Popular Sovereignty and Nationalism Author(s): Bernard Yack Source: Political Theory, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Aug.

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POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY AND NATIONALISM

BERNARDYACK Universityof Wisconsin,Madison

AND THEMODERNDOCTRINEOF NATIONALISM POPULARSOVEREIGNTY Even a brief glance at moder history suggests thatthere is an important connectionbetweenpopularsovereigntyandthe rise and spreadof nationalism. For whereverpopularsovereigntyleads, nationalismseems to follow. Almost everygreatlandmark in the historyof popularsovereignty-from the Glorious Revolutionin 1688, the North and South Americanwars of indeof peopendence,the greatFrenchRevolutionof 1789, and the "springtime in 1848 to the of the colonial and Soviet ples" collapse European, empires in the twentieth in the of nationalism empires century-looms large history as well. At first glance then, it seems clear that "withouta historicallyinformed of the theory of popularsovereignty,no clarificationof the understanding of nation-states andnationalismis possible."'At the very least, the language of these timing developmentsmakes popularsovereigntyseem much more than modernization as a source of nationalism.For while commitplausible ments to popularsovereigntyusually precedethe emergenceof nationalism, the institutions and processes associated with modernizationmost often come on the scene only afternationalismhas alreadybecome popular.2 But correlationsdo not establish connections, let alone causation. We need to identify some causal mechanismor some theorythat would explain why belief in popularsovereignty should lead to the political assertion of nationalloyalties, if we are going to treatit as one of the major sources of nationalism.Thatis whatI tryto do in this article.Fordespiterepeatedclaims that"nationalism is incoherentwithoutpopularsovereignty" or thatnationalism is nothing more than "the application to national community of the doctrineof popularsovereignty,"3 therehas not been muchof Enlightenment a sustainedeffortat why explainingwhy this is true.4 Those who makethese claims seem to assumethatthe meaningof popularsovereigntyandits application to the nationis self-evidentor at least fairly easy to grasp.In this artiPOLITICALTHEORY,Vol. 29 No. 4, August 2001 517-536 ? 2001 Sage Publications 517

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cle, I shall tryto show thatthis assumptionis mistakenon both fronts:(1) the of politspreadof popularsovereigntydoctrinehas alteredourunderstanding ical communityin ways that are anythingbut self-evident, and (2) it is by means of this alteredunderstanding of political communitythatit has made its greatestcontribution to the rise and spreadof nationalism. The most common explanation of the parallels between popular and nationalsovereigntyis also the simplest: sharepower with the people, and you free themto asserttheirnationality. Democratizinggovernment,accordto this is bound to nationalize it. For, as Michael Walzereloargument, ing when the into quentlyputs it, you "bring people political life ... they arrive in tribal ranks and with them theirown language, orders,carrying marching historicalmemories,customs, beliefs, and commitments."5 There is much to be said in favor of this explanationof popularsoverto the politicizationof nationalloyalties. Nevertheless, eignty's contribution it has serious limitations.First,the historyof democraticrepublicsdoes not supportthe claim that when you free ordinarypeople to enterpolitics, they will bring along and assert their nationalloyalties. The citizens of ancient Greekand medievalor renaissanceItaliancity-statesknew what it meantto thinkof themselves as Greeksand Italians.They simply did not connect that sense of nationalcommunityto political life.6That suggests that something more thanliberationfrom the constraintsof undemocratic forms of government must lie behind the politicization of national loyalties in modem democracies.Second, it often seems to be the case thatthe spreadof popular sovereignty doctrines seems to promote the discovery or rediscovery of nationalloyalties, ratherthanmerelyremoveconstraintson theirexpression. That too suggests that the connection between popular sovereignty and nationalisminvolves somethingmore thandemocratization. Finally,a focus of on democratization narrows the influsovereignty's unduly scope popular ence on nationalism. For even authoritarian and totalitariannationalists invoke popular sovereignty to justify their demands for extreme forms of nationalself-assertion.7 In doing so, they insist that a free and wise people in a partyor a leaderthatbest embodiestheirwill, wouldinvesttheirauthority of popular which suggests that illiberal and antidemocratic interpretations also contribute to the of national loyalties. sovereigntymay politicization It is a mistake,in any case, to identifythe moder doctrineof popularsovereigntywith commitmentto democraticformsof government.The doctrine of popularsovereigntypopularizedby the English, American, and French Revolutionsdefinitelypromotesa moreegalitarian pictureof political order, since it denies thatany individualor groupcan claim political authorityas a proprietary right,as somethingthatthey can dispose of as they choose. And it can easily become the startingpoint for justificationsfor more democratic

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forms of government,as one extends consent from the establishmentand accountabilityof state authorityto the election of officeholders and the policies. But this new doctrineof popularsovereignty approvalof particular inhabitinvests final authorityin an imaginedcommunity,all of a territory's ants imaginedas a collective body, ratherthanin any institutionallydefined flesh andblood majority. As a result,it introducesa distinctionbetweenwhat we might call "thepeople's two bodies."8 Alongside an image of the people who actuallyparticipate in political institutions,it constructsanotherimage of the people as a prepoliticalcommunitythat establishesthese institutions and has the final say on their legitimacy.It is the lattercommunity,not the majorityof citizens, thatis sovereignin this new doctrine.For as Article 3 of the FrenchDeclarationof the Rightsof Man andCitizendeclares,"Theprinciple of all sovereigntyresides essentially in the nation.Nor can any individwhich is notexpressly ual, or groupof individuals,be entitledto anyauthority derivedfrom it."9 The traditional of popularsovereigntywas much simpler: understanding rule by the people, the exercise of political authorityby the many or the majorityratherthan by a monarchor an aristocraticcouncil. The new doctrine of popular sovereignty declares instead that no person or personswhether one, few, or many-should ever have the final say over how to make use of the state's authority.In doing so, it constructsa vision of what Istvan Hont aptly calls "indirectsovereignty"'0with which to temper the strugglesamongthe one, the few, andthe manyfor controlof the machinery " of government. The new doctrineof popularsovereigntyreplaces directpopularrule, or governmentalsovereignty,with what has come to be called the "constituent sovereignty"of the people.12 The doctrinerests on a distinctionbetween the powerto establishor disestablishforms of governmentandthe powers delegated to actual rulers. The former,the constituentpower, is unlimited and as the whole body of a territory's alwaysremainswith the people, understood orconstitutedpower,is limited inhabitants. The the latter, governmental legal to those powersdelegatedby the people to theirrulers,whoeverthey may be. Understoodin this way, popularsovereignty argumentshave been used to counter popularas well as monarchicclaims to absolute power. And they have lent legitimacy to constitutionalmonarchiesand even dictatorshipsin which leaders or parties claim to embody the people's deep but unspoken will, as well as to variousforms of democracy.13 of this articleis thatit is by meansof this new vision The centralargument of indirect sovereignty that the modern doctrine of popular sovereignty makes its most important contribution to the rise of nationalism.This vision of indirectsovereignty,I shallargue,introducesa new understanding of polit-

