4 - Nation-Building & Minority Rights: Comparing Africa & the West

Summary

ARE Western models of nation-building and minority rights relevant to Africa? In this chapter, I shall offer a qualified ‘maybe’ to that question. I begin by explaining in the following two sections what I take to be the main outlines of a common Western approach to nationbuilding and minority rights. There are many differences amongst the Western nations, but I shall try to show that there have been important areas of convergence in recent decades, which can be seen as defining a distinctively Western approach to the issue. I shall then discuss its possible application to Africa.

Nation-States and Nation-Building States

We all know that the term ‘nation-state’ is misleading. There are some 190 independent states in the world today, but most commentators agree that there are upward of 5000-8000 distinct ‘peoples’ or ‘nations’. Simple arithmetic dictates that most states (at the moment over 90 per cent) will be shared by more than one national group, and often by dozens.

And yet, in another sense, the term ‘nation-state’ is apt, since modern states typically aspire to be nation-states, and have adopted various nation-building programs to achieve greater national integration and homogeneity. They may not be nation-states, but they are certainly nation-building states.

This fact is obscured by the myth of ‘ethno-cultural neutrality’, according to which Western liberal states are ‘neutral’ with respect to the ethno-cultural identities of their citizens, and indifferent to the ability of ethno-cultural groups to reproduce themselves over time. On this view, liberal states treat culture in the same way as religion - i.e., as something which people should be free to pursue in their private life, but which is not the concern of the state (so long as people respect the rights of others). Just as liberalism precludes the establishment of an official religion, so too there cannot be official cultures which have preferred status over other possible cultural allegiances.