2.a. Nations

There is broad agreement among political philosophers and theorists who write on the topic on the following claims about nations:

1. (i) They are a kind of human community;

2. (ii) They are not identical to either states or ethnic groups (Norman, Reference Norman2006);

3. (iii) A stable desire for self-determination on the part of (at least a large number of) its members is a necessary condition for nationhood;

4. (iv) They have some kind of attachment to a territory (a homeland) (Gans, Reference Gans2003);

5. (v) They have a belief in a shared group history (Miller, Reference Miller, Couture, Nielsen and Seymour1996, 266); and

6. (vi) They have a distinct public culture (Miller, Reference Miller, Couture, Nielsen and Seymour1996).

Now nationalist theorists of self-determination have also characterized nations as “encompassing groups.” Encompassing groups are groups with a “pervasive culture.” Membership shapes individuals’ tastes and habits and provides a source of self-identification (Margalit & Raz, Reference Margalit and Raz1990, 448). Nations are a type of encompassing group, but not the only type. Other types include indigenous peoples, or certain religious communities, such as the Amish. According to Margalit and Raz, encompassing groups have the following six features:

1. 1. They have a common public culture (443–4).

2. 2. People growing up among members of this group will acquire this culture (444).

3. 3. Members of the group recognize each other as members of the group (445).

4. 4. Membership of these groups has a high social profile—it is one of the “primary facts” that people notice about each other (445–6).

5. 5. Membership is “a matter of belonging, not achievement (445–6).”

6. 6. The groups in question are large and impersonal, not face-to-face (447).

Some or all of these features typically play a role in arguments for national self-determination, so it is important to keep them in mind here. Some of these features will play a role in my arguments. In this article, I am trying in particular to ground the right to collective autonomy for sub-state nations, or national minorities. Examples of sub-state nations are the Scots and the Quebecois. This does not mean, however, that I think that the account I offer here does not also ground the right to collective autonomy of, for example, the French.

2.b. Self-determination

In this article, self-determination means collective self-determination. That is, rights of self-determination are held and exercised by groups, not by individuals (Altman & Wellman, Reference Altman and Wellman2011, 11–15).Footnote ² Now there are two senses of collective self-determination that feature in the literature. The first sense is collective self-determination as self-government. What do I mean by this? Self-government means significant independent political control by a group at least some of its own affairs (Buchanan, Reference Buchanan2004, 206). There are degrees of self-government, and self-government does not require independent statehood (Buchanan, Reference Buchanan2004). For example, a group with its own federal unit might exercise political control over cultural and educational policy, but not over foreign policy. In addition, self-government is usually understood to require territorial jurisdictional rights; a self-governing group usually has jurisdictional rights within a particular geographical area (Wellman, Reference Wellman2013, 99).

The second sense of collective self-determination is best described as “collective autonomy.” To say that a group has a claim to collective autonomy is just to say that it has a (defeasible) claim to do what it (collectively) wants to do. This entails both a set of liberty rights and a claim against interference. For instance, suppose a tennis club decides to serve alcohol in its clubhouse. If the tennis club says that no-one should interfere in its decision, and that others have reason to respect the decision just because it is the club’s decision, this is an appeal to the value of collective autonomy (Wellman, Reference Wellman2005, 41–42, Reference Wellman, Paul, Miller and Paul2010). In essence, to say that nations have a claim to collective autonomy is to say that a version of the Millian harm principle applies to them.

These two ways of thinking about self-determination are not just two sides of the same coin. If I say that a group has a claim to some form of self-government, it does not at all follow that I think they have a claim against interference simpliciter. Consider: if I say the Scots have a claim to self-government, construed as above, what that entails is that they have a right to certain institutions over which they exercise significant independent control, and that those institutions have jurisdictional rights over some domain. It does not entail that any interference by outsiders would be presumptively pro tanto wrong. Saying that the Scots have a right to self-government does not specify which areas Scots should have jurisdiction over. The right to self-government might be satisfied without giving Scots jurisdiction over, for example, licensing laws. As such, there is no relation of entailment between the claims that the Scots have the right to self-government and the claim that the central government imposing licensing laws against the opposition of the Scottish people would be pro tanto wrong. By contrast, saying that the Scots have a claim to collective autonomy entails that any interference whatsoever by outsiders with the Scots’ internal affairs is presumptively wrong.

