I just started thinking about this, in the context of Iraq and other places. It does seem to me that for successful democracies, development of a sense of nationhood was a prerequisite. In the United States, for example, we were able to move the locus of patriotism from the individual state to the nation very early in the game. We can cite a number of factors – common language, common religion (for the most part), the unifying effect of the Declaration of Independence and the personality of George Washington, etc. Other countries, perhaps, were initially united under a powerful and authoritarian leader, then became democracies later.
I’m trying to think of contrarian examples – for instances, states where sectional feeling is more pronounced than national feeling, but which manage to be successful democracies. Anybody have any examples, or any thoughts on the subject?
Canada. A binational state with no clear national identity. And, except for the French language (and cuisine and Catholicism), there’s not very much, culturally, to set them apart from their neighbor to the south. The culture of Canada’s English-speaking community was really founded by American Loyalist refugees after the Revolution and a following generation of Yankee immigrants; the U.S. is their mother country, the UK merely their grandmother. I read (in context, it may have been a joke) that the Canadian national magazine MacLean’s once ran a contest to finish the phrase, “As Canadian as . . .” and the winner was, “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances.” But nobody disputes they have democracy.
Or Belgium, which seems to stay together only because its main city is a Walloon island in the Flemish sector.
To the OP, I’d suggest that the main unifying factor in creating multicultural democracies has been war, or at least the threat of war. If the American colonies had become independent one by one, instead of having to unite against a common enemy, it doesn’t seem likely that the US would be more than a loose confederation. It even took a civil war to finish the process. Switzerland would probably not be united if not for a common interest in preventing Roman conquest, and even the Dominion of Canada was created in response to a perceived threat of American expansionism. You could even argue that the European Union was inspired more by the Soviet threat than economic interest.
So who’s the common enemy that Iraq would unite against? So far it looks like that’s us.
I think Canada is a more compelling example than Switzerland. In Switzerland, people are not very likely to think of themselves as German or French, even where they speak German or French as their native languages. Switzerland in fact has a strong national identity, developed over a long time, and reinforced by its citizen-soldier tradition.
Canada makes me wonder. Do the Quebecois portray themselves to the outside world as Quebecois, or Canadian? I’d guess it’s situational. It’s also interesting that Quebecois separatism has never actually succeeded, for all the noise it’s made, which makes me think that most Quebecois see themselves as more Canadian than Quebecois.
But as far as counterexamples go, I’d say Canada is leading the pack at this point.
All of that diversity kind of makes Iraq’s 3 factions piddling by comparison. And you have to understand that Iraq was a nation before they were given the “freedom” to govern themselves.
My personal opinion is the mitigating unifying factor is the level of common suffering among the people. There may be examples where a nation transposed to democracy without a “revolution” of some kind but I think those are exceptions to the rule.
I’m not sure I agree. I think the Wikipedia article overstates the diversity present in the US at the moment of our founding – especially when you consider that the Tories mostly left, and the Africans were denied a voice. And Iraq actually has more than three factions, I would say, since each ethnic faction is divided between secularists and Islamists, and however many additional ways besides. And of course these ethnic minorities are much larger, as a percentage of the whole, than any of the non-mainstream groups in Revolution-era America. The other aspect I’d mention is the bitterness of the feeling that exists between the groups in Iraq, which I’m not sure had much of an analog in early America. There was animosity, to be sure, but nothing like what we see in Iraq.
And Iraq actually has a pretty short history as a “nation.” The British just invented it in the '30s and foisted a king on it. It’s Iraq that actually prompted my question in the first place. Saddam could arguably have been the one to create a feeling of nationhood – but unfortunately, he turned out to be more a divider than a uniter.
The problem isn’t so much a lack of national identity, so much as everyone wants their own nation. On of the great troubles in the colonized world is that colonial borders were drawn for the convienece of the colonists without regard to the natural divisions of the people within the countries.
And here we come in and say "Iraquis have a god given right to rule themselves!’ and yet we don’t say “Kurds have a right to rule themselves” or “Sunnis have a right to rule themselves” (although they can very clearly see us saying “Jews have a right to rule themselves”)
America solved it’s demographic problem by killing the Native Americans and denying African-Americans the right to vote. We’re not really a great model.
The major unifying cultural elements of Canada are:
The health care system,
Hockey, and
Not being American.
No, I’m not kidding.
Actually, if anything, Canada is probably more culturally aware of itself and unified today than it has ever been; there’s more confidence in its identity now than there was even 20, 25 years ago. But a hundred years ago, the cultural divides were enormous as compared to today, and the country functioned fine. So clearly a democracy can transcend cultural divide. Hell, that’s something a lot of Canadians identify as being part of our identity.
Incidentally, it’s not “Dominion of Canada.” The official name is just “Canada.”
It is now, I know. I was referring to its founding, when it didn’t have the health care system *or * hockey, just fears about being overrun by a uniting “enemy” (well, a *potential * enemy, but a big enough potential enemy can have a uniting effect too). That feeling has since evolved into your Item #3, ISTM.