Abstract: The pursuit of community is a universal law in the development of human society, and the community of nation States is the most important form of community in the era of nation States. The evolution of the community of nation-states is not a one-time process, but rather shows the characteristics of stages. The establishment of the community of nation-states gives political dependence to the rights of ethnic groups, which makes the ethnic and class issues the most important themes of the community, and the ethnic issue tends to grow more and more intense. As a community in the cultural, territorial, and political sense it is not always monolithic, nor is it coherent, but it is composite. It is precisely because of this complex nature that the extension of communal rights within the community can lead to communal crises. However, the extension of communal rights is not uncontrolled, but is always subject to boundaries and a balance between an upper limit (the community of nation-states refuses to divide) and a lower limit (the community refuses to assimilate). Ethno-engineering is an important approach and a viable option for governance of ethnic affairs to ensure that the boundary impact of ethnic rights expansion on the community remains manageable.
Keywords: nation-state, community, community rights, boundaries, ethno-engineering
Author:Guangjun Zhou is a lecturer at the School of Political Science and Public Administration, East China University of Political Science and Law (Shanghai 201620).
The pursuit of community is a universal law of human social development, and the construction of community is the search for security in an uncertain world. The modern nation-state has developed the construction of community to a new historical level, not only because the community of nation-states has definite advantages over traditional empires and other forms of states, but also because of the change from “traditional empires” to “modern states”, from “traditional empires” to “modern states”, from “traditional empires” to “modern states”, and from “traditional empires” to “modern states”. (b) A fundamental transformation from “subject” to “national”, from “differential rule” to “homogeneous administration”, and It also lies in the fact that the community of nation-states has highlighted the importance of the ethnic issue in the intersection of class and ethnic issues, and the nation-building and nation-building of the community of nation-states is to a large extent constrained by the ethnic issue. That is to say, community building is largely constrained by ethnic relations, especially the expansion of ethnic rights, which has brought about the re-evolution of the nation-state community and the emergence of ethnic political issues such as ethnic autonomy, ethnic separation and ethnic conflict. However, since the nation-state community has always been the most important community organization and the political dependence of the ethnic groups, and the expansion of ethnic rights is limited by certain borders, the evolution of the nation-state community strikes a balance between the upper and lower bounds of the borders of the expansion of ethnic rights, which sustains the survival of the nation-state community, and the disruption of this balance results in the assimilation of ethnic groups, changes in the political system, territorial sovereignty, and the development of the nation-state community. challenges, regional tensions, etc.
i. the evolution of nation-state communities: the intersection of class and national concepts
The nation-state as a community is fairly recent, and since the Peace of Westphalia, the nation-state has gradually become the collective home of multiple ethnic groups within an inherent territory and has gradually become the subject of international relations. The birth of the nation-state is a crucial point in the course of the community’s development, and the theme of the community of nation-states realizes the intertwining of class and national issues as the nation-state gradually enters the political arena.
The emergence of class and nation as political and social phenomena, whether naturally occurring or imaginatively constructed, is inseparable from a certain socio-political and cultural environment. As a concept that came with the entry of human society into class society, class has never been a political theme of the community, except to say that after the birth of the nation, the birth of the nation-state has to a large extent given another political theme to the community of nation-states – the national question. “The nation is the inevitable product and the inevitable form of the development of society to the bourgeois epoch.” The fact that the nation is an inevitable product of the bourgeois era does not mean that the nation is a late phenomenon; it only means that the “nation” as a political concept and idea emerged only after the emergence of the bourgeois era, when it became self-conscious and self-interested, and it was only after the emergence of the bourgeois era that the nation took on a politicized character. It is precisely because the nation is the constituent form of the nation in the bourgeois era that “the nation-state divides the classes and transforms the latter into an integral part of the nation” and that “the classes, too, are first fettered and then unconsciously nationalized' andnationalized'”. Politicization”, “at its inception, nationalism shattered the traditional, obsolete and restrictive social order and filled the hearts and minds of its followers with a sense of human dignity, with the pride and satisfaction of participating in history and managing one’s own affairs”, a concept that took on the appearance of so-called equality. Gradually, the nation was made to psychologically abandon the notion of unequal classes.
