Robin James Shevlane, Queen Mary College, University of London, National
Minorities and Theories of the Modern State
Introduction
The implication of Ernest Gellner’s oft-cited description of nationalism as a political
principle, ‘which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’
(Gellner 1983: 1), is that all nationalists ultimately seek their own independent ‘nationstate’.
The proposition that nationalism is by definition oriented toward the
establishment of independent statehood finds its most eminent advocate in Eric
Hobsbawm, according to whom a nation ‘is a social entity only insofar as it relates to a
certain kind of modern territorial state, the ‘nation-state, and it is pointless to discuss
nation and nationalism except insofar as both relate to it.’ (Hobsbawm 1990: 9-10).
However, a brief look at contemporary sub-state nationalist movements operating
within Western Europe suggests the need for a re-evaluation of Hobsbawm’s claim. In
Spain, the Catalan nationalist coalition (CiU), whose leader Jordi Pujol has been reelected as President of Catalonia six times, officially supports Spanish unity and orients
its demands not toward independent statehood but toward a lesser degree of political
autonomy (Guibernau 1999:43). In the United Kingdom, the Home Rule tradition within
Scotland boasts a long history of non-separatist nationalism dating back to at least the
1890s, and since the mid-1970s a majority of the Scottish electorate have consistently
expressed a preference for political devolution over the alternatives of either no
devolution or independence (Keating 2001: 61).
What these examples demonstrate is that sub-state nationalist movements are
increasingly orientated toward a conception of self-government that falls short of
independent statehood, a demand that if satisfied represents a fundamental challenge to
the structure and assumptions underlying the traditional nation-state model.
This
suggests a need for re-thinking the nation-state model and perhaps even its replacement
with a novel state type better capable of accommodating internal national diversity in the
form of political autonomy arrangements.
Rather than attempt to construct such a new model of the state, I content myself in
this paper to the more modest aim of analysing some of the principle features of the
nation-state model with a view to elucidating the potential points of conflict between it
and the political demands of national minorities residing within the state’s borders. It
should be made clear from the outset that the focus of my analysis is the state half of the
nation-state equation, and draws primarily on the sociological theories of the state
developed by Max Weber, Anthony Giddens, Michael Mann and Gianfranco Poggi, none
of whom construct a fully developed theory of the nation or nationalism within their
research.
Violence and Sovereignty
The state, according to Max Weber’s celebrated definition, is ‘a human community that
(successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given
territory’ (Weber 1970:78). To argue, as Weber does, that the state be defined according
to its monopolistic possession of the means of violence is not to comment on the extent or
regularity to which the state resorts to the deployment of violence in the maintenance of
its rule. Rather, its intention is to highlight the fact that violence is the means specific to
the state; the method to which only states can legitimately turn as a last resort. Control
over the means of violence is ‘conceptually intrinsic’ to the political power of the state
(Poggi 1990:5).
Weber’s definition can thus be understood as expressing the idea that ultimate
political authority – in other words, sovereignty – is the exclusive prerogative of the state.
The state’s monopolistic access to the means of legitimate violence is testament to its
status as ultimate political authority.
The contention that sovereignty inheres in the organisation of the state is
incompatible with the claim of sub-state nationalists to a right of self-determination, for
the existence of such a right would imply that the national community, rather than the
state, were the ultimately sovereign entity. Indeed, such is precisely the argument of sub-
state nationalists, who reject the doctrine of state-sovereignty in favour of a conception of
national sovereignty.
Any state that attempts to assert the doctrine of state sovereignty by way of a
response to the political demands of sub-state nationalists must confront the fact that one
of the founding principles of liberal democracy is that the political authority of the state
derives from, and is continually dependent upon, the consent of the people. Sovereignty,
in other words, ultimately resides in the people in the form of popular sovereignty, a
doctrine that outlined by John Locke in the following terms:
‘all Power given with trust for the attaining an end, being limited by that end, whenever that end is
manifestly neglected, or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the Power devolve into the
hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security.
And thus the Community perpetually retains a Supream Power’ (Locke 1998:367, my emphasis).
The argument that the state cannot justify the denial of sub-state national
minorities’ political demands on the grounds that the state is sovereign was articulated by
the Scottish nationalist Canon Kenyon Wright speaking at the Scottish Convention in
1990, who declared to his audience; ‘What happens if that other voice we all know so
well responds by saying, we say no. We say no and we are the state. Well, we say yes
and we are the people’ (Devine 1999:613).
