14 August 2009

Nationhood (2): thoughts out loud

This posting is an edited version of a timed and dated journal entry written in Caffe Nero, Silver Street, Durham City UK. This version was first written on 17 July 2008, and has since been updated several times.

I want to look again at issues of nationality, not least because I am aware that some of my thoughts have moved on in response to attempting to resolve some cognitive dissonance on the matter.

(10 August 2008: it is not clear to me whether the people of South Ossetia simply wish not to be governed by Georgia, or if they wish to form their own independent government, or if they wish to form an independent government with the people of North Ossetia, or if they wish to be under Russian (military) protection.)

I believe that people should be free to govern themselves, to form their own government, and should not have to be subject to government by another people. Despite the apparent reported despotism of the Mugabe regime, I believe that the people of Zimbabwe (as Rhodesia, a former British colonial possession) should be free to govern themselves, as should the people of Algeria (a former French colonial possession), Burundi (a former Belgian colonial possession), Poland (a former Russian Soviet client state), Latvia (a state formerly occupied by the Soviet Union) and Tibet (occupied since 1960 by the People's Republic of China). What about Ireland? Scotland? Wales? Cornwall? Brittany? Flemish Belgium? Quebec? Lombardy? Greek Macedonia? Turkish Cyprus? Kurdistan? How is the geographical area of self-government to be determined? What about the European micro-states of Andorra? Monaco? Vatican City? San Marino? Lichtenstein? How self-governing are the Channel Isles (Jersey, Guernsey, Sark) and the Isle of Man? Where do micro-colonies fit in, such as Gibraltar? Ceuta?

Beyond consideration of geographical area, there is for me also uncertainty about what I mean by government. At a simple level, the Westminster government is sovereign. However, federal government in Washington DC is not legally competent over every aspect of legal process in the US. In Germany, the lande possess legal competence not shared by the federal government in Berlin. In the UK, the Westminster government devolved some of its power to the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies. Further, although under ultimate control by Westminster, city- and shire-based local authorities wield considerable power through their budgets, as do devolved institutions such as the National Health Service, the national rail network, and a plethora of quasi-non-governmental organisations. However, at an international level much of the legislation enacted by the UK government must conform with legislation enacted by, and directives from, the European Union; with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; with NATO; and with the United Nations. There are probably any number of international organisations about which I know little or nothing that have specific competence regarding areas of UK governance, and this is to ignore bilateral agreements and understandings, such as the recent military adventures undertaken by the US and UK in Iraq (seen, perhaps erroneously, by many people in the UK as the Westminster government acquiescing to the expectations of the US White House). Whilst pariah states (e.g. Burma and North Korea) and states under siege can run against the pack, at least for a period of time, states central to major world institutions, such as the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Japan either lead the world or else conform - mostly the latter. The exceptions seem to be the superpowers of the US and China, and formerly the Soviet Union, but even these states are under considerable international pressure to conform, as evidenced by the reluctant progress of the Bush administration to acknowledge the human contribution to global warming. So whilst there is a fiction of national sovereignty, there is also an actual dispersal of powers to international organisations. Significantly this de facto ceding of power is not to a world government, but largely to organisations competent in one realm, such as GATT, the World Bank, the IMF, NATO. The major exception to this is the United Nations. However, the UN achieves its authority only from the Assembly of national governments, not from some superior, independent organisation. The European Union, which is an attempt at pan-European government, uses a hybrid version with a combination of pooled national state authority, and trans-European democratic authority. Sadly, the popular democratic aspects of the EU are both weak and undermining of the enterprise. The UN, EU and NATO also make extensive use of experts.

A further international-scale blurring of the sovereignty of nation states is the power wielded by trans-national corporations in every field of finance, commerce and trade.

The foregoing also presupposes that national governments, as though by divine right, have always had sovereignty. A different reality is that they busily acquire power. In part, national governments have acquired authority in novel fields, such as the regulation of television (and thereby, in the UK, the opportunity to tax viewers) and radio communication (and thereby, in the UK, to sell bandwidth to cellphone companies). In part, national governments have acquired authority from other bodies: in (part-)nationalising some UK banks, the Westminster government has also bought itself an important voice in the UK banking industry. In part, national governments have acquired authority by removing the legal competence of autonomous bodies to regulate themselves. (The HPC [Health Professions Council, a UK government body], has recently regulated all psychologists in the UK, despite there being a pre-existing competent body. The HPC has now turned its attention to counsellors and psychotherapists, despite the BACP [British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy] having an effective accreditation scheme.)

To be continued ...