PPt SURREY KEYNOTE 12 6 07
Nationalism and National Identities Today: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
CRONEM, University of Surrey, 12-13 June 2007
A radical response to the intractability of ethno-national conflict:
Partition, consociation or border-crossing democracy?
James Anderson
School of Geography and
Centre for International Borders Research www.qub.ac.uk/cibr
Queen's University Belfast
1. The Intractability Problem: Territoriality and its limitations nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty, representative democracy
2. Conflict Management: Territorial 'solutions' – partition, internal
integration or consociation?
3. Conflict Resolution: Through other conflicts, crossing borders,
participatory democracy, divided cities?
The Arguments
The paper, informed by Ireland's national conflict and 'peace process‘, is a
critique of the problems underlying such conflicts and the difficulties
transforming externally-imposed conflict management into self-sustaining
conflict resolution.
It is argued that the intractability of these problems is deeply rooted in a
thoroughly modern complex of nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty and
representative democracy. These are knotted together in a common
denominator of territoriality, and the nub of the problem is the ‘double
paradox’ of representative democracy’s undemocratic origins in the present.
Territoriality, the use of bordered geographical space, is a powerful and
ubiquitous mode of social organisation which simplifies social control. But it
can grossly over-simplify and distort social realities, particularly at borders
and especially where territory is contested, and thereby it reinforces other
distorting simplifications typical of ethno-national conflict.
Deep-rooted problems demand radical remedies. Rather than relying on the
pieties of remembrance and reconciliation, making ethno-national peace
paradoxically requires ‘forgetting’ and making conflict over other issues.
1. The Intractability Problem: Territoriality’s limitations
– nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty, democracy
All conflicts have their own particularities, so any comparisons (or ‘lessons from
Ireland’) work best at the more abstract level of general structures.
Ethno-national problems are often ‘explained’ in terms of the ‘resurfacing’ of
‘primordial ethnicities’ and ‘atavistic hatreds'. But the main causes are rooted
in contemporary society & modern state and state-related territoriality.
Territoriality - the use of bordered geographical spaces to 'control, classify and
communicate' is a powerful and widespread mode of social organisation.
It simplifies issues of control, management and administration, and makes power
relationships more tangible materially and symbolically - whether in the home,
the workplace, or with respect to the state and the nation.
But its advantages can become serious disadvantages - over-simplifying, reifying
and distorting social realities, de-personalising social relationships, obscuring
relations of power, erroneously equating physical space with social space, and
arbitrarily truncating social processes at territorial borders.
Territoriality (with roots related to 'terror‘) actively encourages conflict, generating
rival territorialities in a competitive 'space-filling' process.
It directly encourages the 'zero-sum game' of national conflict - territory is a finite
resource with a fixed total where more for one side really does mean less for
the other. But this equation is then inappropriately applied to 'goods' (e.g.,
economic wealth, cultural capital, political democracy) which do not have a
fixed total. ‘Positive-sum games’ where both sides gain are blocked; and we
actually get a ‘negative-sum game’ where both lose (though often unequally).
Nationalism and ethnicity
•
Nationalisms tend to essentialise ethnic identities as ‘natural’, timeless and
unchangeable. But they are always socially (re)produced and changeable.
•
However, contrary to the post-modern emphasis on a free choice between
‘multiple identities', there is limited freedom to choose or change identities
in conflict situations, where much effort is expended on reproducing existing
identity – you change your identity ‘at your peril’.
•
Such effort has to be expended, especially where the opponents are very
similar and closely intermingled (fixating on the 'narcissism of small
differences’ as in Ireland). Ethnic and territorial conflict may be more a
means of creating/maintaining difference than a simple reflex of difference.
•
Conflicts supposedly due to ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’ are more likely
contemporary struggles to consciously reproduce ethnic differences. And
they are rooted in the distinctly modern and often benign phenomena of
national sovereignty and democracy.
The doctrine of nationalism
•
Nationalism's happy ideal of nation and state coinciding geographically in
the particular territory of a 'nation-state' has powerful appeal, linking home,
freedom, democracy and sovereign self-determination without 'outside
interference'.
But nationalism 'promises to deceive‘:
•
Geographic realities conspire against its happy ideal - the often different/
intermingled distributions of ethnic groups, nations and states mean the
ideal is not attainable, or trying to make reality fit the ideal is not worth the
cost in human lives, misery, & the foreclosing of other more fruitful options.
