Ethnic democracy means democracy!? What a country!
November 24, 2024 4:33 PM   Subscribe

"The liberal democratic nation-state is on the decline in the West as a result of globalisation, regionalisation, universalisation of minority rights, multi-culturalism and the rise of ethno-nationalism. While Western countries are decoupling the nation-state and shifting toward multicultural civic democracy, other countries are consolidating an alternative non-civic form of a democratic state that is identified with and subservient to a single ethnic nation."

Sammy Smoocha, Univerisy of Haifa, argues:
"There are, in the West, two main forms of [fully fledged] democracy for managing conflicts in ethnically or nationally divided societies. The classical and predominant form is liberal democracy, prevalent in countries such as France and the United States. The state treats all its citizens equally and makes them members of a common civic nation. The nation-state maintains and fosters a single language, culture, identity and public school system that homogenise, integrate and assimilate the population. Ethnicity is privatised. Ethnic cultures and identities are allowed but neither recognised nor encouraged by the state. The other form is consociational democracy, in existence in countries such as Belgium and Switzerland, which takes ethnic and national differences as a given, officially recognises the main ethnic groups, and uses a series of mechanisms to reduce ethnic conflicts. These mechanisms include power-sharing (inclusion of minorities in the national power structure), proportionality (extension of resources according to group size), veto power (avoidance of decisions that adversely affect vital interests of the minority), and politics of negotiation, compromise, consensus and indecision (instead of majority rule)."
"However,... some states are manifestly ethnic. They consider themselves and are internationally considered as democracies but their strong ethnic bias forces them to deviate from the Western forms and principles of democracy."
These states constitute a diminished model of democracy he calls "ethnic democracies", with examples including former Soviet bloc countries Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia; pre-Lesage Canada; Malaysia; Northern Ireland; and Modi's India.

Smoocha uses Israel as his archetypal example. Inspired by Western Europe-style parliamentary system, Israel wishes to retain an ethnic (Jewish) nationalist identity through the Judaization of national identity symbols that inform everyday life (name, calendar, days and sites of commemoration, heroes, flag, national anthem, names of places, and ceremonies) and imposes restrictions on the rights of minorities (primarily Palestinians, internally referred to "Israeli Arabs"). Not only does the state promote the Jewish community in terms of identity reference, but it provides de facto discriminatory financial support through the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, and other semipublic institutions by making benefit eligibility contingent on secondary characteristics, like military service, that otherwise bar most members of minorities. The Or Commission concluded "Israeli democracy is not democratic towards the Arabs to the same extent that it is democratic towards the Jews." Jewish Israeli claim to support principles of democracy, however Smooha concludes "Jewish public opinion not only condones constraints imposed on Arabs, but also endorses preferential treatment of Jews... rightly accorded to them as Jews in a Jewish state." An opinion poll taken in 1995 shows 74.1% of polled Jewish Israeli expected the state to give Jewish Israelis preferential treatment over Arab Israelis, and >30% believed non-Jewish Israelis should not have the right to vote or be hired in civil service jobs.

Critics argue the term "democracy" is fundamentally misleading, inseparable from Herrenvolk democracy or apartheid ethnocracies, which are not democratic at all. Smooha concludes "The Israeli case demonstrates the viability of an ethnic democracy as a distinct type of democracy in deeply divided societies... [that] as a mode of conflict regulation, it is superior to genocide, ethnic cleansing, involuntary population transfer and system of non-democratic domination." (1997) Critics argue ethnic democracies are intrinsically undemocratic but present themselves as having a democratic façade, thereby "legitimating the illegitimate," and contribute to a recent global democratic backslide.

Current Israel discussion thread: After 13 months-- mission accomplished.

Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy brought the concept of Ethnic Democracy to my attention in Part II. Its a very detailed historical read on the rise of Modi and BJP.
posted by rubatan (25 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
One requirement that separates Smooha's model of ethnic democracy from systems of government like Apartheid South Africa or Rwanda is that the national identity must be majoritarian. However, within Israel and the Occupied Territories under its control, the Jewish population is estimated to be a 47% minority.

