还珠楼主 - 2002-11-25 18:10:00
Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, xii + 268 pages, Index. ISBN 0-19-829742-4 (hardback), £19.99/$ 29.95
Reviewed by Stefan Wolff, University of Bath
When writing my undergraduate thesis on Northern Ireland at the University of Leipzig, Germany, I came across Michael Hechter’s 1975 book Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development. Even though, in the end, I did not use much of Hechter’s argument (nor did I become an advocate of the internal colonialism argument in relation to Northern Ireland), the book made a deep impression on me. Several years on, Hechter’s latest book, Containing Nationalism, also impressed me – in its clarity, logic, and comprehensiveness of argument. In addition, I would probably subscribe to most of Hechter’s contentions.
Containing Nationalism is about three questions: What are the causes of nationalism’s modernity? Why is nationalism more prevalent in some countries than in others? How, if at all, is it possible to contain the ‘dark side of nationalism’, i.e., its association with violence? (pp. 3-4)
Hechter defines nationalism as ‘collective action designed to render the boundaries of the nation congruent with those of its governance unit’ (p. 7), with the governance unit being ‘that territorial unit which is responsible for providing the bulk of social order and other collective goods – including protection from confiscation, justice and welfare – to its members’ and that has ‘the capacity to extract the revenue and other resources necessary to defray … [the] production’ of these collective goods (p. 9). This particular approach to nationalism is crucial to Hechter’s argument in that it allows him to see nationalism as an exclusively political phenomenon and to distinguish it from imperialism and regionalism. Consequently, the types of nationalism that Hechter considers (in his own admission not an exhaustive list) are four – state-building nationalism, peripheral nationalism, irredentist nationalism, and unification nationalism. Equally important for the conclusiveness of Hechter’s subsequent analysis is that he treats the state as one particular, but not the only governance unit. From these two definitions, From there, Hechter proceeds to describe nations as ‘territorially concentrated ethnic groups’ with ‘an elaborated sense of collective history’ which ‘implies the existence of some social recognition of the national category, which leads to an available social identity.’ (p. 14)
Chapter two summarises Hechter’s entire argument. Initially, I considered this to be not much more than a ‘filler’ (given that the total number of pages of text is just under 160), but actually it is quite useful because it enables the reader to place the following, more elaborate answers to all three questions in the context of the whole argument, to make connections, and to see the complexity of Hechter’s reasoning.
The explanation Hechter offers for the modernity of nationalism is closely linked to his contention that nationalism is about the congruence of governance unit (not state) and nation. According to Hechter, ‘[f]or the great bulk of human history no … disjuncture existed’ between the two (p. 36). This is because, for centuries, states were ‘faced with high monitoring costs’ of culturally distinct territories and were thus ‘compelled to rely on some form of indirect rule’ (p. 43) in order to maintain social order and extract sufficient resources to allow the centre to provide goods like defence. Consequently, when states are ‘disinclined or unable to intervene in the affairs and governance of constituent lower level groups, these groups usually constituted their own governance units.’ (p. 53) Thus, in systems of indirect rule, nations and governance units were in congruence, and there was no basis for nationalism. This, according to Hechter, changed dramatically with the rise of direct rule. Such a system allows ‘the state to become the governance unit in geographically extensive and populous territories’, assuming ‘rights, resources, and obligations formerly held by local authorities’ and thus making ‘individuals become increasingly dependent on the centre for their access to protection, dispute resolution, education, and other goods promoting individual welfare.’ (p. 60) In order to do so, the centre must enforce its monopoly on the use of force, introduce a uniform legal code, and standardise the economic and tax (collection) system (p. 61). This process of transforming the system of governance from indirect to direct rule, according to Hechter, gives rise to three forms of nationalism. This first of them is state-building nationalism which aims at cultural uniformity ‘to facilitate, and legitimise, direct rule’, pursuing inclusive strategies, such as assimilation or the promotion of a multi-national identity, or exclusive strategies, such as the limitation of rights to members of the dominant nation, ethnic cleansing, or genocide (pp. 62-63). While the introduction of direct rule, from the perspective of the state, necessitates state-building nationalism, from the viewpoint of the formerly autonomous lower-level governance units it makes peripheral nationalism a potentially useful political strategy, seeking ‘to bring about national self-determination by separating the nation from its host-state’. (p. 70) Irredentist nationalism, on the other hand, tries to detach a territory and its population from one state and to unite it with another state, but, as Hechter shows, this is the most improbable of all variants of nationalism as it is ‘seldom in the interest of the nationalist movement’s leadership.’ (p. 84) Unification nationalism, the last type of nationalism to emerge in response to the introduction of direct rule, ‘aims to create an overarching state that supplants a number of smaller sovereign units in a (relatively) culturally homogeneous territory’ (p. 85), thus distinguishing it from state-building nationalism by being culturally as opposed to territorially inclusive (p. 91). This analysis, clearly, also has an important temporal dimension to it that allows Hechter to answer the question about the modernity of nationalism. Direct rule became a possibility only around the time of, and with, the French revolution. Because of the enhanced military capabilities of centralised states, it thus, too, became a military necessity for states being confronted by French expansionism, and a reality for those being conquered by (or forcibly aligned with) France. Consequently the introduction of direct rule in France, led first to state-building and unification nationalisms in neighbouring states and territories, and subsequently (or in parallel) to peripheral and irredentist nationalism. This places the emergence of nationalism in the late 18th and early 19th century and gives a convincing explanation for its arrival at precisely this time.
The next question Hechter addresses is that of why nationalism is more prevalent in some countries than in others. This question is closely linked to the issue of national identities and, in particular to their salience, and Hechter contends that it is the ‘establishment and maintenance of a cultural division of labour’ that is the key to understanding this phenomenon. Using the examples of Quebec, Aruba, and the United States, Hechter makes clear that ‘hierarchical and segmental cultural divisions of labour favour the establishment and maintenance of separate social identities’ and that such cultural divisions of labour, therefore, ‘provide an important social base for the development of nationalism if the relevant groups are territorially concentrated’ (p. 107). Consequently, those countries are most likely to be confronted by persistently high levels of (peripheral) nationalism in which a cultural division of labour exists and where the respective groups live territorially concentrated and have little or no control over state policies that are directly relevant to the individual and collective welfare of their members. That is, in these countries national movements are more likely to exist that will demand sovereignty within their own governance unit congruent with the boundaries of their nation. Yet, while the demand for sovereignty is a necessary condition for nationalism, it is not a sufficient one. Rather, as Hechter rightly insists, ‘[n]ationalism requires the existence of organisations dedicated to pursuing national sovereignty.’ (p. 125) They are needed to overcome the free-rider problem and to ‘convince prospective members that sovereignty is a realistic prospect’, none of which nationalist parties are likely or easily to achieve (p. 125). Over time and space, such organisations have taken various forms and shapes: nonconformist churches in Wales, youth organisations and fraternities in Germany, the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland, and a variety of voluntary associations in Africa (pp. 125-126).