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ical community,one thattendsboth to nationalizeourunderstanding of politics and to politicize our understanding of nationality.Connectingpopular sovereigntyand nationalismin this way may be less familiarand directthan of government. But as I shall tryto show,it talkingaboutthe democratization offers a more plausibleexplanationof the parallelsbetween them. To make this argument, however, I need first to distinguish clearly between two conceptions of communitythat are often identified with each other:the nationand the people. After doing so, I shall go on to presentmy argumentaboutthe connectionsbetween popularsovereigntyand nationalism. And in the final section,I shalldiscuss some practicalimplicationsof my argument.

THENATION AND THEPEOPLE A largepartof the storyof the emergenceandspreadof nationalismlies in the way in which these two images of community,the nationand the people, have become entangled in our minds. Disentangling them, however, is extremely difficult, since we tend to use the words "nation"and "people" both in ordinaryand scholarly language. Accordingly, I interchangeably, wantto emphasizethatmy distinctionbetween these two images of community is conceptual, ratherthan linguistic, in nature.When I describe one image of communityas "thepeople"and the otheras "thenation,"I am not suggestingthatthis is how the termsare ordinarilyused in English or in any otherlanguagewith which I am familiar.14I am merely using these termsas referencepointsfor two distinctways of imaginingcommunity.The straining of ordinarylanguageis, I believe, worththe effort, since it helps us capture something importantabout the way we think about communityin modern political life.15 With that caveat,here is how I propose to distinguishthese two conceptions of community.'6 Both the people andthe nationare,in BenedictAnderson's famous phrase, "imaginedcommunities."That is to say, they derive their characteras communities from the way in which distant individuals imaginetheirconnectionsto each other,ratherthanfromtheirdirector indirectinteraction with each other.7Nevertheless,they arebasedon two distinct of ways imaginingthe connectionsthatbind us to each other. Nationalcommunity,I suggest,is an image of communityover time.What binds us into nationalcommunitiesis our image of a sharedheritagethat is passed, in modifiedform, from one generationto another.Nationalcommunities, as a result,areimaginedas startingfrom some specific point of origin in the past and extend forwardinto an indefinitefuture.The people, in con-

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trast,presentsan image of communityover space. It portraysall individuals within the given boundariesof a state as members of a community from which the state derives its legitimate authority.If nationalcommunityprovides a bridge across the chasm that separatesone generationfrom another, the people offers a bridgeoverthe chasmthatseparatesindividualsfromeach The conof the state.18 otherin theireffortsto shapeandcontrolthe authority that precedes cept of the nationallows us to imaginethe evolving community our existence and survivesour death.'9The concept of the people allows us imagine the community that we share at any particularmoment in dealing with the state's coercive authority. As such,the people exists in a kindof eternalpresent.It neverages or dies. Nor does it change in characterfrom one instance to another.The people invokedas the ultimatesource of the Swedish state's legitimateauthorityis no differentin characterthanthe people invokedas the source of the legitimate authorityof the Chinese or Canadianstate. In every case, the people is inhabitants the same: the whole body of a territory's imaginedas the final or should be constructed and of how the state's authority sovereign judge employed. Nationalcommunitymay be strongor weak, risingor falling. The people, in contrast,is always in place, always availableto be invokedin one's struggles with political authorityor in one's competitionfor political power.For the people exists by rightratherthanby custom or consciousnessraising.To thana matterof sociassertor deny its existence is a matterof ideology rather believes in a It exists as as one theoryof politicallegitparticular ology.20 long of its existence are an Those who guilty injusticeratherthan a imacy. deny we so little about that is talk misdescription. Perhaps why "people-building," A nationneeds time and in spite of all of our talk about"nation-building."21 effort to establish a legacy of memories and symbols salient enough to link one generationto another.Indeed, one cannotreally be sure aboutthe existence of a nationuntil one has given it sufficienttime to grow-or collapse.22 The people, in contrast,needs no nurturing. It is availableas soon as individuals accept the principlesof legitimacy thatassertits existence. The nationis a relativelyold form of community,thoughnew nationsare constantlybeing bornand old ones are dying off as differentconfigurations The of culturalsymbols and historicalmemoriesgain or lose significance.23 is new or it was invented to solve cerin moder; people, contrast, relatively tain problemsof political legitimacy in the moder state. It drawson older images of the people as theplebs or multitudeof ordinaryfolks in any community, as well as images of the people as the demos or the ruling group within a community.But the people of popularsovereigntydoctrinesignificantly altersboth of these earlierimages. It altersthe image of the people as

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of a governedterritory membersof the peoplebs by makingall inhabitants ple, an inventionthatlowers the statusof the nobility andraises the statusof And it altersthe image of the people as ordinary ways.24 people in important demos or rulersby making the people the constituentsovereign that establishes governmentratherthanthe governingsovereign,as noted above. Understoodin this way, the people is clearly a very abstractconcept. Hegel, for one, complainedabout this abstractness.He arguedthat talking about the people as the ultimate source of its institutionsand procedures merely gives political charlatansand nationalist demagogues an empty ForHegel, it makessense phrasewith which to conjureup terriblemischief.25 to talk aboutthe people as the governmental sovereign,since in doing so, we would only be suggestingthatthereshouldbe a relativelydemocraticconstitutionof political power.What seemed so mysteriousand dangerousto him was the idea of the people as the constituentsovereign,since the lack of institutionaldefinitionin such a conceptionof the people makesit a perfectvehicle for irrationalappealsto public passions.26 But it is preciselythe abstract or moremysteriousconceptof the people as constituentsovereignthathas played an indispensablerole in liberaldemocraticpolitics.27 Mysteriousit maybe, perhapseven moremysteriousthanthe idea of the "king'stwo bodies,"since the king at least startswith a single body to dress up in one's imagination.28 Nevertheless,this idea of the people as constituentsovereigns"is now acceptedin all [liberaldemocratic]constitutionalsystems.... Itmay even appearobvious."29 The olderidea of the people as the commoners-the mass of humble, ordinarycitizens, as opposed to upper-and middle-class elites-certainly survives in modernpolitics. It is always availableto fuel populist appeals againstthe advantagesof the rich andpowerful.And the idea of the people as demos certainlysurvivesto sustain demandsfor greaterdemocracy.But the most influentialidea of the people in modernpoliticaltheoryandpolitics is this newerone thatallows all of a territory'sinhabitantsto be spoken of as the collective source of the state's authority. Before turningto my argumentaboutpopularsovereignty'scontribution to the rise of nationalism,I would like to emphasizean important ambiguity or inconsistencyin this conceptof the people. The people is clearlyimagined as a boundedcommunity.But whence does it deriveits boundaries? On one hand,it seems like thereis a simpleandclearanswerto the question.A people derivesits boundariesfrom its state.30 It is sovereigntywithinthe boundaries of its state'sterritories, andnothingmore,thatthe people claim. If peoples are the communities to which states are accountable, then the boundaries between one people and anotherwill be the boundariesthat distinguishthe reachof one state's coercive authorityfrom another's.On the otherhand, if

