) Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, London: Vintage. MacIntyre, A. (1988) ‘Poetry as Political Philosophy: Notes on Burke and Yeats’, in V. Bell and L. Lerner (eds) On Modern Poetry: Essays Presented to Donald Davie, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Miller, D. (1995) On Nationality, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Orwell, G. (1957) ‘England Your England’, Selected Essays, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Reynolds, S. (1984) Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seton-Watson, H. (1977) Nations and States, London: Methuen. Smith, A.D. (1986) The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford: Blackwell.

‘Wider still and wider’: national loyalty and the EU 153 —— (1991) National Identity, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Tamir, Y. (1993) Liberal Nationalism, Princeton, CT: Princeton University Press. Walicki, A. (1982) Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weber, E. (1979) Peasants into Frenchmen, London: Chatto & Windus. Weil, S. (1952) The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind, London: Ark. Yack, B. (1996) ‘The Myth of the Civic Nation’, Critical Review 10: 193–211.

10 Loyalty to the folkhem? Scandinavian scepticism and the European project Peter Lawler

Euro-scepticism is frequently interpreted as being of a particular kind. To its critics, it is symptomatic of a myopic, inward-looking nationalism that remains blind to Europe’s war-torn history and is out of kilter with wider trends in political theory and practice, which are collectively serving notice on the utility and desirability of the absolutely sovereign state. To its proponents, however, it represents an appropriate resistance to the erosion of an evolved national collective identity in the face of demands to identify with, and perhaps ultimately express loyalty towards, a less than fully formed alternative, the legitimacy or desirability of which remains suspect. Euro-sceptics may not be hostile to certain dimensions of regional integration that are seen unequivocally to serve the national collective interest. However, they are generally resistant to any extension of integration that significantly undermines existing ties of national identity and loyalty. Seen thus, Euro-scepticism seems, like nationalism, inherently antithetical to internationalist and cosmopolitan identifications and loyalties. Such tidy conceptual dualisms have severe analytical deficiencies, as many Euro-sceptics, notably those on the left, would be quick to point out. Closer examination of actually existing Euro-scepticism does suggest that a generic representation of it, by either critics or adherents, obscures as much as it illuminates. In the case of British (or, more accurately, English) Euro-scepticism, the dominant, conservative strand often appears to confirm the common critical perception in its inability to shed entirely a jingoistic, anti-foreigner overtone sometimes laced with nostalgic references to a once-great past, the defeat of Germany and so on. What, however, are we to make of a brand of Euro-scepticism emanating from publics notable not only for affection for their own national communities, but also for a historical commitment to domestic and international progressivism? What are we to make, moreover, of a Euro-scepticism emanating from states that have participated in a unique form of multifaceted regional integration for more than 40 years? For a host of reasons, we might suppose that the Scandinavian states and their publics should be particularly inclined towards the European project. Certainly, many Scandinavians are. Nonetheless, between 1992 and 1994 the extent and depth of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish public scepticism towards the European project was revealed in a series of national referendums on the European Union (EU). Although there have subsequently

Loyalty to the folkhem 155 been fluctuations in levels of Scandinavian public opposition to the EU, all of the Scandinavian states remain bastions of Euro-scepticism today. My principal concern is less with the issue of Scandinavian membership of the EU per se than with what Scandinavia’s wrestling with the Europe question might tell us about the contemporary evolution of public loyalty to the Scandinavian model. To this end, this chapter examines the Scandinavian debate about the European project with two principal focuses. The first is on the deployment of progressivist and internationalist values – key elements of the widespread perception of the Scandinavian states as ‘exceptional’ – against a project of transnational integration. The premise underpinning this focus is that analysis of Scandinavian resistance to the European project requires investigation of the blending of nationalism and internationalism in Scandinavian political discourse. In all of the Scandinavian national debates the issue of participation in the European project has been overtly intertwined with the question of the future of Scandinavian exceptionalism itself. Scandinavian Euro-scepticism has exhibited a significant, if intellectually unfashionable, loyalty towards a positive understanding of the sovereign state that a generic term such as nationalism arguably cannot fully capture. The second key focus is on the Danish national debate. This is partly because the principal issues at stake in the Danish EU debate have been broadly representative of those at the centre of debates in Norway and Sweden, even if the actual campaigns played out somewhat differently, not least because Norway and Sweden were debating membership whereas the Danes were debating further immersion into the European project. It also reflects the fact that Denmark has provided a particularly visible example of a tension between two activities that seem ostensibly to be the products of a common family of values: domestic and international progressivism and deeper participation in an international integrationist project. This visibility arises in part from the fact that Denmark’s democratic traditions have stipulated that public (rather than merely parliamentary or executive) approval of any significant changes to its membership of the European Union must be sought even if not constitutionally required. This in turn reflects Danish popular attachment to the value of folkestyre, or ‘rule of the people’, a conception of democracy that emphasizes what Larsen describes as an ‘organic discursive synthesis between people and state’ (Larsen 1999: 460). When this is overlain with a very apparent public loyalty towards a ‘Denmark’ defined, these days, increasingly in terms of cultural and ethnic distinctiveness and set against the historical backdrop of a commitment to internationalist solidarity, then the Gordian knot at the heart of the Danish struggle with the European project (and the wider Scandinavian struggle) becomes manifest. There is a further reason to focus on Denmark, but one where the utility of deploying Denmark as an illustration of an ostensibly generic Scandinavian phenomenon becomes a politically and normatively significant question. The fundamental tension identified above emerged in a somewhat different but clearly connected form most recently in the 2001 Danish general election campaign when the issue of immigration, and Muslim immigration in particular,

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figured very large in an overwhelmingly negative campaign. Not surprisingly, much of the international media coverage focused precisely on the contrast between Denmark’s progressivist reputation and the general tone of the campaign. The election produced a historic outcome: the relegation of the traditionally dominant Social Democratic Party to second place and the election of what appeared to be the most conservative government in Denmark since 1929 – on an astonishingly high turnout, moreover. Dependent on the parliamentary support of an openly xenophobic and anti-EU party, the new government soon enacted severe restrictions on refugee entry and immigration that have been widely condemned within Scandinavia, by other EU member states and by the United Nations (UN). At the same time the government promoted the shoring up of the welfare state (albeit in a modified more liberal form) and maintained a strongly proactive stance towards both the EU enlargement process and an active and ambitious EU development policy. The new Danish government also continues to make a virtue of Denmark’s ‘idealist’ foreign policy tradition. The knot, we might say, has yet to be untied. I begin with a brief overview of the key premises underpinning the claim that within the broad family of Western liberal states the Scandinavian states are indeed exceptional. I then go on to look at how both sides in the Danish debate around the deepening of membership drew upon the value-amalgam underpinning Scandinavian social democracy, encapsulated succinctly in the Scandinavian social imaginary of folkhemmet (The People’s Home). In the concluding section I examine the wider implications of Denmark’s national debate. The combined effects of European integration and globalization seemingly give weight to claims that Scandinavian exceptionalism and the particular brand of national loyalty that accompanied it are eroding. However, the reaction of significant sections of Scandinavian publics to the intertwined issues of immigration and national cultural identity – expressed most starkly but by no means solely in the Danish elections of 2001 – complicates any assessment. It hints at the emergence of a more exclusionary understanding of the folkhem, within which what once seemed to be unequivocally progressive values still play a key role.

Scandinavian exceptionalism1 On the face of it, the Scandinavian states and their publics seem particularly suited to the European integration project. Denmark may have been the only Scandinavian member state prior to 1995, but trade has long tied the others to Europe. In addition, there is inscribed upon the collective identities of the Scandinavian states decades of innovative domestic reformism and multifaceted internationalism. Warranting separate classification from the general form of liberal democracy, the Scandinavian model’s distinctiveness stems in part from the two core principles of universalism and de-commodification that have emerged out of decades of social-democratic theory and practice. It is through the granting of social rights that the status of individuals vis-à-vis the market becomes de-commodified, because their survival is no longer contingent upon

Loyalty to the folkhem 157 the sale of their labour power alone. The universal application of welfare rights in Scandinavia during the post-war era (in contrast to other more restricted social-assistance models) has led to the development of a particularly strong sense of collective identification: ‘[t]his model crowds out the market, and consequently constructs an essentially universal solidarity with the welfare state. All benefit; all are dependent; and all will presumably feel obliged to pay’ (EspingAndersen 1990: 28). The key feature of Scandinavian exceptionalism is the degree to which those policies have underpinned a close intermingling of public notions of community, nation and state. A state so entangled with what are often conflicting sources of public attachment provides the soundest of bases for the development of public loyalty to itself. The metaphor commonly employed by Scandinavian, particularly Swedish, ideologists to capture this quality has been that of folkhemmet. The concept emerged originally on the conservative side of Swedish politics in the early twentieth century, but it was taken up and made famous in the 1920s and 1930s by the Swedish Social Democrat Per Albin Hansson, who wedded a vague, organicist conception of society, emphasizing national cohesion above all, to a radical programme of social reform such that the metaphor was to become coterminous with Scandinavian national identities themselves. A corollary of the attachment to the folkhem has been the social embedding of the value of solidarity, not only because of domestic legislation, but also as a consequence of the regional and foreign policies of the Scandinavian states. Since the 1950s the Scandinavian states have acquired a reputation for a consistent progressivism above and beyond the liberal internationalist mean. Rare is the commentary that does not acknowledge that the self-interested pragmatism of Scandinavian foreign policy has been leavened by ethically driven activism to a significantly greater degree than most other Western states. Critics of the Scandinavian model tend not to argue that the Scandinavian states were never exceptional in their domestic or international outlook, but, rather, that such exceptionalism is either flawed in part or soon will have or already has had its day. Scandinavian social democracy provides, then, a distinctive set of lenses through which to view the world, locate individuals within a collective enterprise and, in combination with structural imperatives, shape the course of events (Tilton 1991: 8–13). At the centre of the Scandinavian worldview is a positive model of the internationalist sovereign state. Sweden is the most famously internationalist Scandinavian state because it is usually credited with having invented the region’s social model and it has been the original source of much of Scandinavian internationalist narrative. Nevertheless, Norway’s commitment to solidarity across the global developmental divide can be traced back to the early 1950s, and Danish foreign policy activism emerged under the former foreign minister Per Hækkerup, who in the mid-1960s explicitly rejected the view that the evident power-political constraints upon small states absolved Denmark from exercising moral responsibility where, and whenever, it could. Since the 1970s especially, when the Scandinavian states formed the core of the progressivist ‘Like Minded Group’ at

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the UN, the foreign policies of all the Scandinavian states have exhibited a marked normative commonality. This has been clearly reflected in shared policy emphases, most notably Official Development Assistance (ODA). The Scandinavian states were the first to reach the UN-recommended ODA target of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and, along with the Netherlands, are the only states to have done so, let alone remain above it. In recent years Denmark has led the Nordic pack, and therefore the world, in the per capita volume of ODA. The distinctiveness of Scandinavian ODA is also evident in its qualitative dimensions – the explicit norms governing aid programmes, the relatively low degree to which ODA is tied to national commercial and strategic interests, the relative weighting of multilateral and bilateral aid, the targeting of recipient countries and so on. All the Scandinavian states have played a disproportionately influential role in the UN and its various activities, have been strong advocates of the development of international law, foundational hosts for peace, conflict and development research institutes and, especially in the cases of Sweden and Norway, have developed a reputation as international conflict mediators and providers of good offices. Not surprisingly, then, Mouritzen has suggested that in addition to ‘peacefulness’ and ‘the egalitarian society’, a generic Nordic progressivism is associated with: internal and regional ‘peacefulness’; ‘solidarity with the Third World’; ‘environmentalism’ and ‘hospitality to refugees and migrants’ (Mouritzen 1995: 10–11). The character of Scandinavian exceptionalism is also illustrated by the history of extensive regional co-operation since the creation of a passport union in 1952. For Scandinavians, open borders and the free movement of people, capital and ideas across them have long been a fact of life. In spite of the absence of any powerful supranational bodies or any legal capacity to enforce compliance, the Nordic region has seen the emergence of a common labour market, common social security and pension agreements, the development of compatible national legal systems, as well as stringent regional environmental policy and the exploration of trans-border municipal co-operation. The cold war’s end has seen the strategic impulse towards Nordic co-operation wane. Nevertheless, all the Scandinavian states continue to affirm the utility and desirability of continued regional co-operation. As Bergmann (2002) has shown, the development of Nordic–Baltic relations since the early 1990s has revitalized and expanded the Nordic regional project in a manner, moreover, that is largely and intentionally consistent with Scandinavian internationalist tradition. Scandinavian internationalism has not inhibited or been inhibited by strong collective attachment to national identities. As any visitor soon discovers, Scandinavians are loyal flag-wavers to a degree that would cause a deal of discomfort in, say, that other bastion of Euro-scepticism, the United Kingdom. The Scandinavian states form part of a very small group of genuine nationstates relatively untouched by multiethnicity and multiculturalism until comparatively recently and as such they are exceptional in another sense, and especially in Denmark. They have shown in all cases comparatively high levels of public consensus over core values, highly participatory democracy, as well as a

Loyalty to the folkhem 159 thick model of citizenship. Thus the values that are reflected in internationalist foreign policies actually contribute to the preservation of collective national identities. The state that plausibly maintains a degree of normative consistency across both domestic and foreign policy – something the Realist tradition has longed decreed to be virtually impossible – offers a smaller target for public moral scepticism. It is something that a putatively nationalist loyalty can embrace and, by extension, it feeds a public attachment to sovereignty as a value. Writing in 1984, Arne Ruth, former editor of Sweden’s Liberal daily Dagens Nyheter, identified what is at stake should the Scandinavian states leave their past behind. The abandonment of the ‘pillars of the Nordic conception of political values’, key among which are equity, the centrality of the state and internationalism, ‘will not simply be a matter of concern for Nordic social democrats, but would go to the very core of national culture in the Nordic countries. The crisis of social democracy would be a crisis of national identity as well’ (cited in Wæver 1992: 85). Of course, there are important differences between the Scandinavian states, but the sense of being part of an exceptional family of nations is apparent throughout the region. As Wæver starkly puts it, ‘Nordic identity is about being better than Europe’ (ibid.: 77). Scandinavian internationalism is not without its critics. Some detect in it a larger dose of self-interest than the official rhetoric suggests. Others see Nordic regional co-operation as little more than an inverted form of an increasingly nostalgic nationalism, and Scandinavian security policies as predominantly realist in conception but legitimized through the language of idealist internationalism. Such criticisms are rarely trenchant, since few discount Scandinavian internationalism entirely or the fact that it remains unique. Nevertheless, the mounting costs of providing universal welfare and the impact of the phenomenon of globalization seemingly put Scandinavian exceptionalism on the defensive. Exploring how, when and why Scandinavian social democracy will go the way of all flesh has generated a voluminous literature of demise. A corollary of this development is the growth of the view, among Scandinavian policy elites at least, that a fuller immersion in Europe is the only way forward, to either the detriment or benefit of the Scandinavian model. Myths matter, nonetheless. Various formulations, such as ‘imagined community’ and ‘social imaginary’, have been used to express succinctly the cultural and political significance of collective identifications and the resilience of publicly internalized and socially embedded myths. More recently, varieties of constructivism and discourse analysis have highlighted the significance of the intersubjective framing of political thought and action. Working within the latter approach and inspired by Durkheim’s conception of society as sui generis, Wæver (1993, 1995) argues that the idea of society has become discursively ‘securitized’ independently of the state, going on to suggest that this gives insight into Danish disquiet about Europeanization. Whereas the security of the state is expressed in terms of sovereignty, the security of society is articulated in the language of identity, and it is the latter, Wæver claims, that primarily exercises the Danish public mind. Wæver seems to hint here at a darker side to public loyalty towards

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the Danish state-society complex. If correct, and recent events in Denmark seemingly enhance the plausibility of Wæver’s claim, this suggests that, for many Danes at least, both the state’s promotion of EU membership and its failure to curb sufficiently the immigration of overly culturally distinct people are construed as acts of disloyalty to the community. In other words, they constitute a direct challenge to the ‘organic discursive synthesis between people and state’ referred to above. Such formulations emphasize the discursive, symbolic and social reproduction of institutionalized collective practices and their practical consequences. In any national political-cultural setting in which the government apparatus is subjected to a vigorous and institutionalized level of public scrutiny – in other words, in which a degree of authentic reflexive monitoring of national policy takes place – both domestic and foreign policy are more likely to be subject to tests of public legitimacy. Thus, in spite of the growing pressures to bring both domestic and foreign policies in line with broad developments in the regional and global political economy, Scandinavian political elites must explicitly identify with actual and potential domestic reactions and take comparatively greater heed of them than most. Maintaining high levels of public loyalty to the institutions of state depends upon it. In effect, then, the Scandinavian debates about Europe have involved a more or less visible public clash of visions and interpretations of both domestic and international social phenomena. For Scandinavian advocates of greater involvement in the European project, the external, primarily economic, pressures either to normalize the exceptional state or to transfer exceptionalism upwards to Europe are now overwhelming; for their various critics, such pressures should be resisted. With a deeply embedded sense of collective self at stake, it is not surprising that proponents of change face an uphill battle: they risk being charged with letting go of something to which significant sections of national publics feel a very real loyalty, offering nothing in its place.

Danish Euro-scepticism and the Treaty on European Unity Historically, the Danes have not always been vehement in their Euro-scepticism, having strongly approved membership of the European Communities in 1973 and, less enthusiastically, the Single European Act (SEA) in 1986. Even the 1992 Treaty on European Unity (TEU – ‘Maastricht’) referendum showed that nearly half of the electorate was able to accept an unqualified treaty. However, Danish support for European integration has primarily been confined to approval of its economic utility. A second referendum in May 1993 approved the TEU, but only after the Edinburgh Agreement, which sanctioned Danish reservations about core features of the proposed Union such as union citizenship, a common currency, and common foreign and security policy (CFSP). Loyalty to their state-society complex notwithstanding, debate about European integration in Denmark has always exhibited a disjunction between

Loyalty to the folkhem 161 elite and public opinion. This was especially evident within the parties left of centre – that is, those most strongly associated with social-democratic values. The first referendum was conducted under the aegis of a centre-right governing coalition, but it fell to a government led by the Social Democrats to engineer a reverse of the vote in a second referendum. They urged ratification in the first referendum, making particular reference to the social dimensions of the Treaty and the possibility of new Scandinavian members in the future, only to see nearly two-thirds of Social-Democratic voters reject the advice. On the second occasion the balance between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ among Social-Democrat voters was evened out, largely as a consequence of strenuous efforts to sell the amended Edinburgh Agreement as having preserved both the economic benefits of the Union and Denmark’s progressive social and environmental policies. Furthermore, the government claimed that because of Denmark’s initial rejection and the sense of crisis it engendered in Brussels Europe would be more open and its further development would now be subject to greater popular scrutiny. In other words, it was all too aware of the need to employ the valueamalgam underpinning Danish exceptionalism in the selling of the TEU. Most dramatic was the shifting position of the small but influential People’s Socialist Party (SF). Initially opposed to EC membership, in 1991 the SF leadership came reluctantly to embrace it. Having campaigned for a ‘No’ vote in the first referendum, they subsequently joined the parliamentary majority and claimed that the opt-outs agreed to in Edinburgh would preserve Denmark’s progressivist features, thereby producing ‘a completely different yes’ (Danmark i EF 1993: 7). It was an argument that failed to convince a majority of its members. By the second referendum only the most right-wing parliamentary party, the increasingly xenophobic Progress Party, formally opposed the TEU. Given that about two-thirds of the ‘No’ vote in the first referendum came from erstwhile supporters of ‘Yes’ parties, it was not surprising that the ‘No’ campaign was dominated by organizations established specifically to engage in debates about Europe. These organizations had the features and structure more of social movements than political parties. One group – the People’s Movement Against the EC (Folkebevægelsen mod EF) – had opposed the EC outright since 1973. Predominantly ‘red–green’ in orientation, the movement brought together straightforward nationalist opposition and a union-based opposition grouping that portrayed European union as ‘solidarity misunderstood’ (Christiansen 1992). The principal opposition group formed specifically to campaign against the TEU – the June Movement (Junibevægelsen) – also brought together left and ecological positions and drew support from the large numbers of disaffected members of the two parliamentary parties left of centre. It was careful not to oppose the existing level of community development overtly and risk alienating the broad centre of the electorate. Underpinning that strategic modesty, however, was a coalition of views that was clearly critical of more than the Treaty alone. Holm (1993) has suggested that the June Movement comprised two broad schools of thought. On the one hand there were the ‘Euro social democrats’, who envisaged a Europe of many rooms, one of which would be

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occupied by the Nordic states with their ‘ideal model of democratic participation, social solidarity and environmental protection’. On the other hand there were the ‘green retreaters’, who adopted an ecological critique of Europe. These two principle currents joined up with a third stream of opposition, the nationalists, who feared the erosion of Danish identity, language and political culture. Perhaps missing the point was Holm’s subsequent assertion that this third rather amorphous group was probably the primary source of ‘No’ votes. A more plausible assessment is that the anti-Maastricht campaign successfully blurred the boundaries between these various oppositional positions in a manner that the political class found difficult to interpret. The substantive content of the Danish ‘nationalism’ that underpinned the anti-Treaty campaign was intricately bound up with the specific character of Danish political culture and institutions in a manner that reductionist references to a nationalism based solely upon linguistic and ethnic affinity cannot fully capture. As Christiansen argues, the various groups in the ‘No’ movement ‘share a set of core values rooted in a deep concern about the future of the Danish model of democracy and the country’s independence’. Furthermore, it is a commonly held view that Danish democracy differs radically from Continental models…. Whether or not this view of a specific Danish/Scandinavian model of democracy is well founded is, in a sense, beside the point; the important factor is that the idea has popular credence, and has thus helped shape attitudes toward the EC. (Christiansen 1992: 1000) The theme of a fundamental clash of values was a hallmark of the ‘No’ campaign more generally. At its core lies an affirmation of the distinctive social and cultural dimensions of Denmark’s multifaceted smallness. Ostergård claims that ‘almost all of the Danish political spectrum agrees on a fundamental distrust of everything “big” – that is, transnational and “European” ’ (Ostergård 1992: 168). Reflecting a history of territorial shrinkage and the presence of a powerful neighbour in Germany, Denmark’s diminutiveness has become a source of pride even among those who also acknowledge that smallness means that in some respects Denmark needs Europe. Ostergård goes on to trace pride in topographical insignificance coupled with a spirit of egalitarianism back to the nineteenth-century writings of N.F.S. Grundtvig, usually acknowledged as the father of Danish national identity, and his prosaic but loaded observation that ‘Denmark is a little land’ (ibid.). Grundtvig depicted a small, fair and satisfied land united by a ‘common feeling’ (folkelighed), in which, his heirs would now add, the value of ‘solidarity’ has come to acquire an exceptional prominence. Denmark stands out as a state that has translated its peasant roots into a modern industrial democracy, in which, moreover, there is a remarkable congruence of society, nation and state. Ostergård sums up the Danish outlook as that of ‘humble assertiveness’. Lacking the proselytizing drive of their Swedish neighbours, Danes ‘know they

Loyalty to the folkhem 163 are the best so don’t have to brag about it’ (ibid.: 170). Although he detects an element of ‘peasant, petty meanness’ in Danish Euro-scepticism, Ostergård also concedes that ‘real values are at stake’, stemming particularly from the public fear that integration into Europe will ensure the sundering of society, nation and state. For the TEU’s opponents, it was a threat to the fundamentals of Danish otherness, an undesirable, undemocratic social leveller that would bring Denmark down in the name of externally driven rationalization; Denmark’s smallness meant that it could not bring Europe up. European aspirations for a common foreign and security policy were read by many as the first signs of postcold war great-power politics which might ultimately involve Danes in militaristic adventurism. Furthermore, to enter fully into Europe was also to enter a fortress that would require the dilution of Denmark’s north–southoriented internationalism. Of course, progressivist rhetoric helped to disguise elements of a more familiar nationalism and parochialism. There was concern about German dominance, a touchy subject among Danes with long memories, and constituencies dominated by agricultural interests shifted away from historically high levels of support in protest against the Community’s agricultural policies, which were seen to discriminate against Denmark’s efficient farming community. Since such shifts were by as much as 10 or 20 per cent in some rural areas, they may well have been decisive in ensuring a negative vote (Petersen 1993: 6). On the far right, opposition to the TEU was premised largely on nationalist grounds alone, with little reference at that time to Danish progressivism. Nevertheless, analysis of voting patterns supported the overall picture of a distinctive character to ‘No’ voters. They were more likely to be women, from urban areas, beneficiaries of the welfare state or employed by it, supporters of parties to the left of centre and part of what Danish commentators call ‘the 1968 generation’. It is noteworthy that analysis of voters’ opinions in both referenda showed overwhelming support for the social dimension of the TEU even within the ‘No’ camp. The impact of the coalition’s opposing the TEU was extraordinary given a pro-Treaty campaign supported by 75 per cent of the parliament, the employers’ associations, the trades-union leadership, the electronic media and all but one of Denmark’s 40-plus daily newspapers. As noted earlier, significant parallels could be drawn between the Danish debate about the TEU and Norway’s and Sweden’s contemporaneous struggles with the question of whether they should join the EU at all, even though the latter two campaigns produced opposite results. The advocates of EU membership presented it as a strategic response to the demands of wealth creation and security in an increasingly globalized economic order and a fluid post-cold war European security environment. All governments added a normative gloss to their case by claiming that membership would contribute to the preservation of Scandinavian political values, albeit at a higher level of social organization. Better, they argued, to carry social-democratic values into Europe and take up the fight for the greater democratization of the Union and the strengthening of its social and internationalist dimensions. In the cases of Denmark and Sweden, a

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sufficient public acceptance of economic necessity appears to have been the decisive factor. In 1993 the Danes eventually said ‘Yes’ to the TEU after key opt-outs were negotiated, and Sweden voted to join the EU in 1994. Norway’s comparatively healthier, oil-based economic circumstances effectively crippled the pro-EU case there. However, the depiction of the EU as a means for enhancing the progressive development of citizenship and community above and beyond the state cut little ice in public discourse on either side of the debate in any of the Scandinavian states. Overall, the debates exposed a deep-seated and widespread public loyalty to the folkhem, even from erstwhile critics of the welfare state or those who would otherwise disavow strong articulations of national fealty. Given the difficulties surrounding Danish public approval of the TEU, how might we explain the electorate’s subsequent comparatively comfortable approval of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1998 (55 per cent voted ‘Yes’)? Friis (1999) insightfully suggests that the answer lies in a distinct shift in tactics by the government-led ‘Yes’ camp. Abandoning the lost cause of defending the EU’s legitimacy, the ‘Yes’ campaign ‘framed the Amsterdam Treaty as a “peace project” and an extension of Danish values to the rest of Europe’ (ibid.: 257). This switch in emphasis from legitimacy to compatibility was clearly facilitated by the two key emphases of the Treaty itself: enlargement eastwards and the enhancement of EU social, environmental and employment policy. Nevertheless, the presentation of the EU post-Amsterdam Treaty as somehow ‘more Danish’ still had to compete with the continuing representation of it as ‘a threat to Danish identity’, a construction that clearly appealed to the 45 per cent of Danes who voted ‘No’ (ibid.: 263–4).

