Seven
There are parts even of Europe, in which different nationalities are so locally intermingled, that it is not practicable for them to be under separate governments. . . There is no course open to them but to make a virtue of necessity, and reconcile themselves to living together under equal rights and laws. —John Stuart Mill
The modern concept of the state draws inspiration from both liberal and national ideas. These two schools of thought could have joined in an ideal marriage: Nationalism could have supplied parameters for demarcating state boundaries, buttressing the view of the state as a community characterised by the mutual responsibility and the internal cohesion required by a welfare state, while liberalism could have provided the moral principles needed to guide personal and institutional behaviour. Indeed, many nineteenth-century liberals believed that “individual liberty and national independence or unity would go together,”1 and that liberal principles could best be implemented within a homogeneous nation-state. “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities,” argues Mill. “Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist.” Thus, Mill thought it necessary that “the boundaries of the government coincide in the main with those of nationalities.”2
So why did this promising engagement come to a bad end? Why are today’s liberals so averse to nationalism? One obvious answer relates to the history of nationalism in the twentieth century, when it broke away from the tradition of Herder, Mazzini, Mill, Naumann and others, and assumed the distorted features of fascism, nazism, and racism. The horrendous results of this unholy alliance drove postwar liberals to adopt a strictly universalistic approach and adhere to principles that were formulated without regard for colour, race, sex, or religion. As Kymlicka has accurately pointed out, the struggle of blacks and women for equal rights has contributed to the intensification of this trend; any deviation from universalist arguments on grounds of national or cultural rights was henceforth objected to, fearing it would legitimise “separate but equal” discriminatory policies.3
The liberal state thus emphasised its role as a neutral mediator and as an honest broker of individual interests, forbidden to promote or express any particular life-plan or conception of the good, and ensuring all members an equal chance to pursue their individually defined goals. The state was not only supposed to act as if it had no bias toward one particular colour, culture, gender, or religion, but was indeed supposed to be free of all identifying characteristics or associations with particular groups or individuals. The state was therefore seen as an embodiment of abstract humanity, representing those universal human qualities that unite all human beings. All dividing features were to be removed from the public sphere. Family affiliations, religious alliances, and professional ties were all viewed as private matters inconsequential to political life: The true nature of political agents was their citizenship, equally shared by all.
But the liberal state has in practice continued to operate within the constitutive assumptions of the modern nation-state and to see itself as a community with a distinctive culture, history, and collective destiny. The growing dissatisfaction of ethnic groups and national minorities living within liberal states lends persuasive support to this claim. Members of these minorities feel excluded from the public sphere because they realise that it achieves an appearance of disinterest in cultural issues by exclusion, namely, by rejecting all those who do not belong to the dominant culture.
The continued existence of national minorities attests that the national ideal of “a state to each nation,” despite its wide acceptance, has never been implemented. Why this gap between the ideal and its realisation? Why was the principle of national self-determination implemented in ways leading to the creation of states that were nationally heterogeneous and perpetuated the problem of national minorities? On what grounds can one justify the persistent adherence of modern politics to the concept of the nation-state, an obviously utopian ideal that could never be implemented? What moved liberal states to shy away from the recognition of their national premises? This chapter is concerned with these questions.
A State to Each Nation—An Unattainable Ideal
The fundamental principles underlying the establishment of nation-states after the First World War closely resembled Mill’s liberal nationalism. In the spirit of Wilson’s Fourteen Points (1918), these principles stated that a new European order should be based on the right to national self-determination, and it was this belief that guided the participants at the Paris Conference when they redrew the map of Central and Eastern Europe and replaced the old dynastic borders with new ones. Wilson therefore demanded changes in the Italian border, autonomy for the ethnic groups within Austro-Hungary, independence for the Balkan states, autonomy for Turkey and for the ethnic groups living there, the liberation of Rumania and Montenegro, and independence for Serbia and Poland.
Yet, as Mill had already noted in 1861, there were major difficulties in implementing the national ideal of a state for each nation, the most prominent being the geographic one. There were (and still are) areas in Europe where members of different nations are so closely intermingled that it is impossible to grant each an independent nation-state. This is particularly true in light of the interpretation of national self-determination prevailing at the time, namely, as a stage in the social evolution of human units developing “from family and tribe to county and canton, from the local to the regional, the national and eventually the global.”4 As long as national self-determination was expected to be part of a linear process of historical evolution leading to increasingly larger social units, the idea that it should also be granted to groups wishing to secede and create their own small, homogeneous national units was a priori ruled out.
In the Wilsonian era, this tendency to prefer unifying national movements was reinforced even further. The prevailing belief at the time was that only large states could be free and progressive, while small ones were doomed to dependence and oppression: The ideal state was nationally and culturally homogeneous, politically centralised, economically and technologically developed, and militarily powerful, namely, self-sufficient, and thus free. Consequently, only nations in sovereign states able to attain economic, strategic, and political autonomy were considered capable of enjoying self-determination.
The borders of the new states established in the Paris Agreement were drawn with these aims in mind. As far as possible, every state received a variety of agricultural areas, industrial resources, and access to the sea. Hence, Poland gained access to the Baltic Sea through German-populated areas, and industrial Bohemia, agricultural Slovakia, and Ruthenia were combined to create the multinational state of Czechoslovakia. Sudetenland, a mountainous area endowed with what was considered an easily defensible border, was annexed to Czechoslovakia, despite the fact that most of its population was German-speaking.
But the belief that only viable independent states could ensure national self-determination in the end hindered the implementation of the national vision. Whenever considerations of independence and viability conflicted with aspirations for national homogeneity, the former took precedence. As a result, most of the successful struggles for independence in the postwar era were led by movements striving for unification rather than for secession. This was true for Germans, Italians, Poles, Rumanians, Yugoslavians, Bulgarians, and Greeks. The supremacy of the viability principle, combined with the desire not to harm the integrity of existing states is crucial for understanding why, in many cases, rather than solving the national problem, the newly drawn boundaries sowed the seeds of national unrest. Stateless nations that had hoped to secede and establish their own state, and nation-states whose fellow nationals were scattered over several states and aspired to annex these territories found no support for their demands. These separatist and annexationist movements could, indeed, find legitimation in the ideal of national self-determination, but advocates of national liberation were in no rush to support them. The fear of Balkanisation, of the fragmentation of existing states into small, antagonistic, and nonviable units, was much too strong. In fact, since the acceptance of Bangladesh, the international community has not granted recognition to any secessionist movement until the breakdown of the Soviet Union.