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the people is imaginedas prior to the state,as the communitythatauthorizes the establishment of the state'sauthorityand survivesits dissolution,thenits boundariescannot be defined by the boundaries of particularstates. An appeal to the people is an appeal beyond the constitutedauthorityof state actorsand institutionsto the communitythatlends them theirauthority. And if the appealto the people is an appealbeyondthe state,why shouldwe imagine peoples as limited by the contingentbordersthat a history of accident, force, and fraudhave establishedfor states? The people, it seems, is imaginedboth as existing priorto the stateand as definedby the bordersof an alreadyconstitutedstate,or,if you prefer,as both a prepolitical and postpolitical community.In practice, the applicationof popularsovereigntydoctrineusually takes for grantedexisting state boundariesandasks questionsaboutthe organization of legitimateauthority within these boundaries.But by raisingthe prospectof a prepoliticalcommunityon which the legitimacyof stateauthority depends,the new popularsovereignty doctrineraises questionsaboutthe prepoliticalsourcesof community,questions thatvisions of nationalcommunityaremuchbetterequippedto answer than are visions of the sovereignpeople.

THENATIONALIZATION OF POLITICAL COMMUNITY The centralargumentof this articleis thatthe doctrineof popularsoverto the rise and spreadof nationalismby introducinga new eignty contributes of image politicalcommunity,animage thattendsto nationalizepoliticalloyalties andpoliticize nationalloyalties. In makingthis argument, I am assumthat to it in a while the nation is a old form of comnutshell, ing put relatively is In nationalism new.31 other I am words, munity, relatively assuming that while intergenerational communities based on imagined cultural heritage havebeen with us for a verylong time, it is only in thepast250 yearsor so that the political self-assertion of national communities has become commonas I am using the terms, place. Therewere nationslong before nationalism,32 because there were national communities long before the assertion of national sovereignty became anything like an empirical or moral norm. Explainingthe rise andspreadof nationalism,accordingto this way of thinkform of communalloyalty has ing, requiresthat we ask why this particular come to be so closely associatedwith political self-assertion.My argument about popularsovereigntyis designed to provide partof the answer to that question. Let me begin then with the nationalization of political community. Defenders of the new doctrineof popularsovereigntyarguethat monarchs

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and aristocrats usurpan inalienableright of the people when they claim the to make unlimited andarbitrary use of the state'sauthority overpersons right and territory. But as we have seen, they do not counterthese claims to personal sovereigntyby insistingthatthe people, rather thanthe monarchor aristhis to make unlimited and use of the state's tocrats,possess right arbitrary that whatever form Instead,they argue takes,it derives authority. government its authorityfrom a territory'sinhabitants, as a collective imagined body. Understoodin this way,the people represents a new kindof politicalcommunity.In earlierconceptions,whatbindsthe politicalcommunityis sharing eithersubjectionto a particular kind of political authorityor the opportunity to taketurnsin exercisingthatauthority.33 But the people, as imaginedby the defendersof popularsovereignty,represents neitherthe absolutist'scommuof nor the nity subjects republican'scommunityof sharersin ruling.Instead, it is the community from which political authorityarises and to which it revertswhen that authorityno longer serves its properfunction. This new traditional notions of popular conceptionof political community"undercuts as much as of traditional notions the sovereignty princely state,"for "it disthe actual flesh and blood qualifies commonalityof the people no less than or aristocrats as the princes depository of rightful ultimate decisionSince making."34 popularsovereignty,in this new conception,is indirector mediatedsovereignty,somethingotherthanthe structure of political institutions or the exercise of ruling and being ruled must define the people who exercises it. For if the people precede the establishment and survive the dissolution of political authority, then they must share somethingbeyond a to that relationship authority. But what it is thatcommon, prepoliticalcharacteristic? As we have seen, the defendersof popularsovereigntyhave no consistentanswerto this question. It is their lack of an answerto this question that opens the door to the identificationof political with nationalcommunity,of the people with the nation.Forthe nationprovidespreciselythatwhatis lackingin the conceptof the people:a sense of whereto look for the prepoliticalbasis of politicalcommunity.By encouragingus to thinkof political communityas distinctfrom andpriorto the establishment of politicalauthority, popularsovereigntydoctrines thus bring our image of political communitymuch closer to national communitythan it had been in the past. The nationalizationor culturalizationof political community is, I am arguinghere, an unintendedconsequence of the widespreadacceptanceof the doctrineof popularsovereignty.The doctrine'sdefenderscertainlydid not intendto transformour image of political communityin this way. They were attempting, instead,to solve the problemof legitimacyandlimitedgovernment.But the way in which they solved this problem introducesa new

