Very interesting article on the patriotic mindset and worldview. This piece comes from Global Ethics and Politics. The author is looking at Europe in particular, where patriotism and nationalism seem to be experiencing a bit of a resurgence.
However, these same ideas - and I see this article as approaching an integral political perspective - could be usefully applied in the US. Patriotism is much stronger here, but it is also pathological a lot more often than it is healthy. Yet by recognizing that patriotism, which is essentially a conformist/authoritarian/mythic stage perspective, is an essential human expression of community, we honor the necessity of supporting each stage's healthy expressions while trying to moderate its unhealthy expressions.
Here is the main thrust of the argument:
I advance a taxonomy of patriotisms that cuts across the traditional civic/ethnic divide and identifies four distinct ideal-types of patriotism: Ethical, Protective, Hegemonic, and Jingoistic. Each of these ideal-types rests upon a distinctive conception of identity and upholds diverse value-systems. I maintain that any defense of patriotism vis-à-vis cosmopolitan visions entails assessing the relative desirability of these ideal-types. I contend that while the Protective ideal-type is merely reactive, Hegemonic and Jingoistic modes of patriotism tend to promote selves and institutions that are incompatible with the ideals of self-determination they claim to advocate. Finally, I discuss the institutional milieu more conducive to an Ethical form of patriotic identification. I argue that to flourish, the Ethical ideal-type requires a political milieu where forms of subsidiarity, functional representation, and local participation combine to produce a more democratic and decentralized system of governance.Agree or disagree - an interesting article.
Journal Reference:
Palumbo, A. (2009). Patriotism and pluralism: identification and compliance in the post-national polity. Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2009, pp. 321–348. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i4.2002
Read the whole paper.Patriotism and pluralism: identification and compliance in the post-national polity
Antonino Palumbo*
Department of Politica Diritto Società ‘G. Mosca,’ Palermo University, Palermo, Italy
Abstract
The paper discusses the identity-building power and motivational force of patriotism. The basic idea underlying the discussion is that far from being a mere irrational and destructive force, patriotism is an expression of ‘existing human social identity.’ Thus, it argues that rather than dismissing patriotism altogether as an undesirable and/or irrational phenomenon, we need to understand how to discriminate between alternative forms of patriotism while investigating what constitutional reforms might be required to support those forms of patriotic identification that are morally desirable. I argue that to flourish, desirable forms of patriotism (what I call Ethical Patriotism) require a political milieu where forms of subsidiarity, functional representation and local participation combine to produce a more democratic and decentralized system of governance. Applied to a post-national polity like the EU, this conclusion invites to rethink the European constitutional project so as to make it less elitist and more open to influence and participation from below.
Keywords: cosmopolitanism; communitarianism; identity; nationalism; governance; Europe
*Correspondence to: Antonino Palumbo, Department of Politica Diritto Società ‘G. Mosca,’ Palermo University, Piazza Bologni 8, IT-90134 Palermo, Italy. Email: a.palumbo@unipa.it
Published: 4 December 2009
Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2009, pp. 321–348. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i4.2002
© 2009 A. Palumbo. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
INTRODUCTIONThe paper discusses the identity-building power and motivational force of patriotism vis-à-vis cosmopolitan value-systems. First, I summarize various theoretical perspectives that advocate patriotism as a set of beliefs supporting feelings of loyalty and alliance. All these perspectives share the idea that patriotic identification represents a positive social force which exercises a deep influence on individual action. This stress on identity, rather than interests, has inspired the communitarian critique of liberal theories and helped develop a civic patriotic perspective which harks back to a republican political tradition. Here, I question the epistemology of the self upon which some of these perspectives often rest and highlight their failure to distinguish and discriminate between alternative modes of patriotic identification. Second, I advance a taxonomy of patriotisms that cuts across the traditional civic/ethnic divide and identifies four distinct ideal-types of patriotism: Ethical, Protective, Hegemonic, and Jingoistic. Each of these ideal-types rests upon a distinctive conception of identity and upholds diverse value-systems. I maintain that any defense of patriotism vis-à-vis cosmopolitan visions entails assessing the relative desirability of these ideal-types. I contend that while the Protective ideal-type is merely reactive, Hegemonic and Jingoistic modes of patriotism tend to promote selves and institutions that are incompatible with the ideals of self-determination they claim to advocate. Finally, I discuss the institutional milieu more conducive to an Ethical form of patriotic identification. I argue that to flourish, the Ethical ideal-type requires a political milieu where forms of subsidiarity, functional representation, and local participation combine to produce a more democratic and decentralized system of governance. A democratic polity of this type would, in my opinion, endorse social change without generating troublesome Protective patriotic movements and would, therefore, be able to resist the maneuvering of political elites with ethnic agenda and hegemonic aspirations. Applied to a multicultural polity like the EU, this conclusion suggests the need to rethink the European constitutional project so as to make it less elitist and more open to influence and participation from below.
