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Updated: 24 August 1996
See linked pages: [] introduction || industrialism || democracy (1) || democracy (2) || conclusion || endnotes || bibliography []
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A second strand in the skein of modernity has equally important and devastating para-modern implications for the survival of constitutional governance. Like democracy and industrialism, nationalism can be analyzed as an historically distinct process with its own ideology and sources of support. However, as the industrial revolution and pressures to replace monarchy with representative government gathered momentum, the need for national unificaton also increased : the three streams became interdependent and mutually reinforcing. On cannot, therefore, say that any one of them "caused" the other, but each strengthened the other and each, without the others, would be imperiled. A discussion of these relationships is offered in Riggs (1994c) and will not be reviewed here.
However, let me add an illustrative point. In a culturally integrated environment with a coherent bourgeoisie there are usually "national" organizations, like a "Chamber of Commerce" open to all business people regardless of ethnic background. Such organizations are able to promote the economic and political interests of their members without regard to ancestry, language, religion or race. By contrast, in many of the successor states we find ethnic associations or clects (as I once called them, Riggs, 1962) -- each struggles to promote the interests of their members' community against those of others, limiting the solidarity of the bourgeoisie and handicapping their efforts to secure impartial support from government for their interests.
No doubt the market system requires competition, but it requires friendly rivalry based on economic interests and "rational choice," rather than irrational conflict based on inter-ethnic suspicions and hostility. This means both that entrepreneurial leaders must promote national unification and, national integration facilitates industrial development. Because trading (mercantile) activities are typically small-scale, usually family-based, communalization is no barrier and monarchies traditionally welcomed its divisive effects as a barrier to the formation of unified resistance movements. Thus multi-ethnic societies and simple capitalism are quite compatible with each other -- but industrialization with its need for large-scale coordination of production, management and distribution requires cultural homogeneity -- at least during its creative ("revolutionary") phase.
Without further attention to the links between industrialism and national unity (cultural integration) let us turn to the more specific issue of how states are related to this process.
Nation-Building During the formative years of modernity, states took the initiative to create nations -- in fact, states engaged in nation-building. Monarchs who relied on supernatural sanctions and religious beliefs to sustain their legitimate authority over their subjects were not much interested in nation-building -- often, indeed, they supported strategies of "divide and rule."
However, when the source of sovereignty shifted from kings to peoples as the industrial revolution advanced, the creation of a sense of national identity became a major goal. The successful states became state nations -- their goal was to establish national states. 6 Nationalism was created by such states in order to make them viable -- they did not evolve from mobilized ethnic communities seeking to achieve sovereignty. Rather, they grew out of industrializing and democratizing states whose elites sought to build a more solid social foundation for their enterprises and political system. State nationalism as in France, Great Britain and the United States sought to integrate cultural minorities and immigrants. State-building provided the foundation for nation-building.
The process had both benign and malign aspects. In liberal states national integration of minorities was seen as a long-term process of social assimilation open, generally, to everyone without regard to race, religion or language. By contrast, it also became an exclusive and reactionary process whereby dominant communities sought to purge minorities in order to achieve national unity. The most horrendous example is that of Hitler's National Socialism which sought to create an ethnic (Aryan) state that could eliminate its non-Aryan subjects.
The Soviet Union provides a more ambivalent case and complex example. Moscow's leaders struggled for decades to create a Soviet "nation," a "soviet way of life". In the end, they spawned a congeries of ethnic nations that repudiated "sovietism" the moment the Union collapsed. Stalin's policy of legitimizing ethnic republics appears to contradict the idea of a "Soviet" nation -- but I think it reflects a deeper contradiction between the lip-service offered by the regime to ethnic autonomy contradicted by an all-union policy of Russification directed at local elites under party domination. Dominated minorities experienced the duplicity which contrasted de-facto domination of the republics by Russians with the de-jure facade of authority conferred on ethnic communities.
The Soviet experience has dramatized in a compelling and very current form the global rise of ethnic nationalism on the ashes of collapsed empires. The state nationalism which successfully mobilized ethnic minorities to become integrated with a dominant ethnic community (cf. Deutsch) has been replaced by a new form of ethnic nationalism in which marginalized minorities rebel and seek to mobilize for sovereignty and newly-formed states. The dynamic of states-creating-nations has been replaced by nations-creating-states. The ethnic nationalism, of these state-destroying movements are driven by a reciprocal of state nationalism: whereas the latter sought to unify disparate peoples into a single nation, the former strives to replace existing states with new ones carved out of their cadavers (Riggs 1995).
