Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:14:22.199Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Federalism and Secession: At Home and Abroad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Will Kymlicka
Get access

Extract

Western democracies have developed a number of effective models for accommodating ethnocultural diversity. One of these involves the use of federal or quasi-federal forms of territorial autonomy to enable self-government for national minorities and indigenous peoples. These forms of territorial autonomy are in general a success. The merits of these models have been underestimated because many people measure success by an inappropriate criterion: namely, the absence of secessionist mobilization. This cannot be the correct standard for evaluating democratic multination states. The success of a common Western approach to territorial autonomy is related, in a complex way, to a particular view about the legitimacy and perhaps even inevitability of secessionist mobilization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 13 , Issue 2: SECESSION , July 2000 , pp. 207 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. On the distinction between indigenous peoples and other national minorities, and its relevance for rights claims, see my “Theorizing Indigenous Rights” in Kymlicka, Will, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

2. The use of nationalist rhetoric by stateless nations is long-standing. On the increasing tendency of indigenous peoples in North America also to adopt the language of ‘nationhood’, see Jenson, Jane, “Naming Nations: Making Nationalist Claims in Canadian Public Discourse” (1993) 30/3 Can. Rev. Socio. & Anthro. 337Google Scholar; Alfred, Gerald R., Heeding the Voices of our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism (Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Volume 1: Restructuring the Relationship (Ottawa: Communication Group, 1996) RCAP—Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Vol. 2: Restructuring the Relationship (Ottawa: 1996.)Google Scholar

3. This raises the question captured nicely in the title of Walker Connor's famous article: are nation-states “Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?” (Connor, Walker, “Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying” (1972) 24 World Politics 319.Google Scholar) In truth, nation-states are both. They have typically sought to build a common nationhood by destroying any preexisting sense of distinct nationhood on the part of national minorities.

4. For surveys of ethnic conflict which confirm this point, see Gurr, Ted R., Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Hannum, Hurst, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Lapidoth, Ruth, Autonomy: Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

5. For example, Anglo-Saxon settlers dominated all of the original 13 colonies that formed the United States. As John Jay put it in the Federalist Papers, “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs”. Jay was exaggerating the ethnocultural homogeneity of the colonial population—most obviously in ignoring Blacks—but it was true that none of the thirteen colonies were controlled by a national minority, and that the original division of powers within the federal system was not defined with a view to the accommodation of ethnocultural divisions.

6. Hence Glazer is wrong when he says that the division of the United States into federal units preceded its ethnic diversity (Glazer, Nathan, Ethnic Dilemmas, 1964-1982 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) at 276-77.Google Scholar This is true of the original thirteen colonies, but decisions about the admission and boundaries of new states were made after the incorporation of national minorities, and these decisions were deliberately made so as to avoid creating states dominated by national minorities.

7. Indeed, far from helping national minorities, there is reason to believe that American federalism has made them worse off. Throughout most of American history, Chicanos, American Indian tribes and native Hawaiians have received better treatment from the federal government than from state governments. State governments, controlled by colonizing settlers, have often seen national minorities as an obstacle to greater settlement and resource development, and so have pushed to strip minorities of their traditional political institutions, undermine their treaty rights, and dispossess them of their historic homelands. While the federal government has been complicit in much of the mistreatment, it has often at least attempted to prevent the most severe abuses. We can see the same dynamic in Brazil, where the federal government is fighting to protect the rights of Indians in Amazonia against the predations of local state governments. The same is true in Australia, where the federal government had to take away jurisdiction over Aborigines from state governments because of the level of abuses (see Peterson, Nicolas & and Sanders, Will, eds., Citizenship and Indigenous Australians (New York, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1998) at 11-19).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. And also in India, Nigeria, Malaysia, Ethiopia and Russia.

9. Note that most of these federal systems are in fact combinations of ‘administrative/territorial’ and ‘multination’ forms. That is, typically only one or two of the federal units are vehicles for self-governing national minorities (and hence embodiments of multination federalism), while the rest are simply regional divisions within the majority national group (and hence embodiments of administrative/territorial federalism). This is the case in Canada, where the province of Quebec secures self-government for the Québécois, but the nine remaining provinces reflect regional divisions within English-speaking Canada. A similar situation exists in Spain, where the Autonomous Communities of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia secure self-government for national minorities, while most of the other 14 Autonomous Communities, such as La Mancha or Extremadura, reflect regional divisions within the majority Spanish national group. And in the new Russian federation, 32 of the subunits are nominally intended to enable minority self-government (e.g., Tatarstan, North Ossetia), whereas the other 56 subunits reflect regional divisions within the majority Russian national group. In these federations, then, some units embody the desire of national minorities to remain as culturally distinct and politically self-governing societies (what I will call ‘nationality-based units’), while others reflect the decision of a single national community to diffuse powers on a regional basis (what I will call ‘regional-based units’). Nationality-based units typically seek different and more extensive powers than regional-based units. As a result, all of these federations exhibit some form of asymmetrical federalism. This is another distinguishing feature of multination federations from purely administrative/territorial federations. For more on the theory and practice of multination federalism, and the role of asymmetry within it, see “Minority Nationalism and Multination Federalism” in Kymlicka, , supra note 1 at ch. 5.Google Scholar

