National–Cultural Autonomy as an Alternative to Minority Territorial Nationalism

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show the advantage of the national–cultural autonomy (NCA) model in dealing with national autonomy demands in societies affected by deep ethnic conflicts and where territorial separation is impossible or plainly inconvenient or where the territorial dispersion or dilution of national/ethnic communities does not allow the implementation of territorial autonomy or national separation. These cases are not few and the resolution to these protracted conflicts is often crippled by the impossibility of finding territorial solutions acceptable to all sides. The article aims to show that, in cases where territorial autonomy has been implemented, particularly in liberal multicultural democracies, the NCA model or aspects of it can complement territorial autonomy at its weakest point: the implementation of collective rights and constitutional protection of the culture and lifestyle of national and ethnic communities. Finally. it will be argued that the NCA model can act as a powerful container of secessionist or extreme demands for nationalist territorial segregation because it provides a feasible alternative to minority self-determination without resorting to the creation of separate states.

Notes

1. Of course, there is a minority of left cosmopolitan liberal thinkers who seriously question the contemporary validity of the nation state as a relevant political institution (see, among others, Waldron, 1995, pp. 93–119; Nielsen, 2003, pp. 437–463). However, the growing number of political regimes that operationalize the normative values of liberalism do so in the context of the institutions of the nation state.

2. Sur la nécessité et les moyens d'anéantir les patois et d'universaliser l'usage de la langue française and, on 8 pluviôse year II (27/1/1794), Barére asserted, Le fédéralisme et la superstition parlent bas-breton; l'émigration et la haine de la République parlent allemand; la contre-révolution parle l'italien, et le fanatisme parle le basque. Brisons ces instruments de dommage et d'erreur (Federalism and the superstition speak low-Breton; the emigration and the hatred of the Republic speak German; the counter-revolution speaks Italian, and fanaticism speaks Basque. Let us break these instruments of harm and error).

3. Understood as the enforced separation of different ethnic or racial groups, such as, among others, the apartheid regime in South Africa, the Bumiputra regime in Malaysia and the Hafrada regime in Israel.

4. The Hebrew term Hafrada is the official descriptor of the policy of the Israeli Government to separate the Palestinian population in the territories occupied by Israel from the Israeli population, by means such as the West Bank barrier and the unilateral disengagement from those territories. The barrier is thus sometimes called gader ha'hafrada (‘separation fence’) in Hebrew. The term Hafrada has striking similarities with the term apartheid, as this term means ‘apartness’ in Afrikaans and Hafrada is the closest Hebrew equivalent.

5. The Meech Lake Accord was a set of failed constitutional amendments to the preamble and the Constitution of Canada proposed in 1987 by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Robert Bourassa, premier of Quebec. It was mainly designed to recognize Quebec as a ‘distinct society’, something that would have allowed the recognition of special cultural rights of the Québecois within Canada. It failed because of the opposition of two other provinces. A further watered down attempt that pleased no one was made in a referendum in 1992 (The Charlottetown accord) but also failed.

6. In 1977, shortly after its first election victory, the nationalist Parti Québecois introduced in Quebec La Charte de la langue française (the Charter of the French Language), best known by the shorthand Loi 101 (Bill 101). The legislation is designed to protect and promote the French language in Quebec. It makes wide-ranging stipulations. The most important ones are the requirement for the compulsory use of French in large enterprises and the use of French on commercial and public posters and signs, making French the sole official language of the province. The most controversial part is the disposition for compulsory education in French for children of immigrants and francophone parents. If one of the parents was educated in an Anglo-Canadian school, they can chose to educate their children in English.

7. In 2004 Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya had 23 seats (the third group by seats) in the Catalan Parliament in Barcelona and is now one of the three coalition members of the Catalan Government. The party has also eight seats (the fourth group by seats) in the parliament of the Spanish state in Madrid.

8. Interview with Joan Puigcercós in the newspaper Diari de Girona, July 2004 (my own translation from Catalan).

9. “We were defeated by money and the ethnic vote.” The next day Parizeau lost the confidence of his party Parti Québecois and he had to resign. Parizeau was not entirely right because les enfants de la loi 101 (children of the bill 101), the children of the immigrants that came to Quebec after Bill 101 was enacted, are on the whole francophone, even if they voted against Parizeau.