Something rotten in the state of Denmark?2 The discussion so far has emphasized the role of the value-amalgam underpinning the Scandinavian imaginary of an internationally minded folkhem as key to understanding the Scandinavian position on the EU. More recent events in Denmark cast a clear shadow, however, over any naïvely progressivist reading of the EU debates. There has always been a conservative, even reactionary, current within the Scandinavian anti-EU movements willing to deploy select elements of the progressivist tradition (in its domestic dimensions at least) in the service of a exclusionary nationalism. After the referenda debates, and especially in the runup to the 1998 Danish general election, this current moved clearly into the foreground. Playing upon reports in the tabloid press that immigrants were responsible for an increase in crime while supposedly exploiting the welfare state, the new right-wing populist Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti; DF) – which had broken away from the radical right Progress Party under the charismatic leadership of Pia Kjærsgaard – came from nowhere to attract over 7 per cent of the vote. DF campaigned on a straightforwardly populist ‘vote Danish’ platform: no to immigration, no to the EU and yes to the protection of the weakest in society (Aylott 1999: 70). It was a tactic that even the Social Democrat prime minister acknowledged succeeded in attracting blue-collar voters away from his own party (Polokow-Suransky 2002: 2).

Loyalty to the folkhem 165 Although the flow of refugees into Denmark increased significantly in the mid-1990s, it remains one of Europe’s most ethnically homogeneous states, with immigrants and their descendants currently comprising 7.4 per cent of its 5.3 million population (Danmarks Statistisk 2002: 4). Although often perceived as traditionally a welcoming state for refugees and asylum-seekers, Denmark put a formal stop on immigration in 1973 (although family reunification and refugees have ensured a continuing flow of migrants) and, arguably, has not had anything that passes for a comprehensive immigration policy since then. Not surprisingly, efforts to promote the integration of immigrants have also been generally slow and hesitant, and the concept of multiculturalism remains notably absent from Danish political discourse. Given this policy vacuum, equally unsurprising has been a visible lack of public empathy towards ‘foreigners’ (udlædninger) – the favoured term of both the tabloid press and the DF. As subsequently proved to be the case with the Pim Fortuyn phenomenon in the Netherlands, DF and its policies do not fully square with other far-right European political parties, in that there are no traces of anti-Semitism or neo-nazism to be found (Bjørklund and Andersen 1999; Polokow-Suransky 2002). While declaring itself ‘colour blind’, the DF now advocates a form of populist welfare nationalism combined with strident opposition to anything smacking of multiculturalism or that might challenge ‘the Jewish–Christian philosophy which…[is] a condition for understanding the ideas behind a modern society and its institutions which are an integral part of Danish daily life’. In addition to vehemently opposing the EU itself, its ‘domestic policy’ declares that ‘a weakening of cultural fundaments will cause the breakdown of the nation’ and, further, that ‘Denmark is not a country open for immigration’ (Dansk Folkeparti 2002: 1). Blunt policy statements have been matched by various equally blunt electoral stunts, especially in the run-up to the 2001 general election, which saw DF’s vote rise to 12 per cent. These included newspaper advertisements in August 2001 naming all the 4,743, mostly Muslim, immigrants who had received Danish passports that year and the towns where they had settled. Such actions were widely condemned by all the mainstream political parties. Nevertheless, DF’s success lay not only in the votes it attracted but also in the mainstreaming of anti-immigration sentiment in the election campaign more generally. While Denmark’s political elite expressed shock at Kjærsgaard’s outbursts, such as her much-quoted claim that she crosses the road when she sees a Muslim, DF’s depiction of Denmark being under threat of invasion has clearly acquired a currency beyond its immediate constituency. The centre-left government had already appointed a ‘former Marxist turned immigrant-bashing’ minister of the interior (Qvortrup 2002: 18) in a clear response to the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment, and various MPs from the centre and centre-left of the political spectrum also saw fit to ride the anti-immigrant and anti-multicultural political wave (Qvortrup 2002; Polokow-Suransky 2002). Central to the successful electoral campaign by the centre-right Liberal Party (Venstre) was a commitment to pass new immigration and refugee laws, and two months after the election the newly formed Ministry for Refugees,

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Immigration and Integration published its ‘New Policy for Foreigners’ (En Ny Udlændingepolitik), which became law in the following July. A key component is the abolition of ‘the concept of de facto refugees’ and the restriction of refugee entry strictly to those whom Denmark is required to admit by international convention. For those who are admitted, a permanent residence permit will only be granted after seven years, in contrast to the previous three-year wait. The statutory right to reunification with distant family members is revoked, marriage rights are much stricter, especially regarding overseas spouses, and any future social benefits will be provided at 50–70 per cent of previous rates (INM 2002). There is surely something strange about a state with Denmark’s reputation enacting a policy that produced a challenge to its legality from the UN High Commission for Refugees, a joint statement of ‘profound concern’ from the governments of Belgium, France and Sweden, and, indeed, comment from Greenpeace, which informed its followers of the ‘sad news that Denmark cannot be expected to play a leading role in international environmental policy for some time’ (Hillgard 2002). The exchange of views between the Swedish and Danish governments has been particularly and uncharacteristically sharp, and the centre-right government in Norway, where the second largest party is also rightwing populist and attracts about a quarter of the electoral vote, has also condemned Denmark’s new refugee policy. Various other, often clumsy, actions also seem to signal a clear turn away from Denmark’s progressivist traditions, including only partially successful attempts to shut down the Danish Centre for Human Rights and the highly respected Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI). In other respects, however, the government’s reform proposals are altogether more moderate, albeit with distinct, often jarring, neo-liberal and nationalist-populist tinges. The prime minister, Fogh Rasmussen, has stepped back from his previous reputation as a staunch neo-liberal and his government’s general stance indicates an intention to trim down the welfare state without challenging its fundamentals. It also continues to make a virtue of Denmark’s internationalist tradition and pledges to uphold it. ODA volume will remain above the UN recommended level of 0.7 per cent, although both development policy and foreign policy more generally have taken a distinctly neo-liberal turn.

Conclusions Polokow-Suransky succinctly identifies what is at stake in contemporary Danish politics: ‘it’s a debate, ultimately, about what it means to be Danish – about whether Denmark’s is an ethnic community or a civic one, an exclusionary body politic or an inclusive one’ (Polokow-Suransky 2002: 5). For a long time Denmark’s strong civic culture and generous internationalism seemed to indicate on which side of those two divides Denmark ultimately fell. Recent events invite a more circumspect judgement. On the Europe question the radical right and left in Denmark now find uncommon cause; on immigration policy they are at imperfect odds. The political centre has largely adopted the exclusionary discourse of the populist right, minus most of the extreme rhetoric. The govern-

Loyalty to the folkhem 167 ment set itself a challenging task: for its immigration policy it required the informal support of DF, but for its European policy it was to depend upon the informal support of the Social Democrats. Much of its foreign policy also endeavoured to dovetail still with longstanding internationalist tradition. Its hardline stance on immigration could well shelter it from some domestic criticism of its pro-European (in a strictly intergovernmental sense of the term) outlook, and maintaining the foreign policy activism of its predecessor could deflect some of the criticism of its enhanced fortress mentality, but this policy mix was only possible through a partial adoption of a welfare-populist discourse that revolved around a nostalgic and exclusionary revivification of the folkhem. Were that to become embedded at its centre, the progressivist gloss of Danish Euro-scepticism and internationalism would dull considerably. There are some factors, however, that militate against the presumption that Denmark’s populist turn is set in stone or that it is indicative of a wider Scandinavian phenomenon. Psephological analysis suggests that Denmark has recently experienced a ‘deviating election’ that does not indicate a linear trend (Qvortrup 2002: 21) and there are reasons for a more normative analysis to concur. A 1999 study of right-wing populism in Denmark and Norway convincingly argues that, although the empirical evidence shows the increased saliency of immigration as a political issue in recent years, this does not indicate an increase in intolerance. The ecology of support for populism in either state does not correlate positively with the numbers of immigrants, but appears to emerge more in flash-waves and to reflect the impact of political debate (Bjørklund and Andersen 1999: 12–13). In any case, the greater visibility of xenophobia, more accurately Islamophobia, is far from solely a Danish or Scandinavian problem, and the impact of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 also has to be taken into account. It must also be stressed that 45 per cent of the electorate did not support the winning coalition and that for the first time two immigrants (from Syria and Pakistan) were elected. With regard to Europe specifically, the election of a pro-European government may in fact indicate a peaking of Danish Euroscepticism; a majority of Danes would at the time of writing like to see the TEU opt-outs withdrawn and support for the Euro tended upwards since its rejection by referendum in 2000. Finally, across the Øresund Bridge linking Denmark to Sweden a rather different story is unfolding. Sweden has not been and remains by no means free of either Euro-scepticism or anti-immigrant sentiment and violence. Yet the former is currently stronger than in Denmark and the latter has received far less political expression, as witnessed not least by the absence of an electorally significant populist party contesting the 2002 elections, which also saw the re-election of a Social-Democratic government. The impact of immigration was confined to the traditionally internationalist centrist Liberal Party (Folkepartiet), which saw its vote more than double, to 13 per cent, after the party proposed a compulsory citizenship language test. Indeed, opinion polls show not only that anti-refugee sentiment has not risen through the 1990s, but also that 11 September has had no visible impact. Demker (2002) proposes that this is the product of a number

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of factors: the lack of multiple political cleavages, the existence of a wide and comparatively open immigration debate since a burst of right-wing populism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, rising public trust of key political institutions, a willingness by politicians to confront the problem and, finally, a long-running integration policy (see also Jederlund 1998). Consequently, the possibility of a populist party being able to rule the debate is low. Recent events in Denmark bring to the fore a question that always lurked behind the debates over Europe: what kind of Denmark and what kind of Danish exceptionalism do Danes really feel loyalty towards? That Denmark’s political culture is in a state of flux is evident enough. That this indicates the impending demise of the progressivist Scandinavian narrative of the folkhem is less clear; the case of Sweden suggests that it could have life in it yet.

Notes 1 2

The following two sections draw substantially on Lawler 1997. The title of a critical analysis (Hillgard 2002) of the new Danish government’s environmental policies, published by Greenpeace.

Bibliography Aylott, N. (1999) ‘Paradoxes and Opportunism: The Danish Election of March 1998’, Government and Opposition 34: 59–77. Bergmann, A. (2002) Adjacent Internationalism: The Concept of Solidarity and Post-Cold War Nordic–Baltic Relations, PhD thesis, Sussex University. Bjørklund, T. and J.G. Andersen (1999) ‘Anti-immigration Parties in Denmark and Norway: The Progress Parties and the Danish People’s Party’, Arbejdspapirer fra Institut for Økonomi, Politik og Forvaltning, Aalborg: Aalborg Universitet. Christiansen, N.F. (1992) ‘The Danish No to Maastricht’, New Left Review 19: 97–100. Danmark i EF (Denmark in the EU) (1993) Copenhagen: Folketinget. Danmarks Statistisk (2002) Data on Demmark 2002, Copenhagen: Danmarks Statistisk, available at http://www.dst.dk/665 (accessed 9 September 2002). Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party) (2002) ‘Domestic Policy’, available at http://www.danskfolkeparti.dk (accessed 9 September 2002). Demker, M. (2002) ‘Möjligheten för ett Högerpopulistiskt Parti att Vinna Framgångar i Sverige är Små’ (The chance of a right-wing populist party becoming successful in Sweden is small), Dagens Nyheter, 15 June: 6. Einhorn, E.S. and J. Logue (1989) Modern Welfare States: Politics and Policies in Social Democratic Scandinavia, New York: Praeger. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Friis, L. (1999) ‘EU and Legitimacy – the Challenge of Compatibility: A Danish Case Study’, Cooperation and Conflict 34: 243–71. Goldmann, K. (1991) ‘The Swedish Model of Security Policy’, West European Politics 14: 122–43. Hillgard, J. (2002) ‘Something Rotten in the State of Denmark?’, Greenpeace, available at http://www.greenpeace.org/earthsummit/docs/danish.pdf (accessed 10 September 2002). Holm, E. (1993) ‘It’s Make Up Your Mind Time’, European, 15–18 April.

Loyalty to the folkhem 169 Hook, S. (1995) National Interest and Foreign Aid, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. INM (Ministeriet for Fylgtninge, Invandrere og Integration – Ministry for Refugees, Immigration and Integration) (2002) ‘En Ny Udlændingepolitik’ (‘A New Policy for Foreigners’), Copenhagen: INM, available at http://www.inm.dk/Index/dokumenter.asp?o=5&n=0&h=5&t=1&d=1056&s=4 (accessed 9 September 2002). Jederlund, L. (1998) ‘From Immigration Policy to Integration Policy’, Current Sweden 422: 1–4, Stockholm: Swedish Institute. Larsen, H. (1999) ‘British and Danish European Policies in the 1990s: A Discourse Approach’, European Journal of International Relations 5: 451–83. Lawler, P. (1997) ‘Scandinavian Exceptionalism and European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies 35: 565–94. Mouritzen, H. (1995) ‘The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall’, Journal of Peace Research 32: 9–21. Ostergård, U. (1992) ‘Danish Identity: European, Nordic or Peasant?’, in L. Lyck (ed.) Denmark and EC Membership Evaluated, London: Pinter Publishers. Petersen, N. (1993) Game, Set and Match: Denmark and the European Union from Maastricht to Edinburgh, Århus: Institute of Political Science, Aarhus University. Polokow-Suransky, S. (2002) ‘Fortress Denmark?’, American Prospect 13: 10, available at http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/10/polakow-suransky-s.html (accessed 7 September 2002). Qvortrup, M. (2002) ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes: Danish General Election of 2001’, European Political Science 1: 17–23. Tilton, T. (1991) The Political Theory of Swedish Social Democracy: Through the Welfare State to Socialism, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wæver, O. (1992) ‘Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe After the Cold War’, International Affairs 68: 77–102. —— (1993) ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, Working Papers 5/93, Copenhagen: COPRI. —— (1995) ‘Danish Dilemmas: Foreign Policy Choices for the 21st Century’, in C. DueNielsen and N. Petersen (eds) Adaptation and Activism: The Foreign Policy of Denmark, Copenhagen: DJØFPublishing.

Part III

Conflicting loyalties in the state

11 Deconstructing and reconstructing loyalty The case of Italy Michel Huysseune

The present global order is frequently interpreted as characterized by the ‘crisis of the nation-state’ and the emergence of a ‘post-national’ order, in which institutions at both the supranational and sub-national levels will rival the ancient nation-states. Within the countries of the European Union, assertive ethnonational minorities (particularly in well-developed regions such as Catalonia or Flanders) have made the most of the opportunities offered by the European Union (EU). Their sub-national governments have to a certain degree (depending on national constitutions and on the strength of nationalist sentiment) been able to use supranational European institutions to develop their own policies independently of their respective national governments. But notwithstanding occasional affirmations of independence, the political mobilization of national minorities in Western Europe has rarely seriously questioned the existing nation-states. Western European nation-states have, overall, demonstrated their resilience, and they remain ‘a primary source of welfare, order, authority, legitimacy, identity and loyalty’ (Müller and Wright 1994: 10). This would thus confirm the existence of what Anthony Smith has referred to as the concentric loyalties of minorities ‘to their own ethnic communities, and to the states in which they have been incorporated for so long a period’ (Smith 1981: 164). During the 1990s several Western European nation-states nevertheless did experience secessionist challenges. How such challenges could deconstruct concentric loyalties even in countries without a tradition of national minority mobilization is exemplified by the Italian example. The early 1990s saw the rise of a new secessionist party, the Lega Nord, which proposed the creation of an independent state, Padania, consisting of the Italian regions north of Rome. It is an exceptional example of how a party has created, apparently ex nihilo, a new national identity and has managed to carry its nation-building programme to the foreground of national politics. The Lega Nord (commonly referred to as the Lega) emerged as a central political actor in the early 1990s, in the context of a crisis in Italy’s political system. It polled nationwide 8.6 per cent in 1992, 8.4 per cent in 1994 and 10.1 per cent in 1996 (and, respectively, 17.3, 17.0 and 20.5 per cent in the North).1 It declined after 1996, and in the elections of 2001 it polled only 3.9 per cent nationwide (8.2 per cent in the North). As of this writing it is a partner of the centre-right Casa delle Libertà (House of Liberties) alliance, and after the elections of 2001,

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which the alliance won, it acceded to the national government, albeit at the price of temporarily abandoning its secessionist programme. The emergence of a secessionist movement in a context where no national minority existed implies that even in cases where identification with the nationstate is well established loyalty towards it may be subverted.2 It thus raises the question of how such loyalty can be deconstructed. If, following Hirschman, loyalist behaviour is interpreted as a non-utilitarian form of attachment that nevertheless ‘retains an enormous dose of reasoned calculation’ (Hirschman 1974: 79) it should be possible to retrace the reasons behind this process of deconstruction. At the same time, however, the presence of such loyalty would normally result in ‘voice’ (that is, critiques of the Italian political system and proposals for its reform) rather than ‘exit’ (that is, secession). The reasons why critiques of the Italian political system were transformed into the affirmation of secessionism hence need to be explained. The Lega’s rise coincided with a more generic rejection of the Italian political system and critiques of the grave defects of the Italian state, especially its inefficiency and its corruption. It is also related to the internal economic differentiations within Italy between a richer North and a poorer and worse performing South. The Lega’s secessionism expresses the rejection of national social solidarity and thus effectively questions one of the fundaments of the Italian nation-state. The rise of the Lega may thus be related to the process of reshaping the state in the 1980s and 1990s, which included decentralization, privatization and changes in the welfare state, but also public perceptions on the role of the state (Müller and Wright 1994; Ginsborg 2001: 214). William Wallace has in particular drawn attention to the close link between national solidarity and social welfare in the evolution of the modern nation-state (Wallace 1994: 69). The retrenchments and adjustments of the welfare state initiated in the 1980s have put a strain on the legitimacy of national governments. They play an important role in the rampant ‘crisis of identity in most Western European states, expressed in different forms of popular disillusion with established institutions and élites’ (ibid.: 74). Controversies on redistributive policies have played an acknowledged role in the political mobilization of several national minorities. The Italian case reveals how in countries with strong regional differences in economic strength a rejection of national redistributive policies may even create sub-national identities. The affirmation of northern Italian identity combined with the rejection of national redistributive programmes in which the richer North sustains the poorer South, considered to be a burden on the North’s development, are the two constants of the Lega Nord’s politics. The secession of the northern regions proposed by the Lega is clearly sustained by an economic rationale, an example of how the logic of utilitarianism may challenge previously established loyalties. A poll held at the end of 1996 in the Italian regions where the Lega is strongest (Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia) clarifies what is involved in this choice: 54.9 per cent of the respondents considered independence unacceptable and disastrous; 25.8 per cent profitable, albeit unacceptable; and 19.3 per cent profitable

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and desirable (Diamanti 1997). The poll reveals that a substantial minority is prepared to accept the dissolution of national unity, whereby arguments of economic profitability subvert loyalty to the nation-state. The Lega’s Padanian nationalism is thus a remarkable example of how economic arguments may undermine national loyalties, and therefore offers us an opportunity to understand how such a discourse can gain legitimacy, and in fact has become instrumental in creating a new allegedly ethnic identity. The poll also reveals, however, that a majority clearly still expresses an undeniable sense of Italian national belonging, a habit of the heart that may counter economic rationality, since even the group refusing secession when affirming its profitability is in fact larger than the group supporting secession. The Lega’s electoral successes have thus offered citizens of northern Italy the option of exchanging their loyalty towards the Italian nation-state for one towards virtual Padania. The absence of pre-existing ethnic sentiments and the lack of historical legitimacy for this new Padanian nationalism underscore the importance of political-ideological mobiles in this process. This raises the question how arguments of economic rationality may be transformed into a new national allegiance, but also which counter-arguments may contribute to reconstruct loyalty towards the Italian nation-state. The Lega’s secessionism is also related to the process of European unification, in fact systematically invoked by the Lega Nord. To what extent, then, should the Lega’s secessionism be understood as an example of the emergence of a ‘post-national’ order where national identities are subverted both from the sub- and the supranational level, and what would the Lega’s case reveal about the content of such ‘post-national’ identities? To answer these questions, the devices used by the Lega in opposing northern to southern Italy and in transforming critiques of Italian institutions into a rejection of Italian national identity are first described. Second, the way in which the Lega Nord has elaborated an image of the Padanian nation and how it understands its nationbuilding programme in a broader, European context are outlined. Third, the contemporary debate on institutional reforms, marked by proposals for federalism to counter the Lega’s critique of the Italian state, is described. The conclusion highlights the relevance of the Italian case for an understanding of the social and political processes that create and deconstruct loyalty.