•
The ideal itself is 'two-faced' - unifying/divisive, including/excluding, forwardlooking/backward-looking (to an invented past?) - only variably progressive.
•
In class-divided societies the 'national interest' is inevitably an ideological
and illusionary unity, often serving the reactionary interests of dominant
groups and classes and used for internal control against ‘enemies within’.
Limitations of national sovereignty
•
National sovereignty is also elusive, applying - and as a claim more than a
reality - mainly in the ‘political’ sphere, while most of the ‘economic’ sphere multinational branch plants, foreign direct investment - is conveniently and
necessarily excluded from the claim. ‘Self-determination’ is at best partial.
•
While recognising nationalism's democratic associations, and differentiating
between oppressed and oppressor nations, the resolution of national
conflict requires a critical stance to nationalism & nationalist doctrine.
•
But this critical stance is just what ‘conflict managers’ lack - coming from
other national governments of ‘great(er) powers’, they are caught in the
same national 'territorial trap‘ as the protagonists they try to 'manage'.
•
They pander to them and their shared presumption that ethno-national
identities have over-riding importance over all other types of identity.
Limitations of territorial representative democracy
The most basic problem in ethno-national conflicts is not some easy archaic or
atavistic target, but modern and valued representative democracy.
National territorial conflicts are not amenable to 'normal' democratic resolution
because at issue is the territorial framework or ‘shell’ for democracy.
These conflicts repeat the paradox of 'democracy's undemocratic origins' in the
present – in effect there is a double paradox:
1. Democracy depends on democratic institutions and is absent until they are
established, but they cannot be established democratically because initially
there are no democratic institutions….
2. For democracies to have legitimacy there is 'normally' a ‘politics of forgetting’
their undemocratic origins (in, e.g., war, conquest, genocide….). But in
national conflicts forgetting is impossible: historical origins are a 'live issue'
('The past is not dead. It's not even past‘ - Wm. Faulkner); and the paradox
is repeated in any contemporary (or proposed) re-drawing of borders…..
More limitations of conventional democracy
Normally 'the electorate decides', but the prior question here is who decides the
electorate? What is the appropriate territorial framework? (eg., in the IrishBritish conflict is it NI, Britain+NI, NI + R of I, or all three territorial entities?)
How the borders of the institutional shell are drawn will determine the outcome
of a democratic majority vote, but the contested borders cannot themselves
be decided by this democratic means.
Instead we get an infinite regression: who decides who decides who decides…
which in conventional terms can only be terminated undemocratically:
Either one of the protagonists decides (e.g., by unilateral action, in the
extreme creating a 'democratic' majority by ‘ethnic cleansing’ - which
Michael Mann shows to be 'the dark side of democracy');
Or external ‘conflict managers’ pragmatically enforce a 'solution' (e.g.,
partition, or more likely ‘internal power-sharing’) - though perhaps with
marginal plebiscites, or subsequent legitimation by ‘democratic ratification’.
Conventional territorial, representative democracy politicises demography (e.g.,
Northern Ireland, Israel) and this gives territory added political significance.
But representative democracy cannot itself resolve the ensuing conflict.
2. CONFLICT MANAGEMENT: National ‘solutions’ to national
problems reproduce divisions - Partition or territorial integrity
National ‘solutions’ (usually not endorsed by external conflict managers) include
the murder, removal and/or forced assimilation of ethnic minorities.
Less malign management strategies include: 1. the territorial (re-)partitioning of
states, and 2. internal power-sharing or consociation (‘ethnic partitioning‘)
Both in different ways emphasise the ‘management virtues’ of separation/
segregation, whereas conflict resolution requires contact & co-operation.
But partition has limited application: subdividing existing territories with
completely new borderlines has mostly applied to defeated/collapsing multinational empires (e.g., Austria-Hungary after WWI; the USSR and
Yugoslavia), or retreating empires (the British from Ireland, Palestine, India).
Since the 1940s, partition has been out of favour for national states because:
it is often impossible to (re)draw ‘national’ borders where ethnicities are
geographically intermingled; it can invite ‘ethnic cleansing’; temporary
expedients (extensions of ‘divide & rule’, or ‘divide & run’) become
permanent, perpetuating conflict (eg., India’s partition: 200,000 deaths, 5
million migrated, several wars, and now nuclear threat); and
the partition of national states (unlike ‘multi-national’ empires) threatens the
‘territorial integrity’ of national states in general (hence Biafra not
supported), though internal federalisation may be an option.