The quasi-states that have emerged in many of the successor states of the modern empires unintentionally furthered ethnic nationalism in two ways: (1) their administrative incompetence creates large zones of anarchy that invite alternative state formation, typically under the leadership of ambitious ethnic activists; and (2) their inability to promote a viable sense of national unity creates an identity vacuum and loss of authority by the state. Democracy can replace monarchic rule or imperial domination, I think, only when a sense of state nationalism (i.e., patriotism) can evolve. Industrialism can thrive only when a national bourgeoisie evolves whose members are not seen primarily as members of a marginalized ethnic minority. When, as is often the case today, the rulers of a new state are members of a dominant ethnic community, whatever bourgeoisie exists is treated with hostility by the elite and they can scarcely become a coherent force for industrialization.
Viewed as contradictory aspects of modernity, we can view state nationalism as a necessary path to industrial development and ethnic nationalism as a major obstacle. Although ethnic nationalism typically has "primordial" roots in the remnants of pre-modern society and the historical myths its leaders construct, its driving force, I believe, arises from the modern empires generated by industrialized states supporting their industrialists who demanded access to ever increasing supplies of raw materials and emerging markets. The most potent form of resistance to imperial rule involved acceptance of nationalism and self-determination as ideals to arm dependent elites seeking to promote their own interests through liberation movements. Following liberation, however, the freedom fighters all too often became tyrants whose oppressive policies and maladministration led to zones of anarchy and the rise of new ethnonational resistance movements.
Global Context. These developments need to be understood in a global context -- what happens in each state of the world today is, increasingly, affected if not determined by what happens in the world system. These effects have their positive as well as their negative aspects. The spectacular industrialization of South Korea is not only a result of the heroic efforts made by Koreans in that country but also by the resources and opportunities offered by the world community with which South Korea is able to collaborate. By contrast, the current economic decline in North Korea has to be traced to its efforts to develop in isolation from the outside world (Riggs 1996b).
Ethnic nationalism is, even more directly, a product of imperialism. The new states are themselves products of the world system insofar as its modern empires created the provincial boundaries based on imperial conquests that drew the map for successor states -- their preoccupation with economic needs rooted n industrialism obscured any concern they might have felt for the sensitivities of conquered peoples. Pre-existing nations ("tribes") were scarcely taken into account and the boundaries inherited by successor states now link peoples who have no affinity with each other and divide peoples who want to be re-united.
Now, of course, the new ruling elites in these successor states have a vested interest in preserving the artificial boundaries they inherited, against the competing demands of ethnic nationalists who may claim their own sovereignty and demand corresponding boundary changes. Since rulers of all existing states share an interest in border preservation, they tend to support each other no matter how arbitrary the existing inter-state boundaries may be.
The legitimation of boundary changes between any existing states puts the principle of boundary-maintenance at risk. Increasingly, I believe, turmoil among nations will increase as ethnic nations evolve and struggle to change boundaries while the states of the world conspire to protect existing borders and, therefore, to suppress the ethnic nations that seek to change them -- the current strife in Chechnya provides a dramatic example. Well established states will usually intervene, through a range of global and regional organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, primarily to prevent boundary changes but also, no doubt, to reduce violence, limit the flow of refugees and alleviate starvation. Following the collapse of the modern empires, however, I do not expect any states to try to annex or partition a fragile and defenseless quasi-state.
Presidentialism vs. Parliamentarism. When we look at the relation between regime type and nationalism, two complementary propositions occur to me. In general, presidentialist regimes are more likely to require ethnic homogeneity in order to survive and parliamentary regimes can more easily accommodate themselves to ethnic heterogeneity.
These propositions lack face validity and they require some explanation. However, if they are true, then new states that want to establish viable democratic governance and have multi-ethnic populations are more likely to succeed if they can adopt parliamentary institutions. If that choice is foreclosed because they are already committed to presidentialism, then they need to pay special attention to the rules and institutions that can handle ethnic diversity. To understand this relationship we need to look at some of the most important variables.