After the French Revolution of 1789, nationalism became an interface in historical development, rooted in a form of political culture of discourse, public justification and sentiment. The birth of nationalism steered the course of the political development of the community, which, while attempting to conceal class contradictions, placed sovereign, unified and distinct peoples at the center of the political stage and shaped the entire world in their image, which, although it may have different classes, ethnic groups and beliefs, nevertheless enabled the representation of individual identities in the nationalist consciousness, thus The quest for coherence between the political and national units. As Ernest Gellner argues, “‘The age of nationalism’ is not merely the sum total of the awakening and political self-expression of this or that nation, but when the general social conditions are conducive to that unified, similar, centrally maintained When high culture, when this condition spreads over the entire population of society and not just over a small elite, a situation arises in which well-defined, education-backed, unified cultural units constitute a near-unique organizational unit that people voluntarily and often enthusiastically identify with.” Thus, the nation as an inherent territorial scope is nationalized, the nation as an attempt to replace class as the new equal is nationalized, and the union of nation and state gives birth to a new type of community, the nation-state.
Whether it arose inevitably or as a result of other developments in a society, “as soon as a nation-state is established, its first task in the spiritual realm is to build or reconstruct a suitable set of ‘heritage’ for the ‘nation’ ‘”. In this situation, the national question, originally considered by Marxism to be a subordinate question, became increasingly prominent and serious. Lenin argued that “the national question has only a subordinate significance in comparison with the ‘workers’ question’, which is unquestionable in Marx’s view”. Here, it is also important to note that an important manifestation of the subordinate significance of the national question is that “only when a nation becomes a class, a visible and unequally distributed category in a system that is otherwise mobile, does it possess political consciousness and take political action. It is only when a class happens to be (more or less) a ‘nation’ that it changes from being a class itself to being a class or nation fighting for its own interests. Neither nation nor class alone seems to be a political catalyst: only nation? A class or class? The nation is the political catalyst.” In other words, the national question can only be a political question and have political significance if it is under the class (workers) question. Since the nation-state, the national question has spread out in the form of national (ethnic) struggles. Throughout the twentieth century and to some extent in the hundred years of the twenty-first century to date, the national question, however, has rapidly overtaken the workers’ question with unprecedented momentum, pushing the national question onto the stage of political history. Perhaps, while globalization and modernization have made vertical socio-economic class issues still important, nation states have had to face the problem of how to integrate social groups horizontally.
However, it should be mentioned that the relationship between the national question and the class question is not one of substitution and substitution, as the class question is still relatively prominent at a time when the national question is becoming increasingly serious. It is only that, compared to the Marxist view that the national question is only a subordinate issue, the national question in the present era has become increasingly serious and has even, to some extent, overtaken the importance of the original class issue.
II. The extension of community rights and the re-evolution of the community of nation States: the boundaries of rights
With the attainment of independence by the vast majority of countries after the Second World War, nation States took root on a global scale. However, this was not the end of history. The complex nature of ethnic relations in multi-ethnic states has led to the creation of complex cultural, territorial and political communities that are not always homogeneous, and the movement for ethnic autonomy in the West in the 1960s and 1970s once again triggered the revival of so-called nationalism, which waned in the 1980s but was subsequently revived, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In particular, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about “another result of this new wave of communal nationalism, which to a considerable extent restored the universal legitimacy of the aspirations of smaller groups of people and subordinate nationalities to independence and, more generally, to nationalism”. That is to say, the re-evolution of the nation-state on the premise that the nation-state as a community has become the basic paradigm is characterized by ethnic nationalism (sub-nationalism) within the context of the nation-state, and it is precisely in the process of nation-state building that minorities are influenced by currents from the right to self-determination, separatism, etc., which constantly challenge the boundaries of rights and demand autonomy and even independence, and the ethnic nationalist wave It is so noisy that it has even become an everyday political discourse.
(i) The community of nation States: the compounding of cultural, territorial and political communities.
According to Koselleck, the existence of different cognitive stages of a concept has to do with the relationship between ‘temporization,’ ‘democratization,’ ‘politicization,’ and ‘politicization. “A concept can be called mature precisely because it has a significant degree of relevance to the “four transformations”, such as “ideologization”. According to this criterion, the nation-state, as a community, has gradually become a mature concept since its inception. The nation-state shapes the community of multiple ethnic groups unified on an inherent territorial basis. In contrast to the monarchical or absolutist state, the scope of the nation-state community is defined, there is a clear sense of boundaries, and the communities within the territory directly or indirectly renounce certain identities as communities and identify with a shared civic-political culture. It is noteworthy that the nation-state community building in multi-ethnic states is always in progress, which leads to a normative, universal and integrated community culture in multi-ethnic states, where the unified, complete and defined territorial boundaries still face challenges from the minority ethnic groups’ communal culture, and the unified, complete and defined territorial boundaries still face challenges from the minority ethnic groups’ communal- The legal and political community of citizens continues to face challenges from the “denationalization” and “de-centralization” of minority communities. decentralization) challenge. Thus, the three most important features of the nation-state as a community – cultural, territorial and political – are not monolithic or homogeneous, but rather complex. It is because of this complex nature that the rights of ethnic groups within the community of the nation-state are able to expand, expand boundaries, and cause ethnic conflicts and contradictions.