Internal conflict has historically arisen creating a pan-Jewish identity between Ashkenazi, Sephardi, indigenous Levantine and other Jewish ethnic division; but that's for another post that will likely never come about national identity building.
posted by rubatan at 4:44 PM on November 24, 2024 [5 favorites]


Tamas called it post-fascism when he was writing about the phenomenon around the same time as the OP's article, and echoes Foucault's assessment of the modern state's use of biopower 'to make live and let die' inverting the previous order of states which had previously been content to let live and make die. What Tamas articulates most clearly is the reasoning and mechanism behind who dies and who lives. Namely, a modicum of comfort, privilege, and human rights becomes the territory of only an elect group of citizens (in many countries drawn along ethnic/racial lines but split also across spectra of usefulness to the economy), while those left outside are left to die (though of course Israel's occupation of Palestine is considerably more active). He writes in "On Post-Fascism: The degradation of universal citizenship,"
Post-fascism does not need stormtroopers and dictators. It is perfectly compatible with an anti-Enlightenment liberal democracy that rehabilitates citizenship as a grant from the sovereign instead of a universal human right. I confess I am giving it a rude name here to attract attention to its glaring injustice. Post-fascism is historically continuous with its horrific predecessor only in patches. Certainly, Central and East European anti-Semitism has not changed much, but it is hardly central. Since post-fascism is only rarely a movement, rather simply a state of affairs, managed as often as not by so-called center-left governments, it is hard to identify intuitively. Post-fascists do not speak usually of total obedience and racial purity, but of the information superhighway.

Everybody knows the instinctive fury people experience when faced with a closed door. Now tens of millions of hungry human beings are rattling the doorknob. The rich countries are thinking up more sophisticated padlocks, while their anger at the invaders outside is growing, too. Some of the anger leads to the revival of the Nazi and fascist Gedankengut (“treasure-trove of ideas”), and this will trigger righteous revulsion. But post-fascism is not confined to the former Axis powers and their willing ex-clients, however revolting and horrifying this specific sub-variant may be[...] Domestic racism is supplanted by global liberalism, both grounded on a political power that is rapidly becoming racialized.

Multiculturalist responses are desperate avowals of impotence: an acceptance of the ethnicization of the civic sphere, but with a humanistic and benevolent twist. These avowals are concessions of defeat, attempts to humanize the inhuman. The field had been chosen by post-fascism, and liberals are trying to fight it on its own favorite terrain, ethnicity. This is an enormously disadvantageous position. Without new ways of addressing the problem of global capitalism, the battle will surely be lost.
posted by Richard Saunders at 5:16 PM on November 24, 2024 [12 favorites]


Will read properly in a bit, but i just have to do this bit: yay malaysiamentioned.jpg
posted by cendawanita at 6:44 PM on November 24, 2024 [6 favorites]


@Richard "I take the term 'fascism' to refer to a break with the enlightenment tradition of citizenship as a universal entitlement; that is to say, with its assimilation of the civic condition to the human condition." and what follows is a great simplified framework for the intersection of status-quo-Conservatism with nation-state reasoning (incl. "post-Fascist") in anti-Enlightenment values (namely a non-universal parochialism in the civic sphere).

Despite its biased sense of history, I've wondered if Putin's "Century of Betrayal" speech is the first significant denunciation of nation-state reasoning by a global leader. In Putin's hands the argument seems more likely to result in a loss of universal entitlement (a neo-czarism), but in the hands of others it seems possible it could result in a shift towards trans-national identities and pluralism (ie the European Union, India under Congress, several extremely diverse states in Africa). Both could be models of post-nation-state-ism, different ends of the totalitarian spectrum.
posted by rubatan at 6:46 PM on November 24, 2024 [5 favorites]


[eta: this is written without checking preview; I'm picking up from my last comment] But I do have to point out, this is but one reason I keep calling Israel to be more similar to the global South countries than it likes to admit - postcolonialism did a number in a lot of places, in the main because territorial divestment was done in an era of romantic nationalism. Most places that got colonized by Europe were largely cosmopolitan civic contract type of polity, if they're even a little bit urbanised and developed (as consequence of all that development). But nationalist postcolonialism caused so much trauma around the world: Turkey vs Greece will not be resolved for years yet because of the realignment caused so many people being pushed across this or that side (there's a pretty famous Greek Orthodox school in Istanbul that provides free educatin provided you're Greek but that just means they currently only have 30 students or so). India and Pakistan and later Bangladesh are also pertinent in this convo. I learn from Nigerian friends a sense of that country consistently under threat of breaking apart into three regions.

