Reply to Gillian Brock’s “Liberal Nationalism versus Cosmopolitanism: Locating the Disputes”
It is always difficult to comment on a talk with whose conclusions you wholeheartedly agree. That said, I have some quibbles both about the content and form of Professor Brock’s paper. I shall focus entirely on her discussion of liberal nationalism.
The aim of Brock’s talk is, as she says,
To clarify some of the points of difference and agreement [between liberal nationalists and cosmopolitans] so that more progress can be made in resolving the issues.
This is a worthy goal indeed, but complicated by the fact that liberal nationalists, at least, cannot currently be said to constitute a “camp” which sees itself presenting a unified front against the cosmopolitans. For example, Miller, whom she identifies as “one of the leading liberal nationalists” at the outset, does not, so far as I know, explicitly accept that label. Indeed, if communitarian were itself not a label rejected by many theorists identified by others as such, his position more accurately warrants that appellation. (Brian Barry calls Miller a “disciple” of Michael Walzer.[1])
Miller also prefers to avoid using the term “nationalism,” defending instead what he calls the principle of nationality. Margaret Canovan, another important writer in the field, who offers arguments that parallel those of Miller and Yael Tamir, is similarly circumspect at labeling herself a nationalist. It would be more accurate to say that she argues that practically all prominent liberal theorists, from Rousseau, through Mill to Rawls, are nationalists because of assumptions implicit in their theories. Nationalism is, as she titles one of her papers, “The skeleton in the cupboard.”[2] Few, however, would list Rawls as a prominent “liberal nationalist;” I would be very surprised if he counted himself as such.
Finally, Will Kymlicka, arguably the most prolific of the
writers most often identified as liberal nationalist, seems to prefer the term
“liberal culturist”[3] because his
concerns are only tangentially nationalist.
Indeed, to the extent that we can group writers like these together,
they should be divided into camps within liberal nationalism. For example, as Kymlicka notes, we should
distinguish between those most concerned to defend majority nationalism,
who typically argue for the value of nation states, and those advocating the
rights of minority nations.
Miller is an example of the former, and writers in this group are much
more likely to advocate assimilation programs than are defenders of minority
nations, like Kymlicka. A related axis
of disagreement is between progressive nationalists, like Mill and other
19th Century liberals, who see the nation as a way to transcend
tribal loyalties and a stepping stone to cosmopolitanism (and thus
transitional), and conservative nationalists (again, Miller appears to
be an example), who see the nation as a necessary bulwark against the
culture-sapping forces of the global market.
Finally, there are the culturists, like Margalit and Raz[4]
and Kymlicka, who stress the importance of national rights to protect fragile
cultures, and the subjectivists, who follow Renan’s exhortation that the
nation should be an embodiment of the will of its citizens, a “daily
plebiscite.”[5] These are by no means the only, or even
necessarily the best, lines of division, but since the camps understand
different things by “nation” and have goals that are often at odds with each
other, it is important to note their differing assumptions before evaluating
their arguments.
That said, there is considerable value to Brock’s taxonomical project in that many of the writers concerned to rebut outright dismissal of the value of nations or nationality do marshal often a dizzying plethora of distinct considerations to their cause. Miller, in particular, is guilty of the scattershot approach. It is also true that several themes come up again and again across the range of writers in this field, and Brock has certainly identified key arguments. However, what makes me uncomfortable about Brock’s approach of isolating particular arguments and offering brief general objections to each, is that those arguments are made to appear much weaker than they might otherwise when considered in context. This is, of course, true of many arguments in philosophy, but it is particularly so in discussions of nationalism, a nebulous topic at the best of times.
Brock identifies three important threads in the writings most often identified as liberal nationalist: defense of the value of nationality, defense of partiality to co-nationals, and a call for national self-determination. What she does not make clear is the extent to which positions on each strand are, in the book-length works of the writers usually grouped in this school, outgrowths of an overall account intended to answer as well the metaphysical question of what a nation actually is. That being so, for each position, while it might appear to be open to fairly devastating objections when considered in the abstract, it might emerge that it is the best option available given concessions necessary elsewhere. These writers are far from ideal theorists: they are concerned to start from things “roughly as they are” (in the words of Margalit and Raz) and work up, rather than starting from things as they should be and working down. This is a point that Brock makes, of course, but I don’t think she makes sufficient concession to the nationalists for the effect this methodology necessarily has on each individual argument. Let me give three concrete examples.
First, consider Brock’s criticism of the claim that one’s nation is an appropriate object of partial attitudes because of the services it has provided. Pointing out the distinction, now commonplace in the literature, between state and nation, she goes on:
The benefits purportedly deriving from nations are often ones which are properly state rather [than] national ones. We can, of course, concede the value of belonging to certain kinds of political communities without conceding the value of belonging to national ones. [Brock, 9-10]
This is too quick. While I cannot speak for Hurka, whose claim prompted this response, some (although by no means all, this is far from a monolithic “camp”) defenders of the value of nationality argue that states that are stable are nation-states. So while it is, admittedly, the state that supplies the benefits, they argue that it would not be in a position to offer those benefits without being aligned with a strong nation, which therefore deserves at least some of the credit. So, here is a case where a liberal nationalist claim is made to look like a simple conflation, and while it may indeed be one in this case, the claim can be situated in a more developed account so as not to rest on such a mistake.