Let us take a brief look at the result of these policies in Western Europe, the cradle of nationalism. Although their numbers are hard to estimate, many citizens of Western European nation-states see themselves as members of national minorities living in a state that does not fly their flag. Are the Scots, the Welsh, the Lombards, the Bretons, or the Corsicans national minorities? If this is so, then a large percentage of Europe’s citizens could indeed count as members of national minorities.
Modern nation-states have attempted to blur the fact that they are composed of different national groups by fostering a liberal-democratic definition of the nation. According to this definition, all those who inhabit a particular territory and live under the rule of the same government are members of the same nation, but modern history has time and again refuted the claim that citizenship and membership in a nation are one and the same. No amount of conceptual manipulation could do away with the problems aroused by the presence of minorities.
National minorities had lived under foreign rule long before the emergence of nation-states, but “the problem of national minorities” surfaced in full force only in the aftermath of the First World War, following the dissolution of empires. The establishment of nation-states did increase the number of people who came to be ruled by their fellow nationals. It also resulted in a considerable number of national minorities left to be ruled by others, and feeling deprived and threatened due to their failure to accomplish their national aims. In a world of nation-states, being a minority not only entails subjection to foreign rule, but also forfeiting recognition as a distinct national group. The most palpable expression of disregard for stateless national groups was, and still is, that international institutions such as the League of Nations or the United Nations, in spite of their names, accept only states as members.
National minorities found subjection to the nation-state more oppressive than imperialistic rule for a further reason. Empires had indeed been perceived as a foreign ruling power, but had left cultural matters to the discretion of national groups. By contrast, the nation-state was not only assigned administrative, economic, and strategic functions, but also adopted a particular cultural and national identity. Consequently, in order to be considered full-fledged citizens, individuals had to identify not only with the state and its institutions but also with the culture of the ruling nation. State involvement in cultural issues deeply affected the self-image of national minorities, which came to feel that the effort to shape all the citizens of the state into one homogeneous nation destined them for erosion. Mobilization of the masses, socialization, cultural uniformity, nation-building, assimilation, all the magic words of modern nation-states, became the national minorities’ nightmare.
The new European nation-states were forced to pledge respect for the religious, linguistic, cultural, and political rights of the national minorities remaining within their borders. Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and Yugoslavia committed themselves to respect the rights of minorities, and the League of Nations established a commission to oversee the implementation of these agreements, but arrangements proved unsuccessful. Their weakness lay in the fact that these provisions had been designed to comply with the demands of minorities as these had been formulated in the era of large empires. At that time, national minorities could have been satisfied with a limited measure of economic and political rights and a modicum of cultural and religious autonomy, but in the era of nation-states, this was no longer enough.
Homogeneous nation-states were revealed as a pipedream, and the illusion that liberal and national ideals could be fully accommodated within one political framework could thus be expected to fade away. Although many national movements continue to entertain this dream, present reality demonstrates that attempts to make it come true inevitably lead to bloodshed. Renouncing the ideal of a homogeneous national state allows us to explore a new set of options. One option that liberals might view as the most plausible is a state that is nationally and culturally neutral. This ideal cannot be implemented, however, since cultural differences are part and parcel of the political reality rather than merely private matters. Liberal nationalism advocates taking cultural and national differences into account, acknowledging that members of national minorities, even within the most liberal of states, have legitimate grievances, and formulating ways of alleviating them.
The Illusion of Neutrality
Historically, neutrality has not been a prominent feature of liberalism. For as long as liberalism supported the minimal state and was mainly concerned with negative freedom, it could be claimed that “the sine qua non of liberal states, in all its varieties, is that governmental power and authority be limited by a system of constitutional rules and practices in which individual liberty and equality of persons under the rules of law are respected.”5 But as soon as the state assumed a more active role, extending far beyond nonintervention, liberalism could not do without a notion of state neutrality. For welfare liberals, or left liberals as they are at times called, equality came to mean distributing the fruits of social cooperation so that members could enjoy equal opportunities in the pursuit of their life-plans and conceptions of the good. A liberal political entity is thus to be recognised not only by the freedoms it protects but also by the neutral distributive principles it adopts.
A minimal state, because of its “thinness,” could be viewed as neutral even when endorsing a particular conception of the good, as long as it refrained from interfering in the lives of all its members to the same extent. All that was needed was for the minimal state to show tolerance and forbearance toward those holding different conceptions of the good. But for the welfare state, which is committed to act in ways that will ensure all its members equal chances in the pursuit of their life-plans and conceptions of the good, neutrality must mean more than forbearance and toleration. It would appear that the welfare state can choose to endorse only one of two available versions of neutrality. The first and more modest one is defined by Mendus as “causal neutrality,” namely, neutrality regarding reasons for action. This form of neutrality implies that the government should not aim at disbenefiting certain groups simply because they hold a particular conception of the good. The second and more strict form of neutrality concerns not only reasons but also outcomes, and suggests that “no laws should be passed or policies adopted which make it easier to pursue one conception of the good rather than another. . . . Where the reason based argument precludes only actions designed to bring about disbenefit, this principle rules out actions which will in fact bring about disadvantage.”6 But it is impossible to be neutral in this second sense. The state is forced to take a stand on social, political, moral, and economic questions, and those who agree with state-advocated policies have a better chance of pursuing their own life-plans and conceptions of the good. For instance, even barring any formal restrictions on communist activities in the United States, the chances Communists have to pursue their life-plans will obviously be considerably smaller than those of individuals who identify with the American ethos. Under these circumstances, granting members equal rights is not enough to ensure them equal opportunities, since the worth of these rights is higher for those who identify with the ethos of the governing institutions. Hence, ensuring that all members enjoy an equal chance to pursue their own conceptions of the good requires that the state refrain from endorsing any particular conception of the good and act solely as a coordinating apparatus. But restricting the role of the state so severely would be of no help, since even the most general procedural principles reflect beliefs about what is fair and efficient. Views about the fairness of procedures express a certain conception of the good, as views about efficiency cannot be fully developed unless ends are assigned, and the assignment of ends necessarily reflects a view about personal well-being and the preferred social order.7 This is particularly true in welfare states, which cannot avoid taking a stand regarding distributive policies. Any attempt to implement a strict interpretation of neutrality in a welfare state is therefore doomed to failure.
