scholarly journals The Instrumental Value Arguments for National Self-Determination

Dialogue ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-89
Author(s):  
HSIN-WEN LEE

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I examine the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARASH ABIZADEH

This paper subjects to critical analysis four common arguments in the sociopolitical theory literature supporting the cultural nationalist thesis that liberal democracy is viable only against the background of a single national public culture: the arguments that (1) social integration in a liberal democracy requires shared norms and beliefs (Schnapper); (2) the levels of trust that democratic politics requires can be attained only among conationals (Miller); (3) democratic deliberation requires communicational transparency, possible in turn only within a shared national public culture (Miller, Barry); and (4) the economic viability of specifically industrialized liberal democracies requires a single national culture (Gellner). I argue that all four arguments fail: At best, a shared cultural nation may reduce some of the costs liberal democratic societies must incur; at worst, cultural nationalist policies ironically undermine social integration. The failure of these cultural nationalist arguments clears the way for a normative theory of liberal democracy in multinational and postnational contexts.


Author(s):  
Andreas Samartzis

Main justifications for regarding common nationality as a necessary condition for holding equal political rights – Critique of collective self-determination, equal stakes, nature of political activity, and stability justifications – Rejection of the incommensurability of legitimacy and justice – Socioeconomic interdependence and liberal democratic values as the normative grounds for equal stakes – Risk of entrenchment of hostility among national groups as a consequence of a competitive conception of political activity – Instrumental value of stability – Stability through democratic inclusion – Possibility of sustainable pluralism through deliberative democracy – Modified version of the equal stakes argument – Equal political rights on the basis of long-term residence – Association of citizenship with nationality in contemporary European states – Redefinition of citizenship as top-down redefinition of nationality – Need to reconceptualise equal political rights independently of citizenship – Legal argument for interpreting references to popular sovereignty in national constitutions in accordance with long-term residence, rather than nationality – Available legal remedies


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-464
Author(s):  
Alevtina Vasilevna Kamitova ◽  
Tatyana Ivanovna Zaitseva

The paper reflects the specificity of the fundamental ideas of the artistic world of M. G. Atamanov, which includes a wide range of literary facts from the content level of the text of the works to their poetics. A particularly important role in the works of M. G. Atamanov is played by cross-cutting themes and images that reflect the author's individual style and his idea of national-ethnic identity. The subject of the research is the book of essays “Mon - Udmurt. Maly mynym vös’?” (“I am Udmurt. Why does it hurt?”), which most vividly reflected the main spiritual and artistic searches of M. G. Atamanov, associated with his ideas about the Udmurt people. The main motives and plots of the works included in the book under consideration are accumulated around the concept of “Udmurtness”. The comprehension of “Udmurtness” is modeled in his essays through specific leit themes: native language, Udmurt people, national culture, mentality, geographic and topographic features of the Udmurt people’ places of residence, the Orthodox idea. The “Udmurt theme” is recognized and comprehended by the writer through the prism of national identity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098689
Author(s):  
Pedro A. Teixeira

In keeping with the radical openness of his theory of democracy, Habermas avoided pre-determining the ideal mode of economic organization for his favoured model of deliberative democracy. Instead of attempting a full-blown derivation, in this article, I propose adapting the Rawlsian method of comparing different political–economic regimes as candidate applications of his theory of justice to Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. Although both theorists are seen as endorsing liberal democratic world views, from the perspective of political economy, the corollary of their conceptions of democracy would arguably veer elsewhere: in Rawls’s case, into the territory of property-owning democracy or democratic socialism, and in Habermas’s, into any political–economic regime which guarantees the real exercise of full political and discursive liberties against the background of legitimate lawmaking. The ultimate aim of this article is to discuss whether a concrete conception of democratic socialism, if any, is compatible with Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
William E. Scheuerman