Critiquing the Italian state to delegitimize the Italian nation The Italian nation-state is a recent construction, united only in 1861. In a celebrated remark, the prominent politician Massimo d’Azeglio stated at Unification: ‘now that Italy is made, we need to make Italians’. The process of cultural unification of the country, albeit slow, has nevertheless been relatively successful, as is exemplified by the spread of a common language which has superseded the use of dialects, predominant until after the Second World War. The emergence of the Lega undoubtedly caused a ‘crisis’ in the Italian nationstate, but this crisis can certainly not be understood as a consequence of the

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weakness of national identity (Dickie 1996: 32). The reason why this process led to a major crisis in Italy’s political system is related to the failures of the Italian state and its public administration, rather than to a lack of national identity (Salvati 1997: 136–7; Lupo 1996: 252). It nevertheless remains to be explained why this political crisis took the shape of a crisis in Italy’s national unity. Historically, the Italian state has suffered chronically from a lack of legitimacy, and Italians have systematically distrusted it (Almond and Verba 1963; Barlucchi 1997). At Unification the state apparatus was imposed from above, with little popular participation and against the then still predominant Catholic Church. The First Republic, founded after the Second World War, although undoubtedly more democratic than its predecessors, continues to carry this negative inheritance. The clientelist nature of the Italian political system and the inefficiency and large-scale corruption of its state bureaucracy have undermined its legitimacy, although its ability to distribute resources has enabled it for a long time to restrain the amount of overt protest (Tarrow 1977). The inability of the state to command large-scale loyalty was, moreover, compensated for by the role of political parties. After the Second World War national integration in fact took place through political subcultures, in particular around the Christian Democrat and Communist Parties (and to a lesser extent the Socialist Party). The increasing financial difficulties that governments encountered during the 1980s (due to irresponsible overspending) problematized the implicit bargain ‘money instead of good government’, which until then had functioned as a substitute for legitimacy. The lethal blow to the political system was dealt by the Mani Pulite (clean hands) investigations, which from 1992 on brought to light the largescale corruption of the political parties, especially the Socialist and Christian Democrat Parties. The Lega’s challenge to the Italian nation thus coincided with large-scale critiques against the Italian state and its political system, amply deployed by the Lega and at the same time widely shared by public opinion. To transform these critiques into a questioning of national unity, the political winning card of the Lega has been to relate them to the alleged negative characteristics of southern Italians. Towards this goal it uses a longstanding tradition of negative evaluations of southern Italian society – its economic underdevelopment, corruption, the presence of organized crime – and of prejudices against southern Italians (see, for example, Teti 1993; Lupo 1996). The Lega has thus been able to develop a nation-building discourse that converges in many aspects with mainstream interpretations of Italy’s North–South divide (Huysseune 2002). The Lega’s rhetoric against Roma ladrona (robber Rome) on the one hand captures tendencies of diffuse discontent against the capital, considered an allabsorbing centre of power and corruption. But it also voices a by now widely shared critique of the strongly centralized structure of the Italian state. There is a broad consensus on the Lega’s negative evaluation of the centralism of the Italian state, which is at the same time interventionist and inefficient (Tarrow 1977; Cassese 1998). Italy has admittedly already experienced decentralization. After the Second World War autonomy was granted to the so-called specialstatus regions (Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d’Aosta, South Tyrol together with

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Trentino, and in 1964 Friuli-Venezia Giulia), which are dominated by ethnic minorities or had experienced secessionist upsurges. A second wave of reform in the early 1970s gave the 15 other regions elected assemblies and regional governments and delegated a certain number of responsibilities to them. But these reforms essentially implied a limited delegation of power to the regional level, with ultimate control remaining with the central government. It is as yet unclear whether the legal reforms introduced in 2000 and 2001, giving regions more autonomy and attributing them exclusive legislative competence on issues not reserved for or shared with the central state, will effectively put an end to a situation where the autonomy of regions remained conditional on the policies of the central government (Mariucci 1999: 1,163–4; Bordignon 2000; Nerozzi 2000). The Lega systematically associates the centralist Italian state with Rome and the South. It makes use of mainstream discourses that oppose a dynamic and modern northern society to the bureaucratic, inefficient and ‘backward’ state. The Lega also argues that the centralist Italian state has systematically favoured the South. The rise of the Lega coincided with more general critiques of the perverse side-effects of the post-war politics of the Italian state supporting development in the South (the so-called intervento straordinario, ‘extraordinary intervention’). By the end of the 1980s it had become clear that the money invested in the South had been instrumental in creating and maintaining a parasitic social system of generalized state-supported corruption, of which organized crime is just the most visible aspect. The outcome of the intervento straordinario is characteristic of the specific nature of the Italian political system, including the welfare state. To preserve political consensus, Italian governments have attempted as far as possible to attribute welfare allocations and social services on a personal basis, as privileges distributed through the channels of patronage. Invalidity pensions, for example, were frequently attributed according to arbitrary criteria unrelated to real diseases – and hence the frequent tales about, for example, officially blind taxi drivers – and thus functioned as instruments of patronage. The Italian labour movement did succeed in imposing some universalist welfare features and guarantees of equal labour rights and salaries in the whole country. Because of the higher degree of employment and the stronger presence of trade unions in the North, these universalist features were more present in that part of the country, while southern Italians remained more dependent on the clientelist networks of patronage. The perverse side-effects of the intervento straordinario and the persistence and expansion of clientelism, corruption and organized crime in the South have undermined the legitimacy of policies to support southern Italy. They have at the same time given credence to the Lega’s discourse on a state taxing the North to squander money in the South. In particular, the Lega argues that the North pays proportionally much more than it receives in taxation (Pagliarini 1996) and that the Italian state is instrumental in transferring money from the North to the South. Last but not least, the Lega argues that the Italian state is also physically southern, dominated by southern politicians, while southerners are over-repre-

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sented in the state administration. The presence of southern officials (schoolteachers, judges) in the North – a consequence of the more limited employment opportunities in the South – is in fact one of the themes perpetually emphasized in its propaganda, which relates state inefficiency with the alleged lack of a labour ethos in southern Italians. Refusing an inefficient state can once again be combined with a stigmatization of southern Italians, including those who live in the North. Many of the critiques that the Lega Nord voices against the Italian state are credible and at least partly justified. It may nevertheless be pointed out that the Lega’s interpretation is an ideological construct, based on a partial interpretation of facts (Huysseune forthcoming). There is, for example, no causal relation between the over-representation of southerners in the state administration and the inefficiency of the Italian state. This argument relies on ethnic stereotypes, juxtaposing modern and efficient northern Italians with ‘backward’ southern Italians lacking labour ethics. The representation of the Italian state as primarily devoted to southern interest is likewise partial, since it ignores the role of northern politicians in the Italian state, the profits the North has derived from state intervention, and the ‘northern’ dimension of corruption and clientelism. The argument that the state invested more in the South likewise needs to be corrected: the most recent overviews of the redistributive policies of the Italian state reveal that per capita spending in northern and southern Italy is substantially equal (Scaramellini et al. 1997; Huysseune forthcoming). The Lega in fact rejects the principle of redistributive policies, and questions the assumption that the constitutional principle of the equality of Italian citizens should be expressed in an equal per capita spending of the state in each region, a principle that has guaranteed interregional transfers (Pizzorusso 1999: 45–6, 97–9). Critiques against the South thus coincide with the rejection of the universalist principle – and hence the national dimension – of welfare policies. As Salvatore Lupo highlights, ‘[t]he Mezzogiorno has become the symbol of, and pretext for, the torrent of abuse now heaped upon the welfare state, the intervening state, the taxing state which takes much more than it gives out’ (Lupo 1996: 258). Surfing the wave of anti-redistributive ideologies and of its Italian version, which amalgamates clientelism with the welfare state, the Lega has transformed diffuse negative sentiments towards southerners into a regionalist populism (Diamanti 1995) with clearly defined enemies – the South (including Rome) and the Italian state. As a precondition for the affirmation of a northern, Padanian national identity, its discourse aims at dissolving the – still dominant – pattern of concentric loyalties whereby the affirmation of differential identities in northern and southern Italy coexists with a common national identity.

Creating loyalty to the new Padanian nation To construct loyalty towards its newly invented Padanian nation, the Lega articulates several forms of identity: a generic northern identity based on the traditional North–South juxtaposition within Italy, local and regional identities,

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and an ethnic ‘Padanian’ identity rooted in history and identified with ancestors such as the Celts. Deploying these identities as instruments to defy the Italian state has not, however, been uniformly successful. Whilst the Lega’s focus on local and regional identities corresponds to widely shared sentiments of belonging, these identities are normally not perceived to be opposed to national Italian identity (Diani 1996). The Lega’s efforts to construct an ethnic Padanian identity, to assert its linguistic and cultural diversity from Italian identity, and to prove the historical continuity of the Padanian nation (for example by identifying them with Celts) have never been taken seriously outside its own ranks. More than the relatively marginal ethnic or regionalist references, or the weak common historical roots of northern Italy, the Lega’s successes are grounded in its re-elaboration of a common northern identity. The Lega opposes northern modernity to southern ‘backwardness’, attributing to northern Italians the virtues of modernity and economic efficiency and associating southern Italians with the vices of the Italian state. The Lega, moreover, deploys the image of il popolo produttore, the ‘producing people’ of the North. This image proposes a civic model of identification founded on the labour ethic and entrepreneurship of northern Italians, which enables them to insert themselves into the networks of the global economy. It makes particular use of the positive image generally attributed to the so-called Terza Italia, the ‘Third Italy’, the northern provinces outside the industrial triangle Milan–Turin–Genoa. In recent decades these regions have experienced a remarkable economic growth, to be attributed to the development of generally export-oriented small and medium-sized industry rooted in local communities. They are in fact often presented as models of regional economic development based on local cultural roots (Mainardi 1998; for a critical evaluation, see Bonomi 1997). The Lega purports to represent these industrial districts – its main electoral constituency3 – and to defend their interests, allegedly opposed to those of Rome and the South. In addition, proposing the image of the producing people implies a critical stance towards the northern oligarchy of large business interests, particularly their overbearing power and their complicity with Rome. Although references to the producing people would give the northern identity a more civic dimension, the Lega’s attitude has been characterized by a continuous ambivalence on this issue, and in recent years the ethnic and racial dimensions of Padanian identity have clearly gained priority. This ethnic option is itself a consequence of the logic of the Lega’s deconstruction of loyalty towards the Italian nation-state. Such a deconstruction necessitates the definition of northern identity in opposition to the South, and hence the affirmation of a strongly rooted ethnic difference. By highlighting how the economic successes of northern Italy result from the labour ethics of its inhabitants, transmitted through the family and local society, the Lega intends to historicize northern cultural specificity. The elaboration of a historically rooted Padanian national identity that differentiates northern Italians in terms of their origins from southern Italians and from immigrants is a logical conclusion of this process. The Lega’s identification with European culture plays a similar role in its

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discourse. References to Europe or to Mittel-Europa are made to articulate a ‘northern’ culture of honesty and efficiency, to be contrasted with the ‘Mediterranean’ characteristics of Italians, particularly southern Italians, rhetorically identified with Africans. The Christian identity of Europe is deployed to emphasize the otherness of non-Christian (that is, Islamic) immigrants. For the Lega, identification with Europe confirms the exclusionary dynamics of its nation-building programme. The Lega has a differential strategy of ethnic exclusion. Southern Italians are accepted according to their degree of assimilation into northern culture and their acceptance of the values of the productive communities of the North. Such assimilation, with a negation of their culture of origin, tends to remain conditional. Southern Italians are accepted on sufferance; they should be kept in their place, preferably on the lower steps of the social ladder and not in functions that offer social prestige (teachers, judges and so on) (see Lanaro and Crainz 1997). Non-Western immigrants remain more systematically excluded from the Padanian community. Ideally they should be expelled altogether from the Padanian realm, and, while their presence may at present be economically necessary, they should be excluded from welfare arrangements and not be attributed rights, so as to avoid their integration and to facilitate their future expulsion. The Lega’s nation-building discourse is based on a societal model that combines a generic adherence to the principles of economic liberalism and a strong and exclusivist articulation of a vision of a national community. In principle, the Lega clearly favours neo-liberal economic policies, and it has incorporated the demands for a dynamic and modern northern society by entrepreneurs eager to internationalize and to reach a European level of efficiency and competitiveness. Its societal model for an independent Padania nevertheless clearly goes beyond neo-liberalism. The denial of society and the exaltation of individualism characteristic of Thatcherite ideology are certainly not reflected in the way the Lega imagines Padanian society. The Lega’s discourse frequently invokes the importance of Padanian identity as a counterweight to economic globalization that reduces people to a homo economicus without a soul and an identity (Bossi and Vimercati 1998: 39–45). Its identityconstruction is concerned with realizing, besides a community of interests primarily defined in negative terms against the Italian state and the South, a positive community of national belonging. The Lega imagines Padania as a protective community, and as such it expresses the aspirations of its constituency – medium-sized and small entrepreneurs and their workers, inserted in the transnational networks of the global economy but in the meantime defiant of cosmopolitanism and large corporate interests. This double focus is revealed in the opinions of the electorate of the Lega, which supports at the same time neo-liberal economic politics and the preservation of the welfare state and social security on a regional scale (Biorcio 1997: 260–1). To balance neo-liberalism, the Lega proposes a political order as a defence against global chaos. The Padanian community, protective of its citizens, easily assumes a hostile attitude towards outsiders, with ethnic overtones. It should be

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an ordered society with a productivist work ethos, where all social deviance should be punished or excluded (ibid.: 204–5). The repression and exclusion of marginal, deviant and unwanted outsiders characterizes the desire for order that the Lega shares with neo-populist parties. The Lega paradoxically combines the rhetoric of autonomy and self-government with a belief in the redemptive value of strong leadership, an expression of the anxieties of a community which is in need of a compensatory image of order, incarnated in an authoritative leader (Pajetta 1997). The Lega has been more concerned with creating a national identity than with outlining the institutions of the future Padanian state. Throughout its existence the Lega has changed the institutional translation of its nation-building programme with an impressive frequency. The borders of the Padanian nation are themselves unclear: at times Padania includes all regions north of Rome, sometimes only the regions of the North.4 It has alternately defended the independence of Padania and various (federal and confederate) models of reorganization of the Italian state. This volatility notwithstanding, the Lega has been consistent on the goals institutional reforms should attain. The Lega gives centrality to the concept of autonomy. Autonomy, considered as liberty from central interference and control, is a right, not a concession to be granted. This right is located with the peoples of those regions that the Lega sees as independent actors (Allievi 1992). As a consequence of its difficulty in reconciling the various interpretations of northern identity (regional, ethnic and civic) and of the various ideological viewpoints its discourse incorporates, the Lega has wavered over the institutional form this autonomy should take. The Lega’s plea for federalism is sometimes voiced as a defence of a liberal state, a non-interventionist state that only functions as a tutor of the rules and as a guarantor of the rights of citizens (Bossi and Vimercati 1993: 151). It may, however, also be understood as creating institutions corresponding with Italy’s ethnic diversity (Oneto 1997). Lately, the Lega has in fact made explicit its refusal to endorse a precise programme of institutional reform, arguing that institutional arrangements should be postponed until Padanian independence (Bossi and Vimercati 1998: 39–45). Essentially, however, the Lega bases itself on the right to self-determination of regional peoples. In the Lega’s rhetoric these peoples, notwithstanding the vagueness of their nature, appear as transcendental categories, with an ethnic connotation. The people(s) of northern Italy are opposed to southern Italians and the state, and demanding their autonomy implies dismantling the central state instead of reforming it. While emphasizing Padania’s autonomy, the Lega nevertheless firmly locates it in a broader context, inserted in the networks of the global economy and as a member of the European Union (EU). Europe also offers an institutional framework that enables the Lega to bypass the Italian state, and before Italy’s acceptance into European Monetary Union (EMU) in 1998 it proposed the unilateral adherence of northern Italy to the EMU. At the same time, the Lega is very critical of the centralism of EU bureaucracy. As an alternative to the current centralized EU based on nation-states, the Lega favours the construction

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of a ‘Europe of the peoples’ based on regional states, and it has longstanding contacts with ethno-nationalist parties in Europe (Bossi and Vimercati 1992; 1993: 208). It argues that the end of the geopolitical order of the cold war coincides with the demise of the centralized nation-state, with its absolute sovereignty, and the revival of the peoples – who rediscover their individuality, claim their autonomy and, if necessary, struggle for their independence (Bossi and Vimercati 1993: 127–30). This idyllic vision of the pacific coexistence of European peoples is, however, contradicted by the economic policies that the Lega defends. Its social protectionism within Padania is extended to the right to preserve its economic autonomy within the EU. Padania has a right to defend itself against the effects of global competition, and in particular against economically stronger actors like Germany, especially by preserving its own currency (Bossi and Vimercati 1998: 46–62, 137–45). It thus gives Padania a unilateral right to act in an anarchic way in a global community otherwise regulated according to the laws of the market. It refuses, however, to attribute this right to economically weaker regions. For the Lega, after the secession of Padania the remaining part of Italy should become a territory where cheap labour, the absence of social legislation and de-taxation of investments would attract (northern) investors (Bossi and Vimercati 1992; Pagliarini 1996). The Lega’s outlook combines a strongly competitive, social-Darwinist vision of economic development with a solidaristic, ethnically exclusive vision of the nation. The Lega defends the right of Padania to be a privileged nation. Its defence of the particular interests of the North resembles, in fact, the clientelist ethos of the old regime (Ginsborg 1996) and, in particular, the bargaining methods used by the southern political class across more than a century of Italian history. It stresses the distinctiveness of local society and waves the banner of a ‘northern question’ as people used to do for the ‘southern question’. (Lupo 1996: 259) But by giving it an exclusionary dynamic and inserting it into a vision of global competition that installs a hierarchy between stronger and weaker societies, the Lega has radicalized this strategy of bargaining into a discourse articulating exclusive loyalty to a community opposed to outsiders, a discourse whose centrifugal logic implies the possibility of secession. The Lega has transformed a rather vague northern Italian identity into a much more elaborate vision of the Padanian nation strongly marked by the localist culture of northern industrial districts, its main constituency. Creating a political identity transcending the local interests of the industrial districts is, however, problematic. Their localist culture and the centrifugal dynamics of the defence of particular interests, which the Lega itself articulates in its defence of the right of the Padanian nation to economic free-riding, can only with considerable difficulties be translated into loyalty towards a new national community.

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The continuous tendency towards fragmentation of the party, with the numerous dissidences of local groups, exemplifies the difficulties such a process involves. The electoral decline of the Lega outside these industrial districts from 1994 on reveals, moreover, how modelling Padanian identity on a particular social identity within the North resulted in the party being cut off from other constituencies. This relative failure indicates the difficulties involved in transforming sub-national or regional identities inserted in concentric loyalties into a national identity with an exclusive loyalty to a new nation.

Critiques of the centralized state and federalist alternatives The crisis of the Italian nation-state caused by the Lega’s secessionist challenge clearly results from the loss of legitimacy of its political system. It is, however, also related to the weakening of collective identities, and in particular of ideologies and institutions that incarnated a vision of national unity and hence sustained loyalty towards the nation, notwithstanding the limited legitimacy of the state. The Lega’s successes coincided, in fact, with the crisis in the Christian Democrat Party, which incarnated the values of social solidarity professed by the Catholic Church (Pace 1998). In debates on alternatives to secession the issue of institutional reforms of the Italian state therefore tends to be related to the elaboration of new visions of national collective solidarity that would be able to embody loyalty to the nation-state. The secessionist challenge of the Lega Nord has revived interest in federalism. Support for federalist reform of the Italian state is not unanimous: the centralized state still has many intellectual and political apologists. They highlight its role as a protection against particularist interests, as a symbol of collective interests, as a guarantee of universal and equal rights of citizens (see, for example, Lupo 1996: 258). The centralist viewpoint is informed by the desire for a strong executive and by an awareness of the dangers of a process of federalization, particularly the centrifugal dynamics it may reinforce (Pasquino 1998: 46). The basic weakness of the centralist viewpoint lies in the historical inability of the Italian centralized state to implement good government and to realize in practice the values it is supposed to incarnate. The negative heritage of the Italian centralized state sustains proposals for federalism. Proposals for institutional reforms, from moderate regionalization of competences to federalist reform of the state, abound nowadays in Italy (for an overview, see Unnia 1995; Jacobelli 1997). Contemporary federalism has a life of its own, both as a concession and as an answer to the Lega’s secessionism. Its relevance is, moreover, enhanced by the process of European integration, which creates more space for sub-national institutions. Most proposals for federalism, however, distinguish themselves sharply from the Lega by rejecting ethnic legitimizations of federalism and by emphasizing, on the contrary, the civic, democratic dimension of such a reform. Federalism is generally defined as responsible self-government based on the principle of subsidiarity, whereby only

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the responsibilities that cannot be fulfilled locally or regionally should be delegated to central government institutions. Proposals for federalism are especially concerned with the effects such reforms will have on the redistributive policies of the Italian state. Business circles and intellectuals inspired by economic liberalism (mainly but not exclusively with centre-right political sympathies) propose a competitive model of federalism. For them, federalism should lead to the dismantling of central bureaucracies and (up to an undetermined level) national welfare solidarity (Bassetti 1996). They favour a lean and efficient state that would support the economic competitiveness of Italian enterprises on the international market. Regions could be such efficient support units, since they are closer to local economic realities and can also easily insert themselves within international economic networks. European unification has already given more space for cross-national collaboration of regional governments in Italy, especially of the more prosperous ones. While this model of competitive federalism has many resemblances with the Lega’s vision on the role of regions, it has never implied abandoning Italy. Its defenders tend to favour a territorial vision of federalism (inspired by the example of the United States) and to be indifferent towards ethnic issues. Defenders of competitive federalism frequently propose the introduction of fiscal federalism, understood as full fiscal autonomy for the regions – that is, the possibility for each region to keep its income entirely for itself, and hence the abolition of interregional financial transfers. They follow, in fact, the political agenda of the Lega (which has also favoured the principle5), since they almost always intend to free the North from contributing to the South. Defenders of fiscal federalism are, however, aware that its full implementation would reinforce centrifugal dynamics within the country. It has a high probability of increasing the North–South differences in economic performance and standards of living. Most southern regions would be faced with serious financial problems: they would be obliged either to raise more taxes or drastically to reduce their welfare expenditure. Proposals for fiscal federalism therefore tend to moderate the radicalism of the principle by proposing the preservation of at least some forms of redistributive mechanisms (Boselli 1995; Ragazzi 1995; Valditara 1998: 39). Adherents of competitive and fiscal federalism are thus confronted with the contradiction between their ideology of economic rationality and their loyalty to the Italian nation. This loyalty implies the preservation of national solidarity and hence necessitates the reintroduction of redistributive mechanisms that counter the competitive logic of their proposals. The combination of federalism and national solidarity is even more marked in proposals, generally from the centre-left, for co-operative federalism. Vannino Chiti (former president of the Tuscan region), for example, characterizes federalism as a cultural orientation based on the responsibility and participation of each citizen and a strong civic involvement of families, local associations and communities (Chiti 1997). Such proposals emphasize interregional collaboration, and in particular solidarity between regions from the (richer) North and from the (poorer) South, a vision of federalism at the antipode of the Lega’s secessionism.

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Federalist alternatives to secession intend to preserve the national community. They intend to reconfirm loyalty towards the Italian nation-state, but they are confronted with the problem of giving this loyalty, and the national solidarity it implies, a new legitimacy. In a context where a secessionist challenge may be sustained by referring to its economic rationality, the mere affirmation of patriotism without a strong vision of national solidarity may be an inadequate answer to this challenge. Within Italy both the Catholic Church and the Italian left have traditionally provided ideologies of solidarity. The former has played an important role in opposing secessionism, and has perhaps more than institutional actors been able to incarnate national solidarity (Cartocci 1994). The Italian left has historically held an alternative vision of social solidarity. The ex-communist union Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) has, in particular, become the voice of the systematic defence of national standards of social solidarity against the introduction of regional wage differentials and the regionalization of social security, which would disadvantage the South and dissolve such social solidarity (Nerozzi 2000). Ideologies that legitimize national solidarity and proposals for institutional reforms may play an important role in reconstructing loyalty towards the Italian nation-state. To obtain this result they should nevertheless also offer concrete and effective answers to the (often justified) critiques that the Lega voices against the Italian political system. Federalist reforms of the Italian state are thus faced with the danger that they may reproduce on a smaller scale the clientelism and the inefficiency of the Italian state. To restore the legitimacy of financial transfers to the South implies realizing them in such a way that the abuses of the past are not repeated. The need to redress past and present abuses explains why debates on reform in Italy frequently take a broader scope. Southern Italians in particular have been concerned with relating institutional changes to reforms of southern society, and in particular of its clientelist traditions (Cotturi 1999). At the same time, critical attention has been paid to the northern culture that sustains the Lega Nord’s secessionist discourse. Its ‘bounded civic-ness’ reduces the scope of solidarity to the local community, and to the private sphere and the particularistic relations of the market in which its members operate (Bagnasco 1994). Both critiques suggest that loyalty to the institutions of the state is related to a culture that transcends the defence of particular interests and is interested in creating a public sphere that defends common interests.

Conclusion: ‘post-national’ loyalty? An analysis of the Italian case reveals both the strengths and the weaknesses of nation-states and of the loyalty they command. It shows, on the one hand, that national identities may be questioned even in cases when these are wellentrenched habits of the heart. The logic of economic rationality and the articulation of economic interests may effectively challenge loyalty to the nationstate, making ‘exit’ a feasible alternative to ‘voice’. The credibility of the secessionist option also relies, however, on an extra-economic logic, since the

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creation of a positive northern identity dissociated from the Italian nation-state is based on a longstanding tradition of understanding Italy’s North–South differentiation as a moral divide between a modern North and a backward South. The appeal of the Lega’s secessionist programme remains, nevertheless, countered by an attachment to the nation-state that does not follow the logic of economic rationality. ‘Voice’ and hence proposals to reform the Italian state remain predominant. These proposals reveal how the nation-state clearly continues to be associated with ideals of social solidarity, which still find their political translation in the welfare state’s redistributive politics. The Lega Nord’s imaginary state of Padania appears at first sight to be a model of a ‘post-national’ state: it incarnates the virtues Italy lacks, the efficiency and modernity which allows its insertion in a global economy and, more concretely, the EU. At the same time, however, it is also a community concerned with guaranteeing social protection to its citizens. But it rejects the universal principle of the welfare state and adapts the principle of an ethnic welfare, whereby social support and the attribution of rights are given according to an ethnic hierarchy which tends to exclude outsiders from them. The Lega Nord’s secessionist discourse may be interpreted as an example of how the competitive dimension of globalization exacerbates conflicts between communities. It can transform relatively mild regional differences into political antagonisms, in a new struggle for the survival of the fittest between exclusivist communities. In such a vision, closely knit regional communities protected from undesired outsiders – both within and outside the territory of the community – would command the loyalty of their citizens, since they appear as safe niches in the dangerous world of global competition. Although the processes of European unification and globalization mark the content of Italy’s crisis of legitimacy and Europe functions as a role model in Italy, as a supranational identity it appears for the moment to be an insufficient substitute for national loyalty. Images of a global and cosmopolitan community incarnated by the EU and the rhetoric of inclusion in global networks and information highways do not yet offer an alternative vision of social insertion. The issue of loyalty remains related to visions of a community that promises social solidarity, which supranational institutions are as yet unable to offer. In a context where state institutions are faced with a crisis of legitimacy, regional, if not parochial, and socially exclusive loyalties seem to remain the most feasible alternatives to the nation-state, notwithstanding – or rather because of – international globalization.

Notes 1

2

The North includes all the regions belonging to the official statistical categories of North-West and North-East: Valle d’Aosta, Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Trentino–Alto Adige, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Emilia-Romagna. Although the Lega also proposes lists in some regions of central Italy, its electoral support outside the North is marginal. Italy does have national minorities which have sometimes voiced secessionist tendencies (the South Tyrolians, the inhabitants of the Valle d’Aosta, the Sardinians), but none of them has been concerned by the Lega Nord’s secessionism.

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5

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For an analysis of the Lega’s electorate, see Diamanti (1995, 1996). It should be pointed out, however, that the Lega has only been successful in the industrial districts which previously voted for the Christian Democrat Party, not in those of the ‘red’ regions of northern and central Italy (Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, Marche). See note 1. In its more extended version Padania also includes the central regions of Tuscany, Umbria and Marche. At times the Lega has also proposed an ethnically determined Padanian territory, which would include only those territories where ‘Padanian’ dialects are spoken (which excludes most of the central regions, but also South Tyrol and Valle d’Aosta, but would include the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland). For example Marco Formentini, the former mayor of Milan (who has since quit the Lega) (see Sabella and Urbinati 1994: 207–8).