In this article, I will argue that collective autonomy is the best way to understand national self-determination. Specifically, I will argue that nations have a presumptive claim to collective autonomy. This claim is only defeated where the group would violate the rights of either members or non-members. In other words, their claim to collective autonomy is not defeated by the fact that a collective action would setback the interests of others—the action must wrongfully harm others. To make this clearer, to say that a group, x, has a presumptive claim to collective autonomy entails:

2.c. The standard picture and its alternative

On the standard way of thinking about self-determination, national self-determination is instrumental in protecting the interests that are realized by national membership. Theorists of national self-determination fill in the details of this account in different ways. Will Kymlicka and Margalit and Raz argue that our national culture provides us the range of meaningful options we need to live an autonomous and flourishing life (Kymlicka, Reference Kymlicka1995, 82–84; Margalit & Raz, Reference Margalit and Raz1990). Some theorists, such as Kai Nielsen and Yael Tamir argue that various psychological goods—for example, self-respect, are well-served by the flourishing of our national culture (Nielsen, Reference Nielsen and Moore1998, 109–110; Tamir, Reference Tamir1993, 73).Footnote ⁴ The next step of this account is to argue that certain institutional arrangements are necessary to secure these interests (Lee, Reference Lee2012, 126–128). National cultures are, after all, vulnerable to decay and out-competition by other cultures. Here again, theorists differ. Some, such as Nielsen, argue that independent national statehood is the optimal institutional arrangement from the point of view of protecting people’s interests in their national membership (Nielsen, Reference Nielsen and Moore1998, 120). Others argue that sub-national autonomy, or even group cultural rights, are sufficient to protect these interests (Gans, Reference Gans2003, 67–96). Painting broad brush strokes, however, we can say that what is common to these accounts is they are committed to at least the weak claim that:

Now so far we might think this is a fairly natural way to think about national self-determination. After all, it is perfectly consonant with the typical starting point for thinking about group rights in political theory—the Raz-ian theory of group rights. But on further examination, this account generates a puzzling question. To start with, the account makes the actual content of a nation’s right to self-government contingent on certain empirical facts—facts about which institutional arrangements are necessary to secure the interests in national identity. At first blush, this might not seem to be a problem at all. We should want a theory of self-determination to be sensitive to this kind of empirical fact, we might think. But notice that we do not typically think the same thing about the right to self-determination of states, or their “peoples.”Footnote ⁵ Philosophers and political theorists who write about self-determination who write about states go to great pains to argue that the “peoples” of states have a claim to statehood that is independent of the empirical facts such as whether having their own state is necessary to secure certain important interests, or whether another state could better protect those interests (Fabre, Reference Fabre2016, 130–135; Stilz, Reference Stilz2011, 590–595). Indeed, this claim is so strong that the peoples of states can go to war over it.Footnote ⁶ So how do we explain this contrast?

There are two possible explanations. The first is to do with territorial rights. States, or their peoples, have a much stronger claim against outside interference because they have rights over territory. But notice that this reply just pushes the question about the normative difference between states and nations back a step: why do states, or their peoples, have these rights—not as a matter of morality—but nations do not? Notice that we are not asking about which entities actually do enjoy territorial rights, but about which entities have the moral right to enjoy them. The other explanation is that the rights of states are enshrined in international law. At first sight, we might think this is a simple-minded explanation. But there is a good case for the claim that our normative theorizing about self-determination should run parallel to the morally defensible aspects of international law—those features of it that realize certain important values, such as stability.Footnote ⁷ The problem with this explanation, however, is that we cannot know whether or not international law in respect of self-determination is morally defensible without doing the normative work of fleshing out a theory of self-determination. There might be a serious moral cost to the current regime, a cost that only becomes apparent to us after we have a worked-out account of self-determination.

So the standard view must either explain the fact that the content and strength of nation’s claims to self-determination are sensitive to a particular set of facts, whereas those of states are not, or we should regard it as an incomplete account of the collective self-determination. As I have said, I am skeptical that the first option is viable. If we take the second option, we need a separate account of self-determination as it applies to states and their peoples. But whatever explanation this account offers will, I have suggested, probably apply to nations as well, in which case this new account, and not the standard view, will explain the ground of national self-determination.

All this should make us open to an alternative account of the right to national self-determination. On the account I offer, the most important normative fact about nations is that co-nationality is (or can be) an intrinsically valuable relationship. This has three implications for self-determination:

I outline and defend these claims in Section 4. Cumulatively, I argue in Section 5, they generate a presumptive claim to collective autonomy for nations. So, as well as having a different justificatory structure to the standard account, my account differs with respect to the content of the right to national self-determination. The core of my account is therefore the following claim:

Thinking about nations primarily as groups of people that have valuable relationships with one another qua co-nationals allows us both to develop a richer account of the benefits of national identity, and to compare co-nationality with other kinds of valuable relationship, such as friendship, and familial relationships.

