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Re: The Fundamentals Of Armenian Identity Or Who Is An Armenian?
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The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism
By Jerry Z. Muller
Foreign Affairs , March/April 2008
----------------------------------------------------------------
THE BALANCE SHEET
Analysts of ethnic disaggregation typically focus on its destructive
effects, which is understandable given the direct human suffering it
has often entailed. But such attitudes can yield a distorted
perspective by overlooking the less obvious costs and also the
important benefits that ethnic separation has brought.
Economists from Adam Smith onward, for example, have argued that the
efficiencies of competitive markets tend to increase with the markets'
size. The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into smaller
nation-states, each with its own barriers to trade, was thus
economically irrational and contributed to the region's travails in
the interwar period. Much of subsequent European history has involved
attempts to overcome this and other economic fragmentation,
culminating in the EU.
Ethnic disaggregation also seems to have deleterious effects on
cultural vitality. Precisely because most of their citizens share a
common cultural and linguistic heritage, the homogenized states of
postwar Europe have tended to be more culturally insular than their
demographically diverse predecessors. With few Jews in Europe and few
Germans in Prague, that is, there are fewer Franz Kafkas.
Forced migrations generally penalize the expelling countries and
reward the receiving ones. Expulsion is often driven by a majority
group's resentment of a minority group's success, on the mistaken
assumption that achievement is a zero-sum game. But countries that got
rid of their Armenians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, and other successful
minorities deprived themselves of some of their most talented
citizens, who simply took their skills and knowledge elsewhere. And in
many places, the triumph of ethnonational politics has meant the
victory of traditionally rural groups over more urbanized ones, which
possess just those skills desirable in an advanced industrial economy.
But if ethnonationalism has frequently led to tension and conflict, it
has also proved to be a source of cohesion and stability. When French
textbooks began with "Our ancestors the Gauls" or when Churchill spoke
to wartime audiences of "this island race," they appealed to
ethnonationalist sensibilities as a source of mutual trust and
sacrifice. Liberal democracy and ethnic homogeneity are not only
compatible; they can be complementary.
One could argue that Europe has been so harmonious since World War II
not because of the failure of ethnic nationalism but because of its
success, which removed some of the greatest sources of conflict both
within and between countries. The fact that ethnic and state
boundaries now largely coincide has meant that there are fewer
disputes over borders or expatriate communities, leading to the most
stable territorial configuration in European history.
These ethnically homogeneous polities have displayed a great deal of
internal solidarity, moreover, facilitating government programs,
including domestic transfer payments, of various kinds. When the
Swedish Social Democrats were developing plans for Europe's most
extensive welfare state during the interwar period, the political
scientist Sheri Berman has noted, they conceived of and sold them as
the construction of a folkhemmet, or "people's home."
Several decades of life in consolidated, ethnically homogeneous states
may even have worked to sap ethnonationalism's own emotional
power. Many Europeans are now prepared, and even eager, to participate
in transnational frameworks such as the EU, in part because their
perceived need for collective self-determination has largely been
satisfied.
NEW ETHNIC MIXING
Along with the process of forced ethnic disaggregation over the last
two centuries, there has also been a process of ethnic mixing brought
about by voluntary emigration. The general pattern has been one of
emigration from poor, stagnant areas to richer and more dynamic ones.
In Europe, this has meant primarily movement west and north, leading
above all to France and the United Kingdom. This pattern has continued
into the present: as a result of recent migration, for example, there
are now half a million Poles in Great Britain and 200,000 in
Ireland. Immigrants from one part of Europe who have moved to another
and ended up staying there have tended to assimilate and, despite some
grumbling about a supposed invasion of "Polish plumbers," have created
few significant problems.
The most dramatic transformation of European ethnic balances in recent
decades has come from the immigration of people of Asian, African, and
Middle Eastern origin, and here the results have been mixed. Some of
these groups have achieved remarkable success, such as the Indian
Hindus who have come to the United Kingdom. But in Belgium, France,
Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere,
on balance the educational and economic progress of Muslim immigrants
has been more limited and their cultural alienation greater.
How much of the problem can be traced to discrimination, how much to
the cultural patterns of the immigrants themselves, and how much to
the policies of European governments is difficult to determine. But a
number of factors, from official multiculturalism to generous welfare
states to the ease of contact with ethnic homelands, seem to have made
it possible to create ethnic islands where assimilation into the
larger culture and economy is limited.
As a result, some of the traditional contours of European politics
have been upended. The left, for example, has tended to embrace
immigration in the name of egalitarianism and multiculturalism. But if
there is indeed a link between ethnic homogeneity and a population's
willingness to support generous income-redistribution programs, the
encouragement of a more heterogeneous society may end up undermining
the left's broader political agenda. And some of Europe's libertarian
cultural propensities have already clashed with the cultural
illiberalism of some of the new immigrant communities.