Bibliography Allievi, S. (1992) Le parole della Lega. Il movimento politico che vuole un’altra Italia, Milan: Garzanti. Almond, G.A. and S. Verba (1963) The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bagnasco, A. (1994) ‘Regioni, tradizione civica, modernizzazione italiana: un commento alla ricerca di Putnam’, Stato e Mercato 40: 93–103. Barlucchi, C. (1997) ‘Quale secessione in Italia?’, Rivista italiana di scienza politica 27: 345–71. Bassetti, P. (1996) L’Italia si e rotta? Un federalismo per l’Europa, Rome and Bari: Laterza. Biorcio, R. (1997) La Padania promessa, Milan: Il Saggiatore. Bonomi, A. (1997) Il capitalismo molecolare. La società al lavoro nel Nord Italia, Turin: Einaudi. Bordignon, M. (2000) ‘Federalismo fiscale? Riflessioni in merito alle recenti riforme in Italia’, Il Mulino 49: 323–31. Boselli, F. (1995) ‘Federalismo fiscale: da dove cominciare’, Federalismo e Società 4: 53–5. Bossi, U. and D. Vimercati (1992) Vento dal Nord, Milan: Sperling & Kupfer. —— (1993) La Rivoluzione, Milan: Sperling & Kupfer. —— (1998) Processo alla Lega, Milan: Sperling & Kupfer. Cartocci, R. (1994) Fra Lega e chiesa. L’Italia in cerca di integrazione, Bologna: Il Mulino. Cassese, S. (1998) Lo stato introvabile. Modernità e arretratezza delle istituzioni italiane, Rome: Donzelli. Chiti, V. (1997) ‘L’Italia fra federalismo vecchio e nuovo’, Nuova Antologia 2,204: 39–63. Cotturi, G. (1999) ‘Federalism dal Mezzogiorno’, Democrazia e Diritto 2: 9–19. Diamanti, I. (1995) La Lega. Geografia, storia e sociologia di un soggetto politico, 2nd edn, Rome: Donzelli. —— (1996) Il male del Nord. Lega, localismo, secessione, Rome: Donzelli. —— (1997) ‘Il Nord senza l’Italia? L’independenza diventa “normale” ’, LiMes 1: 297–308. Diani, M. (1996) ‘Regionalism, Federalism and Minority Rights: The Italian Case’, Res Publica 38: 413–27. Dickie, J. (1996) ‘Imagined Italies’, in D. Forgacs and R. Lumley (eds) Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ginsborg, P. (1996) ‘Explaining Italy’s Crisis’, in S. Gundle and S. Parker (eds) The New Italian Republic: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi, London: Routledge. —— (2001) Italy and its Discontents 1980–2001, London: Allen Lane.

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Hirschman, A.O. (1974) Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Huysseune, M. (2002) ‘Imagined Geographies: Political and Scientific Discourses on Italy’s North–South Divide’, in B. Coppieters and M. Huysseune (eds) Secession, History and the Social Sciences, Brussels: VUB Brussels University Press. —— (forthcoming) ‘A Nation Confronting a Secessionist Claim: Italy and the Lega Nord’, in B. Coppieters and R. Sakwa (eds) Contextualizing Secession: Normative Studies in a Comparative Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jacobelli, J. (ed.) (1997) Il federalismo degli Italiani, Rome and Bari: Laterza. Lanaro, S. and G. Crainz (1997) ‘Emilia, Veneto, Nord-Est: gli storici’, Rassegna di storia contemporanea 7: 15–21. Lupo, S. (1996) ‘The Changing Mezzogiorno: Between Representations and Reality’, in S. Gundle and S. Parker (eds) The New Italian Republic: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi, London: Routledge. Mainardi, R. (1998) L’Italia delle regioni. Il Nord e la Padania, Milan: Bruno Mondadori. Mariucci, L. (1999) ‘L’elezione diretta del Presidente della regione e la nuova forma di governo regionale’, Le istituzioni del federalismo 20: 1,149–64. Müller, W.C. and V. Wright (1994) ‘Reshaping the State in Western Europe: The Limits to Retreat’, in W.C. Müller and V. Wright (eds) The State in Western Europe: Retreat or Redefinition, London: Frank Cass. Nerozzi, P. (2000) ‘Il federalismo necessario’, Quale stato 4: 46–53. Oneto, G. (1997) L’invenzione della Padania. La rinascità della comunità più antica d’Europa, Bergamo: Foedus Editore. Pace, E. (1998) La Nation italienne en crise, Paris: Bayard Ed. Pagliarini, G. (1996) ‘Le ragioni della Lega’, Nuvole 6: 35–48. Pajetta, G. (1997) ‘1992–1997: Cinque anni alla disperata ricerca di un leader’, Rassegna di storia contemporanea 7: 155–63. Pasquino, G. (1998) ‘Reforming the Italian Constitution’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 3: 42–54. Pizzorusso, A. (1999) La Costituzione ferita, Rome and Bari: Laterza. Ragazzi, G. (1995) ‘Federalismo fiscale e questione meridionale’, Federalismo and Società 2: 29–57. Sabella, M. and N. Urbinati (eds) (1994) Quale federalismo? Interviste sull’Italia del futuro, Florence: Vallecchi. Salvati, M. (1997) Cittadini e governanti. La leadership nella storia dell’Italia contemporanea, Rome and Bari: Laterza. Scaramellini, G. E. dell’Agnese and G. Lucarno (1997) ‘I processi redistributivi’, in P. Coppola (ed.) Geografia politica delle regioni italiane, Turin: Einaudi. Smith, A.D. (1981) The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrow, S. (1977) Between Center and Periphery: Grassroots Politicians in Italy and France, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. Teti, V. (1993) La razza maledetta. Origini del pregiudizio antimeridionale, Rome: Manifestolibri. Unnia, M. (1995) ‘A che punto siamo? Cinque anni di dibattito italiano sul federalismo: un bilancio’, Federalismo and Società 2: 149–66. Valditara, G. (1998) ‘La Bicamerale e il federalismo’, Federalismo and Libertà 5: 35–44. Wallace, W. (1994) ‘Rescue or Retreat? The Nation State in Western Europe, 1945–93’, Political Studies 42: 52–76.

12 National identities, historical narratives and patron states in Northern Ireland John Barry

Loyalty, identity and trust Expressions and conceptions of loyalty are especially potent and contentious in the constitution of collective identities in Northern Ireland. On the one hand we have the Orange marches – Protestant religious-political expressions of loyalty to the British monarch and Protestant faith which date back to the late eighteenth century. Some of these insist on marching through Catholic-nationalist areas where they are not welcome and are seen as expressions of Protestant-unionist domination and oppression. On the other hand we have the more recent decision by the first republican Lord Mayor of Belfast to hang the Irish tricolour and the British Union flags in his office, which for many unionists is a provocative act since it expresses a loyalty and allegiance to another country whilst bringing into question the ‘British’ status of Northern Ireland, and indeed his fitness for the office. Thus, the relationship between loyalty, identity and history is particularly interesting in Northern Ireland, not least because there are longstanding political discourses, practices and institutions associated with ‘loyalism’ within unionist politics and history. Loyalism in Northern Ireland is an ideology, a movement and an identity, associated with more extreme unionism in the same way that ‘republicanism’ is associated with more extreme or militant ‘nationalism’. There are paramilitary groups which include loyalism as part of their name, such as the Loyalist Volunteer Force or the Combined Loyalist Military Command, as well as other Protestant organizations such as the Loyal Orange Lodges (to give them their full title) and other ‘loyal’ institutions such as the Royal Black Preceptory and the Apprentice Boys. Within Northern Ireland politics in general, and the unionist community in particular, invocations of ‘loyalty’, ‘trust’ and more often their opposites, ‘disloyalty’ ‘betrayal’, ‘mistrust’, ‘untrustworthy’ and ‘traitor’, have been central organizing features of its political and cultural life. Indeed, in Northern Ireland (at least until recently) the practices associated with loyalty and disloyalty have often had a pre-modern character, particularly when, as in the case of unionist loyalism, ‘loyalty’ has been attached, not to the British state or British nation as such, but to the Crown, the ‘Union’ and the binding covenant it expressed, to the

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Protestant religion as the one true Christian faith, and to Protestant traditions and history. Whilst in modern society elsewhere terms such as ‘loyalty’, ‘disloyalty’, ‘traitor’, ‘betrayal’ are sparingly used and are coming to be drained of much of their traditional depth and power to arouse feelings (particularly the pejorative terms), in Northern Ireland they, and the political behaviour which embody them, assume sometimes frightening expression. People have been murdered and maimed for being ‘disloyal’, for ‘selling out’. Historically, a large part of the problem in Northern Ireland has stemmed from the unionist view of nationalists as, by definition, ‘traitors’ or ‘fifth columnists’, plotting and scheming to dissolve the Union and force the unionists into a united Ireland. Particularly when one looks at the more extreme end of the unionist spectrum (especially paramilitary loyalism and the politics of the Democratic Unionist Party), one finds that often no distinction is made between nationalist ends (a United Ireland, though this is not true of all nationalists) and means (terrorism and support for terrorism or democratic politics). It is arguably this failure to distinguish means from ends that explains the failure of previous attempts at power-sharing. As McGarry notes, ‘Because nationalists aspire to a united Ireland, because, in other words, nationalists are nationalists, Unionist leaders will not share power with them’ (McGarry 1988: 248). Hence, in aspiring to a united Ireland and in reality owing their allegiance to this ‘foreign’ state nationalists are, in loyalist eyes, by definition ‘disloyal’ and ‘traitors’, fifth columnists who cannot or should not be trusted. In the words of David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), speaking of the experience of partition and the Stormont regime in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: Ulster Unionists, fearful of being isolated on the island, built a solid house, but it was a cold house for Catholics. And northern nationalists, although they had a roof over their heads, seemed to us as if they meant to burn the house down. (Trimble 1998) In the next section I suggest that in Northern Ireland (though not, of course, exclusively there) loyalty is particularly intimately bound up with collective identity. The relations that constitute one’s loyalty to particular institutions, places and people are constitutive of one’s identity and membership of the valued community that shares that loyalty. The changing relationships of both communities vis-à-vis their ‘patron states’ (the rest of the United Kingdom in the unionist case, and the Irish Republic in the nationalist case) are complex and can have positive or negative consequences.

Loyalism and betrayal: unionist insecurity and identity At the time of writing, in September 2002, Northern Ireland had experienced another summer of sectarian violence, which in ‘interface areas’ had resulted in almost nightly riots and street disorder. Both studies and anecdotal evidence had

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shown that the two communities in Northern Ireland had never been so bitterly divided – all against the backdrop of the Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998, the establishment of Northern Ireland’s devolved power-sharing assembly, paramilitary ceasefires and a dramatic decline in terrorist bombings and shootings. Things had improved politically in terms of the terrorist and paramilitary conflict, and economically in terms of inward investment and employment, yielding an improved quality of life for people in Northern Ireland with the creation of a more normal society. Yet relations between the two communities had never been so low. A large part of the explanation has to do with the insecurities of certain key constitutive aspects of unionist identity, expressing themselves in the face of a British government determined to make the power-sharing settlement work; with an emboldened and confident nationalist community; and with a strong sense within growing sections of the unionist community that the Good Friday Agreement is a one-way flow of concessions and benefits to nationalists which has not led to any improvement for the unionist community or for the cause of the Union. According to Enoch Powell, a vehement supporter of Protestant Ulster, ‘since 1919 the English state has with dogged tenacity been determined to rid the United Kingdom of the province’ (Powell 1994). For Bruce, the implication of this is that the Protestant community is ‘fundamentally threatened by British actions and British attitudes. Ulster Protestants are well aware that the British public is largely indifferent to their efforts to preserve themselves and entirely uncomprehending of their history, attitudes and culture’ (Bruce 1989: 258–9). Unionist culture and collective identity are problematic to the extent that their sense of ‘Britishness’ requires some recognition and acknowledgement of this from the British people and the British state. But since this recognition and affirmation is not forthcoming, this leaves the Ulster unionist identity unstable and unsure. After all, a Union that is all one-sided is not a union. Brown, McCrone and Paterson (1996) highlight this non-reciprocal aspect of unionist identity, in noting that: The key point about all social identities, including national ones, is that they are not given once and for all, but are negotiated. People’s claims to an identity have to be recognized to be valid and operative. We have to be able to read the signs when claims are made, and treat them not as ready-made and fixed characteristics, but as aspirations made in a social and political context. Hence the claim of Northern Ireland Protestants to be British is not a statement of fact but an assertion made in hope rather than expectation. To be valid it has to be recognized by those on the mainland who hold the key to that identity. (Brown et al. 1996: 209; emphasis added) Yet the sad reality is that the necessary reciprocal recognition is not forthcoming from the rest of Britain, with the notable exception of Scotland. Unionists are the most vocal community within Great Britain, insistently displaying their British identity and loyalty to the symbols of this identity – the Crown, the royal

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family, the commemoration of the First and Second World Wars (especially the Battle of the Somme) and the Protestant faith. But this insistence is not reproduced in the rest of the United Kingdom, giving Northern Ireland an exceptional status. Perhaps the most vivid example of this non-reciprocity between Northern Ireland unionist identity and attitudes in the rest of the United Kingdom is the experience of Northern Ireland Protestants when in the rest of the United Kingdom (especially England) they are treated as members of an ‘Irish’ community undifferentiated as between the Irish from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Irish nationalists. This non-reciprocity in the relationship between unionism and Britain has been explored by Cochrane (1994). A leading member of the UUP whom he interviewed in 1991 stated that Northern Ireland is not part of Great Britain but is part of the United Kingdom, and for that partnership to survive, it isn’t simply dependent upon people in Northern Ireland voting Unionist or being pro-British, it also depends on those who live in Great Britain wanting to retain the partnership…. The basis of the relationship does depend on the Unionists of Northern Ireland having public support in Great Britain as well. (Cochrane 1994: 382–3) Yet, as evidence from polls testifies, there is no overwhelming public support for the unionist cause. A Guardian/ICM poll taken in 1993 showed that only 18 per cent of British voters thought that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom, while the preferred option, supported by 23 per cent, was for Northern Ireland to become a separate state. As Cochrane notes, ‘Despite such evidence suggesting that British public opinion is out of sympathy with their cause, unionists have failed to get the message’ (ibid.: 387). In August 2001 an ICM telephone poll for the Guardian newspaper found that 41 per cent of those questioned said that the North should become part of the Irish Republic, while only 26 per cent said that it should stay in the United Kingdom (Donaldson 2001). Alongside this experience of non-reciprocity or non-recognition, we have statements and policies from the British government that also undermine unionist claims of ‘Britishness’. For example, there can be no more explicit expression of this feeling of isolation and betrayal of their community than the statement by a former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, that the British government has ‘no selfish, strategic or economic interest’ in Northern Ireland (Downing Street Declaration 1993). It is simply inconceivable that the same would have been said of Cornwall, or even Scotland. So the necessary reciprocity required to sustain a central aspect of unionist identity is not forthcoming, which may explain why Ignatieff (1994) stresses that unionism is an extreme form of British nationalism, and why ‘Protestant Ulster’ presents itself as the most British part of the United Kingdom, with its displays of the Union flag, kerbstones painted red, white and blue, and – especially – the Orange parades. While Brooke’s essentially pragmatic view may be said to express a

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strong version of the conditional nature of the union between Northern Ireland and Britain, and of Northern Ireland’s constitutional status as British, there is also a weaker version. This weak version is the consent principle, expressed in the Good Friday Agreement, and agreed to by most of the political parties in Northern Ireland. The consent principle basically holds that if it is the will of the majority of people in Northern Ireland to become part of a United Ireland, so be it. This has been accepted by almost all sides, from the Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of the ‘anti-Agreement’ Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) (Porter 1998: 115) to Sinn Fein (though the consent principle is often cast as an illegitimate ‘unionist veto’ over political change by Sinn Fein). Because of the uneasy relationship for some with ‘the mainland’ (Scotland, England and Wales), the identity of the unionist community has not developed beyond that of colonial settlers, given the attitude of the British people and state to this awkward periphery. For Rowthorn and Wayne: Northern Ireland is one of the last remaining relics from Britain’s once mighty empire. Its Protestant community, descendents of the original settlers to colonize Ireland more than three hundred years ago, still behaves as a settler community surrounded by hostile natives. (Rowthorn and Wayne 1988: 166) This explains why its identity and traditions look towards the mainland rather than to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is regarded as their territory, but their homeland is somewhere else – Scotland or in the symbolism of ‘Britishness’, the Orange marches, the Crown, and the ‘civil and religious liberties’ that the Union upholds. Their identity is not constituted by a relationship with the land of Ulster, but with the unionist community itself, the Protestant faith and its relationship with ‘elsewhere’. In an incisive comment, Payton has recently suggested that for those who insist that ‘[A] myth of territory is basic to the construction and legitimation of identity [and for whom] politicization of territory is achieved through its treatment as a distinct and historic land’, ‘Protestant Ulster’ today is inherently vulnerable and incomplete. (Payton 1996: 397) Whilst the instability and partial incoherence of unionist identity has been remarked upon by many commentators (Todd 1987, 1989; O’Neill 1994; Cochrane 1994; Porter 1998), there has not been much discussion of the putative resolution of this within unionism through an increasing defence of its identity on the non-negotiable grounds of ‘tradition’ and the uncompromising political stance with which that is associated. Loyalty to the past and faithful performance of key annual commemorative events, such as Orange marches, become increasingly the basis upon which its identity is based. The link between political and cultural unionism is such that ‘political instability’, perceived as any change in the constitutional status quo or as anything undermining the ‘unionist

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veto’ on political development within Northern Ireland, is automatically translated into and experienced as cultural instability. And, vice versa, each and every Orange parade that is rerouted and prevented from following its traditional route is experienced as another attack on ‘Protestant culture’ and also a political challenge to the Union and the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. However, as pointed out below, alongside this defensive or reactionary response we can also see evidence of a critical rethinking and revising of unionism. In part, the relationship between Orange marches and loyalty has to do with what Porter identifies as ‘the long-standing Protestant practice of forming “public bands” – of which the Orange Order is an early example – in order to protect a valued way of life against perceived threats from Britain’s or Ulster’s enemies’ (Porter 1998: 116). The discourse of ‘union’, loyalty and bonds between sovereign and a chosen people is particularly marked within what Porter terms the ‘cultural unionism’ of the anti-agreement DUP, which champions a contractual basis for the unionist cause, strongly identified at times as a binding covenant between sovereign, God and a chosen people and faith, with all the exclusive religious overtones that this invokes. However, such a contractual understanding of the Union rarely extends to either the British government or state, or indeed the British people. As Porter points out, there is the familiar difficulty of cultural unionists relying upon understandings that are foreign to the British government. This difficulty appears in an almost absurd form when cultural unionists cite contractual arrangements that are met with blank stares or are given short shrift at Westminster. To state the obvious, a contract requires the mutual agreement of two parties and in its absence there is no contract. (Porter 1998: 121) Once again the one-sided character of the unionist position is revealed in all its weakness vis-à-vis the British state and public opinion. According to Cochrane, the root problem with unionist identity is that it rests on the transformation of a political allegiance into a cultural one: The United Kingdom is a state rather than a nation, a set of political arrangements rather than a culture. England, Scotland and Wales on the other hand are nations with distinct cultural differences. Thus when unionists describe themselves as British they are aspiring to a cultural identity which does not exist. From the British/English viewpoint therefore, unionists are adopted children rather than blood-kin, a vestige of empire-building from a previous age, not an integral part of the nation. (Cochrane 1994: 383) In many respects the attitude of the typical British citizen to Northern Ireland is to view unionists and nationalists as equally alien, and both as having more in common with each other than either have with Britain. This is particularly

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marked in relation to English attitudes to their unionist ‘fellow citizens’. Thus we have the extraordinary situation that the more Britain distances itself politically, economically and culturally from Northern Ireland, the more unionists strive to display their ‘Britishness’. Hence, in order to ensure the Union, which cannot be taken for granted since it is conditional, unionism is rather like a child forced to march around its parent (its patron state) loudly reminding her of her obligations to her children – ‘I belong to you’. This either is itself problematic, on the grounds that there is no such identity corresponding to the ‘British nation’, as Cochrane argues above, or, if we understand Britishness as a particular understanding of Englishness (or English nationalism), then unionism is a strange form of Englishness, which most English people (apart from sections of the Conservative Party and supporters of right-wing populism or English nationalism) would find alien and uncomfortable. However, there are signs of the emergence of a ‘new unionism’, or a rethinking of unionism (Porter 1998). David Trimble (leader of the largest unionist party, the UUP) has attempted a reconstitution and modernization of unionism, a central part of which is the separation of political unionism from religious unionism, the latter represented by Orangeism and the Protestant faith. The Good Friday Agreement’s various organizational changes – the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly, the North–South bodies and East–West institutions – suggest some possibilities. In terms of unionist loyalty this might be seen to suggest a shift from loyalty to the British Crown, history and the British state (though, as indicated above, loyalty to the British state has also been conditional) towards a more local sense of loyalty, to local political institutions and perhaps the ‘Northern Ireland community’ as a whole. However, this loyalty to local institutions is made more complex by the effective sharing of sovereignty of Northern Ireland between the devolved assembly, Britain and the Irish Republic. As befits such a politically self-conscious community, a sense of ‘differentiated loyalty’ may be said to characterize the unionist community (the plurality of which is increasingly evident as this once homogeneous community fragments). Not only do we have the public and very visible conflicts between different unionist loyalties, related to different senses of a unionist identity and now principally organized around ‘pro-Agreement’ and ‘anti-Agreement’ unionists, but we can also characterize as selective the loyalty that even this new unionism expresses towards the new political-institutional arrangements of Northern Ireland. That is to say, just as many of those unionists who voted ‘Yes’ to the Good Friday Agreement had misgivings about it (particularly, but not exclusively, related to the release of paramilitary prisoners and the decommissioning of terrorist arms), so it is likely that their loyalty to the new institutional arrangements will focus on the Northern Ireland Assembly and the continuing Union with the United Kingdom, and not on North–South bodies. While the latter might be accorded legitimacy in the eyes of unionists (a necessary concession required to secure the Agreement in the first place), it is difficult to see how, at least in the short term, this grudging acknowledgement of legitimacy will be accompanied by a sense of loyalty on the part of unionists.

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This condition in which the unionist people finds itself explains its fearfulness, its insecurity and suspicion of everyone and everything – Northern Ireland nationalists, the Republic of Ireland, the Catholic Church, and especially the intentions of Her Majesty’s government. In this way the position of unionists is similar to the position in which the ‘English Irish’ found themselves in Elizabethan England in the sixteenth century. As Ellis points out, the ‘medieval English perception about the coincidence of nations and national territories’ led at that time to a situation such that the two statutes of 1536 and 1541 envisaged for the first time a situation in which large numbers of the king’s subjects could be free at law and yet not English. Accordingly, Englishness came to be more narrowly defined after the 1530s, particularly in the aftermath of the Reformation when it acquired a pronounced religious character, the product of Protestant perceptions of England as God’s elect nation. In consequence, the claims to an English identity of the Catholic Old English of Ireland, who loudly trumpeted their Englishness, were increasingly rejected in Elizabethan England. (Ellis 1996: 4–5; emphasis added) History, in Ireland as in perhaps few other places, has a particular resonance and persistence, and is often apt to repeat itself. For ‘Catholic Old English of Ireland’ substitute ‘Protestants/Unionists of Northern Ireland’. For the tragedy of the unionist predicament is that, while unionists themselves may be convinced of their Britishness, the overwhelming majority of people on mainland Britain do not affirm that self-understanding. As noted, from the point of view of the ordinary British citizen (again with the exception of Scotland) the unionist community is ‘Irish’ and has more in common with the Northern Ireland nationalist community and the ‘Irish community’ of both North and South than with the people of the rest of the United Kingdom.

Nationalist insecurity and identity A similar sense of isolation and abandonment is experienced by the nationalist community in relation to the Republic of Ireland. For some Southern Irish commentators the roots of the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland lie in the way that this State [the Republic of Ireland] abandoned the nationalist minority in the North…it was this sense of isolation experienced by Northern Catholics, the discrimination that was practised against them, which led first to the civil rights movement and later to the violence of the IRA. (Holland 1992) It is thus true to say that over time, initially with partition and then with the onset of the ‘troubles’ in 1968/9, the automatic identification and ‘common

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cause’ between southern and northern Catholic nationalists has declined. For example, at times the Irish government has been more than happy to isolate the Northern Ireland problem and allow the British government to deal with it, rather than to seek to promote the interests of Northern Ireland nationalists. One of the consequences of this distance between Northern Ireland nationalists and the people and state of the Republic of Ireland is that, as Ruane and Todd point out, ‘Over time Northern Catholics evolved from a geographical category (“Catholics in the six counties”) to a community (“Northern Catholics”) capable of autonomous political action’ (1996: 291). In large part this evolution has been predicated on both a growing sense of not being able to depend on the Republic of Ireland or its citizens to support them, and the practical necessities of self-organization to promote the northern nationalist cause within Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and internationally. Hence there is a degree, more marked at some times than others, of resentment and hostility between northern nationalists (especially republicans) and the Republic of Ireland. Northern nationalists, whilst having to relate to a southern state and people less committed to ‘traditional nationalism’ and the cause of a united Ireland as the only acceptable solution to the Northern Ireland problem, does enjoy a closer and more positive relationship with its patron state and people than is the case with unionists. Unlike the relationship between the unionist community and its patron state, the United Kingdom, northern nationalists enjoy greater support within the Republic of Ireland for securing their immediate interests (mainly to do with ‘internal’ issues of power-sharing, equality and parity of esteem in relation to the unionist community and external issues such as the Republic of Ireland’s having some say in the governance of Northern Ireland), if not for their long-term aspirations for a United Ireland within both the Irish state and public. This sense of isolation has recently been joined by a steady decrease in public opinion within the Irish Republic for a United Ireland. As Cox observes, Opinion surveys also indicate something crucial about southern Irish attitudes to partition. The northern Irish are not greatly liked; most ominously for northern Irish Catholics, they are regarded by a majority, according to one survey, as having more in common with northern Irish Protestants than with their southern co-religionists…. By contrast, warm feelings towards the British people, if not towards their government and institutions, are a marked feature of southern Irish attitudes. (Cox 1985: 38) More recent surveys in the Republic found support for a United Ireland varying from 30 per cent to 36 per cent (Irish Times/MRBI Poll 1996; Irish Opinion Poll Archive 2002). However, as Ruane and Todd rightly suggest, ‘Northern Ireland has become more insulated from the rest of the island – more “a place apart” than it was in 1969…northern Catholics are more critical of the South but they also look to it for political and cultural support’ (1996: 292–3). Yet it is clear that

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support for a United Ireland has been declining for some time in the South, and the decline is especially marked since the recent economic boom that the Republic of Ireland has experienced (as the ‘Celtic tiger’). Yet despite this distancing northern nationalists have adapted to the changed relation with their patron state and nation much better than have northern unionists to theirs. In part this has to do with the more open and flexible view of Irish national identity that has arisen since the early 1990s. As Kearney points out, Contemporary Irish identity is most at ease with itself, it appears, when the obsession with an exclusive identity is abandoned. Irish culture rediscovers its best self, not self-consciously, not self-regardingly, but in its encounter with other cultures – continental, British, American, etc. For as long as Irish people think of themselves as Celtic Crusoes on a sequestered island, they ignore not only their own diaspora but the basic cultural truth that cultural creation comes from hybridization not purity, contamination not immunity, polyphony not monologue…the surrounding seas are waterways connecting it with ‘foreigners’, that the navigation towards the other presents the best possibility of coming home to oneself. (Kearney 1997: 101) A less exclusive, rigid sense of Irish national identity has opened up the space to allow the ‘united Ireland’ nationalism of northern nationalists to coexist with a more cultural and less political sense of national identity for citizens of the Irish Republic. Indeed, whilst not infinitely flexible, this post-national sense of Irishness allows citizens of the Irish republic to ‘belong’, to be ‘Irish’ without having to be ‘nationalists’ (in the traditional sense of the term) at all. The ‘disappearance of a fixed Irish identity’ has, as O’Toole points out, allowed ‘the emergence of a set of provisional, contingent identities’ (1998: xvii) suited to the political (and cultural) demands for flexibility, revision and compromise that the politics of Northern Ireland requires. A tree that can bend in the wind is more likely to survive than a more rigid one.