3.a. Introduction

The first step of my argument for national self-determination is to establish that co-nationality, qua co-nationality can be intrinsically valuable.Footnote ⁸ I say, “can make” and “can go better,” because there might be national identities that have objectionable content. As I note below, we want to rule out the claim that certain relationships with objectionable terms of association or content—between Mafiosi, say, can be a source of value (Miller, Reference Miller2005, 66). However, I believe that often the co-national relationship is intrinsically valuable.Footnote ⁹ Now sometimes this claim about co-nationality is taken to mean that the relationship between people who share a state, can have intrinsic value. But it can also be understood to mean—and this is the version I want to defend—that the bonds between people who share a nationality can be valuable.Footnote ¹⁰ The two are different. The second version implies that Scots can have a valuable relationship with fellow Scots, one that is different to the relationship they share with English, Welsh, and Northern Irish people (Mason, Reference Mason1997, 437–438). The first step of this argument is already controversial, so it might not buy me any dialectical advantage. But I think anyone who is already attracted to the nationalist view will be sympathetic to it. In any case, I will argue for this claim.Footnote ¹¹ How do we establish that the co-national relationship can intrinsically valuable? First, I argue for the claim that co-nationality shares an important feature with intrinsically valuable relationships such as family and friendship: it involves the production-in-common of goods that contribute to human flourishing.Footnote ¹² I then introduce grounds for skepticism that having this feature is a sufficient condition for a relationship to have intrinsic value. I conclude the section by arguing for a conditional claim: if you think that friendship and familial relationships can be intrinsically valuable, the burden of proof is on you to explain why co-nationality cannot be. Our reasons for thinking that co-nationality can be intrinsically valuable, I conclude, are about as strong as our reasons for thinking that friendship and familial relationships can be.

3.b. Co-nationality and flourishing

How do we establish that co-nationality can be an intrinsically valuable relationship? One way to get this claim off the ground is to compare co-nationality with other relationships, relationships whose intrinsic value is less controversial. Thomas Hurka pursues this strategy in arguing that co-nationals can permissibly be partial to one another. Let me first say that Hurka might appear to be considering a separate question from mine. But the question of whether a relationship is intrinsically valuable and whether parties to it can be partial to one another are interlinked. The ground of partiality, and of the duties associated with the relationship, for most theorists, is the value of the relationship (Lazar, Reference Lazar2016, 30–31).Footnote ¹³ So, for present purposes, we can treat partiality and intrinsic value as inter-substitutable.Footnote ¹⁴ Hurka compares national partiality to a widely accepted form of partiality—partiality to one’s family members. He notes that skeptics of the justifiability of national partiality often emphasize the differences between families and nations. Nations do not have the features that justify partiality between family members, they claim. Hurka’s response is to point out that there are other factors that seem to justify partiality on which nations sometimes do as well as families. There are, for Hurka, two relevant factors to consider. The first is the “degree of closeness” between the individuals. On this dimension, nations do much worse than families. The second factor is the amount of good the interaction between a group of people produces. The greater the good, the greater the degree to which they can be partial to one another (Hurka, Reference Hurka, McKim and McMahan1997, 153). And, as Hurka, notes, nations do very well on this second dimension:

Hurka’s example in this passage—a national health care system—is a benefit that is provided by the people of the state as a whole. But there are other kinds of benefits that even national minorities can provide to their members. As I sketched out in Maguire (Reference Maguire2023, 78) these are intangible benefits such as:

1. (i) The development of valuable capacities and dispositions: regarding yourself as belong to a nation is a way for you to develop valuable capacities, such as those for reciprocity and fellow-feeling (Mason, Reference Mason1997, 439–441). One may develop an appreciation for, for example, pieces or genres of music, landscape, and works of art, books, plays, and so on by virtue of regarding them as part of your national heritage, where you would not have appreciated them otherwise.

2. (ii) Providing a secure source of self-respect and esteem: the achievements and positive features of nations are a source of self-respect and esteem for their members. Because membership is a matter of belonging, not of achievement, national membership is a highly secure source of self-respect and esteem (when things are going reasonably well for the nation).Footnote ¹⁵ Whether this is a good thing, of course, depends in part on the content of the national identity itself, and the collective achievements in question. We should not think of the pride derived from wars of conquest or subordination of other groups as contributing to individual flourishing.Footnote ¹⁶

3. (iii) Inter-personal projects and trans-generational value: a person’s relationship to their co-nationals is a way for them to put their lives in the context of a larger project, one that extends across generations (Miller, Reference Miller2005, 68–69).