Thus consociational power-sharing in various forms became the
‘international community’s’ preferred conflict management strategy.
Consociation versus Integration
Consociational power-sharing contains and regulates conflict, but by
institutionalising, and therefore cementing, ethnic divisions.
The main 'consociational model' (Lijphart/Netherlands) has 4 non-majoritarian
devices: a coalition government by representatives of all the ethnic groups;
representation proportional to their relative sizes; autonomy in their group
organisation; and mutual vetoes to protect particular ethnic group interests.
The case for consociation: it accepts the harsh reality of conflicting groups
and succeeds in stopping or preventing their open/violent conflict; it is fair
and secures the trust of the groups by giving them guarantees about their
future; it provides stable democratic government. It is more realistic than
‘wishful thinking’ integrationist illusions about creating a single ‘unified
society’ - which would not stop the fighting, and which some groups would
see as an assimilationist threat to their own ethnic identity and interests.
The integrationist case against: the integrationists mirror-image the
consociationalists, arguing that the latter enshrine a bleak view of humanity
seeing distrust and antagonism are as inherent & irredeemable. Powersharing mechanisms & guarantees produce expensive cumbersome
gridlock, and static rather than stable government. Secretive elitist dealing
replaces open political debate, and blocks effective opposition/alternative
government. Consociation is counter-productive:
Consociation versus integration (contd.)
Consociation further entrenches ethnic divisions, increases polarisation and
reproduces the basis of the conflict. Its keeps/forces people into one or
other ethnic ‘camp’, and excludes other more fruitful bases of political
mobilisation (eg., gender, class) which cross-cut ethnic divisions.
It further erodes the so-called 'middle ground' of compromise, or 'other grounds'
for alternative politics. It conservatively accepts the primacy and
permanency of ethno-national categories rather than questioning how and
why they are sustained and how they might be superseded. It ignores
identity (re)production, and in effect supports ethnic essentialisms.
Comment: Both cases are typically over-stated, and presented as a static
either/or choice of two mutually exclusive strategies or ideal end-states.
This is unfortunate because both have some valid points, and they need to be
seen dynamically, not as alternatives but as complementary elements or
stages in an historical process of transforming externally-imposed
management into self-sustaining conflict resolution – the key ‘post-cease
fire’ challenge but it needs to built-into ‘peace-processes’ from the start.
Consociation and then ‘integrative’ border-crossing
To achieve ‘cease-fires’/end to hostilities, the consociationalists are generally
realistic in insisting that elaborate, guaranteed and hence rather static
power-sharing arrangements are essential for establishing initial, at least
minimal, cooperation. However consociation is necessary but not sufficient.
The integrationists’ have the valid point that consociational arrangements
reinforce divisions and perpetuate – or at the very least fail to supersede the conditions of the conflict. And a telling point (from a supporter):
consociation is crucially dependent on continuing external enforcement for
its maintenance; on its own has no realistic prospect of becoming selfsustaining (in N. Ireland, Lebanon, Bosnia…?). It is thus dependent on the
priorities and pace of external forces whose interest/lack of interest varies
but whose main interests are always elsewhere. As ‘external managers’ it is
they who have the ‘limited ambition’ of stopping the worst of the violence or
keeping it to ‘acceptable levels’ (‘acceptable’ to whom?); and their
continuing overall responsibility may encourage continuing irresponsible
‘brinkmanship’ by rival ethno-national leaders.
Such problematical external ‘help’ further supports the argument that the ‘postcease-fire’ focus should increasingly be on developing cross-ethnic and
cross-border contacts and co-operation.
3. CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Through other conflicts, crossing
borders, participatory democracy, ‘divided cities’
Self-sustaining conflict resolution requires two moves: From ethnic & territorial
separation to border-crossing co-operation and transnationalism; and from
ethno-national conflict to more productive struggles over other issues.
Cross-border co-operation, whatever its socio-economic advantages, will only
lead to conflict resolution if it creates trans-ethnic and cross-border 'political
communities' and non-territorial forms of democratic participation.
