Types of democracy and modes of conflict management in ethnically divided societies

The Western democratic nation–state is a model state in the world state system. It appears in two variants: individual–liberal and republican–liberal. Both are grounded on individual rights only. In the West there are also several cases of consociational democracy in which separate national communities and their collective rights are recognised. Since World War II the liberal nation–state has been under global and internal pressures to change. It has kept its basic character but partially decoupled nation and state and recognised group differences. Along with individual–liberal democracy, republican–liberal democracy and consociational democracy, multicultural democracy and ethnic democracy are taking shape as alternative types of democracy. This fivefold typology can contribute to the fields of comparative politics and comparative ethnicity. It serves as a broad framework for the analysis of five states in this special issue: Northern Ireland, Estonia, Israel, Poland and Turkey.     

The ethnic democracy debate: how unique is Israel?

ABSTRACT. Sammy Smooha's “ethnic democracy” model challenged the notion of the uniqueness of Israel by setting it as the archetype of a special type of democracy: “ethnic democracy”. But contrary to what Smooha suggests, Israel's national identity is indeed unique. In each of Smooha's East European examples, besides the concept of a core ethnic nation, exists the notion of a civic territorial nation, which makes possible the integration or ‘assimilation’ into the dominant culture of those who are not members of the core ethnic nation. Yet, Israel's national identity does not recognise the existence of a civic territorial nation and makes no provisions for the integration or assimilation of non‐Jews, especially Arabs, into the dominant Hebrew culture. Setting Israel as an archetype for his model prevents Smooha from exploring the possibility that, unlike Israel, East European “ethnic democracy” could be a transitional phase towards a liberal democracy.     

Untangling liberal democracy from territoriality: from ethnic/civic to ethnic/territorial nationalism

The term ‘civic nationalism’ as it is used today in nationalism studies is misleading because it combines territorial collective identity with liberal‐democratic values. As such, for example, it does not provide much insight into the comparison of Azerbaijani and Georgian concepts of national identity. Azerbaijan, arguably an authoritarian country, has used unconditional citizenship by birth on territory (jus soli) and refused to naturalize Azeri co‐ethnics from Georgia. Georgia, seemingly a developed liberal democracy, hasn't practiced any jus soli, has bestowed citizenship on Georgian co‐ethnics abroad and refused it to its ethnic minorities. These two cases testify to the need to revise the term ‘civic nationalism’, inapplicable to many, especially non‐Western, empirical cases of national identity. By establishing distinct historical narratives based on premodernist sources, the article argues that the ethnic/territorial tension is premodern, which explains why civic nationalism has a premodern (territoriality) and a modern (liberal‐democratic values) component. Territorial collective identity, in its contrast to an ethnic one, has deep historical roots and needs to be separated from the overall umbrella of civic nationalism. Such an approach resolves many current theoretical objections to ethnic/civic dichotomy, a ubiquitous, but still insufficiently understood, heuristic tool.     

The model of ethnic democracy: Response to Danel

This is a response to Adam Danel's critique of my model of ethnic democracy. Danel argues that the model fails as an ideal type and as a comparative tool because ethnic democracy does not exist anywhere. I show, however, that there are indeed quite a few cases of ethnic democracy, although some are partial and some historical, including Estonia, Latvia, Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1972, Macedonia from 1991 to 2001, interwar Poland, Slovakia, and Malaysia. Danel does not address the real functions of the model as a theory of the emergence and stability of ethnic democracy and as a conceptual scheme for the comparative study of ethnic democracies. The theory accounts for the developments of ethnic democracy in these states and for the conditions for its success and failure. Danel also tries to show that Israel is a Western liberal democracy by overstressing its liberal traits and the non-liberal characteristics of Western democracies. I argue that Israel's ideology, design, policies, and practices as the homeland of the Jewish people, most of whom are not its citizens, and as the “property” of the Israeli-Jewish majority, means that it has a second-rate ethnic democracy and as a state and society does not qualify as Western.     

The acid test? Competing theses on the nationality – democracy nexus and the case of Switzerland†

ABSTRACT. This article deals with the connection between nationality and democracy and explores the role Switzerland plays in the scholarly debate on this question. It identifies three main theses – liberal‐nationalist, liberal‐multinationalist and liberal‐postnationalist – and shows that each of them uses the Swiss case to claim empirical support. It then analyses the connections between nationality and democracy in Switzerland and demonstrates that the country is neither multinational nor postnational, but is best characterised as a mononational state. These findings expose the fallacy of using Switzerland to claim support for either the multinational or the postnational thesis and call for a reconsideration of them. Additionally, they show that “civic nationalism” and “civic republicanism” can be conflated and that a predominantly civic nation is viable and sustainable and is not necessarily an ethnic nation in disguise. The Swiss case thus provides qualified empirical support for the liberal‐nationalist thesis.     

