Systematized nomenclature of medicine clinical terms (SNOMED-CT)

Michael Billig pointed out that in both popular and academic writing, nationalism is associated with those who struggle to create new states or with extreme-right politics.

However, he found that there was something misleading about this accepted use of the

37 word²⁷, which “always seems to locate nationalism on the periphery. (…). In consequence, those in established nations – at the centre of things – are led to see nationalism as the property of others, not of ‘us’ [thus] overlooking the nationalism of the West’s nation-state” (1995: 5-6). Prominent scholars are not immune from this assumption, forcefully restated by Michael Hechter in a book published as late as 2000:

“There is no motive for nationalism when the boundaries of the nation and the governance unit are congruent, for then the nation already has self-determination”

(2000: 26, original emphasis). In a similar vein, there is an enduring tendency in the literature to refer to all political parties speaking on behalf of stateless nations as ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ (Tursan et al 1998), or ‘ethnonationalists’ (Connor 1994²⁸, Conversi, 1997), neglecting the fact that they may equally be seen as territorial entrepreneurs.

For the purpose of this dissertation, I understand stateless nation-building as an elite-driven political project the aim of which is to establish, maintain, or expand a stable structure of power over a territory and a population. To be sure, nation-building cannot be understood in strictly instrumental terms, as a mere manipulation of elites inventing traditions from scratch and appealing to individuals’ narcissistic predispositions with the sole aim of increasing their relative power (Hechter 2000²⁹). But while objective differences and historical experiences do provide the necessary raw material to legitimize a claim of self-determination, they must necessarily be translated into a political project articulated in national terms, a task usually undertaken by political elites. Besides, the literature has long suffered from the tendency to reduce nationality claims to their economic dimension, ignoring the fact that they are primarily a response to ‘relative political deprivation’ (Connor 2001), and that claims of self-determination are above all about people’s fundamental interest in membership in a self-governed political community (Bauböck 2006). Likewise ‘the return of the ethnic’ (Smith 1991), perhaps more pronounced in the social sciences than in the real world, replaced economic reductionism with cultural reductionism, no less problematic than the former,

27. Likewise, Wimmer and Glick-Schiller have argued that “nationalism appears as a force foreign to the history of Western state-building” (2002: 167).

28. Walker Conner (1994) also warned his peers against the danger of under-estimating the passionate nature of

‘ethnonationalist claims’, in his view largely detached from the rational motivations driving elites’ behaviour in normal politics.

29. Michael Hechter (2000) defends a strictly instrumental approach to the study of nationalism, which leaves almost no space for objective cultural and historical factors. However, the presence of objective differences is essential for any nationalist mobilization to succeed, and although the understanding of the past can be stretched to a considerable extent, claims must nonetheless be credible enough and resonate among an increasingly-educated population (Evans 1997).

38 which attempted to limit the phenomenon to its cultural manifestations. In its worst materialization, this was translated into cultural determinism and an approach permeated by the Herderian belief that “if each nation had remained in its place, one could have perceived the world as a garden, where this human nation-plant flourished here and another one there, each following its own Bildung and nature” (Herder 1968:326, quoted in Wimmer 2007: 3).

Affirming the prevalence of political motives over cultural and economic ones does not mean dismissing their significance altogether. It merely contends that the fundamental aim of minority nationalists is to advance their autonomy goals and all other concerns, albeit not negligible, are subordinated to this broader objective. Accordingly, they select the frame of reference that is most suitable to the pursuit of their perceived interest.

Hence, nationalists who seek to establish, maintain or expand a stable structure of power over a specific geographical space have a vested interest in expanding the membership boundary to immigrants in order to gain internal legitimacy over the totality of the resident population and defuse counter claims of self-determination within the homeland. On the other hand, polishing their external legitimacy enables them to break the state’s monopoly over the enforcement of liberal democratic norms, and to discourage reluctant elites from using internal divisions as a means of opposing their claims. As the democratic and liberal environment in which they are embedded discredits coercive means to make their territorial and membership boundaries congruent, emphasizing residency as a significant criterion of national membership is among the most effective ways of achieving their autonomy goals through democratic means. Whilst they may also seek to expand the membership boundary to emigrants and their descendants for a cultural, economic or electoral purpose, they would nonetheless be more reluctant to give a prominent voice in homeland politics to individuals residing in a foreign land over which they do not claim sovereignty, and whose interests can hardly be reconciled with the nation-building project being pursued in the homeland.

Ultimately, it becomes much harder for the state to accommodate a nation-building project the legitimacy of which is not rooted in narrowly-defined ethnic criteria but grounded in a culturally plural population inhabiting a common homeland.

This can be contrasted with other kinds of claims which put the emphasis on the membership space and were later translated into non-territorial constitutional arrangements, or in some cases mutated into protracted and seemingly intractable

39 conflicts involving physical violence and coercion. These categories are not mutually exclusive and multiple kinds of claims can be simultaneously deployed. Besides, predominantly territorial claims can shift over time, either because the territorial project has failed or because actors’ perceived interests have evolved as a result of environmental changes.

a) Non-Territorial Claims: claims that are meant to gain greater representation in central institutions and advance the autonomy of a territorially-dispersed population.

Accordingly, political entrepreneurs are more likely to pursue an ethnicizing boundary-making strategy in relation to emigrants and emigrants, in order to increase their demographic weight and relative power within the territory in which they operate.

b) Claims over Disputed Territories: rival claims that are meant to gain exclusive control over a territory in the name of two populations constructed as mutually exclusive. Again, political entrepreneurs are more likely to pursue an ethnicizing boundary-building strategy for the same reasons as claims made on behalf of non-territorialized groups, although the implications are likely to be far more dramatic.

Indeed, political elites first need to establish a demographic majority within the disputed territory, which may involve ethnic cleansing and resettlement in extreme cases.

c) Irredentist Claims: Claims made on behalf of a ‘national minority’ seeking incorporation or at least a rapprochement with an ‘external national homeland’ are more likely to pursue an ethnicizing boundary-making strategy in relation to immigrants and emigrants, in order to reinforce their demographic weight within their portion of territory, and their legitimacy vis-à-vis the ‘external national homeland’. Reciprocally, claims made on behalf of an ‘external national homeland’ are more likely to adopt an ethnicizing boundary-making strategy, in order to polish their ethnic credentials vis-à-vis their putative kin-minority.

Evidently, this does not come without difficulties, not least because minority nationalism brings political boundaries closer to the surface of politics and is too complex a phenomenon to be exclusively driven by merely rational calculations.

Brubaker listed among his six “pernicious postulates” of the literature on nationalism the “architectonic illusion” according to which nationality claims could be solved once

40 and for all with a single remedy which can be applied to all cases, irrespective of the broader environment in which claims are formulated (1978: 274). The main hypothesis introduced above emphasizes agential factors over structural determinants and can easily be dismissed by a brief examination of empirical developments in a variety of cases. Hence, my contention is that the capacity of nationalist elites to articulate and institutionally entrench a terrorializing boundary-making strategy is also affected by the ever-evolving political context in which they are embedded. Therefore, this is contingent upon the relative openness of the Territorial Opportunity Structure, which designates the dimensions of the environment that provides actors with incentives and constraints to undertake actions.