1 The relevant writings of Miller and Walzer will be cited below. While Miller openly acknowledges his political philosophy to be communitarian, Walzer is somewhat more circumspect. He seems to view communitarianism as a supplementary theory to liberalism; nevertheless, he sees liberalism as requiring ‘periodic communitarian correction.’ See Miller, David, Market, State, and Community: Theoretical Foundations of Market Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989), ch. 9Google Scholar, and Walzer, Michael, ‘The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism,’ Political Theory 18:1 (Feb. 1990) 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 This definition is loosely based on the one given by Connor, Walker in his book, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1994), xiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 This term originated in Bauer, Otto, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Wien: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung 1907)Google Scholar; excerpted in Bottomore, Tom and Goode, Patrick, eds., Austro-Marxism (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978)Google Scholar, and has been used by Walzer, among others; see, Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books 1983), 62Google Scholar.

4 Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1990), 46Google Scholar

5 The classic discussion of individualist political philosophy is found in MacPherson, C.B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1962)Google Scholar; see also the various writings of Taylor, Charles, particularly the essays in his Philosophical Papers, 2: Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Taylor, Charles, in ‘Why Do Nations Have to Become States?’ in French, Stanley G., ed., Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation (Montreal: Canadian Philosophical Association 1979), 41Google Scholar, distinguishes several types of argument for a principle of national self-determination based on individualist ideas of rights, welfare, or self-government. But he sees the ‘communitarian’ argument (from the espousal of national identity) as a ‘deeper’ justification based on a questioning of personal identities (44-45). For another perspective on the different types of justification for a principle of national self-determination, see Dahbour, Omar, ‘A Critique of National Self-Determination’ (PhD dissertation, City University of New York, 1995)Google Scholar.

7 See Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)Google Scholar, and Margalit, Avishai and Raz, Joseph, ‘National Self-Determination,’ Journal of Philosophy 87 (Sept. 1990) 439-61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Tamir, Yael, ‘The Right to National Self Determination,’ Social Research 58:3 (Fall 1991)Google Scholar, and Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1993).

8 See Beran, Harry, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation (London: Croom Helm, 1987)Google Scholar, as well as Beran, Harry, ‘Self-Determination: A Philosophical Perspective,’ in Macartney, W. J. Allan, ed., Self-Determination in the Commonwealth (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press 1988)Google Scholar; see also, e.g., David Copp, ‘Do Nations Have the Right of Self-Determination?’ in French, Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation. It ought to be mentioned that the libertarianism of this approach tends to be unacknowledged.

9 The reasons that individualist concepts of self-determination cannot justify these assumptions are too involved to summarize here; see Dahbour, ‘Critique of National Self-Determination,’ esp. chs. 2 & 3. This paper is concerned with the ‘political’ communitarians - David Miller and Michael Walzer - rather than ‘moral’ communitarians such as Alasdair Macintyre and Michael Sandel (and, to some extent, Charles Taylor). On this distinction, see Walzer, ‘Communitarian Critique of Liberalism,’ 21, where the latter are characterized as concerned with the ‘constitution of the self’ while the former seek to theorize the ‘connection of constituted selves.'

10 Miller, David, ‘In Defence of Nationality,’ Journal of Applied Philosophy 10 (1993) 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Miller, , ‘In Defence of Nationality,’ 9Google Scholar

12 The basic case for a communitarian approach to social justice and human rights is made by Taylor in his articles, ‘Atomism’ and ‘What's Wrong with Negative Liberty,’ both in Philosophy and the Human Sciences, and by Walzer in his book, Spheres of Justice. The case for a socialist communitarianism is made by Miller, in his article, ‘In What Sense Must Socialism Be Communitarian?’ Social Philosophy and Policy 6 (1988-89) 51–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See, e.g., Beiner, Ronald, What's the Miltter with Liberalism? (Berkeley: University of California Press 1992), 123Google Scholar; Poole, Ross, Morality and Modernity (London: Routledge 1991), ch. 5Google Scholar; Tamir, Liberal Nationalism, ch. 6; and Giddens, Anthony, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Milterialism, 2: The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press 1987)Google Scholar.