1. The nation-State as a cultural community
According to Anthony Smith, the culture of the nation-state community is complex, consisting of the culture of the community and the culture of the citizens of the community, which are sometimes discordant but necessary in a symbiotic relationship. When the symbiotic relationship between the culture of the community and the culture of the citizens of the community is perfected, the nation-state as a cultural community will develop a “we? As the core of the national community, the “we? Consciousness” is based on an imaginary blood relationship and cultural identity, and is used to define the boundaries with the surrounding world by considering oneself as a member of the same community. Like a mirror defining the self, observing and assessing events and others, clearly defining ‘us’ and ‘them’ to simplify complex matters. In this sense, the nation-state as a community is first and foremost cultural and not only in the sense of a political entity. When the community faces external aggression or internal collapse, it becomes a tried-and-true strategy to use the nation as a banner and to proclaim common cultural symbols under the slogan of nationalism. As Zygmunt Bauman expresses it, “the strongest sense of community may come from those groups who find their collective preconditions for survival threatened, as well as those who build an identity community beyond this that offers a strong sense of resistance and competence The culture of the nation is the culture of the people.” Regardless of whether the nation is imaginary or naturally occurring, the national culture on which the nation is based is universal and marks the cultural community attribute of the nation. “The emergence of modernity depends, in general, on the decline of many small, binding local organizations, on their replacement by a fluid, impersonal characterless, literate, identity-giving culture. It is this generalized condition that makes nationalism normative and universal.” The process of so-called modernity, for the vast majority of nations, is the process of the normative, universalizing, and integrative cultural construction of the nation-state community, the construction of a unified national identity, and the search for a common cultural identity.
However, nation-states as cultural communities may not always coexist harmoniously, and there may be contradictions between the culture of ethnic groups within the community and the culture of its citizens. The vast majority of the world’s nation-states are multi-ethnic, and normative, universal, and integrated national cultures are constructive, not natural. “Minorities, in the course of long-term development, have developed local knowledge systems with their own characteristics, which are expressed in the cognitive base, knowledge composition and knowledge transmission.” There are inevitably conflicts and contradictions between minority cultures and the main culture, which exist as community subcultures, and the minority groups’ pursuit of ethnic identity and ethnic political power will amplify the subcultures. The purity and homogeneity of the originally constructed “national identity,” which was once portrayed as a whole for the purpose of education in politics, is disintegrating. In this not unfamiliar ‘didactic narrative’, there is a persistent sense that immigrants, ex-colonial dwellers and marginalized and possibly mixed ‘marginal’ ethnicities are undermining the fabric of the nation by demanding to be treated as equals with respect to difference, to remain cultural differences and the desire for diversity and autonomy”. The apparent enthusiasm for differentiated citizenship and the increasing paranoia about border control measures in the host communities partly explain the communal conflicts or communal separatist movements.
2. The nation State as territorial community
Territory is a legal concept in the modern political sense, and it is difficult to consider the dominions of traditional empires as territories when they had frontiers but no borders. The modern system of states based on territorial boundaries and state sovereignty began with the Peace of Westphalia. The reason for this is that territory is a political and legal concept combined with sovereignty, rights, communities, etc., as a way of exercising power – territorial rights. Anthony Giddens, for example, argues that “the character of the territory of the State has also begun to change in accordance with the new theories of State sovereignty that have accompanied the rise of absolutist States”. It can be argued that territory is much more than what it is for the nation-state, and that the establishment of the territorial boundaries of the modern nation-state has led to a shift in the management of the communities within it from differential domination to unitary management, with territory becoming synonymous with a political-geographical unit and a political space for the political domination of the nation-state, or even a “territory”. ideology” (ideología territorial). In the sense of international law, an important prerequisite for becoming a State is the possession of a certain territory, so that “the territory of a State is in fact no more than the territorial sphere of validity of the legal order called the State”. The greatest significance of territory for the construction of a modern community of nation-states lies in its ability to provide a unified, complete and definite territorial frontier that provides a framework for the formation of a modern community of nation-states by different ethnic groups and regions, thus providing a territorial space for political organization and structures to rule. The formation of territorial boundaries completely constrains the physical boundaries and legal scope of citizens’ rights, provides the prerequisites and foundations for the cultural construction and political system of the modern nation-state community, and is a necessary hardware facility for communal identity. “Nation? The state form refers to a regime that rules in the name of the people in a geographical sense, but is constrained by a specific territorial jurisdiction. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the nation? state became more and more widespread in the world and deeper and deeper into its citizens, whose rights were confined entirely within physical boundaries and laws.” In terms of the territorial community attribute of the nation-state, which is based on blood, culture, citizenship, etc., “Territorial identity is an indispensable element and necessary dimension of measurement for national identity …… The foundational position of territorial identity determines the shaping or strengthening of national identity A sense of the contextualization of the state should first be created among citizens.”
