What's So Special About Nations?

Abstract

Until quite recently, most Anglo-American political philosophers have had little if anything to say about national self-determination. However, a growing number of prominent political philosophers are now endorsing national self-determination. This new-found enthusiasm is surprising if not ironic, since it comes at a time at which genocidal ethno-nationalist conflicts (in the Balkans, in Rwanda and Burundi, etc.) might seem to lend credence to the view that the doctrine that every nation should have its own state is both impractical and dangerous, and that the nationalist mentality is often racist, xenophobic, exclusionary, and morally regressive. In this essay I will question the wisdom of this new-found enthusiasm for national self-determination. I will probe what I shall call the Strong National Self-Determination Thesis (or, more briefly, the Strong Thesis). This is the assertion that every nation as such has a right to some substantial degree of self-government and there is a presumption that every nation as such has a right to its own independent state (where this includes the right to secede from another state). I call this the Strong Thesis because it is more robust than the thesis that nations have a right to some form of self-government.