Rethinking unionism A promising development in terms of providing creative resources for a lasting settlement within Northern Ireland is the rethinking of unionism, its constitutive aims, worldview and identity. Prompted in part by a recognition of the political limitations of an exclusive focus on maintaining the Union (Porter 1998), and mindful of the lack of reciprocity for their British political and Protestant cultural identity on the part of the rest of the United Kingdom as well as the Realpolitik implications of the drift in British policy towards Northern Ireland (in terms of working towards a devolved power-sharing arrangement with an Irish dimension), there is clear evidence of a rethinking of unionism. While this rethinking or the process of developing a ‘new’ unionism should not be overstressed (especially given the persistence of ‘old’ or ‘traditional’ unionism, as

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represented by Ian Paisley and the DUP), there are nonetheless clear signs of change and critical thinking within the unionist political imagination. While there are a number of sources of this – intellectuals, think tanks, political parties and community groups, for example – I want to highlight two, in order to sketch out briefly the type and extent of the critical rethinking of unionism. A major impetus behind this rethinking of unionism is the ‘new’ unionism associated with David Trimble, leader of the UUP, in whose speeches and criticism of ‘anti-Agreement’ unionists (both in the DUP and his own party) one can discern the beginnings of a more modernized, less traditional and exclusivist unionist vision. In a speech soon after the Good Friday Agreement of May 1998, Trimble stated that it was time to ‘get down to the historic and honourable task of this generation: to raise up a new Northern Ireland in which pluralist unionism and constitutional nationalism can speak to each other with the civility that is the foundation of freedom’ (1998). While Trimble’s rethinking of unionism is limited, partly for Realpolitik reasons of competition with the DUP and fear of moving too far ahead and alienating electoral support for his party, it is clear that it is consistent with the direction, if not the extent, of the critical recasting of unionism that one finds in writers such as Porter (1998). Porter’s radical rethinking of unionism represents perhaps the most sophisticated and intellectually robust modernizing views from which Trimble’s ‘new’ unionism can draw inspiration. Porter’s critique of existing unionist politics and his proposal for a new ‘civic unionism’ represent a new vision which is sharply at odds with existing modes of unionist thought and politics. A flavour of how radical Porter’s ‘civic unionism’ is can be seen in his suggestion that ‘the ultimate end for civic unionism is not the Union per se but the quality of social and political life in Northern Ireland’ which, as he acknowledges, ‘is a shocking inversion of unionist priorities. And that is why civic unionism lies beyond the horizons of most unionists’ (ibid.: 170). Rather than see Northern Ireland as ‘irrevocably British and/or Protestant’, as traditional unionism does, Porter’s civic unionism acknowledges both the British and Irish dimensions, traditions and character of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is ‘neither as “British as Finchley”, nor “as Irish as Cork” ’ (ibid.: 172), but a ‘place apart’, constituting a distinct society where British and Irish influences converge, conflict and commingle, and one in which there ought to be due recognition of both Irishness and Britishness, culturally and politically. If this were not radical enough, Porter goes on to point out that an indicator of a new unionism is the separation of unionist politics from Orangeism (hitherto one of the few areas of agreement now existing within the fractured and disunited unionist house). As he puts it, ‘a unionism that cannot disentangle itself from Orangeism, or any other form of Protestant particularism, offers grim prospects to the citizens of Northern Ireland’ (ibid.: xi). Porter emphasizes the need to develop a unionism the main focus of which is the establishment of a Northern Irish polity in which both unionist and nationalist traditions are accorded ‘due recognition’ both politically and culturally – though with an acceptance that more political weight be accorded to what he calls ‘British’

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factors due to the wish of a majority of Northern Ireland citizens to remain part of the United Kingdom (ibid.: 176). This unionism is one in which unionists (as well as nationalists) are challenged to look to each other rather than to their ‘patron nation-states’ for the recognition of their identities, and to acknowledge that they are both part of a distinct Northern Irish society which offers a way of life worth striving for.1 While such intellectual musing can be dismissed as abstract, theoretical and therefore politically useless, despite the pale ‘lip service’ paid to it in the speeches of David Trimble and other ‘pro-Agreement’ unionists, it reflects a grassroots stirring within unionism – and within loyalism – in favour of a rethinking of what unionism stands for. Strange though it may appear, some of the most refreshing and challenging ideas involved in rethinking unionism and politics in Northern Ireland have come from loyalist politicians and parties, such as the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP; associated with the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association). The PUP website states: We believe that there must be ‘sharing of responsibility’ between unionists and nationalists as the best method of governance for Northern Ireland. Constitutional nationalists have accepted the ‘principle of consent’ which means Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom so long as the majority so wish it. (PUP 2002) It goes on, however, to recognize that, ‘nationalists, being a sizeable minority and our fellow-citizens, must have an executive role in any legislature which may come into being’, whilst also committing itself as a party to ‘strive to eradicate the divisions which have plagued our society for over four hundred years and speed the day when we can revel in our diversity’ (ibid.). This stress on powersharing and the positive embracing of diversity is very close to the ‘civic unionism’ outlined by Porter above, and the PUP is explicit about its project of ‘revisionist unionism’ (Rose 2001). Equally, within the PUP we find an uncompromising commitment to separating unionism and Protestantism. According to a leading member of the PUP, If Unionism is genuinely about maintaining the link with the rest of the United Kingdom then Unionists must accept the multi-faith and multicultural nature of the United Kingdom. Pluralist societies cannot give preference to one religion over another, if the oft quoted phrase ‘civil and religious liberty for all’ is to have any legitimate meaning. (Mitchell, n.d.) Thus at both ends of unionism, from a loyalism associated with paramilitary groups emerging and engaging in democratic politics to the constitutional unionism of the UUP, there are seeds of a new unionism in the making, one more open to acceptance of the difference of the ‘other’ community as non-

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threatening and a legitimate part of Northern Irish society with which it can and ought to share power. It is a unionism that acknowledges the right of northern nationalist political and cultural views and practices to exist and find political expression in the public and political institutions of Northern Ireland. It also, crucially, recognizes the right of northern nationalists to seek a united Ireland by peaceful democratic means. It is a unionism that is neither reducible to nor coextensive with Orangeism or Protestant particularism. It focuses its energies on the creation of a pluralist, inclusive Northern Ireland within the parameters set by the Good Friday Agreement, rather than looking to Westminster to underwrite Northern Ireland as a ‘Protestant state for a Protestant people’. It is, in the end, a vision of unionism that is unrecognizable to many unionists but one that will be a central point of reference in the main split within unionism between ‘pro-’ and ‘anti-Agreement’ camps, and which not only offers the securing of the long-term interests and identity of unionism but is also a necessary part of the creation of a stable power-sharing arrangement.

Conclusion Looking at recent developments in the relationships between the two communities in Northern Ireland and their respective patron states, we come to the following curious situation. On the unionist side, the ‘motherland’ to which they look does not regard them as kin but, rather, at best, as adopted children, as largely alien and at times threatening to mainstream British society. On the nationalist side, the ‘motherland’ to which nationalists look (the Irish Republic) similarly sees them as alien and, at times, threatening and destabilizing (especially in view of republican terrorism); and whilst there is continuing support for a united Ireland (by peaceful means), this has been decreasing since the early 1990s and is likely to continue to decline in the future. It is interesting to note that the majority of citizens in both the Irish Republic and mainland Britain (with the possible exception of Scotland) regard both communities as closer to each other than to either the Republic or Great Britain. Thus, each community is viewed by its respective patron state (in the unionist context) or patron nation-state (for nationalists) as increasingly alien and as forming a single, distinct community in its own right, with common bonds, attitudes and values. Yet neither community seems prepared to accept this external descriptive-cum-prescriptive view that Northern Ireland nationalists and unionists together constitute a distinct ‘Northern Irish’ community in an area of overlap peripheral to Great Britain and to the Irish Republic. While unionists are ‘adopted children’ who are increasingly becoming strangers from the point of view of both the British state and its citizens, nationalists are ‘distant relatives’ who are becoming more distant over time from the point of view of both the state and the citizens of the Irish Republic. At the same time, the support enjoyed by the two communities from their patron states is conditional, in that not all the objectives of each of community are endorsed. Thus northern nationalists enjoy greater support for policy

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changes aimed at ensuring equality for them within Northern Ireland, as laid down by the power-sharing arrangements of the Good Friday Agreement, than for the aim of a United Ireland. Here it is significant to note that a united Ireland is viewed as an ‘aspiration’ rather than an aim or objective in official documents endorsed by both the Irish state and people in referenda on the Good Friday Agreement. Part of the process of that Agreement required the removal of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution, which laid claim to Northern Ireland. Their removal by referendum in 1998 was endorsed by over 90 per cent of Irish voters. Equally, as Ruane and Todd point out, ‘Unionists have the support of the British government, but only in exchange for their acceptance of continuing reform’ (1996: 294). That is, the British state supports unionists and the Union only to the extent that unionists accept the same reforms, which meet nationalist demands for equality and power-sharing within the devolved assembly, and in exchange for which the unionists secured the acceptance of the consent principle by nationalists and by the Irish government. Traditional unionist aims, such as a return to majority rule underwritten by the British state’s ‘benign indifference’ (which can be said to have characterized the Stormont regime which governed Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1972), do not and will not enjoy the support of the British state. At the same time, as noted, support for the Union and the unionist community from the British public has been negligible at best. There are signs of rethinking within both northern nationalism and unionism, though of course this in itself does not automatically point the way to a final settlement of the ‘Northern Ireland problem’. For example, whilst there is clear evidence of an emerging new modernized and revised unionism, it is still the case that there exists a large number (perhaps a majority) of unionists who cling to a traditional unionist worldview, a part of which is a siege mentality born out of legitimate fears for their long-term security and well-being (ibid.: 311–12). Equally, recent steps have been made by republicans to accommodate unionism, perhaps most visibly in the fact that the first Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Belfast participated in official ceremonies for those Irish members of the British Army who died in the Battle of the Somme in the First World War, a big step for a party so implacably opposed to the British army.2 Changes in loyalty, identity and long-established patterns of thought and behaviour are likely to be uneven, uncertain and very difficult. However, despite – or perhaps because of – these difficulties, these changes are nevertheless necessary for the creation of a stable power-sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland.

Notes 1

This idea of a shared Northern Ireland society (made up of two communities and traditions) finds a resonance in the British state’s support for the principle of ‘parity of esteem’ as enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement, but is also consistent with previous British policy initiatives. According to Wilford, the Fair Employment and the Integrated Education policies can be seen as marking a new development in the British government’s attitude to Northern Ireland. For him, ‘The official message seems to be thus: Northern Ireland is one organic community within which there are

National identities in Northern Ireland

2

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realizable, mutually enriching and plural traditions, not a society riven by unbridgeable cleavages and implacably unyielding segments’ (Wilford 1992: 42). Also, Sinn Fein’s position is that it is not opposed to Orange parades where they have not been opposed by the local community, though the overwhelming majority of parades have been so opposed.

Bibliography Brown, A., D. McCrone and L. Paterson (1996) Politics and Society in Scotland, London: Macmillan. Bruce, S. (1989) God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cochrane, F. (1994) ‘Any Takers?: The Isolation of Northern Ireland’, Political Studies 42: 378–95. Cox, W.H. (1985) ‘Who Wants a United Ireland?’, Government and Opposition 20: 29–47. Donaldson, J. (2001) ‘We’re Brits and Proud of It’, Guardian, 22 August, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,540522,00.html (accessed 16 September 2002). Downing Street Declaration (1993) ‘Joint Declaration by An Taoiseach, Mr. Albert Reynolds, T.D., and The British Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. John Major, M.P., 15 December 1993’, http://www.irlgov.ie/iveagh/angloirish/jointdeclaration/default. htm (accessed 10 September 2002). Ellis, S. (1996) ‘Writing Irish History: Revisionism, Colonialism and the British Isles’, Irish Review 19: 1–22. Gilligan, C. (1995) ‘Lost in a Celtic Twilight: The Concept of Identity in Recent Writings on the Conflict in Northern Ireland’, in J. Lovenduski and J. Stanyer (eds) Contemporary Political Studies 1995, Belfast: Political Studies Association. Holland, M. (1992) Irish Times, 19 November. Ignatieff, M. (1994) Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, London: Vintage. Irish Opinion Poll Archive (2002) available at http://www.tcd.ie/Political—Science/ cgi/iopa.cgi (accessed 16 September 2002). Irish Times/MRBI Poll (1996) Irish Times, 7 June 1996. Kearney, R. (1997) Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy, London: Routledge. McGarry, J. (1988) ‘The Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Prospects of Power-Sharing in Northern Ireland’, Political Quarterly 59: 236–50. Mitchell, B. (n.d.) ‘Faith and Politics in a Pluralist Society’ available at http://www.pupni.org.uk/articles/bm/faithpol.htm (accessed 17 September 2002). O’Neill, S. (1994) ‘Pluralist Justice and Its Limits: The Case of Northern Ireland’, Political Studies 42: 363–77. O’Toole, F. (1998) The Lie of the Land: Irish Identities, Dublin: New Island Books. Payton, P. (1996) ‘Inconvenient Peripheries: Ethnic Identity and the “United Kingdom Estate” – the Cases of “Protestant Ulster” and Cornwall’, in I. Hampshire-Monk and J. Stanyer (eds) Contemporary Political Studies 1996, Belfast: Political Studies Association. Porter, N. (1998) Rethinking Unionism, Belfast: Blackstaff Press. Powell, E. (1994) ‘Aligned with the IRA’, Times, 10 August. PUP (Progressive Unionist Party) (2002) ‘The Party Origins’, available at http://www.pup-ni.org.uk/party.htm (accessed 17 September 2002). Rose, D. (2001) ‘What Is the Future for Ulster Unionism?’, The Other View 7: 12–13. Rowthorn, B. and N. Wayne (1988) Northern Ireland: The Political Economy of Conflict, Oxford: Polity.

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Ruane, J. and J. Todd (1996) The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Todd, J. (1987) ‘Two Traditions in Unionist Political Culture’, Irish Political Studies 2: 1–26. —— (1989) ‘Unionist Political Thought and the Limits of Britishness’, Irish Review 5: 11–16. Trimble, D. (1998) ‘Vision for the Future’, 22 June, available at http://www.uup.org/ current/displayfullspeech.asp?pressid=14 (accessed 17 September 2002). Wilford, R. (1992) ‘Inverting Consociationalism: Policy, Pluralism and the Postmodern’, in B. Hadfield (ed.) Northern Ireland: Politics and the Constitution, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13 The paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia Michael Waller

In the 1990s, when this book was being planned, the Soviet Union had only recently succumbed to pressures of globalization and fragmentation, after having stood for some 70 years as a monument of principled resistance to those forces. One result was a radical reconfiguration of political loyalties in one of the world’s largest states. The removal of the constrained loyalty to the communist party-state had led to a burgeoning of other loyalties that either had been suppressed during the Soviet years or had been produced by the changed circumstances. Russia had rejoined the world and was open now to democratizing influences. It presented itself as an intriguing laboratory for the study of changing political loyalties. It has not belied that promise, but the direction of change during the presidency of Vladimir Putin from 2000 veered sharply away from the emancipatory ebullience of the 1990s, running counter to many of the propositions in this book, and emphasizing that there are geopolitical, cultural and developmental barriers to the range of application of its more forward-looking conclusions. There is a fundamental paradox in the evolution of loyalties in Russia over the whole period from the revolution in 1917 which makes it important to retain the Soviet and Russian experience in any discussion of the changing objects of political loyalty. On the one hand, the ruling party’s power monopoly enabled it to give the enlightened ideas of the revolutionary period a modicum of social reality whilst savagely curbing any attempt to base political demands on them. Thus ethnic loyalties were given recognition and cultural autonomy, at the price of political near-impotence. On the other hand, the removal of the communist power monopoly led to the development of exclusionary policies and practices, to Russian nationalism emerging rampant, and to the political challenge of the Chechens to the federal state acquiring a novel confessional colouring and feeding tendencies to racial discrimination. That is, far from bringing a gain in enlightened attitudes to difference, democracy and globalization appear to have resulted in the loss of a Bolshevik sensitivity to difference that was not entirely betrayed in the Soviet period. The state, meanwhile, having been weakened under the first impact of Russia’s re-entry into the world economy, was considerably strengthened when Putin came to power. This chapter examines this paradox in relation to the exceptional circumstances that produced it and against a history of turbulence that has seen

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political loyalties disrupted by revolution, manipulated by revolutionaries and reshaped now by whirlpools of interaction between Russia and the external world, not least in Central Asia. First, loyalties that competed on unequal terms with that enjoined by the Soviet party-state will be examined. This is followed by an analysis of the way in which they resurfaced, together with newer loyalties, when the Soviet Union fell. Finally, attention will be turned to the effects of Putin’s call to order after the turbulence of Yeltsin’s presidency.

Political loyalty in the Soviet Union One of the chief characteristics of the Soviet state was the extraordinary resources that the Communist Party devoted to securing the loyalty of the population. The party stifled the expression of competing loyalties, but could not eliminate them, and indeed through its nationalities policy of ‘national in form, socialist in content’, involving the association of each ethnic group with an administrative territory, it laid the basis for an explosion in the overt expression of ethnic loyalties as the monopoly of power in the hands of the Communist Party weakened. With the final collapse of that monopoly the Soviet Union dissolved into its constituent republics. In the Russian Federation itself, the break-up of the Soviet power monopoly led to a surge in the expression of religious and ethnic loyalties that had hitherto been muted. They had been muted because the communist power monopoly had limited their political opportunities through its characteristic political mechanisms, whilst paradoxically providing a basis on which ethnic sentiment (though not religious practice) could be mobilized. For a full perspective on this evolution one has to go right back to the adoption by the Bolsheviks of a strategy of economic development at a forced pace at the end of the 1920s. It was as a modernizing elite that, under Stalin’s dictatorial leadership, they put in place the mechanisms that were to regulate the Soviet Union until its fall. Central command planning and the abolition of the market required autarky in the economy and a closed frontier. The political counterpart was the ‘leading role of the party’, through which the Communist Party imposed its priorities. Autonomous from society, and pursuing advanced social goals with rigid economic and political controls, the party-state prevented the development of the institutions of civil society. Moreover, within its overall monopoly of power it insisted on a primary loyalty to itself and its goals. So complete was the communist power monopoly that certain important inflections of that power tend to go unremarked. It is important, in particular, to separate the social record from the political. Political exclusion, in the sense of a ban on autonomous organization, was virtually total. Socially, however, the multiethnic Soviet society was remarkably inclusive. In politics, the ‘leading role of the party’ contained mechanisms that imposed and protected the power monopoly. It was not simply a matter of policing. The party’s committees at each administrative level had two key departments that enabled it to exercise its control. One of these departments had charge of appointments – the nomenklatura function – whilst another had oversight of the means of communication.

Paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia 207 Moreover, regional autonomy was restricted, first, by the control the central party bodies had over personnel in the regions and, second, through the economic plan, whose provisions treated the Soviet Union as a single whole. Autonomous organization having been ruled out, in its place the party created its own sponsored organizations. Through the Central Council of the Trade Unions labour was controlled, and youth through the Komsomol. In the case of the large Muslim minority, after the long military struggle against the Basmachi revolt in the 1920s the party contrived to deprive Islam of its power to mobilize on the basis of its creed, confining it to the cultural norms associated with ethnicity. It was in this role that it was viewed by Western analysts and commentators, the potential threat to the Soviet system from the Muslim areas of Central Asia being seen in terms of ethnicity rather than of an assertion of Islamic religious belief, whether orthodox or fundamentalist (Carrère d’Encausse 1978; Karklins 1986). But the party officially espoused advanced social goals, which it proclaimed ad nauseam and which were the justification for its demanding the population’s primary loyalty. Commitment to those goals was not entirely a sham, and the educative and developmental role that the party played is often underestimated. At the very least it can be said that in order to demonstrate its legitimacy the party had to provide formal evidence of movement towards its professed goals. It is difficult to sustain forms without giving them some minimal substance, and ideological mantras can come to have a life of their own. In most areas the forms were meaningless, but in other areas they had substance. Social welfare is a case of the latter. Policy towards the minority nationalities was another. The party was remarkably thorough in discerning existing and potential focuses of loyalty that might conflict with loyalty to the party-state. In doing this it was showing itself to be not only sensitive to difference but also aware of the need to accommodate – and subordinate – multiple loyalties. Having discerned alternative focuses of loyalty it incorporated them, using the mechanisms described above. In this process, promoting social goals was confused with political controls. Thus a Soviet Women’s Committee was created to favour the social advancement of women, which in the early days of construction it did. But it also made it easier for the party to recruit women for the drive for economic development and to integrate them, in a paternalist way, in that role. The Women’s Committee was not an autonomous movement espousing commitment to ideas and values connected with gender and quality-of-life issues. It was more an example of the party’s instrumental use of its ideology (Waller 1988). But in a paternalistic way the party, by evoking those ideas and creating controlled organizations to cater for them, was acknowledging their importance. In Deutscher’s (1967) influential view, they formed part of the ‘trust’ of which the party had appointed itself trustee. A further example was to have a massive impact. In the earliest years of the Soviet Union’s existence, the Bolsheviks had to confront the problem of the multinational composition of the territory that they governed. In the party’s nationalities policy, ethnic groups were assigned a territory which corresponded loosely to their areas of settlement. But it took some time for ethnographers and political decision-makers to effect a patchwork in which the correspondence

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between ethnicity and territory was often a judgement of Solomon (for Englishlanguage details on this period, see Simon 1991; Pipes 1954; Tishkov 1997). To some extent they were creating ethnic groups where none had existed before. In the words of Jane Ormrod, speaking of the North Causasus: Fellow nationals, most of whom – unlike members of a village or clan community – will never meet, are, through the printed word and the dissemination of the idea of the nation, joined in an abstract community…. If, in the earlier decades of the twentieth century, it was possible to speak of the North Caucasian nationalities as groups without distinct national histories, this was no longer true after 1944 [the date when the Chechens and the Ingush, whose loyalty to the Soviet Union in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ was impugned, were transported to Central Asia and Siberia]. (Ormrod 1997: 88–90) The phrase ‘national in form, socialist in content’ was devised to encapsulate the way in which this arrangement was to fit into an increasingly centralized political and economic system. In practical terms, the central plan distributed and organized the resources of the entire Soviet territory without regard to these constitutional provisions, whilst central political control was maintained through the party organizations in the republics and national areas. But the ‘national minorities’ (natsmeny) were able to broadcast and publish in their own languages, and to this cultural autonomy was added a most important element of social inclusion, the importance of which became clear only after communism’s collapse: they benefited from a quota system – for example in access to higher education – and from the egalitarianism that was considered to have been one of the Soviet Union’s weaknesses by internal reformers and external commentators alike. The extent to which such benefits were prevented from extending into the political realm, however, is well illustrated by the way in which the Bolsheviks depoliticized Islam in the Muslim areas of the Soviet Union, as noted above (see also Broxup 1992). Ethnic differences were in any case seen by the Bolsheviks as a residue of the bourgeois order, destined to die away in a socialist ordering of society. For them, territoriality (there was no reference to territory in the name Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and ethnicity emphatically did not form part of the natural order of things. This, and the manipulative way in which they assigned minority groups to territories, meant that the Soviet Union was spared essentialized notions of ethnicity. It was a paternalist arrangement. The dominant Russians took their smaller ethnic brothers in charge, acknowledging their identity but keeping them in their place. It was a relationship that many of the Union republics could not stand, but populations who had been living with and among the Russians for centuries perceived it somewhat differently. It is important to list among the loyalties in play the national consciousness of the Russians themselves, which is strongly bound up with Orthodoxy. From the vantage point of Putin’s Russia it can be seen that the communist power monopoly did to some extent hold Russian nationalism in check, though this was

Paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia 209 far from clear at the time. Evidence is provided paradoxically by the fact that when, from the thaw after Stalin’s death, the symbols of Russian nationhood began gradually to be reasserted – in particular the village, which had been effectively destroyed in the policy of collectivization of the Stalin years, and Orthodoxy (Dunlop 1985) – this movement was viewed as dissidence by the dominant ideological authorities in the party. Finally, whilst under the party’s oppressive rule an urbanized and culturally extremely sophisticated society was being created, for two major reasons at least the sensibilities that took political form in Western Europe as the new social movements could not have emerged in the Soviet Union whatever its cultural sophistication. First, the Soviet Union was far from achieving the affluence that brought about the shift in the hierarchy of needs underpinning post-materialism in Anglo-Saxonia and Western Europe; and, second, the communist power monopoly not only ruled out autonomous organization as such, but controlled the channels of communication without which it could hardly be contemplated. The party-sponsored Soviet Women’s Committee noted above, for example, crowded out the space where an autonomous feminist sensibility could establish a discourse. There was no room for commitment to new ideas that might replace the bogus loyalty to the party-state and the more real, but regressive, loyalties to confession and ethnos.

