The triumph of nationalism in modern social and political life raises several challenges for liberal democracies. Some are conceptual: can the two ideologies really coexist when liberalism focuses on the individual and nationalism focuses on groups? Others are normative: when do policies protecting national interests become unacceptable breaches of individual rights? Yet other challenges are practical: there are many liberal principles, but which ones are liberal democracies meant to apply exactly? And to whom, to which people? These questions arise in some shape or form in every liberal democracy and compel us to reflect upon the points of contact and tension between the modern enhancement of individual rights and the value of national membership.
This book addresses these questions by examining the linguistic disputes in Catalonia and Flanders . These controversies are paradigmatic examples of fundamental debates around rights and identity . Catalonia and Flanders are two sub-state nations with a distinct language and culture placed within liberal democratic states. They use their political autonomy to protect and promote their language , often as part of the wider aim to develop and assert the national character of the territories. Recently, self-determination demands in Catalonia and decentralisation in Flanders have become more central than language . However, there are in the two places ongoing debates about the way speakers of Castilian and French, the dominant languages in the rest of Spain and Belgium , are treated. In Catalonia , the dispute is primarily about the use of languages in education . In publically funded schools , Catalan is the only language of instruction and Castilian is taught as a second language . In Flanders , the dispute is largely limited to the mismatch in some towns around Brussels between language use (mostly French-speaking) and language regime (monolingual Dutch with linguistic facilities for French-speakers in six towns). Vocal minorities within these territories draw on the vocabulary of liberalism to oppose these linguistic policies.
This book argues that the linguistic disputes in Catalonia and Flanders are not between liberals and nationalists, but between liberal nationalists. I show that defenders and opponents of the controversial policies rely in different forms and degrees on the view that membership to national groups is important for individuals. The caveat is that political actors are more concerned with issues of national belonging and community than the dominant liberal nationalist justification, as typified by Will Kymlicka’s autonomy argument (1995). In fact, Kymlicka has recently conceded that his argument, with his emphasis on inevitably vague ideas of ‘cultural structures’ and ‘societal groups’, risks misdiagnosing the actual aspirations and grievances of many minority groups (2016). My suggestion throughout the book is to nationalise liberal nationalism . In contrast with Alan Patten (2014) and other liberal culturalists, I put forward the view that issues of national belonging and community , as opposed to the instrumental role of culture for individual autonomy , deserve greater attention as justifications for national rights. In my view, restricting the normative defence of national attachments to its instrumental role for individual autonomy runs the risk of being unable to account for people’s interests and attachments. In the real world, as evidenced by the Catalan and Flemish linguistic disputes, collective issues of belonging , integration , cohesion , survival and prevalence play a significant role.
With regards to language , this book establishes that the relationship between language and nationhood is politically constructed through two broad processes, state nation-building and ‘peripheral’ activism, and compares and contrasts the way the link was historically forged in Catalonia and Flanders . Theoretically, the book concurs with Philippe Van Parijs’s (2011) argument that linguistic justice requires offering equal dignity because individuals have dignity interests in their language . I suggest the notion of the national identity interest in language as a complement to Van Parijs’s dignity argument. My point is that shifting directly from individual to language rights , as the dignity argument does, and as language justice theorists tend to do, runs the risk of missing the crucial link that may exist—namely, nationalism . This centrality of nationalism renders many existing normative theories of language rights —such as Van Parijs’s —insufficient. Empirically, the book shows the diversity of language ideologies in the two cases, from the persistent appeal of the classical monolingual nation-state model to more pluralistic forms and positions exhibiting ambivalence.
In the process of writing this book, the world and I have changed. The perception of liberal democracy has moved from strength to fragility due to the rise of illiberal nationalism and its calls for the dismantlement of protections for individuals and minorities. From Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary to Salvini’s Lega Nord in Italy and Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party in Brazil, exclusionary narratives are putting into question triumphalist claims about the success of multiculturalism and minority rights schemes. Another aspect that has changed is my own position on these issues. While I began this project in a strictly pro-Kymlicka fashion, in the course of writing this book I have moved towards Charles Taylor’s position, or perhaps somewhere in between the two. After conducting research in the two cases and learning about disputes elsewhere, I now find Taylor’s (1994) quasi-communitarian emphasis on issues of recognition and cultural survival more persuasive and closer to social experience. I have come to think that, while academic forms of liberal nationalism offer a form of national accommodation around rights, they generally do not get at the ways in which people experience identity . Of course, one could argue that the mismatch between the academic and the political arguments is not especially relevant because the aim of normative theorising is not to mirror how things are but to assess them. I address this issue in Chapter 2 and—more briefly—the conclusion. A third significant change has been the political situation in Catalonia . Once a textbook case of non-secessionist nationalism , Catalonia has recently experienced an unprecedented social mobilisation for independence , a unilateral referendum which included episodes of violence by the Spanish police, and a failed declaration of independence . While previous debates on political and cultural accommodation have been replaced by self-determination and independence , we are likely to see a return to those initial debates after the failure of the independence agenda.
Cases
What makes Catalonia and Flanders interesting with regard to these questions? As two major cases of sub-state nationalism where language is a national identity marker facing challenges of illiberalism, they are illuminating case studies for exploring the points of contact and tension between cultural , individual , and national rights. Their two linguistic disputes capture the endurin...