Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Self-Determination: A Paradigm Shift

Abstract

An ongoing paradigm shift is giving birth to a more multidimensional understanding of the relationship between nationalism, sovereignty, self-determination and democratic governance. A common element among the various versions of the new paradigm is the dispersal of democratic governance across multiple and overlapping jurisdictions. Governmental processes are no longer seen as discrete, centralised and homogenous (as in the old nation-state model) but as asymmetrical, multilayered, multicultural and devolved into multiple jurisdictions. These changes have hardly affected the two main conceptual frameworks that dominate the study of nationalism: modernism and ethnosymbolism. As a result, these frameworks risk becoming irrelevant to the new forms of national self-determination, asymmetrical governance and shared sovereignty. Modernism and ethnosymbolism insist that nationalism seeks to equate the nation with a sovereign state, while in reality the overwhelming majority of nations are stateless and unable to build nation states because they often inhabit territories shared with other nations. The paradigm shift occurs through the realisation that nation-state sovereignty is no longer a feasible solution to the demands of stateless nations. Ethnosymbolism is in a much better position to adapt to the paradigm shift provided it abandons the claim that the nation state is the best shell for the nation. The Transformation of the Politics of Ethnicity and CultureWe have grown accustomed to understand nations as axiomatically connected with states. In many cases, particularly in common parlance, we tend to understand the nation as indistinguishable from the state. However, these misleading assumptions have been challenged extensively by events in the last thirty years or so.On the one hand, we are experiencing a devaluation of the nation state as a model for national emancipation; not only because democratic nation states are devolving power internally and externally to regional forms of organisation, but crucially because many democratic nation states have begun transferring jurisdictions to devolved regional governments that in many cases embody