Thoughts on Kosovo, Mill, and Walzer

Last week I was drawn into a couple of fascinating threads on Crooked Timber, both started by Chris Bertram and both focusing on the question of what, if anything, Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia means for the future of national-building and national separation (to say nothing of what it more immediately may mean for Russian and European politics--for a good summary of that, see Doug Muir's thoughts here). Chris started the discussion focusing on the matter of secession, and bringing up the work of Allen Buchanan as part of an argument suggesting that Kosovo's claim of independence could be (and thus presumably should be) justified--though not just another potentially troubling burst of arguably legitimate ethnic-based nationalism, but as the exercise of a "remedial right," given that "[t]he Kosovo Albanians...have both suffered injustice and have no good reason to believe that a just settlement is possible within Serbia." Soon though, both threads spread to discussions of self-determination--and therefore nationalism and democracy--in general. I wanted to put my comments on both threads into a somewhat coherent form, and so let me try to make a few broad points here:

1) Chris is rather hostile, to say the least, to the idea of "self-defining 'nations' complete with normalizing ideologies," preferring instead "multiethnic states if possible, separatism only if strictly necessary"; hence he doesn't want to read anything more into the Kosovo secession than he needs to. He has, of course, a very good point: ethnic separatism has in recent history been the cause of an enormous amount of violence and deprivation, and the ideological promise of "national self-determination" has encouraged more than a few racial/ethnic/tribal elites over the past century to use their influence over local economies and media to panic or stratify their fellows into narrow groupings over which they then somewhat plausibly claim rights of sovereignty. Arguably, that's the whole recent history of the former Yugoslavia in a nutshell. But in the end, it's too simple a story: it's just too easy a response to dismiss what is such a major element of the modern consciousness--our many often convoluted attempts to articulate and/or imagine a national identity (as I wrote long ago, the whole question of "'people-making,' or imagining, or articulating, depending on whether you prefer a more or less constructivist or essentialist approach to the question of peoplehood," is a complicated one to get a handle on)--as "petty bigotry." The truth is that the sort of ideals that many would like to see take the place of ethnic or tribal or racial self-identification and determination--things like neutral state-based "democracy" and "human rights"--are themselves parasitic upon, or at the very least historically developed from, recognitions that are much less abstract, much more tied (though admittedly in an often murky aesthetic/expressive way) to the everyday performed and seen and spoken raw material of our lives. Democracy requires a demos, and for a people to come to a collective self-understanding of itself as capable of self-government, it needs to have been able at some point to "bound" itself, to see itself as a body with the capacity for, much less the right to, sovereignty. How does it erect those boundaries? Obviously much of the time they've been erected from the outside by the brute force of invading empires and colonizing states; but those aren't the cases under consideration here--were considering how a people can come to the capacity of self-recognition internally, on their own. So, when it comes to matters of borders...well, race, tribal ties and ethnicity are obvious and very basic possibilities; other thinkers however (like J.G. Herder) point us towards religion and language as more expansive possibilities, ones which potentially open the way to a mixing of national apprehension with the sort of egalitarian perceptions most moderns would prefer to see. (Which, arguably, is the deepest explanation of how America's own "national idea" came to be.) Either way, however, if there doesn't come to be a ground upon which a people can properly determine itself to be such, then there isn't going to be a consciousness of rights or democracy which said people will be able to elaborate, act upon, and commit themselves to.

Obviously, this doesn't mean that we should fall back defeated by some historical imperative or logic of Enlightenment when, say, a group of Albanians start crowing about self-determination. The debate--both the theoretical and the practical, political one--about identity, community, and sovereignty, and the prudence of striving for such, is, as I said above, a complicated one within which you can find a great many different plausible arguments. In the comments, Chris chooses to contrast "citizenship" with ethnicity insofar as recognition and identity are concerned, and suggests that the American and (to a lesser degree) British and French national self-understandings do a fair-to-good job of prioritizing the former over the latter, in contrast to the German self-understanding, which doesn't. Here he's invoking the distinction between "civic" (or "cultural" or "liberal") and "ethnic" (or "illiberal") nationalism, the idea being that some forms of self-understanding or peoplehood are going to be premised upon open-minded notions of shared social and civic life and thus be nonexclusivist, whereas others won't be; they will focus upon nontransferable blood and soil ("blut und boden") matters that will always seek to exclude. There is a great deal of scholarship on this point, going both ways, far too much to synthesize here. All I can say to this is that, while surely the differences here are real and worth emphasizing, I fear that Chris and others who think like him are perhaps failing to appreciate what being acculturated, being socialized into a culture, and thus being able to recognize what it is and what it is not and be a part of it, fully involves: their ideas are not capturing the unspoken, performative, ritualistic, participatory, and/or expressive aspects to peoplehood. That doesn't mean I think all national identities must, by definition, be exclusive, or to apologize for those that are; it simply means that, to the extent one wants to encourage the formation of peoples that might see themselves collectively as sovereign and thus may possibly govern themselves democratically, one shouldn't draw too firm of a justificatory line between purely and hypothetically "civic" markers on the one hand, and locally embedded ones (historical, linguistic, religious, ethnic, whatever) on the other; there are important ways in which any of those might in fact contribute to the formation of a liberal and/or democratic state. (I'm drawing on a lot of different thinkers, but mostly Craig Calhoun, Ranjoo Seodu Herr, Eric Kaufmann, and Bernard Yack, in coming to these conclusions.)