In that view, most countries are 'fake' - not just Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia where Benedict Anderson formed the basis on how print media capitalism shaped national identity, but Italy is a pretty standard European example in modern history (France and Germany if you want to go medieval). I also think about why I group Israel together as such is because under the guise of that nationalism, territorial expansionism remains fact (Indonesia with East Timor; Malaysia too though 'at least' it's not outright occupation but rather like the Israeli project of reforming Jewish indigeneity by coopting Arab Jewry identity and polities; China's expansion up to Xinjiang due to some imperial historical records; Russian borders being as far Asian as it is).

The fiction that Europe or the West persists about themselves is that somehow they've grown up from ethnic democracies, when if anything this is both a prime legacy they've bequeathed to others and remain in constant delusion and denial about. You can frame the ongoing rightwing political reinvigoration as speaking to that fact. If anything about Israel, they're caught in trying to understand themselves as both a settler colony and a postcolonial construct propagating a Western construct while themselves being coded as non-white. Try talking to Singapore, maybe that'll help.
posted by cendawanita at 7:03 PM on November 24, 2024 [11 favorites]


I don't know that it's fiction though. Australia a hundred years ago was almost exactly an ethnic democracy, in that it was pluralist and had competitive elections, within an overall structure of extraordinary white supremacy. A lot of Aboriginal thinkers draw a very clear link between the practices of the Israeli present and practices of the Australian (quite recent) past, that modern Israel is a 'speedrun Australia' is a joke that's not really a joke. Aus abandoned formally its ethnic democracy in the context of engaging with international supra-national structures, particularly the UN; a move that the author doesn't identify, but is also key to these societies. They all retreat from internationalism, or they're pariahs from it.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:57 PM on November 24, 2024 [7 favorites]


For me, the formal abandonment is the crux for my claim as to why it's fiction. From my global South eyes, the majoritarian identity politics (expanding franchise to more colour as long as we agree on the basic political premises - the "social contract" as it's known here) doesn't change the ethnic nationalism that forms the basis of mainstream life. Because plenty if not all postcolonial countries exists with more "diversity" as understood or experienced in the West (hence Israel's great success in confusing the issue amongst westerners just because, a) it's not "white"; b) it's got substantial native presence; b) it's got a story about diversity. And if we're not picking Israel, look at how India confuses the typical westerner in trying to understand its casteist society with its scheduled tribes who are still marginalized what more the Muslims who are day by day experiencing the sort of alienation the European Jewry underwent in being labelled as foreign).

And these countries all engage in international institutions and are members in it, in fairly full capacities too with fairly validated democratic systems. If anything, what Israel is doing with its citizens and in the occupied territories could've been normalized fairly simply except for the rate of derangement it's undergoing.
posted by cendawanita at 8:34 PM on November 24, 2024 [6 favorites]


The fiction that Europe or the West persists about themselves is that somehow they've grown up from ethnic democracies, when if anything this is both a prime legacy they've bequeathed to others and remain in constant delusion and denial about.

I really appreciate your comments, cendawanita. One thing that has rankled me in Israel-Palestine conversations is people using terms like "Ethno-state" to refer to Israel. In contrast to what? Many people are far more knowledgeable about this than I am, so I always wonder if there's subtleties I'm missing, but when I recall the histories of countries that I have some knowledge of, the (vast?) majority have grown through periods of ethnic/religious/cultural/linguistic supremacy. Yes, Israel has an unusual history... but so do most countries when you dig under the surface.
posted by Alex404 at 11:17 PM on November 24, 2024 [4 favorites]


One thing that has rankled me in Israel-Palestine conversations is people using terms like "Ethno-state" to refer to Israel. In contrast to what?