14 Poole, , Morality and Modernity, 105Google Scholar; Tamir, , Liberal Nationalism, 139Google Scholar. Both Poole and Tamir make the important point that the nation-state is the largely unacknowledged form of community implied in individualist accounts of supposedly universal conceptions of justice or rights. It remains unacknowledged because a privileging of national affinities seems to violate the fundamental individualist commitment to neutrality with respect to conceptions of the good life. Despite this, attempts to derive a universalistic account of distributive justice necessarily presuppose particular territorial states within which distributions take place. But if, as Poole and Tamir contentiously maintain, the nation-state is the only form that such territorial states can (currently) take, then even universalistic theories must implicitly assume their legitimacy.

15 Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books 1977), 90Google Scholar

16 On civic republicanism generally, see Oldfield, Adrian, Citizenship and Community: Civic Republicanism and the Modern World (London: Routledge 1990)Google Scholar; and on the problem of finding a realizable concept of what he calls ‘civic identity,’ see Beiner, Ronald, ‘Why Citizenship Constitutes a Theoretical Problem in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century,’ in Beiner, Ronald, ed., Theorizing Citizenship (Albany: State University of New York Press 1995)Google Scholar, and Beiner, What's the Matter with Liberalism?, passim. Walzer points to a limitation of civic republicanism when he writes that, “A revival of neoclassical republicanism provides much of the substance of contemporary communitarian politics …. [But] there are virtually no examples of republican association and no movement or party aimed at promoting such association” ('Communitarian Critique of Liberalism,’ 19). The recent work of Stephen Macedo seems designed to answer- at least in the realm of theory- Walzer's charge against civic republicanism by arguing that ‘liberal constitutionalism’ does in fact embody substantive civic values. As Macedo, writes, “Communitarian values are implicit in the idea of a pluralistic community governed properly by liberal justice” (Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1990], 203)Google Scholar. I cannot deal further with this controversy here other than to say that Macedo does not seem to separate the problem of how to define the conditions of membership in a community - whether on grounds of national identity or in some other way- from the question of the values that underlie the constitution of a state.

17 Mason, Andrew, ‘Liberalism and the Value of Community,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (June 1993) 232Google Scholar

18 Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), 92–93Google Scholar

19 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 184-5Google Scholar

20 The communitarian view of rights is expressed, e.g., by Walzer, (in Spheres of Justice, 153)Google Scholar, when he states that rights (at least some of them) are not ‘natural or human rights’ but are “derived from the social meaning of offices and careers and vindicated in the course of long political struggles.” But the case for the second-order character of rights (that is, as dependent on the values of a given political community) is more often assumed than argued for by communitarians.

21 Walzer, Michael, ‘Nation and Universe’ (Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Oxford University, May 1989), 554 (italics added)Google Scholar

22 Miller, David, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), 90Google Scholar

23 These two aspects will be dealt with here by focusing, in the first case, on Walzer's argument for national self-determination, particularly in his books, Just and Unjust Wars and Spheres of Justice, and in his 1989 Tanner Lectures, ‘Nation and Universe,’ and in the second case, on Miller's argument, particularly in his recent book, On Nationality.

24 Walzer, , ‘Nation and Universe,’ 538Google Scholar

25 Walzer, , Spheres of Justice, 44Google Scholar

26 Walzer, , Just and Unjust Wars, 57Google Scholar

27 This is what Miller calls the basis of a ‘universalist case for nationality’ - the need for delimited communities within which redistributions of goods in favor of greater equality can be mandated. See Miller, David, ‘The Ethical Significance of Nationality,’ Ethics 98 (July 1988) 661CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Walzer, , Spheres of Justice, 31Google Scholar

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31 Walzer, Michael, ‘The New Tribalism: Notes on a Difficult Problem,’ Dissent (Spring 1992), 169Google Scholar

