ABSTRACT
In the course of the past two or three decades, the debate on “multiculturalism” has become a veritable growth industry within political science, as attested by an endless proliferation of articles, books, seminars, and conferences. This is not surprising, given the change in the role culture has come to play in the modern political system. This was not always the case. For many years, political scientists paid relatively little attention to culture, except insofar as it was part of the policy component of the state. This was particularly true of the United States, where political analysis focused on institutions and processes of decision, and where matters of culture were left to subnational units and civil society. Today, however, culture, or more exactly the cultural diversity of society, has become a major preoccupation of policy-makers and policy analysts. There have been three historic phases of the relationship between culture and polity: pre-national, national, and transnational. Before the rise of the modern state, culture, religion, and language were independent of politics. Churches were autonomous, and religion was a transborder affair; culture and lifestyles were determined by membership in a religious community and by a particular estate or social class; there was no “national” language serving as a constraint to intellectuals such as Hobbes, Erasmus, Rousseau, and Voltaire, who sojourned by turns in one country or another. During the age of nationalism, the idea of a national religion, reconfirmed by the Treaty of Westphalia, was eclipsed by that of a national language. But this was not consistent: some states had a national established religion, and others did not. In certain empires, the ruling class was not concerned with an “indigenous” language; many of its members spoke French (as at the Romanov Court) or German (as in a number of East-Central European countries). In most cases, the language of the masses was left to localities and provinces. This made little difference to the rulers, because they did not communicate directly with their subjects. In the United States, language is left to the marketplace, and the government has little concern with it. In France and Germany, however, language became official business once it was evident that regime legitimacy and the authority of the rulers depended on the support of the population as a whole, and hence on effective communication with it. This provided the impetus for the enforcement of cul-
tural uniformity. In most countries, there was no question of “alternative lifestyles.” At one time, just as it was possible to speak of a congruence between state and nation, so it was possible to speak of a congruence between a nation and a specific language, religion, and culture. Today, culture has transcended both the state and the nation, and it is no longer possible to speak of “one state, one nation, and one culture.” There are no “pure” national cultures, especially in modern states. The idea that “France is the French language” (a theme expressed in the writings of Jules Michelet and Fernand Braudel); that the Spanish nation is essentially defined in terms of its Catholicism; or that the distinction of Germany is based either on its race or its nature as a Kulturvolk – the idea that it is “ein Volk von Denker und Dichter” (a nation of philosophers and poets) – is no longer tenable. Earlier, England, France, and Germany were regarded as “Christian” nations; more recently as “Judeo-Christian” ones; and today, as “Western,” “modern,” and “postindustrial” ones. The belief in the unique character of a particular nation was coupled with the conviction about the unique character of its culture, which in most cases implied a belief in its superiority compared to that of other nations. But such beliefs have been undermined by a number of developments, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, among them the following:
1 The tarnishing of the reputation of several important nation-states, due to their policies during wartime.