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one: the identificationof political with culturalcommunity.For in orderto conjure up an image of the people as standingapartfrom and prior to the establishmentof political authority, you haveto thinkof its membersas sharing something more than political relationships. And the prepolitical or extrapoliticalcommunitythat most resembles the form of the people is the kind of culturalcommunitycelebratedby nations. The problemis thus not just thatthe doctrineof popularsovereigntyignores the prepoliticalfoundations of politicalcommunity.It is ratherthatpopularsovereigntyencourages us to look for those prepoliticalfoundationsin places wherenationalloyalties lurk. The new doctrineof popularsovereigntydoes not just lack means of resisting the nationalisticsentimentsof the people it brings into politics. It or culturalization of politics by the way positively invites the nationalization in which it transformsour image of political community. One can see this process taking place in seventeenth- and eighteenthcenturyGreatBritain,the site where, most would agree, both the new doctrine of popular sovereignty was invented and nationalism first emerged. English or British nationalism has been frequently portrayedas a prime exampleof civic orpoliticalnationalism,as anexpressionof sharedloyaltyto political principlesand institutions,ratherthanan expressionof sharedcultural loyalties-most emphaticallyby Liah Greenfeld in her recent book, Nationalism:Five Roads to Modernity.35 The implausibilityof this characterizationbecomes clearonce one pays some attentionto the way in which British patriots expressed themselves about those "garlic-eating"Catholics across the Channel.36 But what interestsme here is how the assertionof particularculturalloyalties follows directlyon the heels of the assertionof popular sovereignty,a developmentapparentin some of the very passages that Greenfeldcites to defend her claim thatAnglo-Americanvisions of nationhood lack the emphasis on "uniquecharacteristics" celebrated by ethnic nationalistsin Germanyand otherpoints eastward.37 When John Milton, for example, brags that it is their new and unprecedented civil liberties that gives the English "the honour to precede other nations,"he is certainlyidentifying the English communitywith a form of civil libertyratherthanany kind of culturalheritage.But when he goes on to talk aboutwhy Englishmendeserve these liberties,he makes it clear thathe has a very differentunderstanding of communityin mind. "Considerwhat he "it is asks whereof Nation," Parliament, ye are the governours:a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing, spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discourse."These shared characteristics,this sharedheritage,help Milton explain why the English are the "nationchos'n before any other" to receive from God his epoch-making revelation of Indeed,the veryclaim thatEnglandhas "thehonourto precedeother liberty.38

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Nations"makes it absolutelyclear thatMilton does not view nationhoodas nothingmorethana containerfor popularsovereigntyandcivil liberties.For it is precisely the achievement of these things that distinguishes England among the differentnations. One might complain that what is happeninghere is that two different on each other:one of images of nationalcommunityarebeing superimposed the nation as a body of citizens and the other as a culturalcommunitywith unique historical characteristics.Nationalism, from this point of view, involves "asleight of hand"wherebyone uses the same wordfor the two differentimages of communitywithoutacknowledgingtheiropposition.39 But such a complaintmisses the fact thatboth of these images of community,the demos as a body of citizens and the nationas a prepoliticalculturalcommua thirdimage of community,the people of nity,provideways of representing the new doctrine of popularsovereignty.Each capturesone aspect of that image of community-the demos, its inclusiveness; the nation, its then prepoliticalcharacter-while missing otheraspects. It is not surprising thatthey should be assertedtogether.The people of the new popularsovereignty doctrineis an especially abstract image of community.It invitesrepresentationin more concrete images, so to speak, to give the body politic a body. It would indeed involve a "sleightof hand"to representan institutionally definedbody of citizens as a nationor uniqueculturalcommunity.But to represent the preinstitutional people of popular sovereignty theory as a nation,all one needs is imaginationandsome culturalheritageof sharedsymbols and memorieson which to call.

THEPOLITICIZATION OF NATIONAL COMMUNITY Let me turnnow to the secondhalf of my argument, the way in whichpopular sovereigntydoctrinestend to politicize our image of nationalcommunity.Popularsovereignty'svision of indirectsovereigntytendsto nationalize our image of political community by encouraging us to look for the prepoliticaland culturalroots of that bind the people into a community.It politicizes our image of nationalcommunity,in contrast,by introducinga strongerand more exclusive way of thinkingaboutcommunalpossession of territory. role Attachment to particular territories almost alwaysplays an important in assertionsof nationalcommunity.A nation,I would suggest, is best understood as an intergenerational communityboundby an imaginedheritageof or terriculturalsymbols and memoriesassociatedwith a particular territory tories. I deliberatelyuse this ratherweak expression, "associatedwith,"to

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characterizethe relationshipbetween nations and territoriesto contrastit with the strongexpressionsof controlor masteryconnectedto the assertion of sovereignty over territory.Sovereign control or mastery of territoryis cannot.Forthe sovereignis exclusive.If one communitypossesses it, another of authority in a terwhoeverhas the final say in the exercise or establishment in ritory.Jointor divided sovereigntyis eithera metaphoror a contradiction terms. But nations need not control or masterterritoriesto make them the basis of theircommunity.Dwelling in or even remembering doing so is quite stories and that constitute a nationalherisufficientto generatethe symbols thatit tage. Indeed,a nation'sstrongestsentimentsoften centeron territories neither dwells in nor controls: the homelands that earlier generationsleft behind. As a result, the same territorycan figure prominentlyin the stories that more than one nation tells about itself without necessarily inviting serious conflict. The really dangerousconflicts emerge when nationsbegin to measuretheirrelationshipto territory in termsof controlor mastery.Forthen, all the overlappinghomelands or overlappingsites of past greatnessturn into And that happensas soon as potentialflash points in nationalistconflicts.40 doctrines introduce their new popularsovereignty conception of communal over Of national foundation mastery territory. course, myths regularlyrefer to the grantingof lands to nationsand theirprogeny.But the idea of popular sovereigntyintroducesa much strongerandmorepolitical sense of the communalcontrolof territory, one thathelps explainthe politicizationof national loyalties. Popularsovereigntydoctrinesteachus to thinkof statesas mastersof territoryandpeoples as mastersof states.Orto put it anotherway, they teachus that states are the means thatpeople establishto exercise their masteryover Such mastery,based as it is on the use of the state'ssingular given territories. structureof authorityis, by definition,exclusive. No more than one people can be masterof a given territory, since the state, with its exclusive claim to is means it is exercised. the which authority, by The assertionof this new kindof communalmasteryof territory leaves little roomfor the vaguerandless exclusive connectionsto territory thathave so nationalcommunities.For how can we continue to talk long characterized abouta territory as our own when anothercommunity-moreover a community that as we have seen, almost inevitably expresses itself in national terms--claims exclusive masteryover it? Pride, fear, envy, or just a strong sense of justice and injustice makes anythingless than such mastery seem dangerousor degradingto those who lack it. In this way, the disseminationof ideas aboutpopularsovereigntypoliticizes nationalloyalties, as the leaders of one nationalgroupafteranotherdemandthattheybe, as the Quebecoissay,