32 Walzer, , ‘Nation and Universe,’ 554-5Google Scholar

33 Walzer, , Spheres of Justice, 44Google Scholar

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35 Walzer, , ‘Nation and Universe,’ 519Google Scholar

36 Walzer, , ‘Nation and Universe,’ 548Google Scholar

37 Walzer, , ‘New Tribalism,’ 166Google Scholar

38 Miller, , Market, State, and Community, 245Google Scholar

39 Miller, , On Nationality, 11Google Scholar

40 Miller, , On Nationality, 90Google Scholar

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47 John, Rawls, ‘The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus,’ New York University Law Review 64 (1989) 235Google Scholar

48 Oldfield, , Citizenship and Community, 7Google Scholar

49 Miller, , On Nationality, 10–11 (italics added)Google Scholar

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51 The primordialist account of national identity can be found, e.g., in the numerous works of Smith, Anthony (for example, The Ethnic Origins of Nations [Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986]Google Scholar), as well as in Armstrong, John, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1982)Google Scholar.

52 See Miller, , On Nationality, 22–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for his definition of national identity, which is in most respects similar to that given by Walzer.

53 For this modernist view, see, among others, the following works: Alter, Peter, Nationalism, tr. McKinnon-Evans, Stuart (London: Edward Arnold 1989)Google Scholar; Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, rev. ed. (London: Verso 1991)Google Scholar; Breuilly, John, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982)Google Scholar; Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1983)Google Scholar; McNeill, William, Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Seton-Watson, Hugh, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (London: Methuen 1977)Google Scholar; as well as the previously cited works by Connor and Giddens.

54 Breuilly, John, ‘Nationalism and the State,’ in Michener, Roger, ed., Nationality, Patriotism, and Nationalism in Liberal Democratic Societies (St. Paul, MN: Professors World Peace Academy 1993), 38Google Scholar

55 Dworkin, Ronald, Law's Empire (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 1986), 201Google Scholar

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57 This is a quandary for any theory of political representation that neglects consideration of the consequences for those represented; on this point, see Raz, , Morality of Freedom, 55Google Scholar.

58 Taylor, Charles, ‘The Nature and Scope of Distributive Justice,’ in Philosophy and the Human Sciences, 311Google Scholar

59 Fain, Haskell, Normative Politics and the Community of Nations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1987), 102Google Scholar

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61 Habermas, Jürgen, The Theory of Communicative Action, 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, tr. McCarthy, Thomas (Boston: Beacon Press 1984), 285-6Google Scholar

62 Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections on the Future of Europe,’ Praxis International 12:1 (April 1992) 17Google Scholar

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64 As Brian Barry puts it, “Why should anybody form an attachment to an administrative apparatus with a monopoly of legitimate force within a certain territory? … what is important is not the machinery of government but that the people should have a sense of shared political destiny with others, a preference for being united with them politically in an independent state, and preparedness to be committed to common political action” (‘Self-Government Revisited,’ in Miller, David and Siedentop, Larry, eds., The Nature of Political Theory [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1983], 140-1)Google Scholar.

65 The root of the problem with theories of ‘constitutional patriotism’ - to use Habermas’ phrase- is that they fail to posit substantive values that can serve as a basis for deciding upon particular principles. On the idea of ‘constitutional patriotism,’ see Habermas, ‘Citizenship and National Identity,’ 7; on how this problem affects the foundations of Habermas’ theory of procedural legitimacy, see Heller, Agnes, Beyond Justice (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1987), 236-40Google Scholar.

66 Taylor adds a fourth possible solution - a federal system. But this is, as with Walzer's palliatives, too little, too late, and, in any case, lacks any theoretical justification from communitarian premises. See Taylor, , ‘Why Do Nations Have to Become States?,’ 57Google Scholar.

