What does it mean for multiethnic democracies if Scotland leaves the UK? ::posted Mon, 15 Sep 2014 01:00:03 +0000:: ift.tt/1qC2O5Z rss@dailykos (Ian Reifowitz) One idea for the Union Jack without Scotland. The green is from the flag of Wales, FYI. Scotland will vote Thursday on whether to become an independent country. Whatever the outcome, approximately half of the population believes it should. I am not Scottish, and I am here neither to defend nor oppose their independence from the United Kingdom. I have no advice to offer on that front, and I have no desire to freak anybody out by suggesting that their independence would mean the end of democracy or any such nonsense. What I am is someone who has read, thought, and written much over the years about multiethnic societies. Therefore, the push for Scottish independence has brought some issues and questions to my mind that Id like to share. The primary, overarching question Im grappling with is this: What does it mean that half of Scots want independence despite Britains federal structure, one that has already devolved a good amount of power to Scotland (with a promise made by all three major British parties for even more autonomy should the referendum for independence fail). I want to be very clear here. Im not criticizing any Scot for preferring independence to autonomy. I want to gain an understanding of why devolution—in a democratic, liberal society in which the civil rights of Scots as individuals is not an issue—was unable to make Scotland staying in the UK a slam dunk. I also want to ask what other federal, multiethnic democracies can learn from that failing. And make no mistake, it is a failing, even if the Scots ultimately vote to remain part of Great Britain by a sliver-sized margin. The Scottish move for independence bears some resemblance to the breakup of Czechoslovakia, the so-called Velvet Divorce that occurred on the first day of 1993. There, however, the breakup was negotiated by the premiers of the two constituent parts. It was never ratified by a referendum. In fact, according to a late 1992 poll, barely a third of Czechs and of Slovaks supported the breakup, although 80 percent of respondents thought it had become inevitable by that point. Czechoslovakia had only been together 75 years, was a democracy for barely 20 of them, and the people spoke different, albeit quite similar, languages. The Act of Union that brought the Scottish and English parliaments together to form a new state took place more than 300 years ago as a result of the 1707 Act of Union. There is a common language spoken throughout the UK (no jokes about accents, if you please), and scholars have argued that the Scots, Welsh, and English did embrace a strong sense of British identity after 1707. One thing to note is that few states comes together without the influence of economics and either conquest or the fear thereof. Money and guns. For starters, the English wanted to make sure Scotland would never serve as a base for a French invasion, and the Scots wanted access to English wealth and empire. While those reasons proved decisive in 1707, circumstances have changed. No one is invading England from the north, and the sun has long set on the British Empire and Pax Britannica. Yet one might have thought 300 years together would have created a set of bonds strong enough to compete with those tying the Scots solely to one another; that many had, in fact, become one. And this really is the question that the Scottish referendum raises for me, one that applies globally to all multiethnic countries, in particular to democracies, namely: Can they work? Please follow me beyond the fold for more on this question. [Forwarded by the MyLeftBlogosphere news engine. Link to original post below:]
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 10:00:05 +0000
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