4. (iv) Cultural goods: nationality provides people with cultural goods such as a historical narrative, music, national literature, folk customs, and so forth. Part of the benefit that people derive from having these goods as elements of their national culture, as opposed to the common heritage of the world, is dependent on the fact of their relationships with their co-nationals (McMahan, Reference McMahan, McKim and McMahan1997, 130).

To recap, Hurka’s strategy has two components: (i) he identifies a shared feature of nationality and family membership, that is, a history of beneficial interaction; and (ii) he argues that this shared feature grounds moral facts about the relationships. I have argued that the relationship between members of sub-state nations, such as between Scots, can also have this feature. But we should stop here to ask what the nature of the grounding relationship is between this feature and the intrinsic value of the relationship. A history of valuable interaction is not a sufficient condition for the intrinsic value of a relationship. My relationship with my bank (or properly put, with the people who work for the bank), or my insurance company is mutually beneficial, but it is only instrumentally valuable (Mason, Reference Mason1997, 441). Secondly, we do not think that relationships that provide only trivial benefits are, for this reason, intrinsically valuable. Imagine that, not knowing each other beforehand, two people sign a contract where they agree to provide each other an endless list of trivial benefits—for example, the participants will mow one square foot of one another’s gardens, will “like” or otherwise promote one another’s social media activity, will mildly praise one another’s dress-sense to third parties, and so forth. This relationship is at most instrumentally valuable. So there are two questions we must answer: (i) What is the nature of the relationship between the history of valuable interaction and the intrinsic value of the relationship? and (ii) What kind of benefits or goods does a relationship have to produce for it to be intrinsically valuable?

3.c. The flourishing condition

To answer (i), a history of valuable interaction is a necessary condition for the intrinsic value of a relationship. Why should we think this? For two reasons: one, all the straightforward examples of intrinsically valuable relationships satisfy this condition—friendship and family are both characterized by a history of valuable interaction between members. The second reason is that it is hard to account for the special place that relationships such as friendship and family have in our lives and morality without appealing to our interest in being part of them—in the contribution they make to our flourishing. This brings me to (ii): the relationship must promote core human interests, such as interests in autonomy, warranted self-respect (WSR), the need for companionship, and so forth. It must, in other words, promote human flourishing. This is a further necessary condition for the intrinsic value of a relationship: the right kind of valuable interaction. Let us lump these two conditions together under the label of the Flourishing Condition.

Where does this leave co-nationality? Above I listed some benefits (i)–(iv) of nationality. Now at least some of these goods are connected in the right way to human flourishing: cultural goods, self-respect, and the valuable capacities I identified above all, inter alia, plausibly contribute to flourishing. If this is true, then nationality satisfies the Flourishing Condition.

But is satisfying the Flourishing Condition sufficient for intrinsic value? The following case suggests that it is not:

In this scenario, membership in Omnicorp benefits its members across a range of core human interests: in physical security, in education, and so forth. Is their relationship with Omnicorp intrinsically valuable? Their relationship with Omnicorp, let us stipulate, is not exploitative or coerced. Ominicorp charges a reasonable price for membership, and it looks after its customers well. Furthermore, Omnicorp is not responsible for its members’ reliance on its services—it has no role in the state’s dysfunction, and actively tries to promote the development of state capacity, against its own interest. Finally, its members, through share-holding, have a say in Omnicorp’s running. So there does not seem to be anything that would disqualify the relationship from being intrinsically valuable. But I think most of us would resist saying that the relationship between Omnicorp and its members is intrinsically valuable. It seems like Omnicorps’ shareholders would have nothing to regret if the Anarchian government got its act together and set up an inclusive welfare state instead. If we are right about this, then satisfying the Flourishing Condition is not sufficient to make a relationship intrinsically valuable. This opens the door for the nationalism-skeptic to say, once again, that co-nationality, despite its contribution to human flourishing, is merely instrumentally valuable. But, prima facie, this goes just as well for friendship and family. If the nationalism-skeptic believes that these relationships have intrinsic value they must find some feature of these relationships that both (i) nationality does not have and (ii) could plausibly be, in conjunction with the Flourishing Condition, a sufficient condition of intrinsic value. What could this be?