From my pov it also continues the European antisemitic framing that racialised the Jewish people - and yet it is one that Israel itself propagates, yet it's not even unique: because of our shared international legacy of having to talk about self-determination as an ethnonationalist project, you hear the same language in India as you do in Malaysia ("Chinese" is rarely understood as Muslim, never mind that China received Islam a good century earlier than the maritime Southeast Asia - but basically Muslims are somehow their own race rather than a faith; so an authentic Indian is not Muslim).

That's also why the apartheid they practice is both rank and historically unusual. Because for all the original paper wants to talk about ethnic democracies in trying to understand itself, I'd argue for as long as there's reluctance to consider that they're not actually Western core, they will have to keep inventing some new terms for something that is fairly common (democratic systems not necessarily stabilized by an overwhelming racial majority) to describe what they've been inching towards and actually realized (apartheid). But I have a lot of sympathy because non-white majoritarians have no idea when to stop coddling their history of oppression and they continue to strike violence both internally (who can or cannot be legally Jewish versus religiously Jewish - Malaysian Muslims can relate in how we're not allowed to ever leave the faith administratively so technically both us and Israeli Jews have no freedom of religion) and externally (as has been well covered, right down to gatekeeping the Jewish status from Palestinians), even as the only pathway they know is a western one where there IS an idea of a counterbalancing national character that everyone eventually melts into (eventually everyone becomes a Catherine or a Henry - Netflix Bridgerton basically) but if we don't have the demographic numbers to make it a social fact then the only way forward is actual violence.
posted by cendawanita at 11:56 PM on November 24, 2024 [7 favorites]


(anyway, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, before he made it a choice to be known that way, was an up-and-coming politician named Henry Lee. Hmm I'm serious about that need to compare notes.)
posted by cendawanita at 12:09 AM on November 25, 2024 [3 favorites]


As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr. All that is left is the core proposition itself - backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
- Frank Wilhoit

That said, hasbaraists do keep on giving it the old college try.
posted by flabdablet at 3:46 AM on November 25, 2024 [8 favorites]


Omitted from the list was Japan, which I find kind of odd given that Japan is an intensely ethnocentric nation with policies that make foreigners gaining citizenship more or less impossible and which have turned being Japanese into the de facto civil religion.

A professor at the university I attended was a resident alien. He'd been married to a Japanese woman for >20 years, their daughter was 13 at the time, but legally he was a visitor and could literally be deported for jaywalking or discussing politics.

There's a population of 100,000ish "Koreans" in Japan. Scare quotes because those people speak no Korean and are third or even fourth generation born in Japan, speak Japanese as their only language, and in any way except legally and religiously are Japanese. But legally they're foreigners and there's a movement to "return" all of them to Korea.

Ethnic democracy is just another word for Fascism.
posted by sotonohito at 5:28 AM on November 25, 2024 [14 favorites]


I'd noticed Japan going unmentioned here. I've heard citizenship is hard there, but they do have some citizenship process, which seemingly requires two or three times more documents than citizenship elsewhere.

Do they just reject almost everyone somehow? Is this document list some ever growing thing with which they delay everyone indefinitely?

Or do people simply not want to renounce their other citizenships? Japan is not the only nation that requires reouncing your other citizenships, but afaik others like Germany give exceptions. Israelis cannot reounce their citizenship, so Germany doesn't demand the impossible.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:32 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]


We're too idealistc about the word democracy. All nations manufacture consent in some form, but democracy means some verification that elite's have correctly manufactured consent. It's guillotine avoidance, but other flavors exist. I suspect elites becoming too independent of the general population maybe the larger risk.

At some point, the inflation rate should lock-in higher increases, thanks to peak oil and cliamte change, maybe not the classic hyper-inflation, but extremely damaging, not just our current money grab by anyone who sets prices.

