Constitutional or Agonistic Patriotism? The Dilemmas of Liberal Nation-States

Abstract

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, with or without irony, a phantom haunted Eastern Europe, the phantom of liberal democracy. The collapse of communism and the end of Marxism as a serious political and ideological contender propelled the supporters of liberal democracy in countries where it had enjoyed a central position for hundreds of years into a triumphal and congratulatory mood. From Francis Fukuyama at the shallow end of the debate, to more nuanced exponents of liberal democratic political philosophy, such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, liberalism triumphantly paraded its values and ideas, as the collapse of communism and the dissolution of most politically organized forms of Marxism relieved liberals of important political and intellectual opponents. However, and in spite of this considerable success, the result in Eastern Europe’s former communist states was not always the emerging of liberal political regimes. The causes of this paradox are many, but perhaps one important ingredient can be found in a recurrent problem that haunted liberals for decades, if not centuries. This problem can be summarized as follows. Historically, the (civic) nation-state was the vessel through which liberalism exercised its political philosophy.¹ However, the institutionalization of individual rights, the most potent and persuasive device in the liberal inventory, cannot easily accommodate political demands for collective or group rights for national and ethnic minorities in civic nation-states.

Always, however, the intellectual is beset and remorselessly challenged by the problem of loyalty. All of us without exception belong to some sort of national, religious or ethnic community: no one, no matter the volume of protestations, is above the organic ties that bind the individual to family, community, and of course nationality.

(Edward Said, The Independent, 1 July 1993, p. 14)