Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, and: Multinational Democracies (review)

These two important books show the extent to which philosophers have entered into and perhaps come to dominate discussions of nationalism and citizenship. There is a sense in which Charles Taylor (who contributes an incisive Foreword to the Gagnon and Tully volume) created a paradigm exemplified in these volumes. If politics could be based on mutual recognition, Taylor argued in true Hegelian spirit, it would be possible to allow for diversity of varied kinds within a shared political space. Unquestionably the most sustained attempt to spell out what this means has been made by Will Kymlicka, at his best aware at one of the same time of the demands of minorities and of the functional needs of the larger political unit. An altogether more idiosyncratic position is that of James Tully whose introduction to the Gagnon and Tully volume offers something like a Habermasian view of the potential future of countries that contain different nations and cultures. As long as everything is open to question by all parties at all times, Tully suggests, stability — or perhaps, in the words Count Taaffe (Prime Minister of Austria in the Dual Monarchy of Austro-Hungary), "bearable dissatisfaction" — can be maintained. This general view — that multinational arrangements can be created, indeed that they may be on the increase — is bound to interest sociologists. As a corollary of this position, powerfully stated in Kymlicka's most recent work, is that Canada is an exemplar of this new world, with institutional and moral lessons ready for export, it behoves readers of this journal to take these books very seriously indeed.

They need not fear that philosophers have taken over their trade. Consider the amusing schizophrenia present in the Tully and Gagnon volume. If the formal theory is that multinational democracies are on the increase, general considerations together with the contents of many of the individual chapters — for the most part written, it should be noted, by a distinguished set of social scientists — severely qualify the theory, making it an attractive prescription rather than a description of actually existing reality. First, concentration is on Spain, Belgium, Canada and the United Kingdom. One point to be made here is that most countries in the advanced world (and in central Europe and the now in the Balkans) are not multinational democracies: very much to the contrary, the liberal capitalist democracy rests, as thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Ernest Gellner realized, on a very high level of national homogeneity, often achieved though cleansing of one sort or another. A second point is that it is somewhat absurd to take Belgium as a positive case given that the shared political shell has all but gone — at little cost, it should be added, given the constraints and benefits of life within the European Union. Further, both Canada and the United Kingdom face real difficulties, suggesting that Spain is an exception, in need of explanation, rather than the harbinger of some new social norm. Second, progress in the affairs of nations normally imposes costs. Dominique Arel makes this especially clear when dealing with Catalonia and Quebec: secessionist nationalism may fade in both cases precisely because of the imposition of harsh and illiberal laws that protect Catalan and French. Third, several authors, especially Norman and Gagnon, point to the difficulties of negotiation given that "a single reality" is perceived in completely different ways. In this context, it is all too obvious that endless discussion is precisely the condition from which people sometimes shy away: intellectuals might like to talk, but others — as in Quebec since 1995 — often like a relatively settled frame so as to free attention for dull normality. Fourth, some of the panaceas suggested in the general frame are deeply flawed, as several authors, notably Requejo, Simeon and Conway, and Coulombe, realize: the federalism of regions rarely satisfies nations longing for asymmetry, whilst federalism as a whole...