To start, consider that proportional representation provides the most obvious mechanism for representing diverse ethnic communities in a constitutive system. Under PR, everyone is free to organize and support a political party that, potentially, can win representation in the elected assembly. Members of marginalized communities need not remain permanent minorities -- or, at least, they have a better chance to gain political representation. In order for this to happen, obviously, the electoral system needs to have multi-member electoral districts
However, in order for legislative representation to be meaningful, it must permit incumbents to help shape public policy. If they find that they remain permanently marginalized because their legislative seats give them no real access to power, a backlash may occur in which their representatives take the lead in fomenting resistance movements. Recognizing the emptiness of electoral success, they may nevertheless stand for election in order to gain a platform for enhancing their credibility and power as leaders of ethnic revolts.
When we compare the ground rules of presidentialism vs. parliamentarism, we can see that it is always possible for parliamentarians to become part of a governing coalition and, thereby, to exercise real influence in at least some component of the state's power structure. Even in multi-party states where frequent cabinet changes occur, representation of some minorities may be stable if their members are repeatedly re-appointed to posts that can build self-reinforcing influence in governmental programs of special importance to their community.
By contrast, under presidentialist rules, the president chooses a cabinet composed of non-members of the assembly, and minority members in a congress cannot expect to be included in any government. The best they can do is to protest and vote against the dominant majority in the assembly. By doing so, however, they seriously weaken the ability of a congress to reach agreements and thereby undermine its political power in relation to the president. They also increase the risks of permanent executive/legislative gridlocks which, I think, should be called deadlocks since, by definition, we may view a gridlock, by contrast, as a dangerous but temporary obstacle to effective governmental decision-making.
Quite a few presidential regimes in Latin America have, actually, established electoral systems based on a rule of proportional representation -- however, that is impressionistic because I have been unable to find systematic data on the subject. Unavoidably, I think, these regimes create deep cleavages at the heart of their systems of governance that have led to deadlocks and unstable rule during normal times and catastrophic breakdowns during times of crisis. It should be easy enough to make a comparative analysis of how PR has actually worked in these regimes but I have not found any research on this question. 7
The U.S. Exception. The electoral system that prevails in the United States is exceptional. Its heavy reliance on single member districts in which, clearly, only one candidate, with the support of a plurality of voters, is seated in Congress (and in state legislatures and city councils also) virtually guarantees that a majority of the electorate will not be represented in the legislature. This principle actually makes an unwieldy regime workable precisely because it enhances the likelihood that those who are elected will represent main-line centrist points of view. The secret of its success lies in the sad fact that so many alienated citizens refrain from voting, thereby enabling the two main stream parties to concentrate on winning the votes of "independents," i.e. the centrist moderates who lack a strong partisan identification.
Although all American politicians call for a greater turnout by voters, they may well sense, without articulating it, that a truly massive response would be catastrophic for the system. To reverse the argument, if the American electoral system would, in fact, offer viable options to permanent minorities by instituting PR, it would bring a wide spectrum of incompatible demands to the legislatures and make the presidentialist system truly unworkable.
In this context no party can win that seeks only the support of a minority, and no permanent minority -- including the poor and socially alienated as well as many ethnic communities -- can expect to be effectively represented in American politics. No doubt, minorities that are willing to join a mainstream party can, in exchange, gain concessions from them, even though they are often more symbolic than real in their effective impact.8
So long as Americanization succeeded in bringing large numbers of immigrants into the main stream of life in a free-enterprise market economy and induced them to accept English as a working language, it was possible for this precarious system to sustain itself. Increasingly, however, acceptance of the need for cultural diversity and growing demands for more real minority power challenges the validity of majority rule in America. The growing mobilization of demands for sovereignty by indigenous peoples and by members of the largest ethnic minorities -- notably "Hispanics" and "African-Americans" -- will, I believe, increasingly strain the capacity of the presidentialist regime in America to maintain its effective authority.
Autonomy. When a democracy adequately represents its ethnic minorities and respects their special needs or interests, it may well count on most of them to accept their status as citizens of a state -- even to see themselves as hyphenated nationals, harmonizing their dual identities as citizens and as members of an ethnic minority. However, even in ethnic communities whose members tend to accept the status quo, there may well be demands for secession or autonomy by activists who visualize elite roles for themselves as leaders of a break-away or re-united state.
In response to such demands, especially when they gain growing support among potential followers, democracies may agree to grant some degree of autonomy to domestic ethnic nations. In both the United States and Canada some "first nations" have, indeed, received such recognition and administer self-governing jurisdictions within each country's territory. This subject is complicated enough to deserve a full-length separate treatment and I shall not try even to summarize the options or offer examples. However, here I should at least speculate about the differences between presidentialism and parliamentarism as they might affect the willingness of a democracy to grant autonomy to national minorities. On its face, I do not see any striking difference between presidentialist and parliamentary regimes in their willingness or capacity to grant autonomy to minorities -- one can find good examples in both types of regime. However, some possible differences come to mind and may be worthy of consideration.