I've previously predicted that inflation should cause cycling among the major parties in western nations, but actually this seems wrong historically. Instead, people choose a strong man when inflation rises, no? And strong men wind up kinda sicky, regardless of being left wing or right wing.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:33 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]


Israel wishes to retain an ethnic (Jewish) nationalist identity through the Judaization of national identity symbols that inform everyday life (name, calendar, days and sites of commemoration, heroes, flag, national anthem, names of places, and ceremonies)

I... don't see how this part at least is so different from the USA. Despite significant minorities that use different calendars, the USA still uses the Gregorian calendar, which is Christian. Christmas is a federal holiday. Few of our 'heroes', from the deist founding fathers to MLK Jr, JFK, Obama, etc, are not Christian. Our flag is at least plausibly derivative from England's, which still has a national Christian church, and the colors/symbolism as well - white for purity/innocence is not a universal association (and that's leaving aside potential connections to race and whiteness).

As far as Europe, several of their flags incorporate actual crosses, and they all use a Gregorian calendar. Saints Days are part of the national holiday calendar in many cases, plus whenever they celebrate Christmas and Easter.

I don't know if there are any European countries that permit birthright citizenship - citizenship is by heritage or by naturalization, which is similar to Israel.

This is definitely not to undercut all aspects of the critique - critique is always important and necessary. But the quoted text is confusing to me because it invisibilizes the Christianization of the places its contrasting Israel against.
posted by Salamandrous at 4:15 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]


Jus sanguinis is definitely the global norm. Unrestricted Jus soli is fairly common in North and South American, but almost unheard of elsewhere. India and Thailand tried unrestricted jus soli, but could not handle the immigration this caused.

There are 12 European nations with different restricted jus soli rules, like if your parents are stateless, if you stay there until age 18, or if one parent was a lawful permanent resident, held that status long enough, was born there, etc. At a glance, the UK and France have the most generous Jus soli rules in Europe.

As a rule, naturalized citizenship seems "sane" in much of western Europe though, and schengen immigrants alraedy have some voting rights, so they really do not fit the "ethnic democracy" category defined here.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:23 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]


I... don't see how this part at least is so different from the USA. Despite significant minorities that use different calendars, the USA still uses the Gregorian calendar, which is Christian. Christmas is a federal holiday. Few of our 'heroes', from the deist founding fathers to MLK Jr, JFK, Obama, etc, are not Christian. Our flag is at least plausibly derivative from England's, which still has a national Christian church, and the colors/symbolism as well - white for purity/innocence is not a universal association (and that's leaving aside potential connections to race and whiteness).

Well, just for starters, there isn't an explicit law that says "The United States is the historic homeland of the Christian people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it". Also, you don't magically get fast-tracked through US immigration just because you're Christian, and if you do immigrate, the government doesn't let you steal someone else's house.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:15 PM on November 25, 2024 [11 favorites]


Also, jus sanguinis as the sole determiner of birthright citizenship is fashy racist bullshit, which is one reason the owners of the US would really like to end jus soli.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:17 PM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]


Japan has jus soli if both parents are stateless btw, which sounds rare, but there are developed nations like China, Hungary, and Poland with seemingly even stricter jus sanguinis policies than Japan.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:52 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]


On identities: I've certainly framed identities as 'fake' historically, but I think the word I mean is 'constructed'. Whatever national myths each of us was raised with of glorious foreparents, the land and being forever indelibly being born of of it, a golden past, and aesthetics we appreciate (from food, dress and even family) they are inherently social constructs, invented parts of our identity. The power of identities lay in their ability to give us a sense of "legitimate". I don't think realizing they're invented de-legitimates them, but I think many people do. Ernest Becker made an argument that people will kill you for making them question their belief in religion, even just by having a different one, because their religion is the only bulwark they have against the terror of their own death: religion gives them immortality. I'd wager our identity (ethnic, national, "I am a ______") is just as important, extending you into the past and future.

But I have a lot of sympathy because non-white majoritarians have no idea when to stop coddling their history of oppression and they continue to strike violence both internally...and externally...