In the neutralist position, the state has a secondary role in the lives of its citizens: “the state is not itself to pursue the good life—whatever that may be—; it is simply to establish and maintain the ground rules within which others can engage in that pursuit.”8 The state is viewed as an abstract and impersonal entity, above and distinct from both the government and the governed, different from society both in terms of its special functions and in terms of the peculiar character of the authority it exerts. State institutions are therefore assumed to reflect the strength of legalism and codification, show concern for formalisation and depersonalisation, and emphasise the universal nature of the state, thereby making it equally accessible to all its members. But this attempt to portray political institutions as aloof from all interests and desires is both illusory and oppressive,9 since it confers on the particular values guiding state actions the status of universal, impartial rationality, and projects anyone opposed to state policies as advancing a particularistic, self-serving stand that challenges impartial, rational judgments. This perception places political dissidents, be they women, members of minority nations, or opposition parties, at a disadvantage. This leads to a paradoxical result: The attempt to relate to all members equally culminates in an ideal discriminating against anyone outside the consensus, opposed to state policies, or protesting its actions.
Welfarism led the modern liberal state in two conflicting directions—while forcing the adoption of distributive policies that necessarily reflect a certain set of values, it also fostered the ideal of neutrality. The result was a morally biased state, unwilling to acknowledge its own inclinations and deluding itself into believing that it was free from any particular conception of the good.
The Cultural Origins of Politics
Welfarism has not only led to a normative, but also to a cultural bias. Inspired by the ideal of welfare, liberals abandoned the notion of the minimal state and replaced it with that of the caring state. The need for justifying mutual responsibilities and fostering support for redistributive policies brought the welfare state to present itself as a community, sharing an ethos of a common past and a collective future, including notions of closure and strict demarcation between members and nonmembers.
It could still be claimed that, in spite of its communal features, the welfare state can adopt a neutral standpoint regarding culture thus allowing all its members an equal chance to pursue their particular cultural allegiances. This claim entails a fallacy, as the chances of members of minority groups to promote their cultural life are more restricted than those of the majority. Continued adherence to the notion of cultural neutrality prevents the modern welfare state from acknowledging the disadvantages suffered by minorities, and the need to ensure them special rights and protection.
Political sociologists view the modern nation-state as culturally biased for reasons much deeper than the instrumental grounds suggested so far. The political structure of every state, argues Pye, is inevitably rooted in the native genius of the ruling nation. This is the very essence of the notion of political culture:10
The concept of political culture assumes that each individual must, in his own historical context, learn and incorporate into his own personality the knowledge and feelings about the politics of his people and his community. Each generation must receive its politics from the previous one, each must react against that process to find its own politics.11
One thing that everyone knows but no one can quite demonstrate, says Geertz, is that “a country’s politics reflect the design of its culture.”12
Between the stream of events that makes up political life and the web of beliefs that comprise a culture it is difficult to find a middle term. . . . Culture, here, is not cults and customs, but the structure of meaning through which men give shape to their experience; and politics is not coups and constitutions, but one of the principal arenas in which such structures publicly unfold.13
The cultural essence of the state comes to the fore in its political institutions and in the official language, as well as in the symbolic sphere, in the selection of rituals, national heroes, and the like. Attitudes toward the political system, the psychological orientation toward social objects, political norms of behaviour, the interpretation of history promoted by the governing institutions, all unavoidably reflect a particular culture. For example, the Israeli parliament is called the Knesset, after the “Great Knesset,” a central religious and political institution in the period of the Second Temple. Modeling itself after “the Great Knesset,” the Israeli parliament has 120 members. Its symbol, the seven-arm candelabra, was a traditional ritual object. The official language of Israel is Hebrew; the Sabbath is the day of rest.
Could this be avoided? Could a state develop a totally neutral political structure, equally unconnected to the culture of any one of its citizens? Perhaps, but at the risk of alienation and irrelevance. Geertz uses the example of Indonesia to illustrate this point. As a result of 200 years of Dutch occupation, the patterns of official life became disjointed from popular culture and sentiments. Indonesia suffered from a fragmented party system, the enfeeblement of formal law, and the marginalisation of government activities. States, claims Geertz, can acquire legitimacy only if their acts are seen as “continuous with the selves of those whose state it pretends it is, its citizens—to be, in some steeped-up, amplified sense, their acts.” Citizens do not have to agree with what the state does in order to see its acts as “theirs”; “it is a question of immediacy, of experiencing what the state ‘does’ as proceeding naturally from a familiar and intelligible ‘we.’”14 This claim sheds further light on the view of political life developed in the course of this work, as extending far beyond the procedural sphere and as an expression of cultural identification.
As those who create the political system, legislate its laws, occupy key political positions, and run the state bureaucracy have a culture that they cannot avoid bringing into the political domain, the separation between state and culture is revealed as an impossible endeavour. Members of minority groups thus feel alienated from the public sphere, less able to understand its cultural origins, less capable of playing according to the “rules of the game.” They can, of course, decide to become acquainted with the culture of the ruling nation, but this demands that they devote time and efforts that members of the majority culture can invest elsewhere. Furthermore, members of minority groups, argues Kymlicka, can be outbid or outvoted on a range of issues crucial to the survival of their communities, a threat that members of majority cultures simply do not face. As a result “they have to spend their resources on securing the cultural membership which makes sense for their lives, while members of the majority culture get theirs for free.”15
If the liberal pretenses of neutrality at large and of cultural neutrality in particular are indeed only pretenses, and if belonging to a minority group unavoidably carries with it social, political, and frequently economic disadvantages, we might conclude that no national group should be forced to live as a minority. But why should only national minorities have a right to a place of their own, where they can constitute the majority, while Communists or vegetarians are not entitled to similar rights? It is certainly as hard to pursue a communist way of life in the United States as it is to pursue an Inuit life-style in Canada. One answer could be that members of the Communist party or vegetarians have no desire to isolate themselves, but instead wish to persuade the majority to adopt their views, while members of national minorities have no such desire. They consider their way of life appropriate to them, but only to them, and it is for this reason that they seek segregation from the rest.