In the final chapter of his analysis, Hechter approaches the third question, namely under what conditions (violent) nationalist conflict is likely to be contained. Concluding from the previous examination of the phenomenon, Hechter offers three possibilities: to ‘increase the costs of collective action’, to ‘lower the salience of national identity’, and to ‘decrease the demand for national sovereignty.’ (p. 135) For a variety of reasons, Hechter does not have much hope for the success of the former two, but strongly advocates institutional designs aimed at achieving the third. Such designs include consociationalism, electoral systems, and federalism, and it is the latter that Hechter is particularly interested in as it is a form of indirect rule, one of the key concepts that informed much of his entire analysis of nationalism. While he is aware of the various controversies surrounding federalism, some new evidence (more widely discussed in his 1999 paper with Noboyuki Takahashi, ‘Political Decentralisation and Nationalist Conflict’) leads him to suggest that ‘[d]ecentralsation is a spur to mobilisation among minority nations, for it places greater resources … in the hands of nationalist leaders. As long as these leaders see a benefit in remaining part of the host-state, decentralisation ought to contain nationalist rebellion. If the central state implodes, however, then it has little to offer peripheral leaders and fragmentation is the likely consequence.’ (p. 149) Key to any successful implementation of decentralisation is that ‘central leaders … find a way to credibly commit themselves to upholding their institutional commitments’ which ‘will be enhanced when the government provides for maximal procedural justice’ (p. 153). Equally important, minority cultural protectionism must be made feasible by making it desirable for the majority, that is, the majority must be brought to understand that ‘social order can be provided more efficiently in a society made up of different national groups’ because ‘a viable central state can profit from the social control activities of its constituent national groups’ who ‘can contribute to state-wide social order by regulating the behaviour of their members’ (pp. 156-157).
The work is overall logical and consistent, but not without some minor and one major flaw. On the side of the minor flaws, I would disagree with Hechter’s contention that ‘Kosovar nationalism arose just after the imposition of direct rule’ by Slobodan Milosevic in 1989 (p. 77). On the contrary, it had always been present, but had been contained through a mixture of repression (after 1981) and indirect rule (especially through the 1974 constitution). Equally, I would not accept that the ‘distinguishing characteristic of peripheral nationalism is the demand for secession’ (p. 78). Hungarian nationalism in Southern Slovakia and South Tyrolese nationalism in Italy, to give just two examples, have since long been associated with demands for increased autonomy within their respective host-states rather than with secession from them. It also seems highly unlikely to me that the ‘Ossies’, i.e., former citizens of East Germany, can be classified as a new nation in Germany (p. 135). For one, it is over time much more likely that the regional identities of Saxons, Thuringians, and so on will prevail over a common East German national identity, and secondly if such an identity was to become salient it would not be a case of re-emergence, but rather one of persistence as East Germany had existed as an independent state (as much as this was possible at the cold war fault line in Europe) for forty years. Finally, the Frisians, to my knowledge, are more numerous in Germany and the Netherlands than they are in England (p. 135), and in these two countries they have quite a strong national identity, although there are few signs of nationalism as both their host-states and the supra-national structures of the European Union provide desirable collective goods in a way that a sovereign Frisian governance unit (or independent state) would be unlikely to match. None of that, of course, invalidates Hechter’s general argument. Much more problematic, however, is the following. On pages 146 and 147, Hechter contends that ‘[g]roups concentrated in territories that already have their own governance structures … can make a more plausible demand for sovereignty than groups concentrated in regions lacking a governance structure.’ Hechter then uses the rebellion indicators from Ted Robert Gurr’s ‘Minorities at Risk’ project to see whether his contention has a basis in reality. However, the presentation of data leaves much to be desired. On the one hand, it is claimed that all those groups have been excluded that are either not territorially concentrated or whose territory does not coincide with some sort of local governance structure. Yet, immediately thereafter, a distinction is drawn between ‘countries in bold italic’ that have at least one territorially concentrated minority with its own governance structure and ‘countries in regular font’ that do not have such groups. With the distinction in fonts missing from the resulting figure on page 148 which is to show that ‘centralisation is strongly associated with nationalist rebellion’, the figure is either completely useless to the reader, or it proves Hechter’s case, but its description is utterly confusing because there are no two different types of countries included. Given how crucial this point is for Hechter’s argument about decentralisation, i.e., the introduction of indirect rule, as a key strategy for the success of containing violent nationalist conflict, it might be worthwhile to clarify this issue well before a second edition of this valuable book.
In any case, the most important point to be made in this review is that Michael Hechter has written a book that without a doubt makes a significant contribution not only to the theoretical debate on the concept of nationalism, but equally to the various theoretical and practical discourses addressing the ways it can be best managed and prevented from escalating into violence. As such it should find its way into many libraries and become an integrated part of any course on nationalism.