The Nation-State as a Political Community: A Critique of the Communitarian Argument for National Self-Determination

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 22:311-343 (1996)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The principle of national self-determination has usually been justified by extending to national groups an entitlement that individuals are regarded as having, namely, to the conditions necessary for their self development. In order to extend the concept of self-determination to nations in this way, an argument that it is important for nations to exist within their own political communities must be given. In this essay, I describe and criticize one type of argument for such a principle of national self-determination – what I will call the communitarian argument.Contemporary communitarians (such as Michael Walzer and David Miller) usually contend that determining who rightfully has membership in a political community must precede the allocation of rights and responsibilities between members. Community is understood to mean a national community; membership in communities therefore results from the ascription of national identities to individuals and to the consequent sorting out of loyalties that follows from this ascription. A right of self-determination for nations is required, on this view, in order to ensure that political communities are legitimately formed in accordance with national identities.

Other Versions

reprint Dahbour, Omar (1997) "The Nation-State as a Political Community: A Critique of the Communitarian Argument for National Self-Determination". Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26(sup1):311-343

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,449

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-10-30

Downloads
56 (#401,341)

6 months
2 (#1,294,541)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Omar Dahbour
Hunter College (CUNY)

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The Morality of Freedom.Joseph Raz - 1986 - Philosophy 63 (243):119-122.
The Morality of Freedom.Joseph Raz - 1986 - Ethics 98 (4):850-852.
Multicultural Citizenship: a Liberal Theory of Minority Rights.Will Kymlicka - 1995 - Philosophical Quarterly 47 (187):250-253.
National self-determination.Avishai Margalit & Joseph Raz - 1990 - Journal of Philosophy 87 (9):439-461.

View all 22 references / Add more references