This discussion makes clear that although it cannot be ensured that each nation will have its own state, all nations are entitled to a public sphere in which they constitute the majority. The ideal of the nation-state should therefore be abandoned in favour of another, more practicable and just.
Global Responsibilities, Regional Organisations,Local Autonomies
Abandoning the ideal of a state for every nation requires us to redefine concepts like sovereignty, independence, and national self-determination, and reevaluate their mutual links. The distinction suggested in Chapter 3 between the right to self-rule and the right to self-determination could inform an alternative perspective.
Were we willing to accept that the right to self-rule and the right to national self-determination need not be fulfilled within the same framework, we would have to ask what the proper scope of implementation for each one of these rights is. The most probable answer is that the scope should correspond to their purpose. The right to self-rule is meant to allow individuals to participate in the making of those decisions that have a major influence on their lives. Defining the relevant framework thus requires us to define the political structures in which such decisions are likely to be taken. Since the end of the Second World War, independent states have agreed to restrict their autonomy, and cross-national economic cooperation—involving the development of joint policies, effective regulations, and continuous coordination—seems to have become the order of the day. What is true in the economic sphere is certainly true at the strategic level: Only large, regional organisations can develop the military power required for adequate defense. Ecological problems also require regional, maybe even global, cooperation. In their attempt to ensure security and prosperity, modern states have become increasingly dependent on each other. The need for cooperation requires them to delegate authority for significant decisions to a regional level including, for instance, taxation brackets, production quotas, quality control, and the like, not to speak of the placement of ballistic missiles and nuclear plants. Due to the growing influence of regional institutions on the life-prospects of individuals, implementing their right to self-rule requires them to organise in order to affect the character and the function of regional bodies. (The term “regional” as used here indicates organisations above state level.) This does not suggest that local authorities, or even neighbourhoods, should have no power to make economic or ecological decisions, but rather that such decisions should be guided by principles decided at the regional level. Clearly then, self-rule implies that individuals should affect all levels of the decision-making process.
By contrast, implementing the right to national self-determination leads in the opposite direction. National identity is best cultivated in a small, relatively closed, and homogeneous framework, which neither wishes nor needs to reach beyond the members of the nation. This is, therefore, a process motivated by the need for cross-national alliances on the one hand, and by the persistent strength of aspirations for national segregation on the other.
Conventional wisdom suggests that this leads to two excluding options: either to a postnational, integrated, and peaceful world, or to a Balkanised world of small states involved in relentless war. Were this the case, it might indeed be logical to surrender national aspirations in favour of peace. But a third option emerges from the discussion so far, whereby nations might enjoy the right to national self-determination together with the benefits accruing from membership in broader political alliances. We saw in Chapter 3 that only by replacing the aspiration of an independent state for each nation with more modest solutions such as local autonomies, federative or confederative arrangements, could all nations come to enjoy an equal scheme of national rights. Ensuring the ability of all nations to implement their right to national self-determination would then lead to a world in which traditional nation-states wither away, surrendering their power to make economic, strategic, and ecological decisions to regional organisations and their power to structure cultural policies to local national communities.
Sheltered under a regional umbrella, all nations, regardless of their size, resources, geographical position, or economic viability, can acquire cultural and political autonomy and secession no longer constitutes a problem. Indeed, many of Europe’s small nations, which failed to establish independent nation-states, look forward to European unification. The Corsicans, Basques, Catalans, and Irish nationalists rightly assume that, as a self-professed multinational entity, the EC will not seek to shape a homogeneous cultural community, nor will it follow the undesirable tradition of international organisations to include only states. The EC could become a community of nations that openly recognises the diversity of its constitutive units. An instance of the respect and recognition shown by the emerging EC for particularistic sentiments as long as these do not threaten the union, is the creation of an office for “languages in lesser use, to encourage the preservation and revival of ethnic languages.”
The fact that a regional organisation is more likely to foster conditions that will enable smaller nations to prosper suggests a further justification for the creation of such bodies. Contrary to the usual justification adduced for regional cooperation, namely, that it allows individuals to transcend their national attachments, the merits of cooperation can now be couched in terms of its value to the free pursuit of national life.
Indeed, not all nations will be equal within a regional organisation. Some will probably be stronger than others and the use of some languages will be more widespread; one or two will probably be chosen as the lingua franca, but this agreement will express a technical need for communication rather than an attempt to identify the whole region with a particular culture. Viewing this as an instrumental decision rather than as a way of promoting assimilation has important psychological advantages. One can provide a justification for a lingua franca on instrumental-utilitarian grounds, namely, that it will facilitate communication, broaden professional prospects, open a wide range of occupational and political roles, and set all members of the regional organisation on an equal footing, whereas it would be unjustified to attempt to assimilate members of minorities in order for them to achieve these same benefits. The simultaneous move toward cooperation on the one hand and segregation on the other thus grants small nations benefits denied to them in the age of nation-states.
Regional cooperation is also advantageous for members of large nations which, no matter how big and prosperous, could never offer their members the benefits they can obtain through a regional organisation. Nations should also take into account long-term considerations, and recognise that power and prosperity are unstable factors: One nation finds oil, another has access to the sea, a third has fertile lands. But markets change, oil prices fluctuate and wells dry up, air transport has made some of the benefits of sea access obsolete and lowered the price of imports, strategic considerations and ecological conditions constantly change. But, above all, old nations can split and thereby lose their relative advantage as big, unified entities. Western Europe, which was assumed to be beyond nationalism, is a good example of this type of instability. Separatist tendencies now prevail in Western European nations, which have become aware of the fragile and tenuous nature of their unity. The English realise that they may one day find themselves divorced from the Welsh, the Scots, and the Irish; the Lombardian league makes a united Italy a questionable proposition; the Corsicans do not wish to define themselves as French, and no one can assure the French that the Normans or the Bretons will not follow in their footsteps. Although Germany is reunited, there is no assurance that Prussia, Bavaria, or Saxony will not wish to see themselves as distinct national entities in the future. Since no nation can assume it will remain united forever, nations have a reason to join political arrangements in which such splits will cause them minimal harm.
Regional organisations will enable nations to cooperate as equal partners rather than support one’s nation domination over others. Nations, argues Walzer, do not compete for members as some religions do:
When they freely celebrate their histories, remember their dead, and shape (in part) the education of their children, they are more likely to be harmless than when they are unfree. Locke may have put the claim too strongly when he wrote that “there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotions, and that is oppression,” but he was close enough to the truth to warrant the experiment of radical tolerance.16
A regional organisation, which takes the equality of nations for granted, is therefore more likely to foster toleration and diversity than political arrangements based on oppression and domination.