Conflicts of loyalty after the fall of the Soviet Union An immediate effect of the collapse of the Soviet Union was that the loyalties suppressed by the communist power monopoly now became visible, and those who articulated those loyalties began to take advantage of the new political opportunities. Ethnic loyalties had, indeed, played a part in the destruction of the Soviet Union. On the decomposition of the Soviet Union those constituent republics that had been the most pressing in their demands for independence went their own way. Of the ethnic groups that remained within the new Russian Federation only the Chechens made a bid for total independence, though some of the larger minorities staked a claim to ‘sovereignty’ within the Federation, stopping short of outright independence. Pressures arising from neither religious nor regional loyalties contributed significantly to the fall of communism, but in the new circumstances religious loyalties raised their profile, usually in line with the increased self-assertion of the ethnic groups of whose culture they formed a hitherto suppressed part. In the words of Alexei Malashenko, writing at that time, ‘the incessant appeals not to allow ethnopolitical conflicts to be transformed into religious ones are indeed circumstantial evidence that the impact of the confessional factor on political confrontation is being recognized’ (Malashenko 1998: 188–9). The regions Able now to deal directly with foreign firms and governments, and moreover obliged to do so in an economy in total disarray, regional leaderships began to

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gather power into their own hands. The most prominent of these cases were the regions that were rich in natural resources and whose leaderships wished to derive the maximum benefit from this local wealth (Hughes 1994; Melvin 1998; Gorenburg 1999). Although this regional reaction stemmed in good part from the circumstances of weakness and dislocation, it reflected also Russia’s reintegration into the world economy and to that extent is evidence of the globalizing factors that have softened the boundaries of the state in a wider context. But except in certain of the ethnic-minority republics this new flexing of the muscles of regional power did not derive from previously existing regional loyalties. It was almost entirely a product of the transition. At first, under Yeltsin’s presidency, a kind of primitive feudalism arose. This was only partly a matter of the relations between the centre and a regional leader, whose fief was in the gift of the holder of power in the Kremlin in exchange for his (never her) loyalty. But Yeltsin’s moments of need for support were too erratic to create stable and enduring loyalties of this kind (Moses 2002: 906). Rather, in the absence of effective mediation by political parties, which (with the exception of the communists) were extremely weak in the regions, political competition came to be structured round clans composed of major regional economic interests, the local heads of federal monopolies, and particular regional administrative agencies. The regional competitive struggle in which they were engaged pitted them all collectively against the federal centre. It is in this centre–periphery tension that a significant development in political loyalties could be discerned in Yeltsin’s Russia. It had a pre-echo in the collusion of local elites against Moscow in the former Soviet Union, and it was also to have a powerful sequel when Putin attempted to rein in the autonomy that the regions had acquired as a result of decentralization required by the move from plan to market. It will be seen below how in certain regions (Krasnodar and Stavropol, for example) issues of immigration added an element of sentiment to these cases of regional loyalty based merely on a calculation of material advantage. Confessional and ethnic loyalties Whilst a bid for regional autonomy was general in this period of dislocation, the combination of a regional interest with an ethnic or a combined ethnic and confessional loyalty provided a particularly powerful challenge to the state. Even after the separation from Russia of the five Muslim Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union a sizeable Islamic population remained in the Russian Federation, the majority settled on the middle Volga in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, and in the Caucasus. The number of Muslims in the Federation falls between external estimates of 12 per cent of the population and as low as 3 per cent in polls based on self-identification (Malashenko 1998: 187; Izvestiya, 25 October 2002). The Soviet regime had, as noted, suppressed the worship and practices of Islam (bride-price and the wearing of the veil, for example). By sealing the border it had also detached the Muslim people from the world of Islam beyond, in an area where radical strands of Islam were histori-

Paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia 211 cally strong and were to develop further during the regime’s closing years. The lifting of the controls on religious practice and the opening of the border that followed the fall of communism had the dual effect of reawakening an Islamic religious consciousness and making it susceptible to influences from neighbouring Muslim countries. The revival of Islam as a religion was accompanied by that of the Russian Orthodox Church. Yeltsin was fulsome in his overtures to the Church’s hierarchy, and he was no doubt fully aware of the popularity among the Russian population of this aggiornamento. Rather less popular was the dedication of massive funds to the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on the site of the cathedral of the same name that the Soviet regime had demolished and replaced with an open-air swimming bath. Orthodoxy was to evolve in a complex relationship with Islam in the new Federation. The relationship was to turn sour as Russian nationalism strengthened in the Putin period, but in the preceding Yeltsin intermission it retained over the major part of the Federation the character of non-conflictual coexistence that the Soviet Union had given it, even at a time when both Orthodoxy and Islam were feeling the power that their emancipation had given them. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a distinction entered the political discourse of the new Russian Federation between the Russians as an ethnic group and all the peoples inhabiting the Federation’s space. In Russian the distinction is between russkie (singular russkii) and rossiyane (singular rossiyanin and adjective rossiiskii), respectively – between individuals born of at least one Russian parent, wherever living (russkie), which is therefore exclusive, and the inclusive rossiyane. It is a distinction between, on the one hand, a group united by blood and by an awareness of dominance within the state and, on the other, a group linked by common citizenship. Given that the political rights of citizenship had been merely formal in the Soviet Union, its fall seemed to promise the rossiyane a degree of now real autonomy. Some of them, with the Muslim Tatars of Tatarstan in the lead, moved to take advantage of the new circumstances. The structure of loyalties in Tatarstan merits particular attention. Shaimiev, the popular president of the Republic of Tatarstan, himself a Tatar and a member of the Soviet nomenklatura of Tatarstan, maintained his own position less by voicing ethnic aspirations than by promoting the regional interests of his republic – home to almost as many Russians as Tatars – through pragmatic initiatives. Part of his success was to marginalize a very vocal nationalist movement, which has a good deal of interesting history to appeal to, the ancestors of today’s Tatars having held the Russians in thrall between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.1 Yet, whilst succeeding in marginalizing the radicals, Shaimiev was at pains to advance an essentially regional cause by making use of the symbols of a Muslim Tatar loyalty. An Islamic crescent was mounted on the kremlin of Kazan, a flag and a national coat-of-arms were designed and adopted, and a shadow parliament bore the Tatar title Milli Mejlis. It is important in this context that there is a Tatar diaspora not only throughout the Russian Federation but also in the Crimea in Ukraine. Tatarstan could therefore

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boost its independent image by claiming to be the kin-state for this diaspora, and an All-Tatar People’s Centre was created in Tatarstan to cater for this function. The peak of Tatarstan’s drive for autonomy was reached in the 1994 PowerSharing Treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tatarstan, which gave the latter many of the trappings of an independent state, including control of its substantial natural resources. That treaty was not to survive Putin’s clawing back of central power after 2000, but during the 1990s the ‘Tatarstan model’ served to demonstrate the vivacity not only of an ethnic loyalty, which the Soviet Union had accommodated, but also a religious loyalty, which it had suppressed. It is also further evidence of the way in which regional interests, also suppressed during the Soviet period, moved to take advantage of the new circumstances that followed the fall of the communist order and the embracing of capitalism. As poles of attraction and as bases for mobilization these various loyalties operated in different ways in relation to the state. Ethnic loyalties served in one single case – the Chechens – as the basis of a categorical demand for outright independence. Elsewhere they were used to support a movement for a degree of autonomy from the state, as with Tatarstan and Bashkortostan on the Volga. Whilst an appeal to Islam was important in mobilizations for limited autonomy or outright independence, Orthodoxy served rather as a support for the state and was not available as a weapon in the armoury of those who wished to promote regional interests against the state in Russian areas. This no doubt goes a long way to explaining why the state did not completely fall apart in this period of severe political and economic disruption. It might be recorded in passing that the military showed no interest in intervening at this moment of the state’s weakness. This would merit mention in any historically deeper account of political loyalties in Russia.

Putin’s call to order The near dissolution of the state under Yeltsin’s presidency was due in good part to the turbulence consequent on the collapse of the Soviet regime. In calling the country to order when he succeeded Yeltsin as president, Putin had to accept that whatever steps he took to strengthen the state would have to bow to the globalizing factors to which the Soviet Union had succumbed. Russia’s return from isolation into the world economy and its embracing of the market, for example, meant that reining in regional autonomy would have to be balanced by Russia’s historical over-centralization being brought to an end. The result was a strongly policed state that nonetheless shed the monopoly powers of its Soviet predecessor. Also, whilst subject to the international pressures associated with globalization, and in fact welcoming them, the Russian Federation paradoxically appeared to be acquiring many of the features of a national state, with marked problems of exclusion and with a slackening in the Soviet acknowledgement of difference. The new order resolved one of the paradoxes of the Soviet system. The Communist Party had been able to maintain a formal commitment to the enlightened goals of the revolution whilst exercising a monopoly of power that made a

Paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia 213 mockery of them. There was indeed also a tension with reality in the muscled way in which Putin pursued a proclaimed democratic goal, but, despite his near total control of the media, he was not able to hide easily the deep flaws present in Russian politics. These were there for all to see, and their very visibility cast a comparative light on the Soviet system, which now in certain respects seems to have had positive features that were generally discounted at the time. A perspective on the extent of change in Putin’s Russia can be gained by examining the manifestations of Russian nationalism that arose under his presidency, the change in the status and the opportunities of the ethnic minorities, and the pressures to which Islam has been subjected in the Russian Federation as a result of both circumstances and political intervention. The flames of Russian nationalism were already being fanned in the Yeltsin period by a number of political parties,2 but it took many new forms in Putin’s first presidency. There were attacks on foreign embassy staff and foreign students, leading Voronezh State University to establish a special detachment of student volunteers to protect the almost 700 foreign students studying at the university from attack. A number of extreme right-wing movements arose, recruiting largely among the young and adopting the symbolism of the far right in Western Europe – notably Nazi salutes and insignia, and the closely cropped hair of skinheads (the term is used in Russian in transliterated form). When Russia lost to Japan in the football world championship in June 2002 there was a major riot in the centre of Moscow, where the match had been projected on a giant screen. In the same year a number of regions in the south of the Federation began to close their cities to immigrants. Krasnodar and Stavropol ‘territories’, Chelyabinsk region and the city of Magnitogorsk all took measures against unwanted immigrants from countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia that were once part of the Soviet Union, and early signs of a ‘yellow peril’ fear appeared in the Russian Far East. Yet it was pointed out that this imported labour was needed, and that without attention to immigration policy Russia’s population would shrink by a third by 2050 (Zayonchkovskaya 2002: 9). These are clear cases of exclusion in a society that has not had Western Europe’s experience of mass immigration. But they are part of a more general phenomenon of racial exclusion in Russia. For example, Moscow today has inherited the Soviet practice of requiring a permit for residence in the city. Research has shown the great extent to which people from the Caucasus were by 2001 not only being refused permits, but being expelled from the city, not on any quota system but because of their physical appearance (Roman 2002: 1–21). All the Caucasian people are paying the price of Chechnya’s disloyalty to the Federation, as are the Roma. The Soviet system, with its quotas and accommodation of ethnic cultural difference, did not know exclusion of this kind. It catered expressly for a dual loyalty, though insisting heavily on the priority of the loyalty (in Soviet ideological parlance) to the party of the working people in their struggle to construct communism. A major determinant of these expressions of Russian nationalism has been the Chechens’ struggle for independence and the political use made of the

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Chechen challenge. Putin was prime minister for seven months before being elected president, and during that period a ruthless and determined campaign in Chechnya gained him the support he needed for success in the election. His popularity as a leader prepared to do something about the turbulent Chechens was enhanced by the bombs that destroyed apartment buildings in Moscow and elsewhere in 1999. Whether they were the work of Chechens or, as has been frequently asserted, the security service itself, they handsomely promoted the demonization of the Chechens on which Russian nationalism has thrived. It is possible to suggest a distinction between, on the one hand, a Russian loyalty that is supportive of the Federation and is a factor of stability in a period of turbulence and, on the other, pathological expressions of nationalism that are a negative response to the changes that have been taking place in Russia. But the two are connected, and the connection can be located in this demonization of the Chechens, in which a silent Russian majority was complicit, and which provided fodder for a range of extreme nationalist groups.3 Second, this Russian nationalism has, not surprisingly, put pressure on the ethnic minorities. As noted, even as the Soviet Union was collapsing the ethnicitybased republics – such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan – were arming themselves with republican constitutions that proclaimed a degree of autonomy (usually phrased as sovereignty) and laid claim to the natural resources of their territory. Even the smaller republics and the autonomous districts adopted constitutions which, if they did not derogate from the Federal Constitution, at least diverged from it. Already under Yeltsin these aspirations had been cut back, notably by the reduction of the ethnic republics in the 1993 Constitution to administrative and political equality with the ordinary regions (oblasti). One of Putin’s first moves was to require conformity with the Federal Constitution and an unequal tug of war developed, as a result of which Tatarstan, for example, lost its claim to a shared sovereignty with the Federation – and also its claim to its oil. This did not diminish the Tatar loyalty to a Tatar identity, but nor, interestingly, did it affect the view of the Tatars and Bashkirs, and the other minorities on the middle Volga, of themselves as of Russian ‘stock’ (korennye, from the Russian for a root; and rossiiskie here, not russkie). These peoples had lived with the Russians for some five centuries and had little or none of the animosity to the Russians shown by many of the union republics of the Soviet Union before its fall. Under Putin the ethnic minorities have retained a political identity as units of an increasingly centralized Federation, but they lost the rather special status that the Soviet Union had accorded them as members of a Soviet community of peoples, in which, as noted, the identity of the ethnic groups had been protected and Russian nationalism at least to some extent held in check. They now had to seek their own fortunes as units of the Federation, where Russian dominance was only too clearly revealed. They had exchanged the inclusiveness of Bolshevik nationality policy for new tendencies of exclusion that developed in Putin’s Russia. A third feature of Putin’s presidency that closely concerns political loyalties is the pressures to which Islam has been subjected. In the Russian Federation

Paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia 215 confessional loyalties are concentrated in the cleavage between the Russian Orthodox Church (russkaya, not rossiiskaya) and Islam. Relations between Russians and their Muslim compatriots show two opposing trends. The first is that the post-Soviet turn towards the West and the end of Russia’s isolation has increased the distance between the two confessional communities. Whilst the break-up of the Soviet Union gave independence to the Muslim Central Asian republics of the Union, the southern fringe of the Russian Federation lies on what Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997) has termed the ‘arc of instability’. The sensitivity of those borderlands to developments in the Islamic countries beyond them means that confessional loyalties there are necessarily of great importance, with implications for the political stances of Muslim populations deeper inside the Russian Federation. But against this there has been a tendency among nationalists in Russia – for example Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Zhirinovskii – to view Islam within Russia as an ally against the political and cultural pressures coming from the West (Malashenko 1998: 191). It is a view shared by voices in the Islamic community. In the words of the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of the Volga Region, ‘Only a strong Slavo-Turkic, Islamic Christian Russia can become a barrier to the Western expansion against the entire world’ (Glinski 2002: 73). Ironically, the pressure to which the Chechens have been subjected has accentuated the Islamic nature of a struggle that was originally ethnic. It was on an ethnic and secular basis that the secessionist Chechen government came into being, and it only adopted an Islamic attribution when the pressure from Moscow mounted (ibid.: 81). Then after 11 September 2001 all the Muslim republics were put on the defensive, finding themselves involved in a polarization with an international dimension, part of their predicament stemming from Putin’s very positive moves to accommodate the West. This polarization is particularly unfortunate in Russia, where the Islamic presence cannot be reduced to a single essence. Historically the independence-seeking Chechens have differed markedly from the Muslim peoples of the middle Volga in their relations with the Russians. Moreover, in a very interesting development, significant numbers of people outside the Muslim homelands – for example in Karelia in the Federation’s northwest – began to convert to Islam after the fall of the Soviet Union. This has been explained as a reaction to the hardships attributable to government policies and also, connected with this, to a respect for the way in which Muslim communities weathered the hardships of the 1990s through communal measures of mutual support (ibid.: 77). As a footnote to this discussion of change during the Putin years, it might be noted that the freedom of the press and of association that the process of perestroika ushered in have permitted an awareness to emerge of an attachment to quality-of-life issues, nourished by a widely experienced attraction to Western models in many areas of Russian social life. This awareness has yet to turn lived experiences into a fully indigenous discourse. Development in that direction has been most evident in concern for the environment, but it is evident in other areas too. When, at a ceremony at Moscow’s Historical Museum on Red Square on 14 August 2002, representatives of dozens of women’s organizations

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presented a newly published Dictionary of Gender Terms, Nadezhda Azhgikhina, co-chairwoman of the Association of Women Journalists, said: ‘The publication of this dictionary is really something of a revolutionary event for our country…. Earlier, discussions were constantly arising over what “gender” means and many people confused it with the word “tender” ’ (the latter in the sense of a competitive bidding process, another novelty of post-Soviet Russia) (Izvestiya 2002). In Putin’s Russia, with its problems of developing democratic politics from scratch, a plateau of discussion and political engagement – or of economic ease – from which a commitment to universalist goals might arise is still, at the time of writing, in the making.

Conclusions Isolated by the Bolsheviks from the world economy, the Soviet Union became a historical monument of resistance to the processes of globalization and fragmentation that have elsewhere been challenging the prerogatives of the state. Insisting on the primacy of loyalty to itself and to its goals, the communist partystate suppressed other loyalties whilst acknowledging their existence and providing strictly controlled channels for their articulation. Ultimately, however, isolation proved unsustainable and the consequent collapse of the Soviet system resulted in a dramatic fragmentation as the 15 republics of the Union split apart. After the Yeltsin interlude Putin’s Russian Federation, open now to transnational influences and, at least in the short to medium term, dependent on international finance, is paradoxically acquiring many of the features of a national state. These include an increasing centralization of power, together with a resistance to regional autonomy pushed to the extent of waging a protracted war against a constituent republic of the Federation. They include also a rampant Russian nationalism, accompanied by policies of exclusion affecting racial and religious minorities. Bolshevik nationality policy, and the authoritarian drawing of administrative boundaries in the early Soviet Union, had meant that the communal loyalty of the ethnic minorities within the Russian republic of the Union was neither primarily territorial nor exclusive. The political impotence of these minorities was compensated by social inclusion in the sense, for example, of quotas for social goods. This was their entitlement as members of the community of Russia’s peoples (rossiyane), an entitlement that they shared with the Russians themselves (russkie). It has been replaced at the time of writing by Putin’s centralizing moves combined with the noted rise of Russian nationalism. Running the clock backwards, it seems as if in Putin’s Russia a final definitive blow was being delivered to the advanced ideas of the early Bolsheviks, ideas that had been vitiated by the way in which the party-state came to exercise its monopoly of power, but which were never entirely betrayed during the Soviet period. After Putin’s first years in office, his policies appeared to be widening rather than closing the distance between the loyalties that surged with the removal of the communist power monopoly. It remains to be seen how permanent will be

Paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia 217 the exclusionary effects of his call to order after the dislocations of the Yeltsin presidency. The transition from communism has undone the relationships that would have enabled such useful items of the Soviet Union as existed from contributing to the Russian future. That future must be measured against the evolution of the world that Russia has now elected to rejoin, and in particular against the paradigms of democracy that are available in certain areas of that world. The communist power monopoly and the economic austerity of the Soviet years prevented the emergence of a commitment to quality-of-life issues such as those that emerged from the 1950s in the economically more affluent industrial societies of the West, and which have fed the discussions leading to concepts of cosmopolitan citizenship and cosmopolitan democracy. These issues have at least made an appearance in Putin’s Russia with the development of fuller contacts with Western countries, but in restricted circles and with a lack of self-confidence. Meanwhile, although religious identities played no significant role in the fall of the Soviet Union, both Russian Orthodoxy and Islam emerged strongly in the successor Russian Federation, not necessarily in rivalry, as occasional voices emphasizing a shared interest in resisting Western influences showed. At first benefiting as one element in the assertion of regional autonomy in Muslim republics, most notably in the case of the ‘Tatarstan model’, Islam came to be thrown on to the defensive as a result of the demonization of the Chechens and the destruction of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. At the same time, Orthodoxy has grown in political salience with the development of Russian nationalism. This counterpoint between Russian nationalism and Islam – which has a long history behind it – carries a heavy charge of sentiment, making it particularly rewarding in a study of loyalty in the Russian Federation, since loyalty is the best entry-point for any discussion of the role of sentiment in politics. There has thus been no shortage of change in the configuration of political loyalties over time in the Soviet Union and Russia, but it has not been the incremental change towards universal and cosmopolitan focuses of political loyalty to which many chapters of this book point. Russia’s relevance as a case study lies elsewhere and is threefold. First, neither the exclusionary tendencies of Putin’s Russia nor the previous political oppression of communist rule should be allowed to obscure the paradoxically inclusive and advanced nature of the Soviet nationalities policy. Second, whilst Russia is now open to global influences and welcomes Western paradigms, its experience in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods illustrates that the extent to which aspirations towards cosmopolitan focuses of loyalty can be entertained has limits imposed by cultural, developmental and geopolitical factors. Finally, the quite exceptional political and economic upheavals that have beset Russia in the last eight decades reveal a good deal about the contingent and conditional nature of political loyalties. Political loyalties in Russia have been manipulated by leaderships of many stripes, in a part of the world where loyalties are most engaged and where all of them are themselves subject to constant manipulation by myriad forces in a constantly shifting context. It is an

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experience that has, over time, revealed the power that both circumstances and human agency can exert in matters of loyalty.

Notes 1

In the words of its most striking leader, Fauziya Bairamova: Tatar lands form half of Russia’s territory…. It is time to raise the question of joining to Tatarstan the lands that had belonged to Tatars from of old and where they live now – those of Simbirsk, Saratov, Samara, Astrakhan, Orenburg, the expanses of Ufa [Bashkortostan] and the whole region close to the Urals. The Siberian Tatars…are a special matter, their lands are also Tatar…. In the host of Genghis Khan, a single Tatar warrior was worth a hundred men. We Tatars should always remember that. (quoted in Zverev 1998: 126)

2

3

In particular, the Liberal Democratic Party led by the rabid nationalist Zhirinovskii (expressing predominantly a russkii loyalty), the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (its electorate heavily skewed towards the older population) and, for a period, the Congress of Russian Communities. Russian nationalism surfaced at another point, when the law on land ownership was being debated. As the final reading approached, a majority for the sale of land within rather narrow parameters had been achieved but controversy remained over whether land could be sold to foreigners. In the end that restriction was imposed, though Putin himself had personally approved of the sale of land to foreigners.

Bibliography Broxup, M.B. (1992) The North Caucasus Barrier, London: Hurst & Co. Brzezinksi, Zbigniew (1997) The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic Books. Carrère d’Encausse, H. (1978) L’Empire éclatée, Paris: Flammarion. Deutscher, I. (1967) The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917–1967, London: Oxford University Press. Dunlop, J. (1985) The New Russian Nationalism, New York: Praeger. Fowkes, B. (ed.) (1998) Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glinski, D. (2002) ‘Russia and its Muslims: The Politics of Identity at the International–Domestic Frontier’, East European Constitutional Review 11: 71–83. Gorenburg, D. (1999) ‘Regional Separatism in Russia: Ethnic Mobilization or Power Grab?’, Europe–Asia Studies 51: 245–74. Hughes, J. (1994) ‘Regionalism in Siberia: The Rise and Fall of Siberian Agreement’, Europe–Asia Studies 46: 1,133–62. Ingram, A. (1999) ‘ “A Nation Split into Fragments”: The Congress of Russian Communities and Russian Nationalist Ideology’, Europe–Asia Studies 51: 687–704 Izvestiya (2002) ‘Gender dlya “chainikov” ’, 15 August. Karklins, R. (1986) Ethnic Politics in the USSR: The Perspective from Below, London: Allen & Unwin. Lapidus, G.W. (ed.) (1995) The New Russia: Troubled Transformation, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Paradoxes of political loyalty in Russia 219 Malashenko, A. (1998) ‘Russian Nationalism and Islam’, in M. Waller, B. Coppieters and A. Malashenko (eds) Conflicting Loyalties and the State in Post-Soviet Russia and Eurasia, London: Frank Cass. Markowitz, F. (1999) ‘Not Nationalists: Russian Teenagers’ Soulful A-politics’, Europe–Asia Studies 51: 1,183–98. Melvin, N.J. (1998) ‘The Consolidation of a New Regional Elite: The Case of Omsk’, Europe–Asia Studies 50: 619–50. Moses, J.C. (2002) ‘Democratic Tendencies in Russian Regions’, Europe–Asia Studies 54: 905–32. Ormrod, J. (1997) The North Caucasus: Confederation in Conflict, in I. Bremmer and R. Taras (eds) New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pipes, R. (1954) The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism 1917–1922, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rakowska-Harmstone, T. (1974) ‘The Dialectics of Nationalism in the USSR’, Problems of Communism 23: 1–22. Roman, M. (2002) ‘Making Caucasians Black: Moscow Since the Fall of Communism and the Racialization of non-Russians’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18: 1–27. Sakwa, R. (1996) Russian Politics and Society, London: Routledge. Simon, Gerhard (1991) Nationalism and Policy towards the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Sociey, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Szporluk, R. (ed.) (1994) National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Tishkov, V. (1997) Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union, London, Sage. Waller, M. (1988) ‘What is to Count as Ideology in Soviet Politics?’, in S. White and A. Pravda (eds) Ideology and Soviet Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan. —— (1993) The End of the Communist Power Monopoly, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Waller, M., B. Coppieters and A. Malashenko (eds) (1998) Conflicting Loyalties and the State in Post-Soviet Russia and Eurasia, London: Frank Cass. Zayonchkovskaya, Zh. (2002) ‘Migratsiya: nezhelannoe spasenie’, Moskovskie novosti 24. Zverev, A. (1998) Sovereign and United with Russia: The Tatarstan Model as a Peaceful Resolution of Conflicting Loyalties, in M. Waller, B. Coppieters and A. Malashenko (eds) Conflicting Loyalties and the State in Post-Soviet Russia and Eurasia, London: Frank Cass.