The communal identity of modern nation States is a complex product of ethno-territorial conflict and compromise. In addition to the identity of territorial communities based on a unified territory, there is also an ethno-regional identity based on the place where the ethnic group is concentrated, and the degree of territorial concentration and aggregation of resources gives minorities the opportunity for territorial generativism and territorial identity. Unlike the constructed and imagined nature of culture, there is a historical heritage and a distinct certainty in the claims of minority communities to territory. The unified, complete and defined territorial boundaries still face challenges from minority ethnic-geographical communities, such as secession movements. As a political and social movement of minorities (and in rare cases, majority communities) to withdraw from the nation-state in order to establish a new sovereign state based on an inherent territory, secession movements have as an important prerequisite the inherent territory in which the minority communities are concentrated.
3. The nation-state as political community
The nation-state is the most important form in the process of national development and “to date, the nation-state remains the only internationally recognized political organizational structure.” This assertion by Anthony Smith emphasizes the political nature of the community of nation-states and is meant to illustrate the essential nature of the nation-state as a political community. The goal of a political community is integrative and adopts the means by which the subject community absorbs and coerces the weaker communities into the process of modern politics together, thus converging towards a legal-political community of citizens. For the nation, the construction of the nation-state means that the nation has a national entity to rely on; for the state, the construction of the nation-state means that the state has a national centripetal force to support it. As a political community, the nation-state assumes necessary responsibilities, such as providing security for all ethnic groups, creating political institutions in the public interest, and defending basic political rights and interests. The construction of a legal-political community of citizens requires the support of several elements, Samuel Huntington mentions that political and moral consensus, mutual adaptability of interests, political institutions that are inclusive and reflect the principles of moral harmony and reciprocity are important factors for the survival of a complex socio-political community. The level of political community achieved by a society reflects the relationship between its political institutions and the social forces that constitute them, and its formation and maintenance depend on the efficacy of its political institutions. It is the existence of different institutional efficacies of different political institutions that leads to the manifold forms of nation-states in a geospatial and institutional sense, manifesting themselves in different but competitive forms. In other words, the community of nation-states is not uniform, but has different forms, such as different forms of multi-ethnic states and different forms of communities even in single-ethnic states, which extends the political attributes of the community of nation-states and leads to the diversity of political institutions and the differences in the effectiveness of political systems in different countries.
It is precisely because of the diversity of political systems and differences in the efficacy of political institutions that there is uncertainty in the relations between ethnic groups in the community of nation-states. Ethnic groups excavate the history of their own communities in an attempt to express their own particularities and exceptions and seek their own politicization. Here, the more extreme ethnic problems are expressed in ethnic separatist movements that seek to legitimize ethnic nationalism. Within the state, ordinary people from minority groups are increasingly marginalized and under-citizenized, turning to national ethnic group identity. Ethnic groups have acquired the politicized nature of the nation and are committed to looking at the ethnic problem from the perspective of political sovereignty, and the era of globalization has exacerbated inequality and triggered a wave of anti-globalization and de-globalization. Globalization has restructured community relations in nation-states, leading to the development of a self-oriented world of “denationalization” and “decentralization”. became their basic demand and identity. Claims for autonomy and secession have arisen in some minority areas, particularly in areas such as the Kurds where there are communities but no state.