I spent a few unseasonably hot summer days in 1996 digging around in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz for what later became a lengthy essay on Ernst Fraenkel (1898–1975), the neglected German socialist political and legal thinker. I still recall struggling to justify my efforts not simply as an historian of ideas but also as a political theorist who, at least in principle, was expected to make systematic contributions to contemporary debates. The problem was that Fraenkel had focused his acumen on investigating liberal democratic instability and German fascism, matters that did not seem directly pertinent to a political and intellectual constellation in which political scientists were celebrating democracy's “third wave.” With Tony Blair and Bill Clinton touting Third Way politics, and many former dictatorships seemingly on a secure path to liberal democracy, Fraenkel's preoccupations seemed dated. Even though Judith Shklar had noted, as late as 1989, that “anyone who thinks that fascism in one guise or another is dead and gone ought to think again,” political pundits and scholars in the mid-1990s typically assumed that capitalist liberal democracy's future was secure. When I returned to the US and described my research to colleagues, they responded, unsurprisingly, politely but without much enthusiasm.


wisdom ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-161
Author(s):  
Tetiana URYS ◽  
Tetiana KOZAK ◽  
Svitlana BARABASH

National culture, especially literature, contains invaluable nation-building potential and is an effective factor in influencing the development of the national identity of the individual and the ethnic group as a whole. In the process of forming literary works, the author’s consciousness and subconscious play an im­portant role, so they are not only one of the best ways of expressing a creative personality and a form of its reaction to events occurring in the outside world, but also one of the most important means of forming the national identity of the recipients. Therefore, such a literary work contains a modus of national identity. The main content of this concept in the literature is revealed in the article. Its theoretical components and their functional aspects in the text are defined and analysed. The modus of national identity is formulated as a way of realising the identity of one with his nation through certain aesthetic elements and structures at all levels of literary work as an artistic system. Such element-dominants are motives, artistic imagery, lyrical character as the main expression of the author’s thoughts, as well as archetypes, symbols and place names.


2009 ◽  
Vol 08 (03) ◽  
pp. C04 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Aarden

Technoscience is deeply linked to national cultures across terrains as diverse as medicine, agricultural biotechnologies, ICTs, energy technologies, etc. Understanding the cultural dimension of technoscience is vital for the project of socialisation. This project should be embedded in technological and political cultures, taking variation in cultural approaches to technoscience, national identity and political decision-making seriously. Socialisation of science and technology in Europe should therefore approach socio-technical developments in a way that allows for the emergence of controversies and alternative scenarios and their resolution. Only when we take the links between technological cultures, liberal democracy and technoscience seriously we will be able to confront some of today's most pressing and complex problems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6(16) (3) ◽  
pp. 324-331
Author(s):  
R. Sh. Akhmetov ◽  
N. Yu. Sviatokha ◽  
Yu. Filimonova

The Orenburg region is a multi-ethnic region with a large proportion of inter-ethnic marriages. The authors conducted the sociological survey in order to determine the specifics of national identity of children from interethnic families in Orenburg region and identify trends in the formation of national identity. The survey allowed to make conclusions: ethnic self-determination in such families is developing in the form of refusal to associate a person with a certain ethnic group. At the same time, this form of ethnic self-determination is observed not only in inter-ethnic families, where it prevails, but also in single-ethnic families. According to the authors, we are witnessing a process of transition from a traditional society with mandatory registration of ethnicity by birth to a modern civil nation, with a freer attitude to ethnic self-identification, which was launched by the abolition of mandatory indication of nationality in the passport during the Soviet period.


Author(s):  
Dmytro Dzvinchuk ◽  
Iryna Ozminska

The article investigates the concept of “political nation”. The analysis of research studies and the generalization of domestic and foreign experience in the formation of political nation prove the relevance of the issues raised. The study of peculiarities of the political nation formation in the coordinates of the Modernist period enhances the understanding of processes in the socio-humanitarian sphere, makes it possible to outline the ambiguity of interpretations of the conceptual foundations of the political nation, and also helps to develop the effective state policy in this area. It should be noted that there are few studies that systematically analyze the domestic and foreign experience of forming the political nation and they need modernization. It has been determined that the identification of the sense of national identity is the result of the appropriate mental work, and external challenges greatly optimize this process. Different approaches to the content characteristics of the notion “political nation” have been considered and summarized. A number of factors (the need to preserve the integrity of state and its consolidation, the formation of civil society, hybrid aggression, etc.) have been outlined, which stipulate the necessity of developing the adequate policy on dealing with crisis phenomena, existing in the Ukrainian national identity. It has been established that the political nation forms a corresponding type of national culture, which creates a more systematic understanding of the genesis, ritual and strategy of national development.


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