Rather than emphasising ‘reconciliation’, ‘truth commissions’ or ‘identity’ issues
(when usually only one type of identity is recognised; and ‘remembering’ can
be ‘a continuation of conflict by other means’), it may be more productive to
mobilise around (more?) important issues (e.g., of class, gender, and the
environment) which cross-cut ethnic and territorial borders (though ethnonational forces will continue to try and draw people back into their
particularist and ‘zero-sum’ moulds).
The emphasis here is not on building the integrationists’ dream of a single
‘unified society' which does directly threaten (minority) ethnic identities, but
instead is on transcending them, by under-cutting and weakening the
divisions of the conflict and shifting the whole political terrain away from
ethno-national or territorial issues per se – to enable some ‘forgetting’.
Here border crossing activities which are valued in and of themselves, without
any ‘conflict resolution’ motivations, may paradoxically prove to be the most
important in resolving ethno-national conflicts.
And for this ‘divided cities’ are a promising locale….
City life versus territoriality
There’s a dialectic between the urban social space of mixing, sharing, coexisting (incl. in inter-city networks), and its antithesis in the state & staterelated territoriality of ethno-national separation and control.
Cities depend on border crossings – there are inherent pressures to (re-)assert
urban space over state and ethnic territorialities. Cities are amenable to
agon or urban traditions of channelling and negotiating conflict – see
www.conflictincities.org
Border-crossing activities can achieve their highest density within divided cities
(and between cities) - whether contested state borders actually run through
the city (e.g., Jerusalem, Nicosia, pre-1989 Berlin), or are contested
symbolically at local territorial borders of ethnicity (eg., in Belfast or Mostar).
Conflict is often most intense in cities due to density, proximity and symbolism,
making them dysfunctional, or terminally threatening their viability as cities.
But, by the same token, there is always resistance and border-crossings (e.g.,
Berlin’s 'wall jumpers‘; divided Nicosia’s single sewage system; war-torn
Mostar retaining one tiny shared area (modelled on divided Berlin).
Hence the potential of city life for creative border crossings, whether in leisure
groupings (e.g., 'Goths' in Belfast), or in political struggles for ‘non-national’
goods (e.g., higher wages, or gender emancipation, or adequate public
services), as alternatives to the pre-occupations of ethno-nationalists.
Some Conclusions
•
Ethnicity, nationalism, democracy and territoriality all have powerful appeal.
All are problematical, and especially so in ethno-national conflicts where the
resulting problems are intractable and sometimes lethal.
•
Resolving or transcending them demands a critical, radical stance, instead
of accepting the presumptions of nationalism, essentialism and territorial
integrity; or concentrating on democracy’s territorial shell and neglecting
democracy itself; or confining democracy to its conventional (and stunted)
territorial representative form – all of which is what conventional conflict
management generally does. It manages rather than resolves conflict, and
sometimes fails even to manage because of built-in contradictory
tendencies to reproduce, even exacerbate, rather than reduce divisions and
conflict (as in partition & undiluted consociationalism).
•
But for governments trying to manage these conflicts, consociationalism has
the great advantage of not being radical: just change some of the political
institutions and deal with elites, rather than re-structure state and society.
Deal with symptoms more than causes.
•
The powers who ‘manage’ and impose ‘solutions’ are typically caught in
same nationalist 'territorial trap‘ and share the same flawed assumptions as
the nationalists they are ‘managing’ – may indeed provide them with models
of 'national success‘. They are in a weak position to 'preach’ or ‘teach’.
Some more conclusions
•
But we should not simply counterpose ‘resolution’ to ‘management’, or
‘integration’ to ‘consociation’ – in both cases the latter is a prerequisite for
the former.
•
‘Peace-processes’ are better seen and planned dynamically, as moving
from an emphasis on consociational measures to end the more serious
violence and conflict, towards concentrating on politics which encourage the
growth of ‘political communities’ which straddle, cross-cut, under-cut or
transcend ethnic divisions and territorial borders.
•
The resolution of ethno-national conflict will not come from moral appeals to
agree a ‘compromise’ or an ‘integrated identity’. Paradoxically, it will only
come through other, more productive disagreements and conflicts about
other issues on a non-ethno-national, non-territorial basis.
•
Good fences do not make good neighbours. But nor can ‘weak fences’.
Only the neighbours themselves can.