(ii) Extended boundaries of community rights
The expansion of community rights has led to the re-evolution of the community of nation States, which has led to community political issues such as community autonomy, community separation and community conflict. For the community of nation-states, the extension of community rights does not depend unilaterally on the community itself, but is even more subject to the community of nation-states, where the extension of community rights is subject to certain boundaries. “Boundaries are not necessarily physical; they can be intentional or unintentional manifestations of the other at the time of the encounter, in order to manifest each other’s alternative ways and languages.” There is a difference between upper and lower boundaries of community rights, and a certain balance is struck in the interaction, with communities refusing to assimilate and nation-state communities refusing to divide. It is important to note that because the expansion of community rights is subject to the dual interaction of the communities themselves and the nation-state community, there is more of an up-and-down movement than a horizontal movement. Table 1 shows a schematic representation of the boundaries of the extension of community rights. 1.
The “us” and the “other” in the extension of rights: between self-preservation and community assimilation
Recognizing the difference between “us” and “the other” is perhaps the minimum requirement for the rights of communities. Knowing oneself and knowing the other is an initial step in establishing a community’s identity. A possible question, however, is how to recognize “us” and “the other”. “If ‘ethnicity’ is one of the forms of social identity, then it depends on how one defines the self and defines the ‘other’.” “The boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘other’ are fluid and vaguely oscillating, and are constantly questioned in the coexistence of a diversity of self-selected and externally imposed attributes and identities. ” In other words, “we” and “the other” are a combination of natural and artificial constructs. Naturally occurring, “the more tightly woven the genealogical myths, migrant memories and common worship and their rituals become, the deeper the interconnections and emotions among the members of the group become, allowing them to enter first into a thick network of shared actions and relationships and then into a full-fledged ‘community of communities’. ‘or community'”; that it is constructed, “In many cases, a strong – and exclusive – sense of group affiliation can often create a sense of The alienation and alienation of other groups”. Thus, the boundaries between “us” and “the other” are not static, and the degree to which they are satisfied with the requirements of survival and development determines how they define “us” and “the other”. “Us” and the “other”.
The establishment of a “us” and “other” relationship leads to different strategies for communities and the community of nation States. For communities, establishing the boundaries of the “us” and “other” relationship dictates that they need to adopt a minimal strategy of self-preservation in order to avoid assimilation. The establishment of the “us” and “other” relationship is to a large extent a reminder to the central government or the dominant community that there are differences between communities and that policies and institutions cannot ignore these differences. For the community of nation states, the establishment of a ‘us’ and ‘other’ relationship leads to the adoption of a different community strategy, one that makes decisions between inclusion and exclusion. Inclusive strategies are a positive cross-community approach, while exclusionary strategies are policies that limit the political and civil rights of members of non-dominant cultures and exclude individuals from the body politic altogether (e.g., in ethnic cleansing and genocide). Perhaps an inclusive strategy presupposes some way to promote egalitarianism and reduce the unease caused by inequality; an exclusionary strategy presupposes control. Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley examine three coping strategies of inclusion, distinction, and exclusion in the dimensions of tolerance and intolerance, deriving six ways in which intolerance leads to all negative strategies. See Table 2 for details.
Self-preservation of the right to exist is a minimum requirement in community rights, and the bottom line of self-preservation is non-assimilation. In the community of nation-states, such a minimum requirement and bottom line derives from mutual recognition between communities within the community. Mutual recognition serves to break down some illusion of singularity and to avoid an emphasis on the group’s unique identity. One of the main reasons why multi-ethnic societies may be fragmented is that one group does not receive (perceived) recognition of its equal value by the other groups. The need for recognition has become a hot topic in politics today. 2.
2. The concept of the separate State: between a high degree of autonomy and the fragmentation of the State.
One of the most important political rights of communities is the right to development on the basis of the right to life, and it is evident that the development of communities for their own better preservation within the community of nation-States is an important mission and goal of their development. For a community, it lives in its own community world and in its own community of nation-states. In addition to simple passive self-preservation, it is also important to actively seek the political space in which they can develop. The most important of these is a high degree of autonomy for the community and the formation of the community’s nation-state, so that the upper limit for the extension of community rights within the community of nation-states is a high degree of autonomy for the community, which sustains the community of nation-states, and, at the extreme, transgresses the boundaries by advocating the right to secession and carrying out secession movements that lead to the fragmentation of the community.