3.d. (Conditionally) reversing the burden of proof

There is one putative difference between co-nationality and friendship and family: friends and relatives have affective ties such as personal love and filial affection. But is it plausible that these could be a ground of intrinsic value? The contribution that these ties make to the value of the relationships seems to be accounted for already. We have said that a necessary condition of the intrinsic value of a relationship is that it contributes to human flourishing. Now being involved in relationship that involve affective ties both contributes to, and is partly constitutive of, human flourishing. This is the contribution it makes to the value of these relationships; what more is there to say? Nationality also has features that contribute to or are partly constitutive of, human flourishing. There is no relevant difference here. Secondly, there is a range of affective ties, appropriate to different kinds of relationships, and some of these are like the attitudes that co-nationals tend to have toward one another. Not all our personal relationships, even the ones with intrinsic value, are characterized by loving affection, or playful camaraderie. Our affective ties to our closest friends are based on our desire to spend time with one another, our enjoyment of each other’s company, and our sharing interests, a sense of humor, and so on. Our affective ties to our taciturn and humorless uncles, say, are grounded in loyalty, family solidarity, and gratitude. These are not so different from the attitudes that people tend to have toward their co-nationals. Subsuming all the different attitudes that friends and close family bear each other under the rubric of “affective ties” obscures more than it enlightens. Once we disaggregate these, we see that some family ties, for example, are more like impersonal relations such as co-nationality than they are like intimate relationships like friendship. This does not mean that they are not valuable.

So, what next? Do we try to find a list of jointly sufficient conditions for the intrinsic value of relationships? Even if there was space here, I doubt this would be a promising strategy. Instead what I will do is to point out a further similarity between co-nationality and other intrinsically valuable relationships. And I will try to show that, conditional on believing that friendship and familial relationships can be intrinsically valuable, the burden of proof is on the nationalism-skeptic to show that co-nationality cannot be intrinsically valuable.Footnote ¹⁷

One way to get started with this would be to claim that nationality and friendship share another feature: that is, part of what is to be someone’s friend/co-national is to be under certain duties (associative duties) to one another. Although I have not been arguing for the claim that co-nationals have any duties to one another, but for the claim that their relationship is intrinsically valuable, to argue for the intrinsic value of the co-national relationship on the grounds that co-nationals have associative duties would be question-begging. On most accounts of associative duties, the claim about intrinsic value grounds the claim about duties (Lazar, Reference Lazar2016, 30–31). But it is true that both friends and co-nationals typically believe themselves to be under certain duties to one another. Indeed, a pattern of beliefs of this sort is partly constitutive of nations, just as it is of friendship. I am not saying that this pattern of beliefs is the sufficient condition for intrinsic value. It does, however, reflect an important difference between the co-national/friend relationship and the relationship between Omnicorp and its customers: that is, that the parties relate to each other in a particular way. Co-nationals and friends tend to treat their relationship as though it had more than just instrumental value, and this typically reflects beliefs about the relationship’s value. That people believe this is (defeasible) evidence of intrinsic value. Indeed, it is the best kind of evidence we can have for the claim that something is intrinsically valuable: that people believe it is and treat it like it is.

To summarize: I have argued that contribution to human flourishing is a necessary condition for the intrinsic value of a relationship. I have argued that co-nationality can, and typically does, satisfy this condition. Secondly, I have argued that co-nationals, like friends and like relatives, typically act as though, and believe that, their relationship has intrinsic value. This, I have said, is evidence that the relationship does have intrinsic value. Where does this leave the case for co-nationality’s intrinsic value? It leaves it about as good as the case for the intrinsic value of friendship or family. As I have said, proponents of the claim that family and friendship are intrinsically valuable almost uniformly appeal to the contribution that these relationships make to human flourishing. Co-nationality, I have argued, also contributes to human flourishing. And even if contribution to human flourishing is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition of intrinsic value, this leaves nationality no worse off than friendship or family. If we think that friendship and family can be intrinsically valuable, we should think the same of co-nationality.

Of course, establishing that co-nationality can be intrinsically valuable does not straightforwardly have any bearing on the other central issue of this article: the justification of national self-determination. In the next section, I demonstrate the link between the value of the co-national relationship and the right to self-determination.

4.a. Self-determination and respect

People are entitled to respect in virtue of their standing as free and equal persons. To fail to treat them in a way that accords with this is to wrong them. As Christopher Wellman points out, however, sometimes we are owed respect in virtue of our occupying particular roles, or in virtue of our achievements (Wellman, Reference Wellman2005, 56–57). Sometimes, too, we are owed respect for collective achievements. For example, suppose I am part of a crew of workmen that skillfully restores an old country house. The restoration of the country house is something for which I, qua member of the crew, deserve respect. If someone disparages the job my crew did on the house, they disrespect me qua crew member.

The fact that the co-nationals have an intrinsically valuable relationship to each other is a collective achievement. Through their social practices, and through a history of cooperation, they have created and sustained a relationship that contributes to the flourishing of its participants, one that its members value non-instrumentally, and that is characterized by affective ties. Relationships such as this, like great works of art or beautiful landscapes, have a special place in the world of value. They are properly valued for their own sake. To create and sustain something like this is an achievement. Nationals, qua nationals, are owed respect for this achievement.

