Liberal democracy, nationalism and culture: multiculturalism and Scottish independence

Abstract

Proponents of Scottish independence often foreground the claim that Scotland forms a democratically relevant and underrepresented community that would function better as an independent state. This argument casts the nation in cultural rather than ethnic or purely political terms, and thus implicitly draws on forms of both liberal nationalist and multicultural political theory. We argue that any plausible articulation of such a ‘cultural nationalism’ ultimately reduces to a series of interrelated claims about the nature and effects of culture, identity and meaning. We provide a post-foundational account of culture and identity as fluid, contested, and overlapping, which we argue renders the cultural nationalist position unsustainable. We argue Britain is really constituted by multiple tiers of political identities, communities, and democratic structures, which suggests traction for post-nationalisms such as political liberalism and cosmopolitanism. We then sketch a distinctive form of post-national cosmopolitanism that focuses on local rather than universal attachments, identities and practices. We conclude that more polycentric governance is required to help accommodate the fluid nature of culture and identity. A deeper analysis of multicultural political theory post-Brexit therefore supports a fundamental remaking of current constitutional arrangements and radical devolution across the whole of the United Kingdom.