The main difference I see arises from the fact that congress must play an important role in making decisions about possible grants of autonomy to any community whereas, under parliamentary rules, the cabinet and bureaucracy play a larger role. One might suppose that members of Congress, as elected politicians, would be more sympathetic than bureaucrats to the special needs of cultural minorities. However, I suspect just the reverse is true. After all, members of congress feel obliged primarily to the pluralities that elected them to office -- not to minorities who have opposed their election or refused to vote. When subjects are not citizens, as in the colonial possessions of a state, the process of selecting a "governor" and recruiting staff offers opportunities for patronage that can scarcely be resisted: members of congress are more likely to use their powers to help supporters rather than defer to the needs of those who had nothing to do with their election or, perhaps, even opposed it.
A somewhat similar dynamics affects domestic minorities, like conquered indigenous peoples. Committee control, again, provides opportunities for patronage that self-government would destroy. Even when countervailing pressures compel a regime to grant some degree of local autonomy to "native" communities, a controlling legislature will, predictably, seize every opportunity to safeguard the interests of outsiders who seek to encroach on reserved lands to promote their own mining, grazing, lumbering or other special interests.
By contrast, under parliamentary rule, for reasons discussed above, there is much more chance that long-term career mandarin bureaucrats will exercise effective control over dependent territories through special ministries and departments. They will typically also select career officers to govern their dependencies and, because such external matters have low priority on the agenda of most members of parliament, they often have pretty much a free hand to conduct local administration in dependent territories as they think best. This general posture enhances opportunities to adapt the administration of dependencies to local conditions and to rely heavily on advisory groups composed of local notables. In fact, I think, it is really in the interest of ruling outsiders, as careerists, to minimize their own responsibilities by devolving responsibility to local leaders as much as possible. Ultimately, no doubt, when they see that the costs of direct rule exceed the benefits, they may well agree to turn over most responsibilities for self-government to locally elected politicians. These dynamics can operate internally (for conquered indigenous peoples) as well as externally for imperial possessions.
This is only a speculation that would require more research to validate or invalidate, but I cannot say more about it here. However, there is a related distinction that arises out of the differences between monarchies and republics. This sounds pretty old-fashioned, but consider that, so long as monarchic power prevailed, the source of legitimacy did not lie in a sovereign people but, rather, in the crown, the literal sovereign. As autocrats, kings were able to offer any dispensation they thought expedient to treat their subjects differently and, as British imperial policy exemplified, a host of special arrangements were made to accommodate local sentiments and rulers through indirect rule and other special arrangements.
Our theme, of course, is not monarchy but democracy, but in some parliamentary countries constitutional monarchies remain and provide a context within which special arrangements can be made to enable communities to remain part of the kingdom while they have their own autonomy. An example might be the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, each of which is self governing and not a part of Great Britain or even the United Kingdom. The crown provides a unifying symbol, but Parliament has no authority in these islands. By contrast, despite strong movements for autonomy in Scotland and Wales, these areas remain under Parliamentary control, as does Northern Ireland where internal conflicts would make self-government almost impossible.
Oligocracies and Addominiums. An historical perspective links this observation with the preceding paragraphs: as parliamentary rule evolved for core domains within a monarchy, residual territories remained under monarchic rule. Even when constitutionalism replaced monarchic rule at the core, in the periphery monarchism remained alive under the surrogate rule of career bureaucrats, a kind of mixed system that might well be called oligocracy. 9 Actually, it is probably true that virtually all so-called "democracies" are, actually, oligocracies. Even if every permanent resident had the nominal right to be represented in a country's legislature, in fact many of them for a variety of reasons do not or cannot vote -- they are, actually subjects rather than citizens. Traditionally, we have used "subjects" only for persons subject to monarchic control, they have many duties but few rights. However, in oligocracies, we find both citizens and subjects, those who are represented in legislative assemblies and those who cannot vote and, therefore, cannot be represented.