10. Indeed, it has arguably enhanced democratic participation. For example, in Belgium, Flemish nationalist parties “succeeded in dismantling the centralised state without riding roughshod over democratic rights and may even have expanded avenues for political participation” (Newman, S., Ethnoregional Conflicts in Democracies: Mostly Ballots, Rarely Bullets (London: Greenwood, 1996) at 2 Google Scholar; cf. Payton, Philip, “Ethnicity in Western Democracy Today” in Cordell, Karl, ed., Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe (London: Routledge, 1999) at 24-36.Google Scholar

11. For more on this, see Kymlicka, supra note 1 at chs. 14-16.Google Scholar

12. Connor, Walker, “National Self-Determination and Tomorrow's Political Map” in Cairns, Alan et al., eds., Citizenship, Diversity and Pluralism: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives (Montreal, PQ: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999) at 163-64.Google Scholar

13. See Nietschmann, Bernard, “The Third World War” (1987) 11/3 Cultural Survival Quart. 1.Google Scholar

14. This is the main shortcoming of the Council of Europe's Framework Convention on the Rights of National Minorities. It provides helpful guidelines for small and dispersed national minorities, but does not address the issues of territorial autonomy, official language status and higher education raised by larger minorities. For a discussion of why non-territorial forms of cultural autonomy are inadequate for such groups, see Laponce, Jean, “The Case for Ethnic Federalism in Multilingual Societies: Canada's Regional Imperative” (1993) 3/1 Regional Politics and Policy at 23-43 Google Scholar; Kymlicka, Will & Opalski, Magda, Can Western Pluralism Be Exported? Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar. [forthcoming]

15. It is also sometimes resisted on the ground that self-governing national minorities will embark on illiberal forms of nation-building, restricting the rights of their own members or of other groups on the territory. This is a legitimate concern, of course. It is an essential feature of a liberal-democratic conception of multination federalism that all governments—whether the central government or regional governments dominated by national minorities—be subject to constitutional restrictions that protect individual civil and political rights. But this is an argument for strengthening constitutionalism and the rule of law generally, not for rejecting minority self-government in particular. There is no reason to assume that minorities (and minority-led regions) are less able or willing to abide by these constitutional norms than majorities (and majority-led central states). See on this Kymlicka, & Opalski, supra note 14.Google Scholar

16. For a discussion of this process of “securitization”, see Weaver, Ole, “Securitization and Desecuritization”, in Lipschutz, Ronnie, ed., On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).Google ScholarPubMed

17. For a more detailed discussion of this securitization phenomenon in Eastern Europe, and how it has precluded any consideration of TA except in the context of threats of civil war, see Kymlicka, & Opalski, , supra note 14.Google Scholar

18. These are generalizations, of course, and there are exceptions in each case. In the West, Greece remains adamantly opposed to multination federalism. In Eastern Europe, Russia has adopted it, as have Malaysia and India in Asia, and Nigeria and Ethiopia in Africa. But these are anomalies And even these exceptions are under pressure. Multination federalism is widely disliked by Russian leaders, and there have been several plans to replace with a more purely administrative/territorial form of federalism. If and when one of these plans is adopted, Russia will more closely fit the usual East European pattern. And the future of federalism in Ethiopia—which was only adopted after a brutal civil war—remains very much in doubt.

19. Bibo, Istvan, “The Distress of East European Small States” [1946] in Nagy, Karoly, ed., Democracy, Revolution, Self-Determination (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1991) 13 at 42.Google Scholar

20. This is one reason why federalism in India has failed to reduce Kashmiri secessionist sentiments. In the name of national security, the central government intervenes constantly to replace elected state governments, repeal state laws, and so on. Federalism only works to reduce secessionist sentiments if it allows for genuine self-government.

21. Rawls argues that a liberal-democratic theory of justice should be premised on the idea that people are bound to a state “in perpetuity”. I believe that this is an unrealistic and inappropriate goal, particularly in multination states. See Kymlicka, , supra note 1 at ch. 5.Google Scholar

22. Supra note 19 at 50.

23. Ibid. at 50, 55. “In Western and Northern Europe the political rise or decline of one's country, the growth or diminution of its role as a great power, and the gaining or losing of colonial empires could have been mere episodes, distant adventures, beautiful or sad memories; in the long run, however, countries could survive these without fundamental trauma, because they had something that could not be taken away or questioned”. In Eastern Europe, by contrast, there was “an existential fear for one's community”. Ibid. at 39.