The Moderating Power of Interlocking Relations
Regional cooperation is gradually developing in various parts of the world, with the EC as the best-known example. This cooperation, however, has usually been justified on grounds different, and perhaps even contradictory, to the ones suggested here. Rather than stressing the national perspective, supporters of national cooperation emphasise economic and military advantages, hoping that the latter will enable individuals to forego their national attachments. The argument suggested here is motivated by radically different reasons. From a liberal-nationalist viewpoint, encouraging cooperation among nations is advantageous on three counts. First, it allows members of small nations to lead a full and satisfying national life. Second, it contributes to individual freedom by relieving pressures to assimilate as a way of improving the economic or occupational prospects of members of minorities. Cooperation aims, as far as possible, to equalise the prospects of all national communities regarding their chances of becoming objects of choice. Third, it fosters the idea that developing a prosperous national life is not contingent on closure and isolation but rather on the development of transnational ties, serving to allay the more ethnocentric and xenophobic aspects of nationalism.
The last two points call for further clarification. Chapter 2 discussed the conditions under which we can assume that an individual has chosen his way of life. Clearly, making choices implies that individuals have an adequate range of options to choose from, namely, that these options are relevant to their lives and that none of them entails unreasonable costs that would condemn them to marginalisation and destitution. A powerful, although unofficial, way of motivating individuals to assimilate (or to emigrate) is to present them with a forced choice between two unequal options: either to join a stronger, wealthier nation and share in its sense of security, its economic prosperity, and, at times, its feelings of superiority, or to remain closed within their own culture, doomed to marginalisation and very often poverty. When faced with a cultural choice, individuals are thus obliged to take into account considerations found beyond the realms of culture and communal membership. One advantage of the model proposing a regional organisation and national local autonomies is that it allows individuals to make these decisions on the basis of “the relevant reasons alone,” solely on the basis of their cultural and communal preferences. The procedure of conversion to Judaism illustrates an attempt to ground choice on “relevant reasons alone.” People wishing to convert to Judaism must couch this desire in strictly cultural and religious terms. No extrinsic reason, including the wish to marry a Jew, is considered valid ground for conversion.
As the separation of church and state was meant to ensure freedom of religion by enabling individuals to assume only those religious commitments that reflected their religious beliefs, separating the pursuit of a national life and the ability to achieve strategic, economic, and ecological gains through cooperation with other nations is meant to enable individuals to express their national affiliations while free from alien constraints. It allows individuals to differentiate their preferences rather than to cluster all of them in one inseparable sheaf.
A necessary condition of this separation, is that no national community be significantly better off than others, namely, that regional organisations will, as far as possible, be communities of equals, both on the individual and the national levels, lest individuals be motivated to join it for reasons other than national-cultural ones.
The third advantage points to the positive moral effects of cooperation. Cooperation forces individuals to realise that they belong to different communities and share preferences with members of various groups. Those with whom they share their national affiliations may not necessarily share their class, gender, or ideological preferences, and those who share their strategic or ecological preferences may include, but also exceed their national group. As shown in Chapter 5, these interlocking memberships cannot be placed in a hierarchial order. For some, belonging to a social class is a more important locus of identification than being members of a church, whereas identification with a political party or with a gender support group will, for others, mean more than affiliation with a particular nation. What makes this picture even more complicated is that the same individuals assign different values to membership in distinct groups at various stages of their life. The awareness that we are entangled in a series of complex webs of membership blurs the line between members and nonmembers and promotes cross-group affiliations.
The present model contends with some of the fears evoked by the morality of community. Individuals may indeed prefer members of their community on a certain issue, but their simultaneous membership in several nonoverlapping groups turns those who are nonmembers from one perspective into potential fellow members from another. Arguments that demonise nonmembers or call for the pursuit of members’ interests at the expense of outsiders will find it harder to get attention. Overlapping memberships stimulate moderation and cooperation:
When individuals belong to a number of different organized or unorganized groups with diverse interests and outlooks, their attitudes will tend to be moderate as a result of psychological cross-pressures. Moreover, leaders of organizations with heterogeneous membership will be subject to the political cross-pressures of this situation and will also tend to assume moderate, middle of the road positions. Such moderation is essential to political stability.17
Lijphart claims that most group theorists support this view. Truman, for example, states that “if a complex society manages to avoid revolution, degeneration, and decay [and] maintains its stability . . . it may do so in large measure because of the fact of multiple memberships.” Lipset similarly argues that “the chances of a stable democracy are enhanced to the extent that groups and individuals have a number of crosscutting, politically relevant affiliations.”18
Lijphart suggests “consociational democracy” as a way of reducing tensions in a cleavaged society. A consociational democracy is a political system that comprises numerous segments, each enjoying a high degree of autonomy in the running of its own affairs and governed by a “grand coalition” that includes representatives of all the different groups. The electoral system ensures all groups, except for very small ones, proportional representation in all political organisations, as well as a proportional share of the public expenditure and of all civic appointments. The different groups have mutual veto power and can veto decisions they view as vital, a mechanism meant to overcome the problems of simple majoritarianism. Since no nation is likely to attain a simple majority in a regional organisation, and since it cannot be assured that its particular interests will be protected unless it agrees to a mutual veto system, all are encouraged to endorse this arrangement.