67 Walzer, , ‘New Tribalism,’ 169Google Scholar

68 Ofuatey-Kodjoe, Wentworth, The Principle of Self-Determination in International Law (New York: Nellen 1977), 164Google Scholar

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76 Rée, Jonathan, ‘Intemationality,’ Radical Philosophy 60 (Spr. 1992) esp. 10–11Google Scholar

77 Magnuson, Warren, ‘The Reification of Political Community,’ in Walker, R.B.J. and Mendlovitz, Saul B., eds., Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990)Google Scholar. It is also important in this regard to realize that contemporary social movements that oppose the unrestrained global market are increasingly transnational; for examples, see Brecher, Jeremy and Costello, Tun, Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction from the Bottom Up (Boston: South End Press 1994)Google Scholar.

78 Mumford, Lewis, The Culture of Cities (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1981 [originally published, 1938]), 349Google Scholar; another interesting, but forgotten, critic of the nation-state from this period, who makes some of the same points as Mumford, is Rudolph Rocker; see his book, Nationalism and Culture, tr. Chase, Ray E. (Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee 1937 [originally published, in Spanish, 1936])Google Scholar.

79 Giddens, , Nation-State and Violence, 254Google Scholar

80 Maria Mies, in Mies, Maria and Shiva, Vandana, Ecofeminism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books 1993), 128Google Scholar

81 Mumford, , Culture of Cities, 354Google Scholar

82 Mumford, , Culture of Cities, 349Google Scholar

83 Mumford, , Culture of Cities, 367Google Scholar; in this passage, Mumford is concerned to point out that regions are partly natural, partly created by humans. The region, he writes, is a ‘collective work of art.’ For recent discussions of Mumford's concept of regions, see Alexander, Donald, ‘Bioregionalism: Science or Sensibility?’ Environmental Ethics 12 (Summer 1990) 161-73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Luccarelli, Mark, Lewis Mumford and the Ecological Region: The Politics of Planning (New York: Guilford Press 1995)Google Scholar.

84 Shiva, Vandana, in Mies and Shiva, Ecofeminism, 112Google Scholar

85 Mies, in Mies, and Shiva, , Ecofeminism, 129-30Google Scholar

86 On the contradiction between nationality and locality, see Rée, , ‘Internationality,’ passim, as well as Jonathan Rée, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Experience of Nationality,’ in Dahbour, Omar, ed., Philosophical Perspectives on National Identity, a special issue of The Philosophical Forum 28:1-2 (Fall-Winter 1996-97), 167-79Google Scholar.

87 On the need for a ‘third way,’ Beiner writes that, “we are left deprived of a suitable vision of political community unless we can come up with a third possibility that is neither liberal nor nationalist, and that somehow escapes the liberals’ arguments against nationalism and the nationalists’ arguments against liberalism” (‘Why Citizenship Constitutes a Theoretical Problem,’ 16). One example of this third way is the revival of the idea of the city-state; see Kemmis, Daniel, ‘Focusing the Countryside: The Rebirth of the City-State,’ Orion 13 (Autumn 1994), 14–17Google Scholar, and Peirce, Neal R., Citistates: How Urban America Can Prosper in a Competitive World (Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press 1993)Google Scholar.

88 For a thoughtful discussion of different concepts of community in contemporary environmentalism, see Eckersley, Robyn, Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Ecocentric Approach (Albany: State University of New York Press 1992) esp. ch. 7Google Scholar.

89 Bennan, Morris, The Reenchantment of the World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 297-9Google Scholar. For the historical origins of an ecoregional conception of community, see Nisbet, Robert A., The Social Philosophers: Community and Conflict in Western Thought (New York: Crowell 1973), esp. 382.Google Scholar

90 Buchanan defines ‘discriminatory redistribution,’ which he applies to groups rather than regions, as “implementing taxation schemes or regulatory policies or economic programs that systematically work to the disadvantage of some groups, while benefiting others, in morally arbitrary ways” (Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec [Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1991], 40). On his account, this is the clearest case of a justifiable claim to secession; claims based primarily on the assertion of a right of self-determination for nations, however, are illegitimate (50-51).