Should Muslim immigrants not assimilate and instead develop a strong
communal identification along religious lines, one consequence might
be a resurgence of traditional ethnonational identities in some states
-- or the development of a new European identity defined partly in
contradistinction to Islam (with the widespread resistance to the
extension of full EU membership to Turkey being a possible harbinger
of such a shift).
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
Since ethnonationalism is a direct consequence of key elements of
modernization, it is likely to gain ground in societies undergoing
such a process. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it remains
among the most vital -- and most disruptive -- forces in many parts of
the contemporary world.
More or less subtle forms of ethnonationalism, for example, are
ubiquitous in immigration policy around the globe. Many countries --
including Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Hungary,
Ireland, Israel, Serbia, and Turkey -- provide automatic or rapid
citizenship to the members of diasporas of their own dominant ethnic
group, if desired. Chinese immigration law gives priority and benefits
to overseas Chinese. Portugal and Spain have immigration policies that
favor applicants from their former colonies in the New World. Still
other states, such as Japan and Slovakia, provide official forms of
identification to members of the dominant national ethnic group who
are noncitizens that permit them to live and work in the
country. Americans, accustomed by the U.S. government's official
practices to regard differential treatment on the basis of ethnicity
to be a violation of universalist norms, often consider such policies
exceptional, if not abhorrent. Yet in a global context, it is the
insistence on universalist criteria that seems provincial.
Increasing communal consciousness and shifting ethnic balances are
bound to have a variety of consequences, both within and between
states, in the years to come. As economic globalization brings more
states into the global economy, for example, the first fruits of that
process will often fall to those ethnic groups best positioned by
history or culture to take advantage of the new opportunities for
enrichment, deepening social cleavages rather than filling them
in. Wealthier and higher-achieving regions might try to separate
themselves from poorer and lower-achieving ones, and distinctive
homogeneous areas might try to acquire sovereignty -- courses of
action that might provoke violent responses from defenders of the
status quo.
Of course, there are multiethnic societies in which ethnic
consciousness remains weak, and even a more strongly developed sense
of ethnicity may lead to political claims short of
sovereignty. Sometimes, demands for ethnic autonomy or
self-determination can be met within an existing state. The claims of
the Catalans in Spain, the Flemish in Belgium, and the Scots in the
United Kingdom have been met in this manner, at least for now. But
such arrangements remain precarious and are subject to recurrent
renegotiation. In the developing world, accordingly, where states are
more recent creations and where the borders often cut across ethnic
boundaries, there is likely to be further ethnic disaggregation and
communal conflict. And as scholars such as Chaim Kaufmann have noted,
once ethnic antagonism has crossed a certain threshold of violence,
maintaining the rival groups within a single polity becomes far more
difficult.
This unfortunate reality creates dilemmas for advocates of
humanitarian intervention in such conflicts, because making and
keeping peace between groups that have come to hate and fear one
another is likely to require costly ongoing military missions rather
than relatively cheap temporary ones. When communal violence escalates
to ethnic cleansing, moreover, the return of large numbers of refugees
to their place of origin after a cease-fire has been reached is often
impractical and even undesirable, for it merely sets the stage for a
further round of conflict down the road.
Partition may thus be the most humane lasting solution to such intense
communal conflicts. It inevitably creates new flows of refugees, but
at least it deals with the problem at issue. The challenge for the
international community in such cases is to separate communities in
the most humane manner possible: by aiding in transport, assuring
citizenship rights in the new homeland, and providing financial aid
for resettlement and economic absorption. The bill for all of this
will be huge, but it will rarely be greater than the material costs of
interjecting and maintaining a foreign military presence large enough
to pacify the rival ethnic combatants or the moral cost of doing
nothing.
Contemporary social scientists who write about nationalism tend to
stress the contingent elements of group identity -- the extent to
which national consciousness is culturally and politically
manufactured by ideologists and politicians. They regularly invoke
Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined communities," as if
demonstrating that nationalism is constructed will rob the concept of
its power. It is true, of course, that ethnonational identity is never
as natural or ineluctable as nationalists claim. Yet it would be a
mistake to think that because nationalism is partly constructed it is
therefore fragile or infinitely malleable. Ethnonationalism was not a
chance detour in European history: it corresponds to some enduring
propensities of the human spirit that are heightened by the process of
modern state creation, it is a crucial source of both solidarity and
enmity, and in one form or another, it will remain for many
generations to come. One can only profit from facing it directly
Copyright 2002--2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All rights reserved.