In a consociational democracy, all segments have a say in matters of common interest, with the extent of their influence roughly corresponding to their representation. Decisions and policy implementation in all other matters are left to each segment. Rather than attempting to weaken or do away with segmental cleavages, consociationalism grants them explicit recognition and turns them into constructive elements within a larger political framework. It aims to allow every segment autonomy, either through a territorial arrangement or, when the nation is spread within others, to attain partial autonomy by establishing schools, cultural and communal centres, publications in its own language, and the like:
Where the segments are geographically too interspersed, segmental autonomy has been established on the personality principle: in the Netherlands, Austria, and as far as the religious-ideological subcultures rather than the linguistic communities are concerned, in Belgium. It should be noted that, although it is easier to delegate governmental power and administrative responsibilities to territorially concentrated segments, autonomy has proved to be compatible with both approaches.19
The model suggested here tries to equalise life-prospects for members of all nations, be they weak or powerful. It allows every nation representation, an equal share in the distribution of goods, and a fair chance to occupy official positions, pursue its life-plans, and adhere to its culture. Indeed, the chances for members of larger nations to pursue their shared goals will always be better, because their “buying power” will inevitably be greater. But the fact that one is affiliated with a small nation is a matter of bad luck rather than of unfairness. This unavoidable inequality at times leads to conflict, and consociational democracy is not a magic panacea for all ills. We have seen it end in disaster, as the Yugoslavian and Lebanese experiences painfully attest. These failures could be explained in various ways, by pointing to demographic changes in Lebanon (a problem discussed later as an example of the “de facto principle”) and to the uneven economic development, coupled with the abrupt collapse of an authoritarian regime, in the Yugoslavian case. These are sobering reminders that good ideas do not always succeed and may even lead to human suffering. Barry is right in claiming that adopting the consociational model cannot guarantee that a state will become as peaceful and prosperous as Switzerland or Holland and that, in fact, consociational arrangements reinforce national cleavages:
It is sometimes possible to maintain a system of party alignments cutting across a line of communal cleavage. It is usually possible to shift from this to a system where parties articulate the communal cleavage. But it is extremely difficult if not impossible to move in the reverse direction, because of the primitive psychological strength of communal identification and the effects of social reinforcement on maintaining the political salience of communal identification.20
The consociational model is indeed meant to give full expression to national differences, but attempts to lessen hostility among different national groups by emphasising the importance of shared, transnational interests. Such arrangements are likely to encourage all members of a particular nation to present a united front, in some cases, and promote transnational unions or corporations in others.
Notwithstanding these problems, Barry claims he cannot offer “an alternative panacea.” Nor can I.21 Two critical shortcomings of this model merit, however, special attention, as they touch on issues of great theoretical and practical concern. The first is the “Russian doll phenomenon,” namely, the problem posed by the fact that every “national territory,” however small, includes among its inhabitants members of other nations. Hence, granting local autonomy to a national group might reduce, but will not eliminate the problem of minorities. The second relates to problems of immigration. Liberal nationalism is committed to the liberal ideal of freedom of movement as well as to the right of national communities to preserve their distinctiveness. But attempts to accommodate both these ideals within a consociational setup is extremely problematic, as free immigration might threaten the national character of each segment. The following discussion offers several reasonable compromises aimed at coping with these problems. These compromises are not merely part of an ideal model, but are suggested as concrete guidelines for reflecting on some of the most pressing issues of our times:
Defining a political entity as a national community is only justified if a substantial majority of its citizens has consented to this definition. This implies that the national character of a political entity is to be determined de facto not de jure. Hence, attempts such as that of Israeli law to bar parties that deny the Jewish character of the state from standing for election is unjustified. Moreover, decisions about the national character of a particular government should only reflect the interests of those governed by it. Members of diaspora communities should not be allowed to participate directly and formally in the decision-making process, whereas all formal members of the national entity, irrespective of their national membership, have a right to participate in this process. Jews, Irish, or Italians living in the diaspora should not be party to decisions concerning the national character of their respective national homelands, although these decisions significantly affect their lives, but the Palestinian citizens of Isreal, as well as the Pakistani citizens of the United Kingdom, or Algerian citizens of France, should participate in this process. In this light, the decision to allow Estonians living in Sweden to vote in a referendum on the nature of the emerging Estonian state while excluding inhabitants of Russian origin, is unjustified. Although Estonians need not accept individuals of Russian origin as members of the Estonian people, they are not justified in depriving them of citizenship rights.
This approach suggests a dynamic view of the national nature of political entities. The most obvious source of change would be demography. A national entity can find it has become binational, or multinational, and that it must consequently change its official definition. This being the case, it seems justified for members to fear that immigration will change the future character of their society. On these grounds, would it be justified for a liberal national entity to place restrictions on the immigration of nonmembers? This is one of the hardest challenges that liberal nations face today.
The following guidelines might be helpful in dealing with this problem. Although they cannot bridge the gap between the ideal of free immigration and the ideal of national self-determination, together they may lead to a reasonable balance between them.
First, a clear distinction should be drawn between the rights of refugees and the rights of immigrants. Although certain restrictions on immigration could be justified, they could never rescind the absolute obligation to grant refuge to individuals for as long as their lives are at risk.
Second, after individuals have entered a certain territory under the justified impression that they will qualify for citizenship, it is unjustified to change these terms retroactively. This is a crucial issue for many republics established after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For example, out of Estonia’s 1.5 million inhabitants, 600,000 are Russians who entered the country after 1940, while out of Latvia’s 2.5 million inhabitants, Latvians are only 52 percent and in Riga they are a minority. Naturalisation laws have thus evoked serious disputes. The Estonian parliament, striving to secure the Estonian character of the new state, has passed a law that deprives Russians of their Estonian citizenship. Automatic Estonian citizenship will only be granted to anyone residing in the country before June 1940, when the Soviet Union annexed Estonia, and to their next of kin. All those who are not entitled to automatic citizenship but have lived in Estonia for at least two years, are allowed to apply for citizenship, which might be granted if—and this is the law’s stumbling block—they have never served or were never affiliated with the occupying Soviet forces, and on condition that they master the Estonian language. While the language restriction could be justified as a rather standard requirement of citizenship, as it is, for instance, in the United States, the wording of the first restriction is sufficiently vague to allow the Estonian government to reject most of the applications submitted by individuals of Soviet origin, even when born in Estonia. While the Estonian rage over the Soviet occupation is understandable, creating another wrong will not right the first one. Estonia and Latvia must face the fact that the injustices inflicted on them have turned them into binational states, and there is no way of turning the clock back.
Third, liberal democratic principles dictate that, if a majority of its citizens so wishes, a national entity is justified in retaining its national character. On these grounds, a national entity might be seen as entitled to restrict immigration in order to preserve the existence of a viable majority. Kasher claims that Article 1 of the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, can be interpreted as agreeing with this kind of favouritism. The article states the following:
Special measures taken for the sole purpose of securing adequate advancement of certain racial or ethnic groups, or individuals requiring such protection as may be necessary in order to ensure such groups or individuals equal enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms shall not be deemed racial discrimination, provided, however, that such measures do not, as consequence, lead to the maintenance of separate rights for different racial groups and that they shall not be continued after the objective for which they were taken have been achieved.22
Kasher understands this to imply that special measures intended to preserve the status of a group as a majority are only justified until a viable majority has been achieved.23 This seems to be a plausible solution, although it is not easy to define what is meant by “a viable majority.”