A high degree of autonomy is the pursuit of autonomy for a community while recognizing the existing community of nation-states, while the right to secession is the right to stop identifying with the existing community of nation-states and demand the establishment of a nation-state belonging to one’s own community. In fact, this view of the separate state is a game of exit and voice. Albert Hirschman argues that in the face of declining organizational performance, members have two choices: exit and appeal, and that exit and appeal have different effects in different contexts. Withdrawal should be combined with an appeal, which should be used before withdrawal, to increase the possibility of appeal rather than opting for direct withdrawal. Thus, the use of communal autonomy and secession powers is consistent, and which powers are used when depends on the strength of the community, the political opportunity space of the state, and the degree of involvement of regional powers. For the community of nation-states, there is only one step between the right to autonomy and the right to secession. The loss of autonomy increases the likelihood of secession, primarily through four mechanisms. First, it promotes communal resentment and generates discontent; second, it reduces the ability of the central government to make credible commitments and reduces the viability of reconciliation; third, regaining autonomy does not necessarily inhibit the ability of communities to act collectively through autonomy to acquire and develop. Fourthly, groups that lose autonomy have a stronger basis for separation. At the extreme, the extension of community rights occurs when communities secede from existing nation States and form nation States belonging to their own communities. The proliferation of secession movements since the emergence of the modern nation-state, and especially since the end of the Cold War, seems to confirm what Allen Buchanan has called the “age of secession”. According to statistics, from 1990 to 2007, national secessionism gave rise to 25 new states that were recognized by the international community. What is more, apart from the secession movement itself, it has become even more complex, linked to terrorism, religious fundamentalism, regional hegemony and civil war. With the development of network technology, the network has become a stage for propaganda and agitation by separatist forces, a space for information communication, a platform for recruitment and training, a channel for funding, and a vehicle for action planning and implementation, resulting in the rise of online separatist movements. More seriously, if there are mutually supportive forces such as kinship groups and cross-border groups in the separatist movement of minority groups within the nation-state community, the separatist movement will evolve into a regionalized and internationalized political event. Mutual support between separatist movements (e.g., mutual support and cooperation between the Muslim Thais and the Free Aceh Movement), invoking the case of others to rationalize their claims (e.g., Catalonia’s attempt to hold a referendum by invoking the Scottish referendum case), the involvement and support of others (e.g., the distorted support of the United States for Kosovo), seeking support from cross-border communities (e.g., the Iraqi Kurdish separatist movement’s quest to establish a new political system in Turkey, Iran, and the United States). (support from Kurds in Syria and other countries), etc., the internationalization of the separatist movement is becoming increasingly evident. According to the analysis of Yang Shuo and others, the internationalization process of the secession movement is a combination of spillover and diffusion effects of horizontal expansion, aiming to seek external support, transnational mobilization, and intervention by other countries. In other words, there is a certain correlation between the high degree of autonomy and the secession movement, and for the community of nation-states, how to deal with the withdrawal and appeal tests the community’s political wisdom.
iii. governance of community affairs based on extended rights: towards a better community of nation-states
Rights are an important element of the constitutional order, and modern nation-States are governed by a comprehensive constitutional system. If the expansion of rights is examined from the perspective of the constitutional order, it can be argued that the re-evolution of the community of nation States as a result of the expansion of community rights is a result of the fact that the existing constitutional arrangements are unable to meet the needs of minority communities. In this sense, the construction of a stable and effective constitutional order for nation-state community relations is an important way and a viable option for the governance of community affairs based on the expansion of rights, which is what Wayne Normann has called “national engineering”. (engineering). However, Norman did not explain the meaning and content of this concept in detail, but only suggested that the basic task of ethno-engineering is to pursue the construction of the nation-state, and its intrinsic meaning is the same as the governance of ethnic affairs. As a branch of constitutional engineering, ethno-engineering is committed to solving the problem of re-evolution of the nation-state brought about by the expansion of rights, and needs to strike a balance between preventing division, maintaining unity and ensuring the basic survival of ethnic groups to better promote the nation-state. construction.
Based on the expansion of community rights and their boundaries discussed in this paper, ethno-engineering needs to respond to the following three questions to ensure that the impact of community rights expansion on the boundaries of the community stays within manageable limits. The first is how to construct a consensus politics to construct nationhood and preserve the survival of the community; the second is how to make a subtle division of power that reflects community rights and constructs cooperation between communities; and the third is that for multi-ethnic states, the focus should be on the construction of citizenship and civic identity, rather than returning to community identity itself.
