Self-Determination and constitutional morality

Many national groups interpret their right to self-determination as a right to independent statehood, which they in turn interpret as a right to a state of their own, a state which ‘belongs’ to their people. Many nation-states view themselves as belonging to their predominant national group. Some nation-states, such as Israel and several of the new states that belonged to the former Yugoslavia, express this overtly in their constitution or by means of some other important laws. Other nation-states have practices that support such an interpretation. For example, the Baltic states that seceded from the former USSR deny citizenship to their residents of Russian origin. Similarly, other nation-states, such as Germany and Japan, have made the process of naturalization very difficult for those residents who are not of German or Japanese origin. Most nation-states regard themselves as belonging to one particular people and express this through their names, languages, national anthems and the names of many of their main institutions.

I shall call the conception according to which the right to self-determination should be institutionalized by independent statehood the statist conception. In terms of the distinctions made in Chapter 1, the nationalism subscribing to this conception is a state-seeking nationalism. In this chapter I shall argue for a thesis according to which the right of national groups to self-government should almost always be conceived of in sub-statist forms and institutionalized as such.