But what exactly is the link between self-determination and respect? After all, there are lots of ways to respect people’s nationality. Imagine a case where a member of a sub-state nation (a Scot, say), is complaining that the central government interferes in its internal affairs, and that this expresses a lack of respect. The central government might respond that it shows respect for the sub-state nationality in other ways. It might invest significant amounts of money in conserving the group’s heritage, give over airtime on the national broadcasting service to programs about the group and its culture, or give symbolic recognition of the nation in various other ways. If there are other ways to demonstrate respect, it is hard to see the necessary connection between respect for achievement and self-determination.

To answer this challenge, consider the following cases:

Let me first clear up some things about these cases. In each case, we feel that the person who prevents the group or individual from acting autonomously is acting wrongly. But why? The science group has no claim to Tom’s help or time, beyond his normal obligations as a teacher. The members of the band, likewise, have consented to join the band. They could easily ditch Tina and set up their own band without her. So we must account for the wrongness of these cases: respect seems like it will do the job. The second thing to note is that the disrespect does not lie in wrongly denying that the wronged party has a valuable capacity. Tom and Tina both acknowledge the talents and capacities of the wronged parties; they do not deny that the groups are able to do the things they want to do. The disrespect lies in failing to treat the wronged parties in a way that befits their standing. The two groups have earned a right to run things their way, and with whom they choose. And the fact that Tom and Tina voluntarily benefit their respective groups in lots of different ways does not change that. This pair of cases illustrates the connection between achievements, respect, and autonomy.

Does the same thing apply to nations? One common feature of the groups in the examples above: they have the capacity to exercise their autonomy. If they did not, we would not think that not respecting their autonomy was disrespectful. So let us say that a necessary condition for a group to have a claim to autonomy is that it have the relevant capacities—that is, to govern, and to do in a satisfactory way.Footnote ¹⁸

Let me now put the argument from moral bonds to national self-determination more formally:

One thing to note here is that “internal affairs,” mentioned in P4, does not refer solely to the group’s cultural life. Territorially concentrated national groups are not merely cultural groups—they are societies. The Quebecois, for example, are not merely a cultural group, but are the major part of a society—a large group of people sharing a territory, and with a distinctive economic, administrative, and cultural life. To construe “internal affairs,” therefore, as involving merely the cultural life of a national group would be too narrow.Footnote ¹⁹ An objection at this point might be to point out that societies typically have minority groups who do not share the majority nationality, and as such that the claim that national groups have a claim to non-interference against outsiders with respect to the management of their society entails the disenfranchisement of minority groups. Of course, it does not entail that. National majorities are not permitted to disenfranchise minority groups, or deprive them of any of the political rights they need to participate politically. To say that national groups have a claim to govern the collective life of their society does not mean that they are entitled to deprive minorities of an equal say. Just as the Quebecois have a claim against interference with their internal affairs, minorities in Quebec have a claim to equal civic rights. The way to reconcile these two claims is to say that the Quebecois are entitled that the people of Quebec as a whole are entitled to non-interference, and that minorities in Quebec are entitled to fully participate in Quebec’s collective decision-making.

Let me briefly illustrate this with an example. Suppose there is a majority Italian-speaking city in an English-speaking region. The Italian-speaking city comprises three regions, North, Mid, and South. North and South are almost exclusively Italian-speaking, while Mid, which is fully enclosed by North and South, is majority English-speaking. There are obvious good reasons—administrative, political, and so on—to give the city as a whole local self-determination from the wider region. The reasons for this are connected to the interests of the Italian-speaking population. To say that the city should be given self-determination for these reasons, however, does not entail that the English-speaking residents should be deprived of political right. The obvious solution is to say that the primary unit of self-determination should be the city as a whole, with the English-speaking population enjoying full political rights and possibly some degree of local self-determination within the city.

Summing up, this argument generates a pro tanto claim against interference. In this argument, it is the fact that co-nationals have an intrinsically valuable relationship, together with the fact that they have the capacity to govern themselves, that grounds their claim to collective autonomy.

4.b. Self-determination and societal excellence

People have an interest in achieving certain kinds of excellence: creating works of art, carrying out certain sporting feats, becoming a Chess grand master. They also have an interest in seeing people with whom they have important relationships achieve excellence. Parents, for example, do not just have an interest in their child learning to read and write. They have an interest—a morally weighty one—in their child achieving excellence, learning the guitar, excelling at sport, mastering a craft.