The tension, however, lies not in a dispute over whether or not sovereignty should
be considered popular, for unionists and nationalists alike are as often as not committed
to democratic principles. Rather, at issue is the way in which, and by whom, the ‘people’
itself is defined. According to the model of the traditional nation-state, the demos is
constituted by the entire citizenry of the state and is usually, although not always, defined
in unitary terms. It is therefore given to the state to define the identity of the nation that
is taken as the principle unit of political discourse and practice. The state employs the
principle of popular sovereignty to assert itself as a nation-state in the sense of being the
property of a sovereign people conceived of as a pre-political entity (MacCormick
1999:125).
Centralization and Unitariness
Anthony Giddens criticizes Weber’s definition of the state for failing to recognize that a)
it is only modern states that lay successful claim to the monopoly of the means of
violence, and b) only within modern states does the administrative scope of the state
apparatus correspond directly with territorial boundaries (Giddens 1985:18). Pre-modern
states, by contrast, are essentially segmental in character (Ibid:4).
The modern state’s successful transcendence of the segmentalism that was a
chronic feature of the pre-modern state expresses the essentially centralized nature of
politics within modern states. The modern state, according to Michael Mann, is ‘a
differentiated set of institutions and personnel embodying centrality, in the sense that
political relations radiate to and from the center’ (Mann 1993:13, my emphasis). In
similar vein, Gianfranco Poggi argues that the modern state is centralized in the sense
that it is ‘concerned and committed to a distinctive, unified and unifying set of interests
and purposes’ (Poggi 1990:19).
This is, of course, intimately related to the doctrine of state sovereignty as
analysed above.
If the modern state is of necessity a centralized and functionally
integrated organisation, then the demands of sub-state nationalities in favour of a
decentralized and divided structure of political authority are highly problematic. More
accurately, whilst decentralization is not in principle incompatible with the dominant
nation-state model, the existence of rival power-containers is. Consequently, to the
extent that political power is decentralized, it is done so as the voluntary and reversible
grant of the central state.
Sub-state collectivities, argues Poggi, ‘may hold other forms of social power; but
they cannot exercise political power, except in the capacity of agents of the state itself, or
by influencing the activities of such agents’ (Poggi 1990:22).
However, from the
perspective of sub-state national minorities, the decentralization of power to autonomous
political institutions, is a reflection of the national community’s right to selfdetermination, and cannot be legitimately denied by a central state whose authority the
sub-state national minority contest.
The model of the modern state, as depicted by Giddens, Mann and Poggi, is
therefore incapable of affording genuine autonomy to sub-state national minorities, as
this conflicts with the imperative that all political activities must originate from and refer
to the state (Poggi 1990:22). Political autonomy institutionalised on the basis of sub-state
national minorities’ right to self-determination implies a system of divided political
authority that is in direct contradiction to a fundamental imperative of the traditional
interpretation of the modern state; that political authority be unitary and centralized.
Administrative Capacity
In his theory of the modern state, Michael Mann distinguishes between two dimensions
of state power; infrastructural and despotic (Mann 1993:59). Infrastructural power refers
to the state’s institutional capacity to implement decisions, whereas despotic power refers
to the distributive power of state elites over civil society. The impressive strength of
modern states is infrastructural, as evidenced by its capability to influence the most
intimate aspects of the day-to-day lives of ordinary citizens (Giddens 1985:10). In terms
of despotic power, the modern state is relatively weak. This, moreover, is a direct
consequence of its expanded infrastructural power, which, by bringing the state and civil
society into a closer and more direct relationship, enables civil society groups more
opportunities to influence the state’s activities (Mann 1990:59).
Giddens’ terms this phenomenon the dialectic of control and suggests that its
operation within the context of infrastructurally strong modern states causes them to be
inherently polyarchic, that is, democratic in the sense of being continuously responsive to
the preferences of its citizens considered as political equals (Giddens 1985:11, 199).
Two points relevant to the politics of sub-state national minorities flow from this
observation. First, if the polyarchic nature of the modern state is ultimately grounded in
the dialectic of control, it is likely that, even given the limitations of majoritarianism,
sub-state national minorities will continue to find openings through which to influence
the activities of the state. In such instances as a large proportion of a particular national
minority demonstrate a consistent desire for some measure of political autonomy, it is
difficult for a modern state to resist accommodating the demand.
Second, the tightening of the state-society relationship that is a corollary of the
infrastructurally strong modern state, by affording civil society a greater influence over
the state, politicizes the populations’ internal sense of community. Henceforth the state is
compelled to ‘represent’ its citizens internal sense of community, as the tightening statesociety relation ‘cag[es] social relations over the national rather than the local-regional or
transnational terrain’ (Mann 1993:61).