Multicultural democracy: can it work?

After differentiating multicultural democracy (MD) from other types of democracy (liberal, consociational, ethnic and Herrenvolk), this article explores both the conditions favouring MD and the problems it faces. The main obstacle to MD is the model of the ‘nation–state’, which has been the basis of legitimacy in most liberal democracies since the French Revolution. Multiculturalism has existed in many non–democratic states (such as colonial and traditional empires) and in city–states. A distinction is made between minimal MD (the simple tolerance and legal protection of cultural diversity) and maximal MD (the celebration, encouragement and official support thereof). The article concludes that minimal MD is the more feasible of the two, and that political and social conditions for it are the most favourable in urban environments, especially in city–states.     

The Macedonian–Albanian political frontier: the re‐articulation of post‐Yugoslav political identities

Abstract. The article examines the re‐articulation of national identity in Macedonia since its independence in 1992. Both ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political identities have been engaged in a complex process of redefinition. Two ethnic groups had previously been strongly influenced by the Marxist paradigm and its Yugoslav official interpretation. During the 1990s, the elements of the old paradigm were combined with elements of the new – liberal democratic – concepts of nationhood. While some of the concepts developed within the old Yugoslav framework are still in use, the new liberal‐democratic political paradigm finds it difficult to include them into an official discourse on nationhood. At the same time, introduction of the concepts inherent to the liberal‐democratic paradigm has disturbed the fragile balance achieved through the old Yugoslav narrative. In new circumstances, the ethnic Macedonians transformed themselves from the ‘constitutive nation’ to ‘majority’. However, the ethnic Albanians found it more difficult to accept the status of ‘minority’, which was once (in Yugoslav Marxist narrative) considered to be politically incorrect. Thus, they insist on being recognised as a ‘nation’, equal to ethnic Macedonians. In its essence, the conflict in Macedonia is – to a large extent – a conflict between two different concepts of what is Macedonia and who are Macedonians. The questions posed are: is the minority (ethnic Albanians) part of the nation? Could two nations exist peacefully within one state? The article maps out differences between two different discourses on the identity of the new Macedonian state.     

The last refuge of a scoundrel: patriotism,militarism and the Russian national idea*

In a nation‐state, where ethnic and territorial borders coincide, patriotism may easily have an exclusivist‐nationalist component, and be used to serve the goals of politicians hoping to mobilise the population for destructive goals. In a multinational state like Russia, the militaristic patriotism that Yeltsin's and Putin's administrations promote can also carry that risk. The Russian state leadership's use of a militaristic patriotism as a means to generate popular support risks unleashing ethnic chauvinism and the military domination of civilian institutions. Such phenomena cast doubt on the prospects for Russia's state‐building process to proceed along liberal democratic lines. Non‐governmental organisations, such as Russia's Committee of Soldiers' Mothers , however, have devised an alternative vision of patriotism, relying on rule of law and the observance of civil rights, and thereby hold out a slim hope for reframing Russian patriotism and building a peaceful democracy.     

Ethnic Land Rights in Western Ghana: Landlord–Stranger Relations in the Democratic Era

In Citizen and Subject (1996), Mahmood Mamdani denounced the ‘bifurcated nature’ of the African state which, in his account, imposed ethnic hierarchy and chiefly despotism on rural dwellers while reserving democratic citizenship for the urban minority. Have twenty years of ‘decentralized democracy’ in many countries washed away these distinctions? This article takes up this issue in an analysis of the politics of land allocation and landlord–stranger relations in Western Ghana. An analysis of historical trajectories, and our own field observations and interviews in two Western Region districts, suggest that at the local level, the bifurcated character of political authority that was identified by Mamdani persists in the domain of economic rights. The record also shows that state policies and institutions, rather than working to chip away at ethnic hierarchy and chiefly authority, work at least in part to reproduce these features of the local political economy. In both non‐democratic and democratic eras, Ghana's central government has played an important role in shoring up chiefly and ethnic privilege in the land domain. These local hierarchies influence the practical meaning of democracy and economic liberalization for rural citizens, and should be explored more systematically in future studies of democratic and electoral politics in Ghana and elsewhere.     

The ethnic majority: benign or malign?*

ABSTRACT. Since the consciousness of the ethnic majority frequently develops in the context of the formation of the nation‐state, its tendency to ethnocentrism is thereby inhibited by a commitment to the civic norms associated with the modern state. This gives a potentially benign character to its support for the national integration of ethnic minorities. It is then argued that ethnic majorities can also exhibit a more malign face which has its origin in disillusionment with democracy. The resultant feelings of marginalisation are resolved by the construction of a ressentiment nationalism which reassures the ethnic majority of its virtue and status as the ethnic core, by identifying demonised minorities against which it can mobilise. When this dark face of majoritarian ethnic nationalism is tapped by populist politicians, it sustains violence against ethnic minorities. The argument is illustrated through the example of Thai support for state violence against Muslim demonstrators in Southern Thailand.     

