3
institutions may use consociational devices, assign to the group’s political representatives
a disproportionately large number of seats in the legislature, create a special cabinet
position for the articulation of the group’s preferences, etc… As a result, the
configuration of political practices and institutional arrangements put in place to manage
nationalist movements varies from one case to the other.
In the context of liberal democratic states, certain options are not available or,
more to the point, acceptable. This is obviously the case for approaches involving the use
of violence such as genocide or ethnic cleansing. Similarly, strongly coercive approaches
such as population exchanges, segregation or the subordination of one group to the other
2
are incompatible with liberal and democratic principles. Perhaps more importantly is the
fact that political integration through linguistic and cultural assimilation, an approach
favoured by many states in contemporary history and used perhaps most successfully in
France, has been rendered problematic by the globalization of minority rights.
States operating in the context of multinationalism typically seek to capture, or re-
capture, the loyalty of citizens who have come to identify with another nation from the
one they project. At a minimum, these states work to maintain the loyalty of citizens that
is challenged by sub-state nationalism. Therefore, states look to deploy their own
nationalism.
3
There are different ways to do this. A central force in the process of state
nationalism in multinational liberal democracies has been the welfare state.
4
The
2
Ian Lustick, “Stability in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism vs Control,” World
Politics, 31 (1979), 325-344.
3
States operating in a mono-national context also have their own nationalism but it is less easily
noticed because typically unopposed.
4
For the case of the United Kingdom, see Nicola McEwen, “State Welfare Nationalism: The
Territorial Impact of Welfare State Development in Scotland,” Regional and Federal Studies,
12 (2002), 66-90.
Convention