2) Perhaps predictably, John Stuart Mill makes an appearance in the discussion. Mill made very clear his belief that the education of peoples for representative self-government had to involve their being in a position to receive such an education collectively, forming and sharing public opinions that are clearly their own and not someone else's; as he wrote in Considerations of Representative Government (chp. 16), "One hardly knows what any division of the human race should be free to do, if not to determine, with which of the various collective bodies of human beings they choose to associate themselves....Among a people without [this] fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary for the working of representative government, cannot exist." This statement and others of his which defend the idea of mono-ethnic societies--which Chris suggests was one of the inevitabilities of the "disastrous doctrine of national self-determination"--is contrasted to the position of Lord Acton as detailed in an article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta that Chris praises, an article which suggests that Acton properly understood that it was "more important to secure liberal protections than link ethnicity to democracy"

Well, as should be clear from above, I would dispute that "link[ing] ethnicity to democracy" is all or even mostly what the doctrine of self-determination involves; yes, of course, that often takes place, but it isn't necessarily solely what takes place, and when it takes place it doesn't necessarily enlist a cultural understanding that is illiberal in all ways. But leaving that huge, complicated debate aside, my point here is actually a rather narrow one. I'm hardly a major defender of Mill; that his writings on self-determination were joined at the hip to a 19th-century condescension and/or racism regarding certain peoples is undeniable. He was, despite his modifications of doctrine throughout his life, a utilitarian until the end, and as he simply couldn't imagine the utility of being a member of an uncultivated community as opposed to a metropolitan one--Basques or Bretons or Scottish Highlanders, "sulk[ing] on [their] own rocks, the half-savage relic[s] of past times, revolving in [their] own little mental orbit, without participation or interest in the general movement of he world"--he didn't grant any real weight to the claims or attachments of such peoples. That being said, however, think about what his arguments may suggest about demands for independence coming from Kosovo. The context in which Mill was writing was one in which the Bretons and Scots had long since been formally absorbed by the French and British states; Mill, while having already granted the general principle of self-determination as an important element of democratic expression and development, wondered nonetheless why on earth these poor benighted Bretons and Scots complained. Far better, he thought, for them to accept the advantages offered them through governments which have already gone through and benefited from their own national articulations and struggles. Similarly, Kosovo is a region that has contested its incorporation within a post-Yugoslavian environment; in pushing for independence, it is challenging a larger, legitimated polity. I'm not defending Mill by any means, but still: if he was willing criticize the Bretons and Scots, then doesn't that mean he’s not quite the self-determination absolutist which Mehta’s comment makes him out to be? Doesn't that mean that, contra any supposedly stark distinction between himself and Acton, Mill as well was thinking--however condescendingly--about the realities of self-government, and where one is most likely to find the space for democratic development? I'm not enlisting Mill either for or against the Kosovars; just pointing out that Mehta's duality is, again, much to simple for historical and contemporary reality.

3) Finally, Michael Walzer came up on the thread, specifically his collection of essays What It Means To Be An American. Walzer's actually been on my mind a bit lately, thanks to some comments from Jacob Levy and Damon Linker (the latter having caught a recent speech of Walzer's at the University of Pennsylvania, and who referred me to a piece on Walzer's latest book from the NYRB that I'd missed). Walzer is an important thinker to bring up in this matter, because his bona fides span the debate: he's been a strong defender of the principle of sovereignty as both a potentially democratic expression of local/national identities and communities and as a tool for preventing exploitation, but is also deeply liberal in his commitment to egalitarianism and justice. The question at hand is, does he believe the latter necessitates a purely civil form of the former?