3 of 3
The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism
By Jerry Z. Muller
Foreign Affairs , March/April 2008
----------------------------------------------------------------
THE BALANCE SHEET
Analysts of ethnic disaggregation typically focus on its destructive
effects, which is understandable given the direct human suffering it
has often entailed. But such attitudes can yield a distorted
perspective by overlooking the less obvious costs and also the
important benefits that ethnic separation has brought.
Economists from Adam Smith onward, for example, have argued that the
efficiencies of competitive markets tend to increase with the markets'
size. The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into smaller
nation-states, each with its own barriers to trade, was thus
economically irrational and contributed to the region's travails in
the interwar period. Much of subsequent European history has involved
attempts to overcome this and other economic fragmentation,
culminating in the EU.
Ethnic disaggregation also seems to have deleterious effects on
cultural vitality. Precisely because most of their citizens share a
common cultural and linguistic heritage, the homogenized states of
postwar Europe have tended to be more culturally insular than their
demographically diverse predecessors. With few Jews in Europe and few
Germans in Prague, that is, there are fewer Franz Kafkas.
Forced migrations generally penalize the expelling countries and
reward the receiving ones. Expulsion is often driven by a majority
group's resentment of a minority group's success, on the mistaken
assumption that achievement is a zero-sum game. But countries that got
rid of their Armenians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, and other successful
minorities deprived themselves of some of their most talented
citizens, who simply took their skills and knowledge elsewhere. And in
many places, the triumph of ethnonational politics has meant the
victory of traditionally rural groups over more urbanized ones, which
possess just those skills desirable in an advanced industrial economy.
But if ethnonationalism has frequently led to tension and conflict, it
has also proved to be a source of cohesion and stability. When French
textbooks began with "Our ancestors the Gauls" or when Churchill spoke
to wartime audiences of "this island race," they appealed to
ethnonationalist sensibilities as a source of mutual trust and
sacrifice. Liberal democracy and ethnic homogeneity are not only
compatible; they can be complementary.
One could argue that Europe has been so harmonious since World War II
not because of the failure of ethnic nationalism but because of its
success, which removed some of the greatest sources of conflict both
within and between countries. The fact that ethnic and state
boundaries now largely coincide has meant that there are fewer
disputes over borders or expatriate communities, leading to the most
stable territorial configuration in European history.
These ethnically homogeneous polities have displayed a great deal of
internal solidarity, moreover, facilitating government programs,
including domestic transfer payments, of various kinds. When the
Swedish Social Democrats were developing plans for Europe's most
extensive welfare state during the interwar period, the political
scientist Sheri Berman has noted, they conceived of and sold them as
the construction of a folkhemmet, or "people's home."
Several decades of life in consolidated, ethnically homogeneous states
may even have worked to sap ethnonationalism's own emotional
power. Many Europeans are now prepared, and even eager, to participate
in transnational frameworks such as the EU, in part because their
perceived need for collective self-determination has largely been
satisfied.
NEW ETHNIC MIXING
Along with the process of forced ethnic disaggregation over the last
two centuries, there has also been a process of ethnic mixing brought
about by voluntary emigration. The general pattern has been one of
emigration from poor, stagnant areas to richer and more dynamic ones.
In Europe, this has meant primarily movement west and north, leading
above all to France and the United Kingdom. This pattern has continued
into the present: as a result of recent migration, for example, there
are now half a million Poles in Great Britain and 200,000 in
Ireland. Immigrants from one part of Europe who have moved to another
and ended up staying there have tended to assimilate and, despite some
grumbling about a supposed invasion of "Polish plumbers," have created
few significant problems.
The most dramatic transformation of European ethnic balances in recent
decades has come from the immigration of people of Asian, African, and
Middle Eastern origin, and here the results have been mixed. Some of
these groups have achieved remarkable success, such as the Indian
Hindus who have come to the United Kingdom. But in Belgium, France,
Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere,
on balance the educational and economic progress of Muslim immigrants
has been more limited and their cultural alienation greater.
How much of the problem can be traced to discrimination, how much to
the cultural patterns of the immigrants themselves, and how much to
the policies of European governments is difficult to determine. But a
number of factors, from official multiculturalism to generous welfare
states to the ease of contact with ethnic homelands, seem to have made
it possible to create ethnic islands where assimilation into the
larger culture and economy is limited.
As a result, some of the traditional contours of European politics
have been upended. The left, for example, has tended to embrace
immigration in the name of egalitarianism and multiculturalism. But if
there is indeed a link between ethnic homogeneity and a population's
willingness to support generous income-redistribution programs, the
encouragement of a more heterogeneous society may end up undermining
the left's broader political agenda. And some of Europe's libertarian
cultural propensities have already clashed with the cultural
illiberalism of some of the new immigrant communities.