Helping the enemy? Why transnational Jewish philanthropic foundations donate to Palestinian NGOs in Israel

ABSTRACT. This article asks why transnational Jewish donor organisations have been increasingly providing financial support to Palestinian social movements and NGOs in Israel when many of the main recipients are strong critics of the Jewish character of the state and act to promote Palestinian national claims within Israel. The article evaluates a number of plausible explanations, some generated by interest‐centric theories while others are driven by ideational underpinnings. The study concludes that the donors do not view the interests of the Jewish state and the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel (PAI) in zero‐sum terms. Having internalised liberal values of minority rights and pluralism in their countries of residence (mainly the United States), donating foundations believe that the development of the PAI is both normatively desirable and strengthens Israel as a whole because it facilitates the minority's integration into Israel's society and bolsters its civic culture, and therefore, it also contributes to the country's security. These findings are theoretically significant because they demonstrate how the interpretation of communal interest is strongly related to the normative social environment in which transnational activists operate.     

‘Nationalising states’ or nation‐building? a critical review of the theoretical literature and empirical evidence

This article critically surveys the concept of nationalising states first coined by Rogers Brubaker when referring to the policies implemented by post‐communist states. The concept of nationalising states is placed within the context of the traditional literature on nationalism, which divides Europe into a ‘civic West’ and an ‘ethnic East’. The article discusses the concept of nationalising states and questions if it is really any different to nation building which took place from the late eighteenth century onwards in the ‘civic West’. Polyethnic rights are ignored on both sides of the classic ‘West:East’ divide. All civic states are composed of both civic and ethnic factors and the proportional relationship between them depends upon how much progress there has been in democratisation. The article concludes by arguing that the concept of nationalising states has little theoretical value unless it is equated with nation building and no longer selectively applied to only former communist countries. The traditional division of Europe into a ‘civic West’ versus an ‘ethnic East’ requires revision in the light of recent developments in Central and Eastern Europe.     

Citizen Paul

In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul twice evokes his rights as a Roman citizen. When he crosses from the jurisdiction of the Jewish to that of the Roman court, Paul in effect completes his definitive mapping of Jewish law as a local affair whose peculiar practices must be subsumed and refigured by the universal order promised by the Messiah to all nations. Paul's real and epistolary journeys to Rome effect a symbolic translation westward of Jewish civic themes, linking the destiny of the Jews to the European political tradition. Yet Paul does so by evacuating the central mark of membership in Israel, namely the covenant of circumcision, of its continued validity. Rather than either salvaging Paul's universalism as the basis of modern democracy or critiquing his cultural politics, I use the concept of citizenship to begin calculating the consequences of Paul's multiple memberships in three distinct juridical orders: the Hellenistic city‐state, the nation of Israel, and the Roman Empire. My goal is not to re‐localize or de‐legitimate Paul's universalism in the name of individual cultures, but rather to recall the integral dream of universalism to its dialogue with diverse citizenship protocols, including Jewish ones, as well as to disclose the universal dimension of seemingly local civic rituals and routines.     

Giuseppe Mazzini and the democratic logic of nationalism

ABSTRACT. This article brings the thought of Giuseppe Mazzini back into the field of nationalism studies, from which it has been largely missing for a half century. It suggests the following: that Mazzini is much more modern and secular than he is usually portrayed; and that his commitment to liberal policies while rejecting liberal principles suggests that the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism has been misconceived. Nationalism, to Mazzini, was not an end in itself but a means to an end – government of, by and for the people. The demand for such a government was manifested in three popular demands in nineteenth‐century Europe: in the West as democracy, in the East as national sovereignty (the precondition for democracy) and in both East and West as social democracy. Thus nationalism may be instrumental rather than an end in itself, and it may be attributable not to ethnic groups' natural striving for autonomy but to the pursuit of democracy.     

Tolerant majorities,loyal minorities and ‘ethnic reversals’: constructing minority rights at Versailles 1919*

ABSTRACT. The 1919 Versailles Peace Conference created new states in East Central Europe (ECE), but the imperfect implementation of the ‘one nation, one state’ formula resulted in more than twenty‐five million ‘unassimilable’ minorities. With the introduction of majoritarian democracy, this gave rise to what we term ‘ethnic reversals’: ‘formally dominant majorities’ suffered status decline, while previously ‘minoritised majorities’ found new political powers. Accordingly, the 1919 Minorities Treaties sought to manage these ‘ethnic reversals’ by instituting a liberal minority rights regime that tried to create both ‘tolerant majorities’ and ‘loyal minorities’. While the Treaties reflected the influences of Anglo‐American and Anglo‐American Jewish elites – the most notable voices of liberalism in an age of ethnic homogenisation – we suggest that in contexts of historical diversity with little institutionalised liberalism, ‘ethnic reversals’ raise issues that cannot be resolved within liberal conceptions of minority rights that rely solely or primarily on cultural protections.     