If I am right about the above argument, however, more weight rests on the nationalist claim that the nation is a prerequisite for valued institutions like democracy and the welfare state. Brock contends that claims such as these “fail in similar ways”:
Convivial living together does require considerable social capital. We do need some shared sense of trust, solidarity, and shared values for well-functioning democracies and responsible governance, but it is not the case that only shared nationality can do the job. First, it is not clear that common nationality is necessary (or indeed sufficient) to generate these, since all we need are some shared values and sharing values is not the same as sharing nationality. Second, it is not clear why the social capital can’t be more consciously generated amongst larger groups. [Brock, 8]
Brock is surely right on both counts, but nationalists can, with some justice, stand back and ask for viable alternatives. While it is certainly true that people can on occasion be very generous to individuals living on the other side of the world when confronted with images of famine and suffering, there are just no examples of giving on the scale of the welfare state, and indeed, the contrast in reactions in the US to civilian victims of the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington (vast outpourings of sympathy and money) and the civilian victims of the war in Afghanistan is a telling recent example of the felt bonds of nationality. (In fact, Brock is arguably guilty of a priori psychological reasoning when she says “it is not clear that whatever glue is needed for us to bond with co-nationals can extend to the outer rim of the set of co-nationals and no further.” [10] It may not be clear, but there certainly seem to be ample instances of it happening. The attitude of the Australian government – who seem to represent the majority of Australians in this – towards refugees descending on their shores in unseaworthy ships is another recent telling example.)
So although in the abstract it is certainly true that nations are not necessary for the convivial feeling which, Brock is prepared to concede, might be required for viable systems of distributive justice, this is not something the nationalist need claim. They can simply say that there are no viable alternatives in the real world, and furthermore, point to their other claims about the value, ingrained acceptance, what have you, of nations and nationality to say that it is no bad thing if we allow nations to continue to be the locus of affiliation that fills this need.
As a third example, the argument from gratitude for nationalism is dismissed because there are other groups to whom we owe gratitude. This is certainly true, but just as I can have special obligations to friends as well as to family, surely I can have obligations to nation as well as to the world. Now, if I had greater obligations of the same kind (that is, political allegiance) to non-national entities, then Brock’s point would be telling. But she does not establish that this would be so.
This is not to say that I think the argument from gratitude is a good one – I don’t. But I think it cannot be dismissed that quickly. For the purposes of a talk of this length, I rather wish that Brock had focused instead on one or two key arguments, put them in their context, and dissected them more extensively. Of course, that was not her aim: her aim was to offer an overview of the two camps. But as I have argued, I think that goal is undermined by the lack of cohesion within each purported camp, and the fact that the strength even of each argument that she isolates depends on its place in a larger theory.
Of course, there is a danger of conceding too much to the defender of nations who stresses the practical nature of her project. If we are too forgiving of weaknesses of particular arguments because of their place in a grander account, criticisms will always be pushed off to the next arena, and we never nail them down to a key weakness. Furthermore, there is of course something self-confirming in the nationalist’s insistence on a viable alternative before they accept knock-down criticisms: if we continue to accept nation-states as the inevitable foci of government, there never will be viable alternatives.
Brock cites cosmopolitan writers who point to entities like the EU to support the claim that cosmopolitanism is not as divorced from the real world as nationalists suggest. I am skeptical. I think the strongest thread in recent writings on nationalism is that which stresses just how ingrained commitments to nation-states are in our political thought and practice. Nationalists have been very ingenious at showing how much one becomes committed to nations in accepting anything like liberal orthodoxy: the moment one concedes the necessity of something even approximating the system of states we have now, the nationalist has a foothold. This is not to say that one should abandon cosmopolitanism. On the contrary, I think that the cosmopolitan must embrace her outsider status. To my mind, the most persuasive cosmopolitans are those, like Peter Singer and perhaps Thomas Pogge, who are prepared to acknowledge just how much of our way of life is founded on morally indefensible practices.
In conclusion, while I share Brock’s belief that the cosmopolitans hold the moral high ground, I do not think her criticisms of the various arguments forwarded by defenders of nations and nationality do justice to all variants of such arguments. Liberal nationalism, if it exists, is more complex (and thus, to my mind, more troublesome) than it is presented here.
[1] Barry, Culture and Equality (Cambridge: Harvard, 2001), 136.
[2] Canovan, “The Skeleton in the Cupboard: Nationhood, Patriotism and Limited Loyalties,” in ed.s Caney, George and Jones, National Rights, International Obligations (Boulder: Westview, 1996). Canovan’s major work in this field is Nationhood and Political Theory (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996).
[3] See his Politics in the Vernacular (Oxford: OUP, 2001).
[4] Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz, “National Self-Determination,” Journal of Philosophy 87:9, 1990.
[5] Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” in ed. Zimmern, Modern Political Doctrines (Oxford: OUP, 1939).