Cultural Pluralism and the Politics of Accommodation

Abstract

Most states in the world are multinational and multiethnic. Thus the classical nationalist ideal of ‘one nation, one state’ can only be achieved by a process of nation-building to assimilate all citizens into one nation, or by domination or expulsion of the citizens who do not belong to the nation, viewed as an historic ethnic community. This is the aim of integral or exclusive nationalism, and its effects have been unfortunate in those states whose social basis is multiethnic or multicultural. Such nationalism is highly intolerant of national minorities and in history it has been linked with Fascism and Nazism, and with those states which have repressed or expelled the national minorities within them (for ‘integral nationalism’, see Alter, 1989, pp. 37–54).