(i) Constructing a new politics of consensus: shaping policy flexibility
The extension of rights brings about a reshaping of community relations. According to the prevailing academic view, there are three modes of interaction in community relations: assimilation, egalitarian pluralism, and inequalityist pluralism. Assimilationist policies are not ideal for countries with high levels of ethnic diversity and a lack of a dominant ethnic group. Modern societies do not advocate the erasure of ethnic differences, or even believe that “‘deep diversity’ is the only formula for building a united nation-state”. In this context, then, egalitarian pluralism and unequal pluralism are perhaps the more interesting models of community relations for multi-ethnic states. Pluralism is “the establishment of equitable, coexistent and mutually prosperous relations among peoples in the process of their existence, recognizing differences in values, norms and goals”. In fact, pluralism is an analogy between relations between communities within countries and those between countries in the world today; if countries of different sizes and strengths can coexist harmoniously on the basis of peaceful coexistence, then why not between communities within countries? However, it needs to be made clear that diversity, while seen as valuable, can only function well within the context of defined common norms and institutions. In other words, egalitarian pluralism versus unequalitarian pluralism depends on the degree of ethnic diversity in different countries. Of course, we recognize the de facto dominance of the subject communities within their own countries, respecting and identifying with the central government’s nation-building, but such dominance is not a justification for its compulsory promotion of their communities’ cultures, beliefs, languages, etc., and respecting and protecting the interests of minority communities remains a subject to be accomplished, and this requires flexible policies.
The political model of community relations, represented by egalitarian pluralism and unequal pluralism, can be called the consensus model, that is, the model of community relations among diverse communities based on shared political values, goals and political identities. For the consensus model, the implicit value behind it is that, in addition to shared political goals and political identity, full respect for the interests and needs of each ethnic group, and even special ethnic policies can be developed for this purpose, are important policy options. “If a viable approach exists to promote a sense of unity and common purpose in multi-ethnic states, it will involve the accommodation rather than the suppression of ethnic identities. People from diverse ethnic groups will share a loyalty to the larger political organization only if they see it as a context for developing, rather than suppressing, their national identity.”
As Aaron Liphardt argues, “The substantive problem is that the essential features of consensus democracy are ‘stretchable’ in nature: they can assume a large number of different institutional forms.” How to shape policy flexibility under the model of consensus politics is a major issue in dealing with communal relations resulting from the expansion of rights, and perhaps a program of non-homogenous national autonomy that emphasizes openness and inclusiveness as well as heterogeneity and consultation in a multicultural context is inherent in consensus democracy.
(ii) Searching for a more effective power-sharing model
More general and fundamental to communal politics is the theory of the intercommunal distribution of State power. The essence of the problem of access to power is “power-sharing”, which addresses the issue of representation. At the central government level, the issue of power-sharing is whether ethnic groups are adequately represented in the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the central government; at the local level, the issue is whether ethnic groups have local autonomy or whether power is distributed at the central level. In other words, the question of representation is concerned with the fairness of the division of power and the distribution of power between the minority community and the dominant community (central government). Fair and equitable distribution and sharing of power is a key factor in maintaining inter-community stability, even if it means giving “passive representation” to a very small minority, “a symbol that has a remarkable causal effect? It can motivate in-group members to compete for public office and put out-group members on an equal footing with members of their own group”.
In today’s world, where the vast majority of states are multi-ethnic, there is no single model of power-sharing that can be emulated, except perhaps for a constitutional “constitutionally asymmetrical” emphasis on multi-ethnic states (whether unitary or non-unitary). or federalism, whether mono-ethnic or multi-ethnic) are constitutionally asymmetrical. Switzerland is the best example: in an attempt to unite a plurality of peoples, they have constructed an asymmetric federalism by assigning different languages, cultures, and legal capacities to different subjects of power. According to James Tully, such an approach is intended “to enable peoples to recognize each other, and then to reach agreement on how to arrange the legal and political differences they wish to preserve by organizing or piecing them together in a constitutional union”, which he calls “a federalism of asymmetry”. “disparate federalism” (diverse federalism), where federalism is not federalism, but a power-sharing model constructed on the principle of federalism. Thus, federalism as a principle of power division deals with the most basic aspect of the problem as pluralism, provides the most basic trend of problem solving as coordination, and its regulating principle as solidarity.
In accordance with constitutional asymmetries, the representative problems addressed by the power-sharing model are typically found in the form of state structures. For unitary systems, (1) “decentralized unions”, represented by the United Kingdom, are a form of decentralized federalism, with a high degree of local autonomy, represented by Scotland; (2) even for centralized states, such as Indonesia, the local autonomy of The arrangement of central authority and the special administrative regions, such as Aceh, constitute a unitary system with elements of federalism. In the case of federalism, federalism itself implies a decentralized arrangement between the members of the federation and the federal government, which can be divided according to the country’s ethnicity or geography into: (1) “multinational federation”, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is composed of Bosnian (2) “territorial federalism” (territorial federation), such as that of the United States, which is based on individual states; (3) ethnic federalism versus territorial Elements of federalism coexist, such as in Canada, where territorial federalism is the basic institutional arrangement, in addition to elements of community federalism to satisfy the desire for autonomy of the French minority. Thus, there is no question of the merits of unitary or federal systems, but rather of the decentralization of the central and local authorities within the framework of the system. The system is only a textual design, and it is how it works in practice that determines the system’s capacity.