Part IV

Conclusions

14 The changing face of political loyalty Michael Waller and Andrew Linklater

This collection of essays has taken as its point of departure the weakening of the state’s ability to order the political allegiances of its subjects as a result of the challenges that it currently faces. To what extent are today’s circumstances of globalization and fragmentation producing new focuses of loyalty? In normative terms, what forms of loyalty can today be envisioned that might limit the harm that traditional loyalties have caused through the exclusion of minorities and members of other societies, and through inter-communal violence? Or is the association of loyalty with the state so entrenched that the weakening of the nation-state renders loyalty an anachronism and a matter of nostalgia? This is not the first time that questions of this kind have been raised. In her contribution to this collection (Chapter 1) Ursula Vogel describes how the thinkers of the Enlightenment dismissed the concept of loyalty as vitiated by association with the old order, yet held at the same time that the new ideas opened up new spaces in which to conceive of alternative possibilities and resources of attachment. These views envisaged multiple loyalties, communities of choice rather than of destiny, and humanity as a focus of commitment in an increasingly interconnected world. Being led to examine the fate of political loyalty in a changing universe, the philosophers of the Enlightenment entertained vistas that are strikingly similar to those posed in this book. They provide an endorsement, at a distance of two centuries, of the value of taking note of shifts in the objects to which political loyalty can be attached. This concluding chapter will first provide a summary of the reconfiguration of political loyalties consequent on contemporary challenges to the national state, situating within that framework the areas of concern marked out in the Introduction. Second, it will highlight the major themes concerning loyalty that arise from the material of this book. Finally, a coda will be added on the implications of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center for the discussion on political loyalties. A simple terminology will be used throughout, in which the ‘subject’ of loyalty owes or feels loyalty to the ‘object’ of loyalty in a ‘loyalty bond’. Loyalty has been little used as an organizing concept in international political theory, or political theory in general. This may be because of the immense range of the term’s uses, coupled with the fact that it jostles with other concepts that

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have been thoroughly worked over and fixed in the matrix of meanings that constitutes the discourse of political theory – notably identity, legitimacy and obligation. It is hoped that in their examination of new or reconfigured focuses of loyalty, the chapters of this book have added some substance to the discussion of loyalty as a concept. The chief aim of the book, however, has been to focus on responses to change – on change in the objects of loyalty and consequent changes in the nature of the loyalty bond. Insofar as it deals with definitions, the book’s concern is with semantic shifts, and the way in which the term’s meanings have followed changes in domestic and international politics. If a working definition is needed, it might be that loyalty is an abiding disposition to act with others in support of a shared commitment. A constant theme in the book is that loyalty combines commitment with sentiment, and it is the element of sentiment that no doubt accounts for a further theme of the book – that loyalties can get out of phase with a changing reality and in extreme cases become fossilized. In the most general terms, the change in political loyalties that this book records and analyses is a discernible shift from singular and essentialist objects of loyalty to multiple commitments that acknowledge difference. Loyalties can be entertained that are a matter of choice, not destiny. New focuses of commitment can today be envisioned that suggest possible ways of avoiding the ills that less inclusive loyalties have generated in the past. Indeed it is possible today for those who defend the goal of a world citizenship to envision humanity itself as a chosen and viable object of loyalty. But a focus on change must include reaction to it, which in the case of loyalty is characteristically strong. Whilst change can produce a commitment to new ideas and new values, it can also generate an apprehensive and at times aggressive reaction to them in a reassertion of traditionalism. To this extent there is an element of lag in loyalty. It more easily attaches to what change is leaving behind than to what it is ushering in. In Mannheim’s (1997) categories, it sits more easily in the realm of ideology than of utopia. Thus, although the book examines new focuses of loyalty, it must deal with continuity at least as much as with change. Continuity is most clearly evident in the anxious assertions of national loyalty that have emerged as a reaction to the state having itself become less national and having lost part of its prerogatives to transnational and regional bodies. Responses to the perceived need to draw loyalty upwards to a supra-state level in the European Union, dealt with here by Margaret Canovan and Gerard Delanty (in Chapters 8 and 9), provide a prominent example – one in which traditionalists find the state to which they have given their enthusiastic loyalty apparently abandoning them in favour of transnational ties. This case of a loyalty spurned achieves hypertrophic form in the rather different case of Northern Ireland, analysed by John Barry (in Chapter 12). Here loyalty to a state from a group within it has remained culturally fixed, whilst the circumstances that bred the loyalty in the first place have passed into history. In both these cases there is the same element of unrequited loyalty leading to an exaggerated attachment to the symbols of a past relationship where a solicited loyalty once met with a willing response. Perhaps only the

The changing face of political loyalty 225 passage of a greater length of time from the caesura distinguishes the Northern Irish from the European case, making the former appear clearly fossilized. Both continuity and change, in a complex balance, are evident in ethnic and regional identities. These longstanding focuses of loyalty, hallowed by the passing of time, have been ambivalent as motors of change. On the one hand, their challenge to the state’s once extensive capacity to tame or appropriate them has been a powerful factor promoting the decomposition of the national state and, as Richard Devetak shows (in Chapter 2), they retain their emancipating power. On the other hand, ethnic loyalties have frequently confirmed the focus on territory and have contributed too often to an essentialized self-image of ethnic groups as primordial communities, arriving fully formed on the political scene in the mists of time. Moreover, many of the new states resulting from the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia that were formed on an ethnic basis have adopted strongly exclusionary policies, as the chapters by Campbell and Waller both show (Chapters 3 and 13). Ethnic and regional loyalties can together occupy two different places on the continuum running from essentialized and territorial loyalties to those accommodating multiplicity and difference. There is an element of continuity also in the divided loyalties characteristic of diaspora communities, an explicitly political commitment to the host state coexisting with affection for the country of origin. The country of origin assumes mythic status and becomes one of the symbols through which, together with treasured cultural practices, the community maintains its distinctive identity. But, as with the assertion of ethnic identities, the movement of substantial populations across state boundaries has been both a challenge to the national state and a result of its weakening through globalizing processes. It has brought problems of integration and conflicts of loyalty far greater than those experienced by former diasporas. In particular, a substantial Muslim presence in Western countries has brought even Western liberals with a strong commitment to tolerance to question whether in this case integration is possible. Yet, as Werbner argues with reference to the British case (in Chapter 7), Muslim transnational loyalties have challenged the national polity to explore new forms of multiculturalism and to work for new global human-rights causes. In the long run, the Muslim diasporic presence in a Western country can be an enriching one, to the extent that the Westphalian state proves capable of becoming a post-national, multicultural polity. Moves to create new loyalties both above and below the level of the state, which usually means reordering existing loyalties, are an obvious case of change, and the logical consequence of the processes of globalization and fragmentation to which the national state has been subject. They are again partly a result, but also partly a cause, of the softening of the borders of the national state. An example of an attempt from below is the attempt by the Lega Nord in Italy, under its leader Ugo Bossi, to engineer the separation of a group of northern regions from a less prosperous south. The appeal is to the material benefit to be gained from such a detachment. This case differs from the very many cases where loyalty to the state is challenged by a longstanding communal loyalty within it. Whilst each of the regions that Bossi aims to enrol in his endeavour has its own dialect and strong

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sense of communal identity, they are not linked in a common loyalty. Bossi is thus confronted with the task of creating one. In the usual case loyalty involves a combination of sentiment and advantage, but whilst it can survive or even thrive on sentiment alone, advantage on its own is a poor generator of an abiding loyalty. In Chapter 11 Huysseune shows how the absence of a pre-existing social identity makes it difficult to construct loyalties of an enduring kind. In the case of the European Union, the architects of Europe have not yet solved the problem of drawing the loyalty of the populations of the member states up to the level of the Union. At least one of the reasons for this concerns again the balance between sentiment and advantage. Economic strength through unity and the avoidance of warfare among European states having provided the initial impulse, the prospect of a unified political influence in world affairs now joins these factors in the list of benefits that integration can bring, but sentiment has stubbornly remained anchored in the societies of the member states. The factors that could provide a bridge between the two are analysed by Delanty, who focuses (in Chapter 8) on the problem of legitimacy. The factors that have so far driven the process of integration have not yielded the institutions to support an authority based on legitimacy and trust. Trust, as has been pointed out by David Miller (1999), remains a feature of the lives of co-nationals in the member states. The celebrated democratic deficit, in fact, is a major cause of the inability of the architects of Europe to generate loyalty to the Union. Citizenship continues to reside at the level of the member states, European citizenship adding rather little to national citizenship. Without at least matching the conditions that generate loyalty in the member states the Union cannot hope to acquire a loyalty of its own. It might be contended that integration to a European level merely reproduces many of the characteristics of the national state that the Union aims to supplant, albeit in some federal arrangement and one that the national state – witness the United States – has proved capable of accommodating. Arguments against this have been put forward by Bull (1979), for whom the regional integration of Europe could quite well take place without investing a centralized authority with the traditional monopolies of the national state. At the same time, minorities within the member states could assert themselves against the nation-state without staking a claim to full sovereignty. European integration becomes, in this perspective, a learning process involving multiple loyalties, some local and concrete in focus, others more diffuse and reaching out beyond the national state to a broader political community. These cases of a reordering of political loyalties to promote new political enterprises involve a high degree of intervention on the part of the promoters. But new focuses of political loyalty have in other cases emerged more organically as, for example, from the impact of social developments within the advanced industrial countries since the Second World War, and from new ideas that attended those developments. It is these cases that justify the analogy with the Enlightenment that this book claims. A number of factors shook the framework of existing loyalties in the advanced industrial world from the 1950s. They included the rise in the salience

The changing face of political loyalty 227 of post-materialist values and quality-of-life issues, a crisis in working-class solidarism and in the employer–employee paternalist bond, movements of solidarity with third-world countries, added to the pacification of the core industrial regions of the world system. The civil rights movement in the United States and the events of 1968 in Europe served as landmarks in the political response to these developments. But it was the intellectual response, from the theorizing of new social movements to postmodernism, that addressed the questions concerning legitimacy raised by these developments and reoriented attitudes to difference. New thinking on loyalty now reflects changes in social sensibilities. With reference to the claims of indigenous groups, Richard Devetak shows that no singular identity, cultural or otherwise, can today claim a legitimate monopoly over loyalty (Chapter 2). In Chapter 4 Jill Steans similarly stresses the existence of multiple points of loyalty in contemporary societies, today’s acknowledgement of difference casting a retrospective light on traditional loyalties of the past, heavily gendered through their preoccupation with waging war. As the state’s role in mobilizing for war has waned, other roles have risen in salience, prominent among them being social protection, the guarantee of citizen’s political rights, and security issues such as policing its boundaries against outsiders, including refugees, the last being strengthened in the aftermath of 11 September 2001. These other roles involve benefits and not sacrifices. They have therefore not been the object of the state’s mobilizing techniques, though it is to the latter that notions of loyalty have traditionally been attached. The difference between the loyalty given to the state as guarantor of these benefits and that demanded for the defence of the realm is that the former is not – or not necessarily – territorial and exclusive, however stridently the citizens of a contemporary state may sing the praises of their own democracy. The state’s distributive functions do much to soften, or at least conceal, its coercive role. For its part, the guaranteeing of the rights and benefits of citizenship is an important contribution to the state’s ability to present itself as a community, and on that depends to a great extent its ability to elicit the loyalty of its people. It is ironic that one of the factors that has challenged the national state’s autonomy has been precisely a diminishing ability to support the costs of maintaining the state’s distributive role in social welfare. In Chapter 10 Peter Lawler shows how in Scandinavia, where a high investment in welfare has provided a regional focus for political loyalty, pressure on that policy has led to the emergence of dark exclusionary movements that vitiate the model to which that regional loyalty has been attached. In the 2002 elections in Denmark a key theme was the defence of the progressive folkhem from unwanted external influences. As was the case with Fortuyn in subsequent elections in the Netherlands, apparently progressive language can be put to exclusionary use. The enlightened nature of one’s own state can be exploited to claim that those of a ‘reactionary’ persuasion are unlikely to assimilate and should be excluded. Cases such as these raise the question of what it is that, among all the roles and features that comprise the state, should be the focus of our loyalty. The state as armed defender and protector? As guarantor of social welfare? As guarantor

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of the democratic rights of citizens? As protector against outsiders, including refugees and asylum-seekers? It may be that deconstructing the state in this way has only become possible once the defence of the realm slipped from its massive priority. No longer is it ‘theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die’. If instead it is theirs not to do and die but to reason why, traditional conceptions of treason and mutiny are weakened, and the door is open for new principles and ideas to be the object of our political loyalties, including continental and global ones. To say this is to restate in terms of loyalty Habermas’s view (1996) that patriotism with the national state as its object should be replaced by commitment to the rules of citizenship, which have been the more benign accompaniment to the territorial and coercive attributes of the state. In this view, citizens who lack a shared identity or identification with a homogeneous political community can develop a strong attachment to citizenship and the rule of law in a ‘constitutional patriotism’.

Themes Such are the changes in the configuration of political loyalties, presented in this book, that have accompanied the challenges to the national state and its traditional monopolies. But in analysing them the authors have also developed a number of themes concerning loyalty and its evolution. First, loyalty can become decoupled from state, territory and nation. On the one hand, the territorial state can no longer insist on being the only or even the primary object of its subjects’ loyalty, and is, moreover, losing many of is attributes to non-territorial bodies such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. These same bodies become candidate objects for more universalistic loyalties once loyalty has been detached from a close association with territory. At the same time, the view of ethnic identities as given and as rooted in a primordial association with the soil of a particular territory is under challenge. Second, a number of factors, among them the emergence of movements based on quality-of-life issues in the industrially advanced societies of the West, together with mass migrations across the globe, which have had the effect of generating assertions of identity stemming from earlier diasporas, have led to the acceptance that loyalties can be multiple. These reflect, third, advanced attitudes towards difference. Moreover, an awareness of difference among contending objects of loyalty is amplified by a reflexive awareness of the past, which has the effect of delegitimizing existing structures and questioning the meaning of national traditions. When it is viewed in historical perspective, for example, the loyalty required by the state to keep soldiers in the field, and all the symbolism of that earlier loyalty, can be seen to have been heavily gendered. A further major theme is that loyalty is increasingly conditional, and that the grounds on which it can be challenged have widened. Both Coppieters and Delanty (in Chapters 5 and 8, respectively) show that loyalty can no longer be derived simply from uncritical duty, patriotism and obedience, the former by analysing four views on

The changing face of political loyalty 229 the nature of war and political order, and the latter claiming, in a different context, that European publics are becoming more sceptical of political elites who are having to contend with volatile loyalties that can be withdrawn if the conditions on which they were accorded are not met. As noted, foremost among those conditions are legitimacy and trust. Delanty adds as a third essential component of loyalty a sense of community which it is not always in the power of political elites to deliver but which is nonetheless a condition for the creation of loyalty to the European Union. If loyalty is increasingly conditional and open to challenge, this cannot help but in turn affect the nature of political obligation. The link that loyalty has with obligation is, indeed, central to the aims of this collection, in that to say that the state has been losing its power to mobilize the loyalty of its subjects is to say that the range and extent of its powers to ensure unconditional obedience has been narrowing. The book provides ample evidence of an evolution from the blind loyalty enjoined in an earlier age to a wide-ranging questioning of political – and also social – authority. In general, the history of loyalty may be said to have been one of a shift, fitful and uncertain, from mobilization to participation, from obedience to a more critical commitment. If this is to an extent an elite phenomenon, the point may be that it is becoming less confined to elite groups. This distinction between loyalty and obedience, in the sense of mere compliance with orders or precept, is crucial. There is an irreducible element of sentiment in loyalty. Loyalty, indeed, could be held to be the best entry-point into any discussion of the role of sentiment in politics. Even at the height of its powers the state found it expedient to endow obedience to its dictates with a charge of sentiment. Loyalty has distinguished the slave from the subject of a legitimate authority and sugared obedience with a coating of sentiment. It seems that obligation must be joined with sentiment to produce loyalty. This is obligation in the sense that duty, piety and blood-oaths – all parts of the discourse of loyalty – entail an obligation. This is a very different view of obligation from that of Judith Shklar, cited by Devetak, who opposes loyalty to obligation on the grounds that the ‘emotional character of loyalty’ sets it apart from the cold reasoning associated with obligation (Shklar 1993: 184). Devetak’s own counter-argument to Shklar is threefold. First, the ideals enshrined in political institutions may inspire loyalty as much as they may generate obligations. Second, there is an historical connection between loyalty and a commitment to stipulated rules. His third and most important counter-argument relates to the cultural image of nation, which ‘cannot of itself create the conditions necessary for loyalty’ (p. 38), and must draw upon resources within the political image of the nation – what Devetak styles the ‘loyal supplement’. At the focal centre of the book, indeed, lies the question, addressed by many of the authors, of the extent to which it is possible to invest political principles, and specifically the rules and procedures of democracy, with a sentiment of loyalty. Not only does the discussion in many chapters turn on the place of sentiment in loyalty, but in a sense the entire book is about the differing political objects to which sentiment can be attached. The amount of sentiment in a loyalty bond,

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however, can vary widely. Interests and political advantage can be pursued, as in Hirschman’s celebrated discussion (1972), on the basis of a largely instrumental notion of loyalty or of none at all. Both Delanty and Huysseune (in Chapters 8 and 11, respectively) deal expressly with the problem of generating loyalty where there is a deficit of sentiment. In the case of the Lega Nord, the appeal to advantage is the principal prop of Bossi’s campaign to establish his proposed Padania, but without a basis in a sentiment of communal belonging it is difficult for him to generate loyalty to his project. For the architects of the European Union, where sentiment remains firmly vested in the member states, the pull exercised by demonstrable material advantage is insufficient to draw loyalty upwards to the Union. Advantage on its own, unsupported by sentiment, is a poor generator of loyalty. A further major theme of the book is the question of agency. How do loyalties arise, and what forms of agency are involved in their generation? Some loyalties are clearly older than others. Some seem to be so hallowed by time that the question of agency does not arise. They appear as givens in the political and social structure of their host societies. This view, in the case of nations and their generation, has been extensively criticized (Gellner 1983; Breuilly 1982; Anderson 1983; Tishkov 1997). But agency has been of equal importance in the generation of loyalty. The idea that loyalty arises purely from sentiment, from a ‘we-feeling’ entirely independent of any manipulation or manufacturing, is surely naïve. True, the loyalties that we perceive, or feel, may appear as a given. Yet insofar as they are given they have been given by time and by some distant strategies involving interactions between human beings, as individuals or as groups, albeit on the basis of some shared characteristics or circumstances. There are in this book abundant illustrations of such strategies at work. Loyalty can be exploited by different groups to serve their interests and few loyalties have been free of past manufacture and present manipulation, however free they may be of wilfully harmful intention. Once created, a loyalty becomes, of course, a given. As it evolves it becomes a given in its evolved form. It is existing loyalties that theorists and practitioners of politics have to deal with. Why, then, be concerned about their creation? A first reason is that loyalties, as in the case of nations, can derive a political force from imagined origins. When Fauziya Bairamova suggested to her fellow Tatars in the Russian Federation on a celebrated occasion that they were descendants of Genghis Khan (see Chapter 13), this might well have been expected to put power into a Tatar loyalty. But it was only partially true, and then in a very convoluted sense. A second reason is that political practitioners might base their policies likewise on essentialist views of loyalty, as in the case of external actors in the Bosnian conflict, examined by David Campbell in Chapter 3. In both cases the beliefs are part of the givens of the day, but they can lead to harmful, even disastrous, political results that an awareness of the dangers of manipulation and manufacturing could have avoided. It may be that manufacture and manipulation are endemic in the generation of bonds of loyalty. If so it is as well to be aware of this, the more so if the balance between obedience and critical commitment in political loyalties is shifting in favour of the latter.

The changing face of political loyalty 231 This introduces a final theme – the move from obedience towards critical commitment means that loyalty becomes a matter of choice and personal responsibility. We should be critically aware of the multiplicity of objects of loyalty and also of what is involved in agency. We can be aware also of what various authors have described as the recalcitrant, unpredictable, volatile, contested, negotiable and flexible nature of political loyalty itself. If the material in this book suggests that political loyalties are freeing themselves from precept and revealing their susceptibility to manufacturing and manipulation, the notion that the proper agency in questions of political loyalty is ourselves in our dialogic relations with others becomes perfectly tenable. It is this responsibility – if accepted – that counters Luhmann’s charge (1979), cited by Delanty, that loyalty is an anachronism and of no relevance in today’s bureaucratic post-national state.

9/11 This book has considered the emergence of multiple and less exclusionary forms of loyalty and identification beneath and above the nation-state but it has not overlooked the persistence, and frequent intensification, of ethnic, national and religious loyalties and attachments to the nation-state. The development of postnational loyalties is perhaps most striking in Europe and in secure liberal democracies elsewhere in the world. A novel experiment in creating political communities in which subnational and transnational loyalties feature more prominently in political life is underway in Europe, and still more radical global possibilities have been suggested by the theorists of cosmopolitan democracy and the advocates of world citizenship. Crucial questions arise about the extent to which the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington have checked or reversed these tendencies or revealed that they are largely confined to the affluent industrial or post-industrial world. The purpose of this coda is to offer some brief comments about the significance of 9/11, as it has come to be called. It might be argued that, while circumstances in the affluent West have led many to question traditional objects of loyalty, circumstances elsewhere often encourage traditional loyalties, which the sense of global exclusion and disadvantage frequently intensify. This may appear to restate in terms of loyalty the superficial notion of the ‘West’ in opposition to the ‘rest’. It may not be extravagant to hold that the secular loyalty required of its subjects by the Soviet Union in response to capitalist encirclement is now being replaced by a confessional loyalty to Islam in many parts of the world which protest, as did the Bolsheviks, against the West’s cultural and political dominance. But many of the chapters in this book emphasize that loyalties, in both cases, have been contingent, in the sense of being to a large extent the result of manipulation and manufacture by specific political groups – and certainly neither al-Qaeda nor the Soviet Union can, or could, speak for Islam and the socialist movement, which they claim, or claimed, to represent. Although the majority of the chapters have been concerned with political loyalties within the carapace of the modern European state, those by Lawler,

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Waller and Werbner deal in different ways with the interface between Islam and the West. Thornberry deals with the human-rights aspects of the treatment of al-Qaeda suspects after 9/11 (Chapter 6); Lawler notes how a rise in antiMuslim feeling in northern Europe conflicts with traditions and policies favouring social inclusion (Chapter 10); Waller how Muslims in Russia have suffered from both the repercussions of 9/11 and the demonization of the Chechens (Chapter 13); while Werbner reminds us that the idea of the modern territorial state was originally alien to Islam and that loyalty to the sovereign state remains for many subordinate to the ummah – the collective body of Muslim believers (Chapter 7). Such observations serve to put distance between the West and the rest of the world. In the privileged parts of the globe, political loyalties may be acquiring more universalistic qualities, cultural differences have been increasingly recognized and multiple loyalties accepted and regarded as essential to the flourishing of the liberal-democratic order. With 9/11 we are reminded that cosmopolitan democracy and genuinely universalistic loyalties must not only find institutional solutions to the democratic deficit in Western states but also address fundamental global social and economic inequalities and perceptions of the relentless intrusion of Western cultural preferences. We are also reminded that the modern West is far from immune from savage exclusionary policies justified in terms of particularistic political loyalties. Crucial here are the questions of how far the reinvention of traditional security politics in the aftermath of 9/11 has checked the tendencies mentioned earlier and how far it has damaged the Enlightenment project of developing the loyalties of world citizenship. One response to 9/11 is to argue that the moment their security is threatened the citizens of stable and effective states look to national governments for protection. Advocacy of cosmopolitan loyalties and the public recognition of social and cultural differences cannot escape the fact that under conditions of insecurity citizens turn to the state, which is assured of their loyalty. Civil liberties are curtailed for the sake of the higher goal of security; respect for cultural differences does not prevent racial profiling; cosmopolitan loyalties do not prevent national security politics which ignore or reinterpret the law of war affecting the rights of non-combatants and the treatment of prisoners of war or ‘unlawful combatants’. President George W. Bush’s claim that states are either for or against the United States in its war against terrorism and defence of civilization and civilized values finds a receptive audience in many quarters. Those developments pose problems for what may seem to be an inherently progressivist interpretation of long-term patterns of change in Western liberaldemocratic states. But a fuller account of the significance of 9/11 must recognize the tenacity of the themes that have been central to the present discussion of the changing face of political loyalty. The universal human-rights culture and international humanitarian law remain a central influence on loyalty for Western publics, as opposition to the use of force against Iraq in 2002 and 2003 indicated; concerns about the damage that national security politics may do to the multicultural idea have been heard repeatedly since 9/11, as have concerns

The changing face of political loyalty 233 about the dangers of vilifying Islam and allowing immediate Western security interests to distract attention from the unfinished project of creating a world order which is just in the eyes of the members of radically different cultures and faith traditions. The re-emergence of traditional national security politics and the forces that continue to make the state a central focus of loyalty have not silenced demands for demonstrations of good international citizenship that endeavour to reduce global inequalities and end poverty in the most desperate regions of the world. In short, post-national loyalties continue to appeal to mass publics in the Western democracies, and the governing elites of these societies give at least rhetorical support to these themes in their quest to legitimate defending civilization (and not just the West) from global terrorism. This is not to claim that post-nationalizing loyalties are bound to dominate – only to stress that they are not easily displaced under conditions of threat and insecurity, but remain fundamental features of the modern era and are, for that reason, evidence that contemporary societies may still keep faith with the ideals of the Enlightenment.