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maitrescheznous. Oras DanieleManin,leaderof the ill-fatedVenetian revolt in 1848, proclaimed, "We do not ask Austria be humane and liberal in Italy.... We askherto get out.Wehaveno concernwithherhumanityandliberalismwe wish to be mastersin our own house."41 Of course, popularsovereigntydoctrinesinsist that it is the people, the collective body of a territory's rather thana nationalcommunity, inhabitants, that should exercise such mastery.Nevertheless, these doctrines open the doorto assertionsof nationalsovereigntybyjustifying the rightof peoples to the authority of the state.For when popularsovdisestablishandreconstruct arrive on the scene, they find people living not only with ereigntydoctrines the injusticesthatflow fromabsolutism,feudalprivilege,andotherabusesof authoritywithin states, but with all of the injusticesthatcome from the hisandjust plain bad luck tory of conquest,royal marriages,sales of territory, thatdefine the boundariesof statesandempires.Some people, when they are introduced to the new doctrineof popularsovereignty,find themselvesruled fromdistantandalien capitals,fromwhich they can expect little understanding or sympathyfor distinctivelocal conditions.Othersfind themselvessubof imperialrulerswho treatthemas inferiorracesincapaject to the authority ble of civilized forms of self-government. Still others find themselves conspicuousanddangerouslyexposed minoritieswithinlargercommunities thatsharea sense of belongingto a nationalcommunity.The establishment of humane of and forms ease concerns legitimate many government might aboutinjusticefor these groupsof people. But it would be foolish or naiveto say thatit could eraseall of thepotentialfor injusticethatis createdby thehistory of force, fraud,andchance thathas led to the currentboundariesamong states. Defenders of popularsovereigntyoften proclaimthat humanbeings are fromreflectionandchoice,"rather capable"ofestablishinggood government than "destinedto depend, for their political constitutions,on accident and force."42 But why should exposed minorities, subordinatedpeoples, and those at the peripheryof large indifferentstates simply accept state boundaries as given when they begin to think about how to establish legitimate of political authoritywith which to govern themselves? It is one structures when thing you tell the membersof a groupwho formthe greatmajorityof a state'ssubjects-Englishmen, say-to takefor granted the state'sboundaries in their deliberationsabout what "thepeople" should do. It is quite another when you tell thatto the membersof the othergroupsI havejust mentioned. To tell themthatthey must simply cast theirlot with whatevergroupthathistoryhas servedup to them seems manifestlyunfair.Why shouldthe danceof historythatprovidedsome people with communitiesin which they feel comfortablestopjust when theyget a turnto expressthemselveson the floor?One

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does not have to believe, with Herderand Mazzini, that nations are natural divisions of the human race in order to express impatience with such a demand. One need only share their perfectly reasonableinsistence on the arbitrariness or artificialityof the historicaldivisions among states.43 Resignationto the contingenciesof historydoes not at all fit with the rhetoric of popularsovereignty.Yet, in effect, that is what many liberal demowith the shape cratictheoristsseem to demandfrom peoples uncomfortable of their communities:that they should accept whateverpotentialinjustices historyhas servedup to them with the boundariesof states so thatwe can all get on with the task of establishingliberaldemocraticforms of government. Thatthis advice almostinvariably comes frompeople who arequitecomfortable and unexposed within the given boundariesof states, people who, in effect, are happywith the partners they were given when the music stopped playing at the dance of history,makesit harderto acceptthanit would otherwise be. Thus while popularsovereigntyis not designed to help us determinethe it legitimacy of a particular community'scontrolover a particular territory, definitelyopens the doorto this question.And in doing so, it raisesa question that it cannot itself answer. Who belongs to "the people" in 1848 Venice, 1955 Algeria, or 1999 Quebec?Inhabitants of Venice, Algeria,or Quebec or all of the Austriansand Italians,Frenchmenand Arabs, Anglophones and Francophoneswho share the boundariesof the larger states to which they belonged at the time? We cannot simply say to those who put forwardcompeting claims to territoryin the name of differentpeoples, "let the people decide,"since it is preciselywhich "people"shouldbe associatedwith which thatis at issue. Does lettingthe people decide disputeslike those surterritory roundingdemandsfor Quebecoisindependencerequirea referendum among all the citizens withinthe boundariesof the provinceof Quebec or amongall the citizens within the boundariesruledby the federal governmentof Canada?Youcannotanswersuch questionswithout,in effect, takingsides in the issue thatyou want to put before "thepeople."44 You need to assume the existence of boundariesbetween peoples before you can exercise the principleof popularsovereignty.Therefore,you cannot use popularsovereigntyto determinewherethe boundaries betweenpeoples shouldlie. Popularsovereigntycan help guide us in determining ourpolitical It cannot us decide how to determine the arrangements. help shapeof ourcollective selves.45 But by arguingthatthis collective self, the people, precedes and survives the state, it opens up the question of how to determine our collective selves and their control of states and territory.Where there is little concernor discomfortwith the given boundariesof the state,this question will probablynot surface.But where there is some controversyor dis-

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comfort, the inconsistency between these two ways of talking about selfis boundto come out. For while popularsovereigntyrests on determination the assumptionthatthe stateis the creature of the people, to be dissolved and reconstituted as the people wills, the people only gets the limits of its identity from the boundariesof the state accordingto the doctrineof popularsovereignty. It is little wonder then that those who are uncomfortablewith the thathistoryhas deliveredto them startlooking to othervisions of boundaries communityas the sourceof state sovereignty.The modem doctrineof popularsovereigntydoes not single out nationalcommunitiesandencouragethem to take control of their own affairs.But it does justify the delegitimationof state boundarieswithout giving any useful guidance-other than resignation-to those who are dissatisfied with the way in which they currently divide up political and culturalcommunities.