Most theorists of democracy assume, I think, that our goal should be to integrate everyone into a polity so that all can be represented -- so that resident aliens (as subjects) can become naturalized citizens, so that oligocracies can become democracies. However, increasingly we will find, I think, that within the successor states of the modern empires, there are many subjects, mainly ethnonationals, who do not want to become citizens even if they are given the opportunity. Yet for them to achieve sovereignty as citizens of new successor states is not only difficult but the struggle often leads to violence and genocide.
In this context can we think of a formula like that which prevails in the Isle of Man -- where subjects of the British Crown are, simultaneously, citizens of an autonomous democratic state? It is, again, hard to discuss this possibility because we lack a term for it. Federalism is incorrect because it presupposes not only the autonomy of each state but also the equal participation of their citizens in the election of representatives to an elected assembly.
In the best known prototype, the United States, every sub-state has, in principle, substantially the same ethno-linguistic composition -- Puerto Rico as a separate linguistic "dominion" remains outside the Union as a "commonwealth," as does Guam, the Marianas, and many Indian "reservations." We need a concept that links the United States as one party in a union with other parties that not only exercise sovereignty but are culturally (ethnically) different from the dominant community. On the British analogy, they would be like "dominions" exercising effective self-government but under the authority of the Crown, not the Parliament. On the UN analogy, they might be like "trusteeships" having a separate sovereignty while under the authority of a "trustee." Typically one member of such a union could be seen as the dominant one, perhaps as the "first among equals." Could we call its domain the heartland and its elected assembly the core assembly, metro-council or some such term.
Provisionally, let me call any such regime an addominium that recognizes self-government for its minorities, brings them under a collective political umbrella, but does not expect them to be governed by an assembly in which they are not represented.10 Can we at least speculate about the possibility of an independent state on the world stage in which a number of fully autonomous self-governing collectivities might accept membership in a kind of United Dominions in which each would have its own representative assembly and administrative autonomy while accepting a form of union that could be expressed by a multi-national "Assembly" like the General Assembly of the UN. In such an assembly, currently unrepresented peoples could, in fact, be represented collectively without demanding the status of an independent state.
On the assumption that the legislature represents and speaks for all citizens of a republic, any unrepresented jurisdiction is, in fact, a kind of colony or possession. U.S. territories were, in principle, administered like possessions until they were transformed into sovereign states within the Union. Currently Guam, the Marianas, and Puerto Rico have "commonwealth" status which permits self-government and rights of citizenship but not full equality of status. Within the territorial domain of the U.S., as mentioned above, a substantial number of Indian "tribes" have various degrees of self-government and autonomy.
The anomaly for presidentialist regimes is that no center of authority exists outside the authority of the elected officials -- discounting the Supreme Court whose members, of course, are appointees of these elected politicians. The dilemma this poses may be illustrated by the question which arose when the Northern Mariana Islands became a self-governing Commonwealth in 1977, and its residents became U.S. citizens. The question was whether the Commonwealth's representative in WAshington should have a "quasi-diplomatic" status or be granted a Congressional presence such as that enjoyed by the commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. As of now, this issue appears to be unresolved.
In parliamentary monarchies where the crown retains substantial prestige and can serve effectively as a head of state, the various dominions in an addominium may accept the authority of the crown without becoming subjects of a parliament ("metro-council") in which they are not represented. At least in principle a framework exists for linking highly autonomous dominions in a union that does not grant jurisdiction over its subjects to an assembly elected by its citizens. Thus peoples in an addominium could be citizens within their own dominions but not elsewhere. However, all dominions in an addominium could share certain rights and duties as members of a single union (addominium), accepting the suzerainty of a single crown, but not the domination of a metro-council.
Parliamentary republics lack such a residual authority but a functional equivalent might be found in India's Council of States composed of indirectly elected representatives from the states. With analogies to the House of Lords in the UK, or the U.S. Senate, as originally conceived, such a body might be able to unify a union of self-governing dominions, but I do not see any good precedents for an effective all-union authority in an addominium, regardless of whether it be presidential or parliamentary in design. Yet it is not difficulty to imagine an omni-council or addominium assembly on which representatives of all the dominions in a union could meet to discuss their common problems and resolve their differences.
Finally, could an elected president in a parliamentary state might be more capable of unifying an addominium than any president in a presidentialist regime? My guess is that the responsibilities of a president as head of government for a heartland would make it impossible for the same person to serve effectively as a unifying head of state for all the component dominions of an addominium. 11
See linked pages: [] introduction || industrialism || democracy (1) || democracy (2) || conclusion || endnotes || bibliography []