That Walzer is firm believer in the legitimacy and the enviableness of America's civic accomplishment: it is a good thing, he affirms, that America is not a "homeland," but rather a place defined as a people "only by virtue of having come together"; as he writes at greater length: "These abstract ideals [liberty, equality, and republicanism] made for a politics separated not only from religion but from culture itself or, better, from all the particular forms in which religious and national culture was, and is, expressed" ("What Does it Mean to Be an 'American'?" pgs. 24, 27, 30). But, he almost immediately goes on to note that he doesn't "want to claim that American politics was not qualified in important ways by British Protestantism," to say nothing of all the other religious and cultural movements that burrowed their way inside what describes as "this strange America"--strange because this most patriotic of nations actually doesn't appear to have what it takes for any real kind of nationalism (pgs. 31, 46, 47). And sometimes he will admit to some regrets on this point--regrets that take him back to a desire to construct truly sovereign democratic communities, which he acknowledges will require civic attachments and virtues that will require more than just a liberal public square:

Among a people like ourselves, a community of patriots would have to be sustained by politics alone. I don't know if such a community is possible. Judged by the theory and practice of the classical republics, its creation certainly seems unlikely: how can a common citizenship development if there is not other commonality--no ethnic solidarity, no established religion, no unified cultural tradition?...Given liberal society and culture, certain sorts of dedication may well lie beyond our reach. But that's not to say that we cannot, so to speak, enlarge the time and space within which we live as citizens. This is the working principle of democratic socialism: that politics can be opened up, rates of participation significantly increased, decision-making really shared, without a full-scale attack on private life and liberal values, without a religious revival or a cultural revolution. ("Civility and Civic Virtue," pgs. 98-99).

So yes, Walzer finds America's accomplishment unique and admirable...but he also sees it as needing to find something political--in a rather deep and redistributive sense--to supplement the sort of civic strength that its plurality prevents it from developing internally on its own. I would take this point, and deepen its historical force; I would argue that the history of populism and progressivism and egalitarianism in this country reflects at least in part the abiding influence of tight communities motivated by common bonds--whether they be poor white farmers from the Great Plains or exploited African-Americans from the South--extending their self-generated understandings of dignity and democracy to the wider world, strengthening the country along the way. Which is, perhaps, just a rather pretentious way of making the same point: that even we prudential liberals and social egalitarians have to make room for, perhaps even have to depend upon, the emergence of tight attachments--dare I say self-determining attachments--if we're going to see self-government and justice make any kind of headway.

This actually comes out fairly clearly in Jeremy Waldron's review of Walzer's thought that I mentioned above. He writes that "political community is the heart of Walzer's writing," and that he believes "communal integrity has a nonrelative claim upon us"; we morally and prudentially ought to, in short, allow all (or almost all) self-identifying communities the space to work out (and deepen, and thereby perhaps through an education in democracy extend) their own identities and claims. What others may see as a clear-cut issue of humanitarian justice (a state oppressing its ethnic minorities, a violence-prone secession movement gaining power), Walzer sees--at least in many cases--as more of the "traditional philosophical dislike for politics." Waldron adds:

Even in the absence of democracy, Walzer wants to hang on to the principle of self-determination. A political community "is self-determining even if its citizens struggle and fail to establish free institutions, but it has been deprived of self-determination if such institutions are established by an intrusive neighbor." The compromises that people make, the sacrifices they forgo, may trouble a philosopher who is obsessed with human rights. But "I don't believe," says Walzer, "that the opposition of philosophers is a sufficient ground for military invasion."

Walzer is a careful and complicated thinker, as anyone should be who dares to take on the thorny and often discomforting mess of cultural and civic issues that surround claims to self-determination, claims which are central to figuring out what to think about Kosovo (or for that matter, Iraq, or even the U.S., as it tries to take care of its own issues while allowing itself to be dragged into others' as well). If I've learned anything from the past five years of trying to apply my knowledge of political theory to world affairs, it is to not assume that I can really see to the ends of the particular rabbit holes I feel obliged to dive down, not the least reason for which the possible violence I may be doing to those who go down (or may be dragged down) the hole along with me. Self-determining nationalities may not be entirely theoretically justifiable, or even politically desirable, but they do, undeniably, play a part in making a people sovereign, capable of deciding where they want to go and which hole they want to go down. People who would warn the Albanians about the very legitimate risks facing them after having declared independence, or who argue about what Mill or Walzer or anyone else might say to them about such, need to keep that in mind.