NATIONS WITHOUT NATIONALISM? I shall conclude by consideringan important practicalimplicationof my in If I am about the between popular this article. connection right argument then a lot harder to get ridof than and nationalism is sovereignty nationalism, most of its liberaldemocraticcritics realize. Nationalismthreatens liberaldemocraticpoliticalprinciplesandpractices in which it connectspoliticalrightsandprivilegesto relthe primarily by way of culturalcommunity.As a result,severing exclusive atively understandings the connection between political and culturalcommunityhas been a major goal of those who try to reconcile liberalismand nationalism.They pursue that goal in two different ways: by trying to refocus national loyalties on purely political objects or by trying to refocus them on purely cultural the one chosenby defendersof whathas come to be objects.The firststrategy, aims at purifyingnationalloyalties of the cultural called "civic nationalism," that particularism accompaniesnationallife in most modem political communities.46The second strategy, in contrast, aims at purifying cultural of the temptationto seek political power to which it has sucparticularism cumbedin the age of nationalism.I havetriedto show elsewherethatthe first strategy,the celebrationof civic nationalism,has merely replacedold myths This articlesuggeststhatthe second strataboutnationalismwith new ones.47 of a the cultural celebration nationalism,faces similardifficulties. egy, purely The argumentthat politics corruptsthe intrinsically cultural bonds of backat least to Herder'sdefense nationalcommunityis an old one, stretching of culturalnationalism.It was popularamong Austro-Hungarian pluralists like OttoBauerandhas been given new life in YaelTamir'srecentbook, Lib-

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eral Nationalism. Rebecca West presents a particularly eloquent version of this argument in Black Lamb, Grey Falcon, her extraordinary account of her travels in Yugoslavia during the 1930s. It comes near the end of that long celebration of Yugoslavia's cultural diversity, when West finally reaches Kosovo and its shrines to Serbian nationalism. Deeply moved by the way in which some boys recite the legend of Serbian self-sacrifice here on Kosovo's "field of blackbirds," she is inspired to defend cultural nationalism against its critics.
The little boys looked noble anddevoutas they recited.Herewas the nationalismwhich the intellectualsof my age agreedto considera vice andthe originof the world'smisfortunes. I cannotimaginewhy. Everyhumanbeing is of sublimevalue,becausehis experience, which mustbe in some measureunique,gives him a uniqueview of reality,andthe sum of such views should go far to giving us the complete pictureof reality,which the humanrace must attainif it is ever to comprehendits destiny.Thereforeevery human being must be encouragedto cultivatehis consciousness to the fullest degree. It follows thatevery nation,being an associationof humanbeings who have been drawntogether to by commonexperience,has also its own uniqueview of reality,which mustcontribute ourdeliverance.... Thereis not the smallestreasonfor confoundingnationalism,which is the desire of a people to be itself, with imperialism,which is the desire of a people to preventotherpeoples frombeing themselves.... HerecertainlyI could look withoutany reservationon the scene, on the two little boys darkeningtheirbrows in imitationof the heroes as they spoke the sternverse.... This was as unlikely to beget any ill as the wild roses and meadowsweetswe had gatheredby the road.48

After the terrible violence unleashed by the recent attempt to keep Kosovo Serbian, these words are, of course, weighed down with a terrible irony. Little boys "darkening their brows" in imitation of Serbian national heroes cannot help but suggest to us something considerably more sinister than the gathering of roadside flowers.49 Nevertheless, West's argument is not at all unreasonable. How can we deny that there is great value in the diverse ways in which people have come to express themselves and hand those forms of expression down to their children? Would not a world in which we lost touch with these forms of expression be immeasurably poorer? Why not try to recover and protect the life-affirming creativity of cultural nationalism from the life-threatening temptations of political nationalism? Such is the goal that Yael Tamir, among others, pursues in her attempt to purge nationalism of its illiberal tendencies. Nations, she declares, should be understood as communities that allow for shared and voluntary forms of cultural expression. Nationalism, she suggests, is the form that such expression takes, although it has unfortunately been confused with the pursuit and exercise of political power. She concludes that if we can return to the original cultural understanding of nations and nationalism, then we can truly reconcile

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Otherssharethis conclusion but speak instead nationalismand liberalism.50 of a returnto "nationswithout nationalism"or "nationsagainst states,"5' since, like myself, they identify nationalismwith the political self-assertion of nations. The viability of such a solution to the problemsthat nationalismcreates for liberal democraticpolitics depends on just what it is that has led to the politicization of national community in the modern world. If the political self-assertionof nationalcommunities is a passing phenomenonbased on values and practicesthatwe are readyto discard,then this may indeed be a promisingpath for liberaldemocratsto follow. If, instead, it has developed because of featuresof modernlife andpolitics thatwe now hold dearand/or indispensable,thenit is not.In this article,I havetriedto show thatthe latteris trueand thus thatpurifyingnationalismof its taste for political power is no moreplausiblea projectthanthe civic nationalists'effortsat purifyingpolitical nationalism of its taste for cultural particularism.For the key to the politicizationof nationalloyalties lies in a notionthatliberaldemocratscontinueto hold both dearandindispensableto a decentpolitical order:the idea of popularsovereignty.

NOTES
1. I. Hont, "Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind:The ContemporaryCrisis of the Political Studies (1994), 166-231, 171. Nation-Statein HistoricalPerspective," MA: Harvard Uni2. See L. Greenfeld,Nationalism:FiveRoadsto Modernity (Cambridge, versity Press, 1992), 21-22. Of course, one can get aroundthis difficulty by expandingone's of modernization to includeearlierdevelopments,like the emergenceof the modunderstanding ern state in the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies,thatprecedethe emergenceof nationalism. But doing so seriously underminesthe idea of modernization by identifyingit with every new developmentin the past few centuries.On the problemscreatedby confusingtemporalandsubstantiveunderstandings of modernityin this way, see B. Yack, The Fetishismof Modernities (Notre Dame, IN: Universityof Notre Dame Press, 1997). Nationsand States (London: 3. H. Kohn,TheIdea of Nationalism,3, andH. Seton-Watson, Methuen, 1977), 445. 4. Forinterestingexceptions,see LiahGreenfeld,Nationalism,5-26; M. Canovan,Nationhood and Political Theory(Cheltenham,UK: EdwardElgar, 1996); S. Beer, ToMake a Nation (Cambridge,MA: University of HarvardPress, 1993); and above all, I. Hont, "Permanent Crisis." Notes on a DifficultProblem," 5. M. Walzer,"TheNew Tribalism: 206, ed., R. Beiner,Theorizing Nationalism(Albany:SUNY, 1998), 205-18. 6. See M. Finley,"TheAncientGreeksandTheirNation,"in Finley, The Use and Abuseof History (New York:Viking, 1975); and B. Yack, "TheMyth of the Civic Nation,"ed., Beiner, TheorizingNationalism, 111-14. One problemwith manycurrentstudiesof nationalismis that theyincludethe claim to politicalsovereigntyin theirverydefinitionof a nation,therebymaking

