From the Claim of Differences to the Construction of Social Homogeneity

✍ Scribed by Javier De Lucas

• Publisher: Swiss Political Science Association
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: German
• Weight: 162 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1420-3529
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1662-6370.1995.tb00003.x

✦ Synopsis

In this paper, I discuss the (in)compatibility between democracy and ethic universalism on the one hand, and absolute respect of collective ethnic or national minority groups on the other. Ethic relativism will have to be acknowledged a consequence of cultural pluralism in light of the ethnocentric tendencies that loom behind the concept of universalism. In other words, I call for a discussion of a contradiction that lies at the heart of the democratic idea of representative government; namely, that universal franchise can co-exist with citizenship and nationality as defined by the Nation-state project. I argue that the legal and political concepts of citizenship and nationality serve to seal the social systems in which they are embedded. In a world of "international migrations," that framework is no longer justifiable.