Restrictions on immigration constitute a violation of the right of national minorities to equal treatment, as they only serve the needs of the majority. Therefore, they can only be justified if members of the minority have materialised their right to a national entity of their own, to which they could immigrate if they desired to live as members of a majority, and as long as family reunions are allowed. Hence, the Israeli “Law of Return,” which actively encourages the immigration of Jews and grants them automatic citizenship and financial assistance on their arrival in the country, would only be justified if the largest minority in the state, namely, the Palestinians, would also have a national entity in which they could enact a similar law. Even if a Palestinian state was established, however, it would not be justified to expel the Palestinian citizens of Israel to that state, just as the existence of a Russian political entity cannot justify expelling citizens of Russian origin from the Baltic republics. Restrictions placed on the entry of future members differ significantly from injustices inflicted on present members, which can never be justified.
Once individuals have formally joined a political community they should be treated as equals. Nationality should not be the basis for distributing goods, rights, or services. The political culture should be open to all and members of national minorities ought to be encouraged to participate and integrate into the political sphere. It is true that entering the political culture requires members of minorities to join a political process reflecting a national culture not their own. Their difficulties on this count should be recognised, and it would be unjustified to use them for promoting assimilation into the national culture. Pragmatic reasons once again support moral ones: As a political entity becomes more tolerant of cultural differences, it lessens the risks of national unrest.
Another principle that derives from the nature of liberal nationalism concerns the obligation of every nation to respect the rights of other nations to self-determination. But some nations might be too poor to reach any reasonable level of prosperity, and this could hinder their ability to lead on autonomous national life. It is cynical to assume that the people of Bangladesh or of Ethiopia, or of Egypt or Turkey for that matter, enjoy their right to national self-determination to the same extent as the people of Norway or the United States. The implications of the distinction between equal liberties and equal worth of liberty should be considered in this context. The worth of liberty to a person or group is proportional to their capacity to advance their ends by means of the liberty granted. Individuals in poor countries are often forced to make a choice between living with their own people or improving their life-prospects in a society in which they will be a minority. If when choosing the latter option individuals were mainly motivated by instrumental considerations, their decision cannot be seen as expressing a cultural choice, it would be misleading to see it as waiving the right to national self-determination and expressing a desire to assimilate into a new culture.
This point underscores one of the most important implications of a theory of liberal nationalism: Restricting immigration in order to retain the national character of a certain territory, is only justified if all nations have an equal chance of establishing a national entity, in which its members will be given a fair chance of pursuing their personal and collective goals. The right to preserve cultural homogeneity is therefore contingent on the welfare of other nations. Liberal nationalism thus implies that it is justified for a nation to seek homogeneity by restricting immigration only if it has fulfilled its global obligation to assure equality among all nations.
Wealthy nations, concerned with avoiding pressure to open their gates to immigrants who are apt to change the national and cultural status quo, should, therefore, embark on efforts to improve standards of living in poorer countries, on both moral and prudential grounds. This, in fact, entails a restricted implementation of Rawls’ second principle on a global scale. But without the claim that individuals are entitled to lead fulfilling lives within their own national and cultural environment, Rawls’ argument could lead to the conclusion that the best way of ensuring members of poor nations a modicum of well-being would be to spread them among other, more prosperous communities. In fact, neither nationalism nor liberalism can, in and of themselves, justify support for the rights of individuals to prosper within their own communities, a claim that can only be sustained through liberal nationalism.
The argument justifying closure on the one hand and global responsibility on the other could be manipulated cynically, and used to justify the deportation of immigrants or Gastarbeiter back to their countries of origins. Le Pen in France, the Neo-Nazis in Germany, and supporters of white Australia or white California, indeed rely on similar claims when urging the deportation of existing populations. Note, however, that they not only demand a retroactive change of terms, but most important, call for deportation first and the redistribution of resources later. Their popularity lies in the fact that they tie a promise of economic benefits—better job prospects and salaries, lowered housing prices, and the like—with the attainment of cultural homogeneity. It is doubtful that these policies could have gained such wide support had they entailed the economic sacrifices implied by the liberal nationalist argument. A further difference between the liberal nationalist argument and its cynical “translation” is that the latter uses the language of race rather than choice, and the policies it advocates in fact prevent individuals from assimilating, even when they choose to do so. An important conclusion to be drawn from these examples is that ideological movements flying only one flag, be it equality, liberty, or national liberation, are to be viewed with suspicion. Human beings have a wide range of interests, preferences, and needs, and a sound political philosophy will attempt to balance all of them rather than pursue one at the expense of all others.
The attempt to create a synthesis sometimes results in a diluted version of both poles. Nevertheless, the attempt to integrate liberal and national ideals leads to a scheme of international justice that is less egoistic than the liberal one, entails genuine respect for different ways of life, and extends the limits of toleration, thus emphasising central liberal values without losing sight of national ideals.
We can now summarise the characteristics of a liberal national entity. This entity will endorse liberal principles of distribution inwards and outwards; its political system will reflect a particular national culture, but its citizens will be free to practice different cultures and follow a variety of life-plans and conceptions of the good. The political entity described here differs from the traditional liberal entity in that it introduces culture as a crucial dimension of political life. Its unity rests not only on an overlapping consensus about certain values essential to its functioning, but also on a distinct cultural foundation. Membership in this entity will be more accessible to certain individuals, capable of identifying the political entity as their own, than to others. Consequently, even if governing institutions respect a wide range of rights and liberties and distribute goods and official positions fairly, members of minority groups will unavoidably feel alienated to some extent. Alienation rather than a deprivation of rights is to be acknowledged as the main problem affecting members of national minorities.
The openness of the political culture and the readiness to compensate culturally disadvantaged members of minority groups may lessen the hardships faced by cultural minorities. Yet, minorities “may vote and enjoy all the formal-legal privileges of citizenship, and still be functionally excluded from the political process, and thus effectively excluded from the life of the ‘true’ political community.”24 This tension is endogenous to any liberal national entity and cannot be resolved.