PATRIOTISM, IDENTITY, AND COMPLIANCE
As a set of beliefs and feelings of loyalty and allegiance, patriotism is related to people's identity and exercises a deep influence on individual action. It is through patriotic attachment that membership can be defined, social choice can acquire consistency and voluntary compliance be relied upon. Patriotism is, in other words, a social force that can keep separate individual together by turning an array of self-concerned agents into a community and a collection of distant groups into a nation. The first systematic attempt to analyze patriotism as a source of identity and motivational force comes from political theory and Rousseau's work in particular. For Rousseau, patriotism is the linchpin between the voluntaristic account of the state supplied by contract theory and the idea of virtue inherited from republican political thought.1 Following Hobbes, he claims that men come to constitute a civil state and establish a legitimate political body only through a social contract. Against Hobbes, Rousseau maintains that the ties that bind the citizens together cannot rest on prudence alone, but on deeper changes in their personality structure that turn them into moral and social agents. This ‘remarkable change’ entails that ‘the right which each individual has to his own estate is always subordinate to the right which the community has over all: without this, there would be neither stability in the social tie, nor real force in the exercise of Sovereignty’.2 To avoid clashes between general and particular wills which could be pernicious for the body politic, citizens need to be virtuous—know the requirements of the General Will and be able to conform to it. Patriotism is, for Rousseau, the only means to teach citizens how to be virtuous and thus, exact their compliance with the General Will. Since the love of humanity has a very weak motivational force, and since ‘we voluntary will what is willed by those we love,’3 Rousseau contends that we need to confine our compassion to those around us with whom we have stable and permanent intercourse: our fellow citizens. From this perspective, a truly cosmopolitan society would not be at all viable, ‘such a society, with all its perfection, would be neither the strongest nor the most lasting: the very fact that it was perfect would rob it of its bond of union; the flaw that would destroy it would lie in its very perfection.’4 In short, Rousseau views patriotism as a device for fostering collective identities and through this solving the problem of compliance affecting Hobbesian readings of the social contract.5
An alternative account of patriotism as source of identity and compliance derives from conservative thought. The more traditionalist version comes from the Catholic opponents of the French Revolution: Maistre, Bonald and Chateaubriand. For these authors patriotism entails full identification with locality, monarchy, and religious faith. Its motivational force rests on fear of God and submission to the church's moral teaching.6 A more philosophically compelling version is proposed by liberal conservatives from Burke to Oakeshott. Their account of loyalty and allegiance to the social and political institutions of the country rests on the evolutionary moral psychology of individuals interacting in small, close-knit groups. As Burke famously put it: ‘To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in a series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind.’7 Here, social conventions arisen as solutions to coordination problems ‘not only reconciles us to any thing we have long enjoy'd, but even gives us an affection for it, and makes us prefer it to other objects.’8 People's ability to empathize with those who suffer an injustice is then used to explain both group loyalty and political allegiance without the need for a Hobbesian sword. Contra Rousseau's, this alternative account of patriotism rejects the very notion of social contract as a basis for collective identity and reduces questions of legitimacy and compliance to conformity to pre-political values, principles and institutions whose origins are either revealed or immemorial.