A Soviet outpost in Tel Aviv: the Soviet legation in Israel, 1948–53

This article inquires into the reasons why the ideal type of ethnic democracy proposed by Sammy Smooha has no viable manifestation other than Israel. Ethnic democracy exists in the tensions between the two contradictory principles of inclusive and egalitarian democracy, on the one hand, and a preference for a majority ethnic group on the other. The archetype of the ideal type of ethnic democracy is Israel. Yet since the conceptual tool of ideal type was developed by Weber for the purpose of overcoming idiosyncrasies and discovering similarities, other manifestations of the ideal type must be found. Although Smooha presupposes that ethnic democracy is essentially “non-Western,” he finds its manifestations mainly in “Western” democracies. He tries to overcome this difficulty by characterizing Israel as the sole embodiment of the ideal type of ethnic democracy. However, a comparison with West European democracies renders the ethnic attributes of Israeli democracy empirically dubious and logically circular.     

‘They have to abide by our laws … and stuff’: ethnonationalism masquerading as civic nationalism

The long established distinction between civic nationalism and ethnonationalism is useful heuristically to understand different dimensions of nationalism and perhaps track a movement from ethnic forms to civic allegiances, though some have challenged its empirical veracity and others question the normative implications of such a distinction. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the two are elided in everyday discourses about migrants in Australia. We argue suspicion of cultural difference, identified more than three decades ago as the new racism, has given way to talk of the need for migrants to ‘follow the law’. This serves rhetorically to reinforce the notion that migrants, often implied to overlap with the category ‘Muslims’, are insisting on breaking the law and/or changing it and are therefore culturally incompatible with a modern liberal democracy. We argue that since ethnic nationalism, like racism, is out of favour normatively, ethnic nationalist arguments are now superficially concealed beneath the acceptable language of civic nationalism. The manner in which this occurs is mapped discursively using data from a corpus of twenty seven focus groups conducted around Australia.     

Jeremy Bentham's ‘unusually liberal’ representative democracy

Jeremy Bentham is a philosopher who deserves a prominent position in the history of democratic ideas. He not only thought popular rule as a vehicle for materializing his vision of utilitarian society, but also gave us a detailed picture of the basic institutions of the form of democratic governance he envisaged. It is also noteworthy that in his radical system the people, who are the ultimate and undisputable source of all power, are protected from the authoritarian tendencies of state authorities not by a bill of constitutional rights but by a set of enhanced democratic powers that enable them to exercise strict control over their elected representatives. In this essay we present an outline of his ‘unusually liberal’ theory of democracy based on recently published texts and studies as well as a brief assessment of its strong and weak points.     

Between nation and state: `fractured' regionalism among Palestinian-Arabs in Israel

Theories of nationalism have often overlooked variations in ethnic spatial settings, and have too easily subsumed nation and state. But nationalism surfaces in a variety of dynamic forms, such as among homeland ethnic minorities `trapped' within states controlled by others. In such cases `ethnoregional' identities often emerge, combining ethnonational and civic bases of identity with attachment and confinement to specific places or territories. Ethnoregional movements denote spatial and political entities which mobilise for rights, resources and political restructuring within their states. This is the case in the Israeli Jewish `ethnocracy', where an oppressed Palestinian-Arab minority resides in stable but confined enclaves which make up an Arab `fractured' region. The spatial, socioeconomic and political characteristics of the Arab struggle in Israel provide early signs for the emergence of an ethnoregional movement. This movement is creating a new collective identity, situated between Palestinian nation and Jewish nation-state. The ethnoregional interpretation challenges existing accounts which perceive the minority as either politicising or radicalising, and points to a likely Arab struggle for autonomy, equality and the de-Zionisation of Israel. Arab mobilisation also resembles other ethno-regional movements, whose persistent struggles expose embedded contradictions in the global `nation-state' order.     

Constitutional democracy and civic nationalism

ABSTRACT. This article seeks to bring to the fore the intrinsic link between constitutional democracy and the civic nation, relying on Jürgen Habermas's theory of democracy. This theoretical framework will serve as the basis for a communicative understanding of civic nationalism, underscoring the notable role played by language. Attention will be given to the normative dimension that allows for the legitimisation of national divisions of a civic space bound by universal rights. The prime motivation behind this article is thus political‐philosophical, although empirical examples, drawn particularly from the French revolutionary discourse, will be brought to bear. And since a civic nation construed in communicative terms has necessary linguistic implications, cases of multilingual and multinational states will be examined.