The Return of Cultural Nationalism
In light of the preceding analysis, it is surprising to find that, notwithstanding its shortcomings, the concept of the nation-state still prevails. The popularity of this concept rests on several widely held fallacies, namely, that free institutions can only operate within a homogeneous nation-state, that a state can mobilize its citizens only by invoking the power of national ideals, and that economic development and modernization require cultural homogenization.
The first assumption suggests that members of different nationalities and various cultural backgrounds can hardly be expected to act harmoniously in the same state since
the same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigation, are circulating in the other. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities, than from the common arbiter, the state.25
Internal mistrust will either result in prolonged internal conflict or in despotic rule.
Furthermore, Mill assumes that a multinational state will not succeed in galvanising its population into political, economic, or military action. Only national feelings can be relied on to recruit an army resting on a liberal raison d’etre, that is, protecting the people against their government. Mill considers a national army in sympathy with the people as “the grand and only effectual security in the last resort against the despotism of the government,” while in an army composed of several nationalities
soldiers to whose feelings half or three-fourths of the subjects of the same government are foreigners, will have no more desire to ask the reason why, than they would have in doing the same things against declared enemies. . . . The sole bond that holds them together is their officers, and the government which they serve; and their only idea, if they have any, of public duty, is obedience to orders.26
Mill consequently fears that such an army is more likely to serve the interests of the ruler than those of the nation, thus turning from a source of national pride and confidence into a source of instability and danger.
Gellner turns our attention to political and economic aspects and suggests that modern states can only function under conditions of cultural and linguistic uniformity, without which citizens cannot participate in the political process or become involved in technological development and economic growth:
The mutual relationship of a modern culture and state is something quite new, and springs, inevitably, from the requirements of a modern economy. . . . All this—mobility, communication, size due to refinement of specialization—imposed on the industrial order by its thirst for affluence and growth, obliges its social units to be large and yet culturally homogeneous.27
As Gellner makes clear, nationalism had indeed been conceived as providing the impetus for progress and modernisation. But both Mill and Gellner speak for the needs of another era.
It is now believed that the economic future lies in cross-national cooperation. Economic considerations are expected to overcome linguistic and cultural differences and provide the momentum for a regional system that is both multinational and multicultural. In this system, industrialisation and technological development will be achieved without cultural standardisation, and with growing mobility among cultural frameworks. Nationalism and modernisation indeed nurtured each other during the first stages of the nation-state, but their paths seem to have parted. Today, nationalism is not seen as serving as a vital motivation for economic progress and development and, in fact, it is rather feared that it might constitute an obstacle to both.
A united Europe, if and when the process of unification comes to closure, will offer a concrete model of the consociational democracy suggested here. Although the events taking place in Eastern and Central Europe seem to be leading in the opposite direction, it seems safe to predict that these new states will seek to join regional organisations based on economic, strategic, and ecological cooperation, which are bound to restrain their autonomy. Eastern European states will therefore find that they cannot avoid going though political and economic processes similar to those followed by Western nation-states. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland have applied for membership in the EC, and the new republics created after the collapse of the Soviet Union will eventually find their place either in the EC or in new federative agreements. Although the exact terms of these agreements are hard to predict, they will probably resemble those on which the EC is based, namely, they will allow the different national groups a broad range of national autonomy, and develop policies of coordination and cooperation on economic, strategic, and diplomatic issues across national lines. The triadic principle of one army, one currency, one passport (implying free movement of goods and individuals within the boundaries of the federative or confederative system and a coordinated trade and immigration policy), will presumably capture the essence of the coordinated policies. Under this union, it will not really matter if the Yugoslav federation is divided into four separate national autonomies, or if Slovaks and Czechs separate.
Accepting the idea that national self-determination might best be attained within a larger regional framework implies that political thought has entered a new age, in which the principle of national self-determination no longer provides the sole justification for political organisation. It also challenges the belief that a stable political framework requires cultural, linguistic, or religious uniformity. Does this lead to a vision of a world without borders? Walzer rejects this ideal and emphasises the need for closure.28 If we appreciate differences, Walzer claims, we must accept that borders must be placed somewhere, and if we eliminate borders between states, local communities will create their own. Experience shows that, as the borders of the state become more open, communities will set up their own. In the cosmopolitan cities of multinational empires, or in cities where there is a steady influx of immigrants, the neighbourhood that preserves cultural uniqueness becomes a substitute for the political framework.29
The concept of “border” appears here in two different senses. Unlike that implied by a distributive framework, preserving the cultural character of a community requires a different kind of boundary. Cultural uniqueness is preserved in Quebec, in Belgium, and in many other places, without an actual geographical border. Scattered peoples like the Jews or the Armenians, and immigrant groups such as Hispanics in Southern California, Cubans in Miami, Algerians in France, and Pakistanis in England, and religious sects like the Mormons in Utah, the Amish in Pennsylvania, or the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem, also manage to preserve their identity without tangible boundaries. National and cultural groups wishing to preserve their uniqueness thus draw invisible frontiers between themselves and all “others,” and create closure by constructing ideological, religious, linguistic, and mainly psychological barriers between members and nonmembers.
The real test of power for cultural and national affiliations has arrived. Technological development and economic prosperity now depend on cross-national associations, and assimilation is, more than ever, a feasible option. Will national groups withstand pressures to melt together into a new regional culture, or will they be motivated to invest in the preservation of their cultural heritage, their language, their distinctiveness? Pye claims that the continuity of separate political traditions imprinted by particular national cultures “constantly resists the levelling forces at work in the social and economic spheres of modern life.”30 Time will tell whether this is true. But a postnational age in which national differences are obliterated and all share in one shallow universal culture, watch soap operas and CNN, eat MacDonalds, drink Coca-Cola, and take the children to the local Disneyworld, is more a nightmare than a utopian vision.
These could appear to be idle concerns in these tragic times, when fanatic versions of nationalism are causing so much anguish and suffering. But it is precisely at such times that individuals are lured by the appeal of cosmopolitan visions, which overlook the importance of national aspirations. The way to confront ethnocentric nationalism is not to suggest that national interests should be denied altogether, but to offer an alternative national view. It seems rather clear that nationalism will simply not go away, and the question that remains open is whether its guise will be some form of virulent ethnocentrism or a sober vision, guided by respect for liberal values.