These two philosophical perspectives have had a lasting influence on more sociological reflections on patriotism. Classic and modern social theory has highlighted patriotism's power to establish and maintain solidarity within and between the groups composing modern nation-states. Emile Durkheim, for instance, viewed patriotism as a crucial element in the development of ‘organic solidarity.’ For him, patriotic identification would allow people to preserve the internal cohesion and identity of social groups across time, thus, overcoming the anomie brought about by the collapse of traditional social order for which the nation-state bear clear responsibilities.9 Similarly, Max Weber attributed to patriotic sentiments the ability to integrate the masses within the framework of the nation-state and be ‘a vehicle for, and embodiment of, […] Kultur.’10 These two lines of thinking are brought together by Ernest Gellner in his attempt to clarify the connections between nationalism and social change by noting that,
For him, patriotism supplies the socio-psychological resources for coping with the disruption caused by social change and re-establishing more adequate forms of cooperation. The contribution of social theory to the understanding of patriotism is twofold. First, it has challenged the optimistic and self-complacent modernism of cosmopolitans by stressing the significance group representations and myths have for creating or preserving collective identities. Second, it has drawn attention on the modernity of national identities and underlined the relevance of politics and state's action in shaping and fostering those identities.nationalism is a phenomenon connected not so much with industrialization or modernization as such, but with its uneven diffusion. The uneven impact of this wave generates a sharp social stratification which, unlike the stratifications of past society, is (a) unhallowed by custom […], (b) is not well protected by various social mechanisms [thus] providing maximum opportunities and incentives for revolution, and which (c) is remediable, and is seen to be remediable, by “national” secession.11
Communitarians have combined themes developed by these two traditions of thought and put forward an epistemology of the self aimed at questioning liberalism as a coherent and feasible political theory while advancing a sociologically informed re-evaluation of patriotism.12 Alasdair McIntyre, for examples, notes that ‘from the standpoint of individualism I am what I myself choose to be,’ and points out that such a conception is ‘an illusion and an illusion with painful consequences.’13 For him, individualism fails to acknowledge that ‘the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity’ and is thus, responsible for the anomie and moral hollowness of modern life, which has now ‘be assigned the status of an achievement by and a reward for the self.’14 Similarly, Michael Sandel objects to Rawls’ deontological approach that ‘Only if my identity is never tied to the aims and interests I may have at any moment can I think of myself as a free and independent agent, capable of choice.’15 However, Sandel believes such a notion of agency is implausible on both epistemic and normative grounds:
Same basic concerns are expressed by Charles Taylor for whom,To imagine a person incapable of constitutive attachments such as these is not to conceive an ideally free and rational agent, but […] a person wholly without character […] for to have character is to know that I move in a history I neither summon nor command.16
There are grave problems with this [procedural/cosmopolitan] model of liberalism, which can be properly articulated only when we open up ontological issues of identity and community. There are questions about the viability of a society that would meet these specifications, and issues about the applicability of this formula in societies other than the United States.’17
Although the Communitarian critique of liberalism can support a variety of contradictory political positions, the authors just mentioned employ it to advance a republican public philosophy promoting people's patriotic identification with the values embodied in actual nation-states.18 As such, they end supplying philosophical arguments to a flourishing historiography engaged in defending the nation and nationalism from the attacks of modernists, constructivists and globalist.19
The question I want to raise here is whether this communitarian conception of the self could support the progressive policies and institutions advocated. I shall try to show that their appeal to republican virtues notwithstanding, communitarians in reality end up supporting a conception of the self that comes close to what Viroli calls an ‘ethnic’ (as opposed to a ‘civic’) model of patriotism, which is incapable of engendering them.20 For Viroli, ‘civic’ models of patriotism stress the role of politics and subjective elements like beliefs and choice, whereas ‘ethnic’ models highlight the role of objective factors like ancestry and mores. This ‘ethnic’ reading of patriotism comes to the fore when the communitarians’ account of identity is fleshed out.
Embedded selves and plural identities
Communitarians often give the impression to conceive the self as an essentialist and backward-looking entity. This impression is in part due to the fact that their accounts are always proposed as part of a critique of the disembedded liberal self, which leave the substantive side underdeveloped. However, the scattered textual evidence reinforces this impression. Individual identities are described as embedded in national communities and constrained by social practices. Moreover, the features that define and distinguish those communities and practices from others are themselves said to be not a matter of person belief and certainly beyond choice.21 Lore, national myths and languages seem, therefore, to assume the status of ‘primordial social facts’ that transcend and set constraints on the ability of individuals and groups to determine themselves. Tellingly, communitarians suggest picturing identity as a system of concentric circles that enclose and constrain the individual as agency. As MacIntyre puts it,
Similarly, Sandel claims that,I am brother, cousin and grandson, member of this household, that village, this tribe. These are not characteristics that belong to human beings accidentally, to be stripped away in order to discover ‘the real me’. They are part of my substance, defining partially at least and sometimes wholly my obligations and my duty. Individuals inherit a particular space within an interlocking set of social relationships; lacking that space they are nobody, or at best a stranger or an outcast.22
From this perspective, patriotism is a virtue founded on attachment primarily, if not exclusively, to such all-enclosing communities and nations. And it is according to the degree with which political institutions uphold and foster those communal and national identities that they can acquire legitimacy and the allegiance of its subjects: ‘people will not pledge allegiance to vast and distant entities, whatever their importance, unless those institutions are somehow connected to political arrangements that reflect the identity of the participants.’24 Were this the case, communitarians could end subscribing to a curious political vision which mirrors that supported by liberals: a vision where the nation and its rights supplant the individual and her rights as trump cards that set limits to politics and collective decision-making.25We cannot regard ourselves as independent in this way without great cost to those loyalties and convictions whose moral force consists partly in the fact that living by them is inseparable from understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are-as members of this family or community or nation or people, as bearers of this history, as sons and daughters of that revolution, as citizens of this republic.23
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