Should Muslim immigrants not assimilate and instead develop a strong
communal identification along religious lines, one consequence might
be a resurgence of traditional ethnonational identities in some states
-- or the development of a new European identity defined partly in
contradistinction to Islam (with the widespread resistance to the
extension of full EU membership to Turkey being a possible harbinger
of such a shift).
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
Since ethnonationalism is a direct consequence of key elements of
modernization, it is likely to gain ground in societies undergoing
such a process. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it remains
among the most vital -- and most disruptive -- forces in many parts of
the contemporary world.
More or less subtle forms of ethnonationalism, for example, are
ubiquitous in immigration policy around the globe. Many countries --
including Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Hungary,
Ireland, Israel, Serbia, and Turkey -- provide automatic or rapid
citizenship to the members of diasporas of their own dominant ethnic
group, if desired. Chinese immigration law gives priority and benefits
to overseas Chinese. Portugal and Spain have immigration policies that
favor applicants from their former colonies in the New World. Still
other states, such as Japan and Slovakia, provide official forms of
identification to members of the dominant national ethnic group who
are noncitizens that permit them to live and work in the
country. Americans, accustomed by the U.S. government's official
practices to regard differential treatment on the basis of ethnicity
to be a violation of universalist norms, often consider such policies
exceptional, if not abhorrent. Yet in a global context, it is the
insistence on universalist criteria that seems provincial.
Increasing communal consciousness and shifting ethnic balances are
bound to have a variety of consequences, both within and between
states, in the years to come. As economic globalization brings more
states into the global economy, for example, the first fruits of that
process will often fall to those ethnic groups best positioned by
history or culture to take advantage of the new opportunities for
enrichment, deepening social cleavages rather than filling them
in. Wealthier and higher-achieving regions might try to separate
themselves from poorer and lower-achieving ones, and distinctive
homogeneous areas might try to acquire sovereignty -- courses of
action that might provoke violent responses from defenders of the
status quo.
Of course, there are multiethnic societies in which ethnic
consciousness remains weak, and even a more strongly developed sense
of ethnicity may lead to political claims short of
sovereignty. Sometimes, demands for ethnic autonomy or
self-determination can be met within an existing state. The claims of
the Catalans in Spain, the Flemish in Belgium, and the Scots in the
United Kingdom have been met in this manner, at least for now. But
such arrangements remain precarious and are subject to recurrent
renegotiation. In the developing world, accordingly, where states are
more recent creations and where the borders often cut across ethnic
boundaries, there is likely to be further ethnic disaggregation and
communal conflict. And as scholars such as Chaim Kaufmann have noted,
once ethnic antagonism has crossed a certain threshold of violence,
maintaining the rival groups within a single polity becomes far more
difficult.
This unfortunate reality creates dilemmas for advocates of
humanitarian intervention in such conflicts, because making and
keeping peace between groups that have come to hate and fear one
another is likely to require costly ongoing military missions rather
than relatively cheap temporary ones. When communal violence escalates
to ethnic cleansing, moreover, the return of large numbers of refugees
to their place of origin after a cease-fire has been reached is often
impractical and even undesirable, for it merely sets the stage for a
further round of conflict down the road.
Partition may thus be the most humane lasting solution to such intense
communal conflicts. It inevitably creates new flows of refugees, but
at least it deals with the problem at issue. The challenge for the
international community in such cases is to separate communities in
the most humane manner possible: by aiding in transport, assuring
citizenship rights in the new homeland, and providing financial aid
for resettlement and economic absorption. The bill for all of this
will be huge, but it will rarely be greater than the material costs of
interjecting and maintaining a foreign military presence large enough
to pacify the rival ethnic combatants or the moral cost of doing
nothing.
Contemporary social scientists who write about nationalism tend to
stress the contingent elements of group identity -- the extent to
which national consciousness is culturally and politically
manufactured by ideologists and politicians. They regularly invoke
Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined communities," as if
demonstrating that nationalism is constructed will rob the concept of
its power. It is true, of course, that ethnonational identity is never
as natural or ineluctable as nationalists claim. Yet it would be a
mistake to think that because nationalism is partly constructed it is
therefore fragile or infinitely malleable. Ethnonationalism was not a
chance detour in European history: it corresponds to some enduring
propensities of the human spirit that are heightened by the process of
modern state creation, it is a crucial source of both solidarity and
enmity, and in one form or another, it will remain for many
generations to come. One can only profit from facing it directly
Copyright 2002--2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All rights reserved.
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