However, the extent to which social relations actually are caged over the national
terrain is dependent on the degree of civil society autonomy that sub-state national
minorities are able to retain. When national minorities enjoy a significant degree of
autonomy in the sphere of civil society, as was the case in Scotland following the Treaty
of Union 1707, which left intact Scotland’s distinctive religious, educational and legal
institutions, they will be in a much stronger position to advance a claim for selfgovernment.
Legitimacy
According to Weber, the modern state’s legitimacy is primarily of a rational-legal type.
That is to say, it is predominately based on the widespread existence of a belief in the
‘legality’ of its order, norms and rules, rather than the charisma of its leader(s) or by
reference to tradition (Weber 1970:330).
The modern state is an example of an
‘associative’, more so than it is a ‘communal’ group, meaning that a ‘rationally motivated
adjustment of interests’, rather than a subjective feeling of belonging or togetherness, is
the source of its legitimacy (Ibid:130).
Whilst Weber is correct to highlight the greater importance of a rational
acceptance of a consistent set of abstract laws for the legitimacy of the modern state, as
compared to its pre-modern predecessors, it is not the case that subjective bonds of
belonging are unimportant. As has already been indicated, the direct way in which the
modern state governs means it must ‘represent’ civil society’s internal sense of
community. This, indeed, is what makes it a nation-state – it is legitimate insofar as it
can uphold a claim to be the political/institutional affirmation of the nation.
The relationship between legitimacy and nationality that thus prevails in the
modern state problematizes the existence of heterogeneity within civil society. Since,
however, heterogeneity is the rule rather than the exception, all modern states embark
upon a programme of nation-building designed to strengthen their legitimacy by
homogenizing the citizenry. It is in the context of states that have more or less failed in
their attempts at cultural homogenisation and nation-building that minority nationalist
movements, which challenge the unitary state’s monopoly of political authority, emerge
(Guibernau 1999:60, 71).
The link between legitimacy and nationality, and the pervasiveness of state-led
nation-building policies, is of central significance to understanding the politics of substate nationalism, for it shows that minority nationalism arises in response to state
nationalism. When exclusive attention is given to the state’s associative features, at the
expense of its communal, it appears as if minority nationalists seek to insert nationalism
into a political context in which it is otherwise absent. For this very reason, the political
autonomy demands of national minorities are often perplexing to members of the
majority nation, for whom the process of national integration is assumed to be an
accomplished fact (McCrone 2001).
When the dialectical nature of the relationship between state and minority
nationalism is recognized, it becomes less tenable to portray sub-state nationalist
movements as necessarily particularist and divisive. Contrary to Hobsbawm’s assertion
that minority nationalism is inevitably of an ‘ethnic’ type and thus an affront to efforts at
working toward the common good (Hobsbawm 1990), there is no a priori reason for the
assumption that sub-state nationalisms are necessarily less progressive than the statesupported nationalisms with which they enter into a dialectical relationship.
Conclusion
As I have attempted to show, the ideal-typical model of the nation-state is, for a number
of reasons, pathologically unable to accommodate the demands of sub-state national
minorities who demand a degree of political autonomy on the basis of a claim to
represent a distinct and separate demos. As it is unlikely that the phenomenon of substate nationalism will disappear, partly owing to the changed operation of the dialectic of
control under modern conditions, the dominant interpretation of the state as an
organisation in command of undivided sovereignty and committed to a centralized (and
centralizing) structure of political authority will increasingly come under strain.
In this respect, real-life developments are outpacing theory.
In the United
Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Spain, and Finland, to name but a few, national minorities
enjoy varying degrees of political autonomy.
In the case of Scotland, although
devolution is in principle the voluntary and reversible grant of the central state, in
practice any attempt by Westminster to abolish the Scottish Parliament would trigger a
constitutional crisis which the central state could not endure (Bogdanor 2001).
Moreover, the right of the United Kingdom’s constituent nationalities to unilaterally
secede from the union, should a majority of their population express such a wish, is now
accepted by all the major political Parties.
In the search for new theories of the state that are unbeholden to the doctrine of
undivided, unitary and centralized sovereignty, the proliferation of transnational political
organisations such as the European Union and the United Nations offers something of a
template. As the nation-state’s capacity to control its own affairs continues to be eroded
by globalizing tendencies, the idea of political authority as ‘layered and shared’ replaces
the model of the traditional unitary nation-state (McCrone 2001:2). It is, as yet, unclear
precisely what a fully ‘post-sovereign’ state would look like, and what the effects on
civic coherence would be. However, as this paper has hopefully demonstrated, the
traditional nation-state model is no longer fit for purpose in a globalized world in which,
just as was the case in medieval Europe, divided and overlapping sites of political
authority are increasingly the norm.