The same thing, I claim, goes for our co-nationals. We can have an interest in seeing our co-nationals achieve excellence in sport, culture, or science.Footnote ²⁰ If co-nationality is an intrinsically valuable relationship, then how our lives go for us is affected by how the lives of our co-nationals go. We have an interest in seeing our co-nationals live flourishing lives, just as we do our children, or our close friends.

Not only, however, can people have an interest in seeing their co-nationals achieve great things, they have an interest in having some share of responsibility for these achievements. The parenthood example is useful again here: parents do not just have an interest in their children achieving excellence—they have an interest in being (partly) responsible for their children’s achievements.Footnote ²¹

This is where national self-determination comes into the picture. Contrast the following three hypothetical societies:

The Culture-Vultures can claim a greater degree of responsibility for the achievements of their co-nationals than the Provincians or the Talentians. They choose to invest in the promotion of art and culture, even at the opportunity cost of pursuing other social goals, and they executed their policies without outside interference. If nationals have an interest in being responsible for promoting excellence in their national societies, the Culture-Vultures are better off with respect to this interest than the Provincians or the Talentians. This is parallel to the parenthood case again. A parent who invests times and resources into their child and sees that child become a great musician, is better-off with respect to this interest than a parent whose child just happens to become a great musician, or where someone else deserves the credit for this. There are several things that follow from this—parents have a claim not only to assistance in developing their children’s talents, but also against interference by outsiders with respect to the rearing of their children. They have a claim to rear their children in a way that allows them to claim a share of responsibility for their children’s success; and not just because, for instance, they contribute through their taxes to the child’s education and the like. They have an interest in playing a specific role in the development of these talents. Likewise, nationals can have a claim to the collective autonomy and to the institutional arrangements that allow them to claim their share of responsibility for the achievements of their co-nationals.

A possible objection here is that members of national minorities already do have access to institutional arrangements that allow them to claim their share of collective responsibility for the achievements of their co-nationals—they have equal political rights to participate in the governing institutions of their state as a whole. To see the problem with this objection, imagine a group of people—say some other close relatives—usurp many parental functions from two competent parents. The parents still have some role in the child’s upbringing, but it is fair to say that the child, rather than having two parents, has some kind of parenting committee. The parents claim that they are being deprived of their ability to control the child’s upbringing, and in shaping her or her future trajectory. The usurpers respond that the parents still have some role in the child’s upbringing, just in tandem with others. The parents could justifiably claim that they are entitled to play a special role in their child’s life. They have an interest in the goods realized by fulfilling the role of parent in the child’s life, not the role of member of the parental committee. The case of the national minority is analogous here. Members of national minorities have an interest in playing a specific role with respect to the achievements of their co-nationals, one that gives them a claim to a degree of exclusive control over their societies. Parents and co-nationals want to claim responsibility for their co-nationals’ achievements qua parent, or qua co-national, not merely as participants to some broader co-operative scheme.

But does this generate a claim to national self-determination? There are many ways for a society to be responsible for cultural achievement. One way is for its government to co-ordinate things and provide money to artists, writers, and so forth. Another way is for individuals and smaller groups within the society to put their own time and effort into promoting cultural achievement—running classes, setting up competitions, and so on. Self-determination is not needed for this. But some forms of cultural excellence do require self-determination, because it is expensive to promote them, and they need a lot of co-ordination. Scientific research is one example. And even if self-determination is not necessary, it certainly helps. The Culture Vultures are in a much better position to promote excellence with certain institutions behind them then if they had to rely just on individual effort and initiative, just as a parent with greater control and involvement in her child’s life is in a better position to develop the child’s talents and abilities.

The general point is this; there are some goods that people either (i) derive directly from their relationships with others or (ii) can derive because they are related to others in a particular way. For some of these goods, there is a strong connection between the enjoyment of these goods and the absence of outside interference in the relationship. In other words, there is an internal, or constitutive, connection between these goods and autonomy or self-determination. Many of the other goods realized by the parent–child relationship, such as spontaneous affection and trust between parents and children, simply cannot be realized unless parents are sufficiently free from outside interference or monitoring. Parents have an interest in playing a special role in their children’s lives, and interference by outsiders undermines this. Likewise, co-nationals have an interest in playing a certain role in their co-national’s lives—in having a share of responsibility for creating the conditions for them to flourish. And to be able to do this, they must enjoy significant freedom from interference from outsiders.