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it very difficultto make sense of the distinctionbetween nationaland political communitythat prevaileduntilrecentcenturies.See, for example,BenedictAnderson'sdefinitionof a nationas a (New communityimaginedas boundedand sovereign,in B. Anderson,ImaginedCommunities York:Verso, 1991), 6-7. 7. See, in particular, R. Emerson,FromEmpireto Nation (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 214. 8. E. Morgan,Inventingthe People (New York:Norton, 1988), 83. 9. As we shall see below, Frenchwritersfrequentlyuse the termnation whereEnglishand Americanwriterswould use the termpeople. 10. I. Hont, "Permanent Crisis,"172. 11. As EdmondMorgannotes (Inventingthe People, 60), althoughthe new doctrineof popularsovereignty"encouraged its purposeremainedthe same"as the greaterpopularparticipation, ideologies it was designed to replace:"topersuadethe manyto submitto the few."Much of the historyof the doctrine"canbe readas a historyof the successive effortsof differentgenerations to bringthe facts into closer conformitywith the fiction, effortsthathave graduallytransformed the very structure of society" (ibid., 152). As a result,the modem notion of popularsovereignty is frequentlyattackedby supporters of participatory democracyin the name of an older, more directunderstanding of the concept. See, for example, J. Mostov, Power,Process, and Popular Sovereignty(Philadelphia: Temple UniversityPress, 1992). 12. On the theoryof constituentsovereignty,see J. Franklin,John Lockeand the Theoryof I. Hont,Permanent Crisis,"201; M. Forsyth,"ThomasHobbesandthe Constituent Sovereignty; Power of the People,"Political Studies 29 (1981), 191-203; 0. B6aud,La puissance de l'etat MA: Cambridge (Paris:PUF, 1994), 208-27; S. Beer,ToMakea Nation (Cambridge, University Press, 1993), 312-21; and P. Pasquino,Sieyes et l'inventionde la constitutionen France (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1998). 13. Nevertheless,this distinctionbetween the people's two bodies stronglyinfluences even modem restatementsof directpopularrule, such as Rousseau's.For example, it informsRousseau's famousdistinctionbetweenthe generalwill of the people andthe expresswill of all or of a majorityin the legislative assembly.The former,Rousseauargues,is neverwrong and remains the source of all legitimateauthority. The lattererrsand needs to be correctedwith referenceto this general will of the imagined people. 14. In English,the termnation tends to have moreof a culturalconnotation,the people more of a political connotation.In German,it is the otherway around,althoughas EmmerichFrancis points out, thatis the resultof a long evolutionthatreversedthe use of the terms.See E. Francis, Ethnos und Demos (Berlin:Dunckerund Humblot, 1965), 61. 15. ThatFrenchpolitical traditiontends to follow Sieyes in calling this form of community "thenation,"ratherthanRousseau in calling it "thepeople,"should not be allowed to interfere with the distinctionthatI am makinghere.As Sieyes himself makesclear,"apolitical society, a E. J. Sieyes, "Contre in P.Pasquino,Sieyes la re-totale," people, a nationaresynonymousterms." et l'inventionde la constitutionen France, 175. In anotherplace, he insists thatpublic authority "comesfromthe people, thatis to say, the nation," addingthat"thesetwo termsought to by synonymous."E. J. Sieyes, Ecrits Politiques(Paris:Editionsdes ArchivesContemporaines,1985), 200. The revolutionaries' preferencefor the termnation reflects the lingeringnegativeassociations of the termthepeople with the plebsor mob.See E. Fehrenbach, in Handbuch der "Nation," Politische-Soziale Grundbegriffein Frankreich1680-1782 7(1986), 75-107, 83-84, I. Hont, "Permanent Crisis," 194-250, and L. Greenfeld, Nationalism, 6-8. One consequence of this developmentis thatFrenchlegal and political thoughthas long distinguishedbetween national andpopularsovereignty,even thoughby nationalsovereignty,what is meantis the kind of indirect or constituentsovereignty associated with the new doctrineof popularsovereigntythat I

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have been describing. See G. Bacot, Carre de Malberg et l'origine de la distinction entre souverainete du peuple et souverainete nationale (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la RechercheScientifique, 1985). 16. Needless to say, I presenthere a sketch of conclusions ratherthanan elaborationof the evidencethatmightsupportmy distinction.This is especially truewithregardto the definitionof nationalcommunity,a field of vastcontroversy thatI deal with in "TheMythof the Civic Nation" andin the firstchaptersof my forthcomingbook, Nationand Individual.Withregardto the people, in contrast,thereis a relativedearthof seriousreflection.See M. Canovan,Nationhoodand Political Theory(p. 16) for an interestingdiscussion of why this is so. 17. AlthoughI employ Benedict Anderson'sexpression(ImaginedCommunities, pp. 1-7), I use it here in a somewhatdifferentmannerthan Andersondoes. Andersonfocuses on lack of familiarityand thus defines an imaginedcommunityas a communitywhose membershave no directinteractionwith each other.As I am using the concept, however,an imaginedcommunity is a communitywhose existence is derivedfrom its members'imaginationof theirconnections, ratherthan throughsharedprocesses or interactions.The nation is an imaginedcommunityin both Anderson'sand my sense because it is a communitybased on an imaginedheritageshared by widely separated groupsof individuals.But as I am using the term,therecan be large,impersonal communitiesthat are based on sharedinteractionsand proceduresthat are not imagined communities.When,forexample,we speakof the urbanor even the worldcommunity,we canbe thanany kindof image of sharinga or interaction, rather speakingaboutsharedinterdependence community.And therecan be small communitiesthatarebased on imaginedconnectionsrather thanon any direct interactionor interdependence. 18. Accordingly,the people is conceived with referenceto the state,in particular to the modin a single hierarchical structure. ern statethatintegratesall coercive authority withina territory When scholars suggest that it is "pointless to talk about nations apartfrom the state" (Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 [Cambridge,UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990], 9), they are conflating the nationwith this image of the people. 19. See M. Canovan,Nationhoodand Political Theory, 22, andB. Anderson,ImaginedCommunities,9-12. 20. On this point, see R. Scruton,"InDefence of the Nation,"in Scruton,ThePhilosopheron Dover Beach (Manchester, CT: Carcanet,1990), 301. 21. M. Canovan(Nationhoodand Political Theory,107) notes this absence. Rogers Smith The Politics of People-Building"(the 1999 triesto correctfor this absencein "Trust andWorth: CharlesE. LindblomLectureat Yale University). 22. R. Emerson,FromEmpireto Nation, 90. 23. I wantto emphasizeherethatI am not endorsingthe dubiousclaims thatso manynations make about the antiquityof their nationaltraditions.I am definitely not suggesting that all or even most nations are old, with their roots in the mists of some distantprimordialage. I am merely saying that the nation, as a distinctiveform of community,is, relativelyold, while the people representsa relativelynew way of thinkingaboutcommunity. 24. On this point, see especially L. Greenfeld,Nationalism,6-8. 25. "Opposed to the sovereignty of the monarch, the sovereignty of the people is one of Takenwithoutits monarch... the the confused notions based on the wild idea of the "people." people is a formless mass and no longer a state. It lacks every one of those determinate class-divisions, characteristics-sovereignty, judges,magistrates, etc.-[by which]a government, abstractionwhich, when representedin a quite general people cease to be that indeterminate way, as the 'people."'

