Democracy, free association and boundary delimitation: The cases of Catalonia and Tabarnia
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088219848460 |
| Published date | 01 October 2020 |
| Date | 01 October 2020 |
| Author | Guillermo Graíño Ferrer,Adriaan Ph V Kühn |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219848460
Journal of International Political Theory
2020, Vol. 16(3) 323 –338
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1755088219848460
journals.sagepub.com/home/ipt
Democracy, free association
and boundary delimitation:
The cases of Catalonia and
Tabarnia
Guillermo Graíño Ferrer
and Adriaan Ph V Kühn
Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, Spain
Abstract
This article aims to illustrate the confusion within today’s secessionist movements
regarding the liberal and the nationalist arguments for legitimising secession. To do so,
the liberal theory of secession – understood as an approach primarily based on consent –
is examined, its limitations highlighted and its contradictions with nationalism stated. We
then use the case of the fictional Tabarnia region to show how problematic the use of
liberal arguments by secessionist nationalism is. Although until now only a virtual region,
Tabarnia exemplifies how nationalist arguments reappear in the defence of Catalan
independence when its supporters claim to only propose arguments of free association.
Keywords
Catalonia, civic associations, civil society, liberal nationalism, secession, social capital,
Tabarnia
Introduction
For most of human history, humankind has lived within an inherited social and political
framework over which it has generally been unable to consciously exercise control. The
Enlightenment, liberalism and democratic progress may thus be understood as attempts
to empower humans with the means to effectively influence the social and political world
in which they live. Owing to these ideas, institutions, laws, codes, political practices and
traditions have been subject to ever-growing scrutiny.
Corresponding author:
Guillermo Graíño Ferrer, Instituto de Estudios de la Democracia, Universidad Francisco de Vitoria,
Carretera Pozuelo a Majadahonda, Km 1.800, Pozuelo de Alarcón, 28223 Madrid, Spain.
Email: g.graino.prof@ufv.es
848460IPT0010.1177/1755088219848460Journal of International Political TheoryGraíño Ferrer and Kühn
review-article2019
Article
324 Journal of International Political Theory 16(3)
The role of nationalism in this process is ambivalent. According to Elie Kedourie
(1960: 9), nationalism is a doctrine that ‘holds that humanity is naturally divided into
nations, that nations are known by certain characteristics which can be ascertained, and
that the only legitimate type of government is national self-government’. Here, the
assumption that the world is ‘naturally divided into nations’ is contrary to the belief
that mankind itself designs its social habitat, and the very idea of a natural division of
peoples has led to the most well-known catastrophes. However, the nationalist credo
states that it is the people who take control over the power arrangement of the ancien
régime – often perceived as ‘foreign’ – or, alternatively, that they cast off the yoke of
an empire or colonial power. In these cases, nationalism certainly empowers or aims to
intensify political participation for a people that, partially or completely, has previ-
ously been excluded from it.
In today’s separatist discourse, regarding (1) nationalism as a historic catalyst for the
establishment of popular sovereignty and (2) nationalism as a maximalist ideology that
seeks the rearrangement of borders based on pre-political assumptions, we find that these
two concepts are mixed and confused when they should be analytically separated.
Therefore, when today’s separatist movements challenge established liberal democra-
cies, they tend to identify the nationalist reorganisation of frontiers (2) with an intensifi-
cation of democratic government. (1) This ‘natural’ association between the nationalist
and the democratic element was originally proposed by John Stuart Mill, (1977 [1861]:
547) in his famous work Considerations on Representative Government: ‘Free institu-
tions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. 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’. Therefore, within a sociologically aware liberalism that seeks optimum condi-
tions for the founding and survival of representative government rather than establishing
abstract principles of individual rights, national integration clearly benefits democracy
(Miller, 2003: 262–274).
However, it is not only the argument of cultural homogeneity that is advanced by
those who seek secession today, for example, in the case of Catalonia. One reason is that
to do so would be to employ the very same argument that has traditionally accompanied
the nation-building processes of large European states, a development that separatists
today all but aim to reverse. According to Will Kymlicka (2001: 255–256), a matching
between a political border and a national culture can be achieved in two ways: either by
rearranging established borders so that they overlap pre-existing cultural spheres of
influence by including secession and annexations (thereby taking for granted that a clear-
cut separation in identities is possible) or by engaging in a process of cultural homogeni-
sation within a territory that is already politically formed. Defending that the former way
of pursuing a political territory’s cultural harmonisation is legitimate, while the latter is
not, is the central issue in the separatist discourse.
Hence, separatism today tries to identify itself not so much with the defence of an
assumed harmonic relation between culture and polity but with the belief that free asso-
ciation is imperative for the legitimacy of any given border regime. This rearrangement
of the modern nation state’s frontiers would thus mean nothing less than the conquest of
one of the last strongholds that has prevented mankind from consciously shaping its
To continue reading
Request your trial