4.c. Self-determination and personal autonomy

There are some activities and options such that, because of personal history and our psychology, to pursue them is part of what it means for us to live a life on our own terms. Imagine a talented young violinist who has spent years practicing and wants to pursue a professional career in music. If this option is closed off for her—by an accident, or by someone else’s malicious behavior—this comes at a cost to her personal autonomy. We have a special interest in pursuing these options because they are important to us, over and above our interest in pursuing them because they are valuable. Following Steven Wall, we can call such options vital options (Wall, Reference Wall2007, 254–256).Footnote ²²

Now sometimes our vital options are options to do things with particular people—people with whom we have valuable relationships.Footnote ²³ Imagine a group of close friends who meet every Friday evening to play carpet bowls. Taken by itself, playing carpet bowls might not mean very much to them, or might not be the kind of thing that can be a vital option. But it is fact that they do this activity together that gives it significance. Moreover, even if they could pursue carpet bowls with other people, they have a special interest—a personal autonomy-based interest—playing with one another.

As I have already indicated, some of our vital options our options that we pursue with other people. Some of these options are what we call joint options. Joint options are options to pursue ends that require coordinated action with other individuals (Wall, Reference Wall2007, 245–250). Put another way, a joint option is an option to undertake a joint activity, such as going on a walk with another person. A necessary condition of an undertaking being a joint activity in the sense that Wall means is that it be “guided” by a shared intention (Wall, Reference Wall2007, 246).

Some of our vital options are joint options. To give an example: imagine a group of people who have a strong personal investment in building a church in their village. It is not only that they have an interest in having a place to worship, but the activity of building the church together is very important to them; they see at adding to the significance of their lives, and as fulfilling some of their religious obligations. None of them can build the church on their own. This is something that requires coordinated group activity. There must be someone to design the church, or to outsource this work to someone reliable. Funds must be collected. Now it might be the case that in order to successfully build the church, the villagers need to vest some individual, or a group of people with the authority to co-ordinate their activities. In this case, the villagers have an autonomy-based interest in having an institution that can do this. Another way of putting this is that the villagers have an interest in creating an institution that allows them to exercise collective rights with respect to their activities.Footnote ²⁴

This is a small-scale example. Are there any examples of joint-options that can be undertaken by much larger groups, such as by nations? Language revival movements, such as those in Israel and Wales, movements to modernize agriculture or other important sectors of the economy, like the Danish co-operative movement of the 19th century, and movements for national self-determination are good examples. In each case, people act together in a coordinated way, not just to achieve some social goal, but because they have an interest in so acting. People who are involved in mass movements of this type are typically not solely interested in the social goal they have in mind. They also believe that participating in these movements gives their life meaning and purpose. Further than that, they often have a further interest in acting together with a particular group of people: people with whom they have a special relationship.

So we can see that members of a national minority can have an interest, grounded in personal autonomy, in pursuing certain joint-options together. Even if they could pursue those options with another group of people—the people of the state as a whole, for instance—they still have a claim to pursue them with their co-nationals. Moreover, as we have seen, even activities that are not valuable in themselves can become so by being activities that we do with certain people.

Even an option as coarse-grained as exercising national self-determination together can be a vital option (Wall, Reference Wall2007, 253). Often, however, people will have finer-grained options they want to pursue with their co-nationals: language revival and agricultural modernization are good examples. Where people have special relationships, they can have a special interest in acting together, an interest grounded in personal autonomy. When they cannot do this, it is a blow to their personal autonomy.

Let me put the point another way. Part of what it is for us to live a life on our own terms is for us to do things with people with whom we have significant relationships. Co-nationality is a significant relationship, and there are things that we can do, not just with a handful of our co-nationals, but as a nation. Even if none of these activities themselves are particularly valuable, or if they do not relate to our other interests, acting together is important to us. This is another parallel with friendship and family. What this means is that when we are weighing up people’s interests in being able to carry out certain activities, we do not just need to ask what their interest is in doing the thing itself, we need to ask whether there are any special relationships involved. Even if there is no independent interest in carrying out the activity itself, or the interest in carrying out the activity itself is already satisfied, we have a separate interest in carrying out the activity with particular people.

When a nation, whether self-governing or not, decides to do something, we can see this as either the outcome of the aggregation of a set of preferences, or we can see it as a group of people with a significant relationship committing to undertake a joint option. Even where the decision is a trivial one—for example, a decision to beautify roundabouts—it can still be important to nationals that they carry out the decision together. If we look at this in a coarser-grained way, people typically have some desire to engage in joint activities, and in doing so with people with whom they share significant relationships.Footnote ²⁵ To reiterate part of what it is to live a life on one’s own terms is not merely to do things that are important to us, but to do things with the people that are important to us. The fact that we have an intrinsically valuable relationship with someone, or with a group of people, gives us a claim to do things together, even when we have no interest in doing those things that are independent of the relationship.Footnote ²⁶