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G.W.F.Hegel, Philosophyof Right,(Oxford,UK: OxfordUniversityPress, 1967), ?279. On this the State(Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1999), passage,see J. Stevens,Reproducing 79-80. 26. "Thewordmost on its lips is the 'people;'butthe special markwhich it carrieson its brow is the hatredof law."Forlaw "is the shibbolethwhich marksout these false friendsandcomrades of what they call the 'people."'G.W.F.Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Preface,6-7. 27. It also continuesto inspiremoreradicaldemocrats,who areattracted to the idea that"the will of the people resists all representation." See P. Markell,"MakingAffect Safe for DemocPolitical Theory28 (2000), 38-63, 50. racy: On ConstitutionalPatriotism," 28. "Aking, howeverdubioushis divinitymightseem, did not haveto be imagined.He was a visible presence,wearinghis crownandcarryinghis scepter.The people, on the otherhand,are nevervisible as such. Before we ascribesovereigntyto the people, we haveto imaginethatthere is such a thing, somethingwe personifyas thoughit were a single body."(E. Morgan,Inventing the People, 153) 29. J. Franklin, JohnLockeand the Theoryof Sovereignty,124. See also, I. Hont,"Permanent Crisis,"201, andM. Forsyth,"ThomasHobbesandthe ConstituentPowerof the People,"Political Studies 29 (1981), 191-203, 191. 30. Accordingly,one mightarguethatthe emergenceof the moder sovereignstateas a form of political organizationis a necessary condition for the emergence of this new idea of the people. 31. This is my formulafor a trucebetweenthe "modernist" and"primordialist" understandings of nationalism.I repeatthatI am not suggestingthatall or most nationsareold; I meanonly to suggest that the nation as aform of communityis, unlike nationalism,relativelyold. 32. See J. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress, 1982). activist understanding of citizenshipis found in 33. The classic statementof the traditional, and office" Aristotle'sPolitics (1275a23), thatthe citizen is someone who sharesin "judgment and takes turnsin ruling and being ruled. 34. I. Hont, "Permanent Crisis,"184-85. 35. I discuss the strengthsandweaknessesof Greenfeld'sargument in "ReconcilingNationalism and Liberalism," Political Theory(1995), 165-82, 175-80. 36. See especially L. Colley,Britons:TheMakingof a Nation(New Haven,CT:YaleUniversity Press, 1992). 37. L. Greenfeld,Nationalism,3-14, 76-77. 38. Ibid.,76-77. The quotationsaremostly fromMilton'smost famousandinfluentialpolitical essay, Areopagitica. 39. This argumentis presentedmost effectively by J. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1994), 62, 390. 40. I add "sites of past greatness"to emphasize, with IstvanBibo, that it is the memory of connectionto territory, notjust presentdwelling, thatleads to nationalistconflicts. The intermixing of peoples in the Balkans,Bibo suggests, mighthave been sortedout with farless violence if it were not for the fact thatthese peoples were sustainedby tales of pastgreatnessin the sameterritories.See I. Bibo, "TheDistressof EastEuropean Small States,"in Bibo, Democracy,Revolution, and Self-Determination (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1991), 13-86, 22-23. 41. Quotedin R. Emerson,FromEmpireto Nation, 43. 42. A. Hamilton,J. Jay, and J. Madison, The FederalistPapers, no. 1. 43. "Natural divisions, the spontaneoustendenciesof the peoples will replacethe arbitrary divisions sanctionedby bad governments.The countriesof the People will rise, defined by the

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voice of the free, upon the ruins of the countriesof Kings and privilegedcastes."(G. Mazzini, TheDuties of Man [London:Dent, 1907], 52) 44. See F. Whelan,"Democratic eds., J. R. Pennockand Theoryandthe BoundaryProblem," J. W. Chapman, NomosXXV: LiberalDemocracy(New York:NYU Press, 1983), 13-47, 13, and M. Canovan,Nationhoodand Political Theory,17-18. of collec45. This ambiguitybetween collective self-determination and the determination tive selves plagues most attemptsto justify the right to nationalself-determination. 46. For example, see M. Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging (New York:Farrar,Strauss, & Giroux, 1993), 7-13. For similararguments,see Bogdan Denitch's defense of civic nationalism in EthnicNationalism:TheTragicDeath of Yugoslavia (Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota, 1994), Liah Greenfeld'sdistinctionbetween Anglo-Americanand continentalEuropeanforms of nationalismin Nationalism:FiveRoadsto Modernity, andDominiqueSchnapper's defense of the idea of the civic nation, in which she attemptsto prove that the "very notion of an ethnic nation is a contradictionin terms,"in La communautedes citoyens: sur l'idee modernede la nation (Paris:Gallimard,1994), 24-30, 95, 178. 47. In "TheMyth of the Civic Nation,"ed., R. Beiner, TheorizingNationalism, 103-18. 48. Rebecca West, Black Lamb, Grey Falcon (London:Penguin, 1988), 843. Like Tamir, West is indebtedto Herder'scelebrationof culturalpluralismin her vision of liberal cultural nationalism. 49. A different,butequallyterribleironyhungoverthebook at the time of its publication.For West published Black Lamb, Grey Falcon shortly after the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia and destroyedso many of the people and forms of life that she had so lovingly described.See her remarksin the book's preface. 50. Yael Tamir,Liberal Nationalism, 57-58. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Tamir'sargumentmore generally in "ReconcilingLiberalismand Nationalism,"170-75. 51. J. Kristeva,Nations withoutNationalism(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1993); G. Gottlieb,Nations against States (New York:Council on ForeignRelations, 1993).

Madison.His most BernardYack teachespolitical theoryat the Universityof Wisconsin, recentbookis The Fetishismof Modernities: EpochalSelf-Consciousnessin ContemporarySocial and Political Thought.He is currentlycompletinga book titled Nation and Individual:Contingency,Choice and Communityin Modem Political Life.