The colonial project often defined identities from the outside. In many cases, with the purpose of fracturing indigenous peoples' power for the purpose of control: Rwanda, the Middle East (with some selecting actual kings to name entire peoples after too), India, etc. We carry those "invented" (albeit real) conflicts today. The colonial powers defined themself on an exclusionary basis from the inside against the outside; the colonized in many cases are still working out what a legitimate identity imposed from the outside-in means, in the context of systems of legitimacy that are external too. "How do you know your ethnicity is legit? Well bigger brother did it through oppression." I think alternate discourses "but see... we did get along before... we were different but we didn't treat each other differently" is a rebuke not just of colonial identities but of colonial systems of legitimacy rooted in oppression. Its the realization not just of inherited identities but of inherited ways to legitimate those identities (i.e. is it through a colonial context: violence, or something else?) and trying to work out what is legitimately self (in individual and collective contexts).

Even if they are invented external identities, they don't feel any less personal in what they say about us. We all have a lot of pride invested in our identities. There is a point of course we all must accept responsibility and not perpetuate being "the victims of victims..."

TL;DR we'll have to wait to see what ethnicity, nations, and identity and even how to judge what legitimacy look like free from a post-colonial context, if they exist, until we're recovered from a post-colonial context. My ~feeling~ is nationalism, and its derivates (ethnic nationalism, relgious nationalism, etc), are some of the most virulent ideas people have had... but its also hard to see outside systems from the inside.
posted by rubatan at 12:42 AM on November 26, 2024 [3 favorites]


Are there any states with strict immigration laws but inclusive citizenship laws, something like, "We're picky who we let in, but live here 5 years and pay taxes, we won't kick you out and you can vote"?
posted by rubatan at 12:47 AM on November 26, 2024 [1 favorite]


NZ permanent residency can applied for after 2 years and citizenship after 5 years. You can vote as a permanent resident I believe.
posted by phigmov at 12:56 AM on November 26, 2024 [1 favorite]


More related to this thread I think, and just published in +972: Grappling with Jewish fears in a just Palestinian struggle -
Recognizing Zionism’s settler-colonial nature shouldn’t prevent us from reimagining a collective Jewish existence in this land, or taking seriously the fears that are weaponized to justify Palestinian subjugation.


Random asides-as-responses:
The colonial project often defined identities from the outside. In many cases, with the purpose of fracturing indigenous peoples' power for the purpose of control: Rwanda, the Middle East (with some selecting actual kings to name entire peoples after too),

I can share that my Arab-side relations still call KSA Hejaz instead, and interesting note about Rwanda, re: this point - "I think alternate discourses "but see... we did get along before... we were different but we didn't treat each other differently" is a rebuke not just of colonial identities but of colonial systems of legitimacy rooted in oppression."

-it really seems to be propagated well in the current day thinking/education there. More than one person was telling me in fairly similar phrasings about how the tribal delineations weren't racialized until the Belgians arrived, and how they all lived well together. At the same time, it's illegal nowadays to identify your tribal affiliations. I suppose it's working out for them for now, but other than the memorials, it's the opposite of memory culture.

Japan is also another interesting example, and one that I think Southeast Asians like myself would go into a conversation being fully aware that they're as Western as Israel is not in that they're of imperial legacy and being as romantic nationalist as their cohort except for the fate of losing a world war. (I feel like westerners especially Americans can't help but underplay this because of their own violence with the atomic bomb. And this idea that white supremacy is literal.). So to me, they're very much in the deluded and denial group too. And outside the Korean-Japanese or the indigenous Ainu, SEAsians would be the first to notice post-war didn't change that ethnic nationalism regardless. Don't even talk about the barely any apologies for the comfort women - it is well-known anglophone SEAsians would never be first choice hire to teach English, one of the most typical jobs Westerners could easily get in order to experience Japan. But now I'm just getting into anecdata territory.
posted by cendawanita at 9:49 AM on November 26, 2024 [3 favorites]




Insane AI generated AFD deportation campaign add via r/aifails/
posted by jeffburdges at 12:15 PM on November 27, 2024


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