(iii) Constructing the political identity of the nation-state through citizenship
The construction of the modern State needs to be based on a certain degree of political consensus and thus on the historical basis of multi-ethnicity, which requires the formation of an integrated identity that transcends national identity. However, there is a tension between ethnic consciousness and citizenship, as a member of an ethnic group acquires a corresponding ethnic identity in order to express his or her ethnic belonging “based on the common possession of what is considered to be a distinctive cultural identity,” and as a member of a nation-state acquires an identity that transcends ethnicity in order to acquire citizenship and thereby (c) Participation in national politics. It is the difference between ethnic identity and citizenship that leads to conflicts between ethnic rights.
The salient feature of the modern construction of the nation-state is the inclusion of all ethnic groups in the country within a single system of national citizenship, the so-called “citizenship-state”. “Citizenship is not only a legal status defined by a set of rights and duties, but also an identity, an expression of people’s membership in a political community.” On the one hand, the construction of a nation-state by citizenship is not about shaping “‘national minorities’ as part of a ‘subject nation’, but rather about making ‘national minorities’ The ‘nation’ and the ‘main nation’ together shape a ‘citizen’ with a strong sense of citizenship. Thus, the construction of the nation-state through citizenship is more like a “nation? neutral system” that is “based on a civic nationalism not on communal coexistence but on the rights and responsibilities of individual citizens”. In this system, ethnic groups within the state are expected to participate in political life on the basis of homogeneous citizenship and citizenship rights, regardless of ethnicity. The identity fault lines of ethnic groups are a fact of life, but the identification of citizens should be an effective discourse for the political participation of each ethnic group. According to this line of thought, what Habermas calls “constitutional patriotism” is in fact the construction of a political culture and political identity based on the constitution as the consensus basis and citizenship as the consensus bottom line. According to Habermas, the constitution expresses the idea of a consortium in which there is a triple recognition of each person as an irreplaceable individual, each person as a member of a community, and the identity and respect that each person deserves as a citizen within the national community. On the other hand, the construction of the nation-state by citizenship is not about eliminating ethnic differences, but about constructing a politically integrated citizenship based on respect for each ethnic identity (cultural identity). Will Ginrica emphasizes the need to promote a multi-ethnic concept of citizenship that reinforces multicultural multinationalism if citizenship construction is to take place in multi-ethnic states. Since “ethnic identities cannot be changed, they can only become more tolerant and open. Ethnic conflicts touch upon core elements of each group’s identity and provoke fear and suspicion in actual and potential adversaries. Ethnic conflict is therefore not only a political event, but also a dramatic event that challenges the very existence of the group by questioning its identity”. Thus, citizenship should be constructed with due regard for the identity of minority groups, guaranteeing equal treatment of all citizens at the political and legal level of the state, while taking care to protect the special care of minority groups. Political arrangements should not arbitrarily select particular identities for identification when the majority identity can be treated in a more equal manner.
IV. CONCLUSION
The formation and evolution of nation-state communities follow certain rules, and they display different properties and attributes in response to changes in political themes at different times. As a community of diverse ethnic groups, the development of ethnic rights promotes the existence of the nation-state as a cultural, territorial and political community, and it is precisely because the expansion of ethnic rights leads to the complex nature of the community of nation-states, which makes the expansion of ethnic rights subject to certain borders. The balance. The nation-state is still the optimal form of community evolution, and thus governance for ethnic integration based on the expansion of ethnic rights still needs to be carried out within the framework of the nation-state community, only that historical, regional, cultural and other differences remind different communities of the need for different governance models and structures. It should be noted that the cultural, territorial, and political communities of nation-state communities are important forms of safeguarding ethnic rights, and as ethnic rights expand, recognition of nation-state communities still requires the recognition of multiple ethnic groups; at the same time, nation-state communities should also recognize the need for the rights of ethnic groups to expand, correctly deal with the conflicts and contradictions brought about by the expansion of ethnic rights, and better govern ethnic groups. National Community.
Annotations omitted
Recent Comments