Bibliography Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Breuilly, J. (1982) Nationalism and the State, Manchester: Manchester University Press Bull, H. (1979) ‘The State’s Positive Role in World Affairs’, Daedalus 108: 111–23. Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell. Habermas, J. (1996) ‘Citizenship and National Identity’, included as Appendix II in J. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hirschman, A.O. (1972) Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Luhmann, N. (1979) Trust and Power, New York: John Wiley. Mannheim, K. (1997) Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, London: Routledge. Miller, D. (1999) ‘Bounded Citizenship’, in K. Hutchings and R. Dannreuther (eds) Cosmopolitan Citizenship, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Shklar, J. (1993) ‘Obligation, Loyalty, Exile’, Political Theory 21(2): 181–97. Tishkov, V. (1997) Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union, London, Sage.

Index

Aborigines, Aboriginal 27–9, 31, 34–5 advantage (in loyalty bond) 173, 182–3, 185, 225 Afghanistan 107–9, 135 Africa 76 agency 231; see also manipulation Ahmed, A. 119 A Journey round the World 23 Al-Azm, S. 110, 117–18 Al-Azme, A. 119 Ali, Y. 119 All-Tatar People’s Centre 212 Al-Qaeda 107, 231–2 Amnesty International 56 Amsterdam Treaty 164 Anderson, B. 1, 17, 21, 65 Andrews, A. 112, 114 Apprentice Boys 189 Arab, Arabs 103, 111; Arab countries 100–1, 118 ’arc of instability’ 215 asylum seekers 97, 100, 228; see also human rights; immigrants Attwood, Bain 28 Augustin, Saint 81 Australia 27–42 ‘axis of evil’ 98 Bairamova, F. 230 Barry, J. 12, 224 Bashkortostan 212, 214 Basmachi revolt 207 Basque nationalism, 143 Bauman, Z. 43 Beckett, S. 101 Beijing 63–4; Beijing Platform of Action 70 Belfast 189 Belgium 12–23, 34, 80–1, 84, 166

belonging 32, 34, 38–40, 93, 125, 198, 230; see also sentiment Bencheikh, S. 112 Benhabib, S. 69 Bergmann, A. 158 Betts, K. 33, 35–6, 38, 40 Bharatiya Janata Party 117 Billig, M. 149 Bin-Laden, O. 107–8, 111 Bjorgo, T. 105 Blainey, G. 31 Blair, A. 98, 108 Blunkett, D. 107 Bolsheviks 78, 205–6, 208, 214, 216, 231 Book of Martyrs 146 Bosnia 7, 13, 43–58, 118 Bossi, U. 12, 225, 230 Bourdieu, P. 132 Breuilly, J. 142 Bringa, Tone 47, 49, 51 Britain, British see United Kingdom Brooke, P. 192 Brown, A. 191 Bruce, S. 191 Brzezinski, Z. 215 Burke, E. 18, 33, 40, 138 Bush, George (senior) 85 Bush, George W. 85, 98, 108, 232 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 108 Campbell, D. 5–7, 230 Canada 34 Canovan, M. 10, 224 Carter, David 28 Casa delle Libertà 173 Castells, M. 132 Catalonia 173 Catholic Church see Roman Catholic Church

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Caucasus 208, 210, 213 CEDAW see Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women Central Asia 206–7, 210, 213, 215 CERD see International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Chechnya, Chechens 13, 205, 209, 212–13; demonization of 214; human rights in 118; political use of 214; war in 82 Chelyabinsk 213 China 64, 143 Chinkin, C. 64 Chirac, J. 127 Chiti, V. 184 Christendom, Christian 106, 111, 114, 116–18, 129, 180 Christian Democrat Party (Italian) 176, 183 Christiansen, N.F. 162 Church of England 114–15; establishment of 115–16 citizenship 2, 6, 8–9, 35, 99–100, 114, 226; and asylum seekers 100; in Australia 35, 38–9; ‘binding force of ’ 33; ‘civic unionism’ (in Northern Ireland) 199–200; cosmopolitan 10, 17–26, 224; in Derrida 54; for League of Nations 92; non-citizens 96; in Scandinavia 159; women’s 60–1, 66 civil society 91, 101, 115, 128–9; see also democracy ‘clash of civilizations’ 68, 98, 105, 108–9 clientelist relations 177–8, 182, 185 Clinton, W. 85 CND see Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Cochrane, F. 192 cold war 149 Colley, L. 147–8 Combined Loyalist Military Command 189 Comité International contre la Piraterie 55 commitment 40, 81, 119, 128–9, 133–4, 144, 150, 207, 224, 229 Common Foreign and Security Policy (EU) 160 Commonwealth 148 Communism 124, 205 Communist Party of the Soviet Union 206–7, 212–13 communitarianism 33, 43

community: communal loyalties 2, 5–7, 11–12, 34, 93–4, 144–5, 180, 182, 223, 231; in Bosnian context 44–6, 51–7; and the Enlightenment 17–20, 24; in Northern Ireland 193–4, 197; and plural loyalties 31–5; communal rights Ch.6 passim; in Russian Federation 216; and Scandinavian exceptionalism 157; sense of in EU 126–129, 229; and women’s rights 59–60, 65, 67–8 Condorcet 18, 22–5 Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro 185 conferences: Cairo Conference on Population and Development 64; Fourth UN Conference on Women (Beijing) 63–4, 69; Rambouillet 86; World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna) 64 Confucian values 64 Connolly, C. 116 Connolly, W. 45–6 conscientious objection 74, 78, 80, 82, 84 Conservative Party 195 constitutional patriotism 25, 35–7, 132, 150 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women 64, 69 Copenhagen Peace Research Institute 166 Coppieters, B. 7, 228 cosmopolitan: cosmopolitan loyalty 20, 25, 125, 131–5, 217, 232; see also citizenship; democracy Council of Europe 3, 93, 228 Cox, W.H. 197; to solidarity 157 Croatia, Croatians 49–51 culture 31, 34, 40, 45; core culture 36–7; in creation of Padanian identity 179–80; in context of women’s rights 69; ‘cultural core’ in Australia 36–7; differentiation in Europe 135, 160; and federalism in Italy 184; human-rights culture 61–8; and nationhood 140; in Northern Irish context 191, 198; and political community 126–7; and Western ideals 97 Cyprus 135 Czechoslovakia 75 Daily Telegraph 108 Danish Centre for Human Rights 166 Danish People’s Party 164–5 Dar al-ahd, dar al-dawa, dar al-harb, dar alIslam, dar al-kufr, dar el-aman 111–14

Index 237 Davidson, A. 35 Dayton Agreement 45 D’Azeglio, M. 175 Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations) see Universal Declaration of Human Rights Declaration of the Rights of Man 2 Delanty, G. 5, 10, 226, 228–9, 231 democracy 32, 101, 117, 155, 232; Australian views 34–7; cosmopolitan democracy 10, 17–26, 29; Danish model of 162; and EU 124–8; in Scandinavia 158–9 Democratic Unionist Party 190, 192, 199 Denmark 11, 146, 154–68, 227 Derrida, J. 40, 43, 47,54 Deutscher, I. 207 Devetak, R. 5, 7, 225, 227, 229–30 dialogue 68–70, 99, 130, 133 diasporas 8–9, 105–10, 225; Irish 198; Tatar 211 Diderot, D. 18, 22 différance 47, 91 difference 7, 40, 46, 117, 227–8; attitudes to 7, 34, 65; culture and 68; ‘differentiated loyalty’ 195 dignity 66, 143, 147 discursive see dialogue disobedience see obedience divided loyalties 225; see also diaspora; difference; multiple loyalties Dixson, M. 36, 39 Durkheim, E. 126, 159 Eastern Europe 139 Eastern Eye 107 Edinburgh Agreement 160–1 El Alamein, Battle of 76 Ellis, S. 196 England, English 143, 146–8 Enlightenment, the 6, 17–26, 61, 223, 232–3 Esperanto 143 Establishment see Church of England ethnic cleansing 45–6, 53 ‘ethnic federalism’ 13 ethnic revolt 4 ethnicity 1, 4, 7–9, 13, 43; ethnic loyalties 46–53, 56, 145–8, 179, 225; see also first peoples; indigenous etymology of ‘loyalty’ 38, 102 Eurobarometer 130 Euro-federalists 131

European Commission of Human Rights 95 European Convention on Human Rights 97 European Court of Human Rights 95 European Monetary Union 181 European Union 3, 8–10, 123–35, 135–9, 154, 173, 224, 226, 230; Council of Ministers 128; European Commission 128; European Court of Justice 128; European Parliament 128, 138; and Lega Nord 181 Euro-scepticism 130, 154–6, 158, 160, 167 exclusion 34–5, 223, 227, 231; of Aborigines 28, 29; in Denmark 156, 162, 166; and English/British nationhood 146; ethnic exclusion and Lega Nord 180; and the state 2, 4–5, 9; in Russian Federation 205–6, 213, 217; in USSR 205–6, 209; of women 59, 67; see also ethnic cleansing; human rights; immigrants fatwa 108–11 federalism (competitive, fiscal, cooperative) 183–5 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 84, 138, 225 feminism see gender Fichte, J. 140 Finland 76 first peoples 27; see also ethnicity; indigenous First World War 6, 191 Fischer, J. 84 Flanders 173 Fletcher, G.P. 6 folkestyre 155 folkhem 154–68, 227 Forster, G. 18, 23–5 Fortuyn, P. 97, 100, 165, 227 Foucault, M. 54–6 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (Council of Europe) 93–4 France 93, 112, 127, 140, 142–3, 146–50, 166 Freeman, K. 27, 40 French Revolution 2; Burke’s views on 19 Friis, L. 164 Friuli-Venezia Giulia 174, 177 Gandhi, Mahatma 77 Gastarbeiter 141 Gellner, E. 142–3

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gender 63, 66, 116; gendered loyalties 60, 216; see also women Genghis Khan 230 Germany 132, 139, 141, 143, 150–1, 163, 182; in Second World War 75–6, 84; Third Reich 92 Global Cultural Diversity Conference (1995) 29 globalization 109, 123–4, 137, 143, 180, 186, 223, 225; anti-globalization 108; and Russian Federation 210, 212, 217; and Scandinavian exceptionalism 159 Good Friday Agreement 191, 192, 195, 199, 201–2 Greece, Greeks 149 ‘green retreaters’ (Denmark) 162 Greenfeld, L. 143, 147 Greenpeace 166 Gruntvig, N.F.S. 162 Guardian 108, 192 Gulf War 9, 85, 106, 108–10, 118 Habermas, J. 35–8, 124–5, 129, 132–4, 150, 228 Habsburg empire 140 Haekkerup, P. 157 Hanafis 112 Hanson, Pauline 32 Hansson, A. 157 Hartle, A. 82 Hayden, R. 46 Held, D. 10 ‘heterophobia’ 43 Hirschman, A.O. 173, 230 Hitler, A. 75–6, 87 Hobsbawm, E. 140 Holm, E. 161 Holy Roman Empire 150 Holy See 64 Hoodfar, H. 63 Howard, J. 30–3 human rights 8, 91–104, 232; international 62; universal 59, 69; 100, 232; women’s 59–73 humanitarian intervention 92; in Kosovo 86 Huntington, S. 105, 108–9 Hussein, S. 106, 108, 111 Hutton, W. 134 Huysseune 12, 226, 230 identity 5, 7, 10, 12, 65–6; communal 7; cosmopolitan 59; cultural 99, 179–80; debate about national identity in Australia 28–32; distinction between

primordial and chosen 93; essentialized 45, 49, 56, 67, 230; ethnic 4, 52, 115; European 10, 129, 131–2; multiple 115; Muslim 67, 111–14; national 18, 27–42, 65, 149, 176; in Northern Irish context 189–202; Padanian 175, 178–80; Tatar 214; within UK 147 Ignatieff, M. 45, 192 IMF see International Monetary Fund immigrants, immigration 8, 34–5, 39, 107; in Denmark 155–6, 158, 160, 164–7; and international law 100–2; in Italy 180; Muslims in UK 105–19; in Russian Federation 210, 213; see also asylum seekers; refugees India 64, 110, 112, 116 indigenous: indigenousness 56; indigenous peoples 8, 93, 227 Inquisition 20 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) 96 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 93 International Monetary Fund 109 Iran 110 Iraq 85, 101, 232 Ireland, Irish 5, 11, 147–50, 189–202, 224 Islam, Islamic 9, 13, 62, 101, 105–22, 149, 231–3; Islamic Law 111; Islamophobia 106, 167; and the Netherlands 97; in USSR and Russian Federation 207–8, 210–11, 214–17; women and 62, 64, 67–8; see also Muslim Islamic Party of Great Britain 111 Israel 101, 111, 117–18 Italian Communist Party 176 Italy 98, 151, 173–88; First Republic 176 Jacobins 78 Jahilia 113 James 1 (and VI) 147 Japan 75, 143 Jewish Defence League 117 Jews 105, 118 jihad 112 Journey round the World, A 23 Joyce, J. 117 June movement (Denmark) 161 just-war theory 81–8 Kant, Immanuel 18 Karelian Republic 215 Kashmir 118

Index 239 Keating, P. 27–30, 35 Khomeini, Ayatollah 106, 110 Kierney, R. 198 Kissinger, H. 86 Kjaersgaard, P. 163, 165 Koningsveld, S.van 111–14 Koran 108, 110 Kosovo 8–9, 13, 85–6 Kouchner, B. 55 Koufa, K. 101 Krasnodar 210, 213 Kurdistan, Kurds 95–6 Kymlicka, W. 8 Larsen, H. 155 Lasch, C. 130 Lawler, D. 11 Lawler, P. 11, 227, 231 Le Pen, J.-M. 127 League of Nations 92 Lee, N. de 80 Lefort, C. 34 Lega Nord 5, 12, 173–88, 225, 230 legitimacy 5, 7, 65, 125, 160, 201; in war 74–88; in context of EU 123–8, 226, 229; of Italian state 176, 186 Leicester 114 Lenin, V.I. 78 Lewis, B. 111–14 Lewis, P. 115–16 Liberal Party (Denmark) 165, 167 Libération 56 Liechtenstein 140 L’Ile de lumière 55 Lingis A. 54 Lombardy 174 ‘loyal supplement’ 37, 40,229 Loyalist Volunteer Force 189 loyalty: for aspects of loyalty see commitment; ethnic; manipulation; military loyalty; multiple loyalties; national loyalties; ‘pathological loyalties’; regional , religious loyalties; sentiment; supra-national loyalties; see also symbols Luhmann, N. 125 Lyotard, J.-F. 102 Maastricht see Treaty on European Unity MacIntyre, A. 137 Magnitogorsk 213 Mani Pulite 176 manipulation of loyalties 1–2, 208, 212–17, 230; in Burke 19

Mannheim, K. 224 manufacturing of loyalty see manipulation Marshall, T.H. 109, 125 Mason, A. 32 McGarry, J. 190 Médecins du monde 55–6 Médecins sans frontiers 55 Mediterranean 180 Mennonites 77–8 Metternich 138 migration see immigrants militarism 74–7 military loyalty 7; see also militarism Mill, J.S. 39 Miller, D. 33, 35, 39, 140 Miller, H. 117 ‘millet’ system 48 Milli Mejlis 211 Milosevic, S. 142 minorities 223; religious 112, 114–15; minorities’ rights Ch.6 passim; in USSR and Russian Federation 208; see also immigrants Modood, T. 115–17 Moltke, H. von 75 Monnet, J. 123 Montesquieu 18, 21–2 moral majority 117 Morris, E. 107 Moscow 213 Mughal empire 112 multiculturalism 2, 4, 9, 36, 62, 86, 232; absent from Danish debate 165; in Australian debate 29, 31–2, 34–5, in Bosnia 44–5, 53–4; and Islam 106, 109 multinational corporations 109 multiple loyalties 5, 7, 34, 39–40, 117, 127, 223, 225, 227–8; in Enlightenment thinking 25 Munich Agreements 75 Muslim, Muslims 50–1, 62–3, 105–22, 225; in Denmark 155; Muslim scholars 111; in USSR and Russian Federation 207–8, 210–12; see also Islam nacija 49 nacionalnost 49 Napoleonic wars 140 narodnost 49 nation 48, 123, 127, 137–51; and multiculturalism 44; political image of 34; transcending of 54; see also supranational loyalties national loyalties 39, 74, 79, 83, 228

240

Index

nationalism 65; ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ 145; in Northern Ireland 189–202; Padanian 175, 178; Russian 205, 208, 213–16 NATO see North Atlantic Treaty Organization nazism 63, 75, 150 neo-nazism 165 Netherlands 150, 158, 227 ‘new International’ (Derrida) 54 NGOs see non-governmental organizations Nice Treaty 128 ‘nine/eleven’ see World Trade Center Nixon, R. 85 nomenklatura 207 non-governmental organizations: concerning women 59, 61, 63, 68, 70 North Atlantic Treaty Organization 3, 84–6, 109 Northern Ireland see Ireland Northern Ireland Assembly 195 Norway, Norwegian 154–8, 163–4, 166–7 Nussbaum, M.C. 64 oath of allegiance 17, 113, 229 obedience (and disobedience) 124, 229; balance with critical commitment 230; military disobedience74–88 obligation 5, 7, 33, 38–9, 43,65, 229; in Burke 40; dictionary definition 38; Judith Shklar on 37–8 OECD 228 Official Development Assistance 158 One Nation Party 32 ontopology 43 Orange Order 201; Loyal Orange Lodges 189, marches 189, 193–5, 199 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe 3, 9 Ormrod, J. 208 Orthodoxy (Russian) 49, 208–9, 211, 215, 217 Orwell, G. 140 OSCE see Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe Ostergard, U. 162–3 Ottoman Empire 48 Owen, Lord M. 46 pacifism 77–9; religious 77–8; secular 78–80 Padania 12–13, 173–86, 230 Paisley, Rev. I. 192, 199 Pakistan, Pakistani 9, 106–8, 111, 119 Palestine 101, 111, 118

‘pathological loyalties’ 20–2, 25 Patriot Act 100 patriotism 101, 109, 124, 137, 184–5, 229; in Australia 37; in Enlightenment thinking 18, 22; see also constitutional patriotism; nationalism People’s Movement Against the European Community (Denmark) 160 People’s Socialist Party (Denmark) 160 Persian Letters (Montesquieu) 21–2 Piedmont 174 Pinochet 3 Poland 139–40, 145 Porter, N. 199–200 post-materialism 209, 215, 227 Powell, Enoch 191 Power-Sharing Treaty (Russian Federation/Tatar Republic) 212 proceduralism 36, 38 Progress Party (Denmark) 160, 164 Progressive Unionist Party (Northern Ireland) 200 protestantism 78, 146, 150; in Max Weber 78; in Northern Ireland Ch.12 passim Putin, V. 13, 205–6, 208, 211–16 Quakers 77–8 racism 29, 44, 97, 116–18; in Australian debate 29, 31 ‘radical interdependence’ 49 Rasmussen, F. 166 Rawls, J. 133 realism 159; realist views on war 79–88 recognition-claims 92–6 Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke) 19 refugees 8, 46, 53, 97, 156, 228; Afghan 108; to Denmark 165–6; see also asylum seekers; immigrants regional loyalties 12, 174, 179–81, 209–12, 225 religion 20; and millet system 48–52, 77–9, 81, 83–6 religious loyalties 66–70, 75, 117, 129, 189–202; 209–12 Republic of Ireland 196–8, 201 Rex, J. 133 Rice, Condoleeza 85 rights: group (collective) 94; minority 92; reproductive 64; women’s 59–73; see also human rights Robespierre, M. de 78 Roma 11, 213

Index 241 Roman Catholic Church 49, 81, 87, 115, 150; in Italy 183, 185; in Northern Ireland Ch.12 passim Rommel, E. 76 Rousseau, J.-J. 22 Rowthorne, B. 193 Royal Black Preceptory 189 Ruane, J. 197, 202 Rushdie, S. 9, 106, 108–11, 114, 116, 118 Russia, tsarist 78, 143 Russian Federation 5, 8, 139, 205–18; and Chechen War (1994–6) 82 Sarajevo 46 Sardinia 176 Satanic Verses, The 117–18 Scandinavia 11, 105, 154–68; Scandinavian exceptionalism 156–8 Schuman, R. 123 Scotland, Scots 147–50 Second World War 63, 76, 84, 87, 123–4, 139, 150, 176, 192 sects 78 secularism 117 self-determination 28, 32, 34, 95–6, 99–101, 181 sentiment 37, 39–40, 52,102, 217; advantage unsupported by sentiment 226, 230; of belonging 32–3; and commitment 224; and obligation 229; placed above reason 33; separatist 95–6 Serbia, Serbs 49–51, 86, 142 Seton-Watson, Hugh 139 Shadid, W. 111–14 Shaimiev, M. 211–12 Sharia 103 Shklar, J. 37, 229 Sicily 176 Siddiqui, K. 113 Single European Act 129, 160 Sinn Fein 193, 202 Sir Robert Menzies lecture (1996) 30 Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (Condorcet) 23 Smith, A. 3, 150, 173 social democracy 159–60, 163, 167 social inequalities 101, 233 Social-Democratic Party (Denmark) 156, 164, 167 Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 4, 8, 13, 44, 49, 140 Socialist Party (Italian) 176 solidarity 54, 75, 157, 162; national 184 Solzhenitsyn, A. 215

South Tyrol 12–13, 176 sovereignty 54, 124, 159, 182, 209 Soviet Union 4–5, 8, 13 Soviet Women’s Committee 207, 209 Spain, Spanish 149 Stalin, I.V. 75, 206 Stavropol 210, 213 Steans, J. 5, 7, 227 Stormont regime (1922–72) 202 supra-national loyalties 9–11 Sweden 154–5, 157–8, 163–4, 166–7 Switzerland 34, 133, 146 symbols, symbolism 27, 110, 140, 192–4, 211 Taliban 107–8, 110 Tamir, Y. 140 Tatarstan 210–12, 214, 230 Taylor, C. 106 Terre des hommes 56 territorialized/deterritorialized loyalty 1, 193, 196, 227–8; in Bosnia 43–58; and USSR 208 terrorism, terrorist 8, 97–102, 109, 232; in Northern Irish context 191 Thatcherite ideology 180 The Satanic Verses 117–18 Thirty Years War 20 Thornberry, P. 8 Times 147 Tolstoy, L. 77 tradition 193, 224 treachery see treason treason 110, 189–96, 228 Treaty on European Unity (’Maastricht’) 160–4 Trentino 177 Trimble, D. 190, 195, 199–200 trust 33, 126, 226, 229 Turkey 95, 99, 135; United Communist Party of 95; Welfare Party in 103 Tuzla 47 Ulster Defence Association 200 Ulster Unionist Party 190, 192 Un bateau pour Vietnam 55 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 75–6, 140, 205, 208–9, 212, 216, 225, 231 United Kingdom 80, 107–19, 146, 225; Northern Ireland in 189, 191–6, 198–202 United Nations Organization 3, 9, 62, 64, 111, 139, 156, 158, 228; Committee on the Elimination of Racial

242

Index

Discrimination 94; Counter-Terrorism Committee of the Security Council 98; High Commission for Refugees 166; and Scandinavia 158; Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities 92; Security Council 100; UN Charter 92 United States of America 34, 85, 100, 108, 117, 119, 133, 141, 146, 231–3; US Congress 138 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 62, 69, 92 Valle d’Aosta 176 Veneto 174 Verhaegen, J. 80 Vietnam 54–6 Vitrioli, M. 37–8 Vogel, U. 6 Volksdeutsche 141 Voltaire 18, 20–3 Waever, O. 159–60 Wales, Welsh 140, 143, 147–9 Waller, M. 232 Walicki, A. 145 war, warfare 7, 109, 227–8, 232; ethics of 74–88; and gender 61; see also just-war theory Weber, E. 142 Weber, M. 78, 125

Webster, R. 118 Weil, S. 142 welfare 11,126, 129, 134; in Italy 177–8, 185; in USSR 207; and Scandinavian exceptionalism 157, 227 Werbner, P. 9, 225 Westphalian system of sovereign states 81 Wilson, Woodrow 4, 85 Windshuttle, K. 31 Winter War 76 Wolf, M. 85 women 59–73; and citizenship 60; in Russian Federation 216; in USSR 207, 209 Women Against Fundamentalism 116–17 World Trade Center, attack on 68, 97, 100, 106–9, 118, 137, 167, 231–3; impact in Russian Federation 215, 217; strengthens policing 227 Year of Dialogue among Civilizations (UN) 97 Yeltsin, B.N. 206, 210–2, 214, 216 Yugoslavia see Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Zhirinovskii, V. 215 ¯i¿ek, S. 56