Internal and external identity politics: The nation state

Before proceeding to explore the possible dynamic relations in the form of spill overs and feed backs between the three corners of the reworked conflict triangle – identity politics, identity as structure, identity as agency – the chapter needs to specify the units acceptable as self and other. The discussion takes as its point of departure the concept of unit implied in Galtung's distinction between intra- and interactor conflicts – and arrives at a specification of the difference the state makes as an attempt to delimit internal identity politics from external identity politics.

Galtung's distinguished (1978:486f) between intra-actor conflicts (hinging on the making of a choice to end a dilemma involving the realization of two incompatible values) and inter-actor conflicts (hinging on the control or resolution of an incompatibility of goal states). When analysing conflicts as involving questions of identity, the formulation of this distinction is, however, obfuscating.

The obfuscation is tied to the last part of the definition of conflict, which was not explicitly discussed in subsection 2.3.3: Conflict, in Galtung’s definition, is

"incompatibility between goal states, or values held by actors in a social structure"

(1978:486; all italics in original). It is, however, not just so that "the conflict ...

reproduces conflictual social identities" (Wæver 2009:5 representing Galtung). Most conflicts are (also) conflicts over which identities should be in conflict.

To the dissertation, the relevant social structure in which the actors are situated is the relation between self and other. As discussed (in section 2.1) the other not only constitutes identity by being excluded as different; they also co-star the narratives explaining the relation between identity and difference. And – more pertinently – as co-stars they are endowed with a capability of agency: They co-narrate the story. This means that self and other constitute the social system of the relation which is the conflict – and simultaneously constitute themselves as identities in that relation.

Conceived in this way there is a theoretical place for conflict over who gets to be an actor in the social system; i.e. an actor in the conflict.⁶⁸

As Galtung – writing in the heyday of the naturalized nation state (the 1978 paper originates in 1968) – moves from definition to prognosis, he sees this problematique – the conflict over who gets to be in conflict – as a "dislocation of classical loyalty patterns”. This dislocation occurs as the nation state with its "clear lines of identification" must co-exist with various types of non-national identifications (i.a.

the ones following migration) (1978:492). Galtung foresees that the co-existence types of identifications will lead to "less clear ways of structuring large-scale

68 In that sense the dissertation proposes as its analytical grasp on conflict what Galtung proposes as a normative approach when he advocates as part of a 'positive view of conflict' that "far from separating two parties, a conflict should unite them, precisely because they have their incompatibility in common. The incompatibility should be seen as a visible or invisible bond tying them together, coupling them to each other because their fates are coupled." (Galtung 1978:490).

conflicts" (1978:492-3).⁶⁹ Galtung probably overstates the historical success of the nation state in actually monopolizing identification – but he is precise in his pointing to the conflict potential in a claim to monopoly on legitimate identification that does not succeed (whether it ever did or not). It is, nevertheless, fair to say that empirically the nation state has been a relatively successful attempt at such a fixation.

The nation state's tendential monopoly of identification appears most full blown when observed a) in Europe and b) from the 'outside' perspective of the international state system: "In some periods one type of political unit dominated, at others different kinds coexisted [but f]or a time (the seventeenth to twentieth centuries), politics converged on the sovereign 'nation state' as the form" (Buzan et al. 1998:143). In this 'high modernity' of the nation states, "the principle of identity ... was pursued within states. International politics became the ... realm of difference itself." (Walker 1993 qtd. by Neumann 1999:223) In these conditions "The passage from difference to identity as marked by the rite of citizenship is concerned with the elimination of that which is alien, foreign, and perceived as a threat to a secure state." (Campbell 1992:36) In the event of new actors making their way into conflict, in each realm it was clear who were the relevant actors to be in conflict with; and it was clear that it was the members of this "circle of recognition" one should engage to fight ones way into the circle (Ringmar 1996:164f; cf. Neumann 1999:223).

Also from the inside, however, nation states present themselves as the obvious distinction between internal and external identity politics: One of the most significant political effects of the widespread perception of the foundational character of political communities construed as national is the tendency to imbue the nation-states built

69 It is these conflicts over the relevance of identities which Smith studies as conflicts between narratives of political peoplehood (2003:19-22) and which Sonnichsen conceptualizes as hegemonic struggles between discourses of 'primary political community' (2009).

upon them with high degrees of seemingly obvious legitimacy. Nation-states (as institutions) are experienced as infrastructures representing the organic social base existing before them and built to express them. This gives the nation-state the task of articulating the identity and interests of the nation including the task of safeguarding its sovereignty as a condition for its autonomous development. In this way the nation (as social base) and the nation-state (as institution) have – especially in Europe – become cognitively inseparable (Sonnichsen & Gad 2008:8).

Bech Dyrberg & Torfing argues that

The special quality of political institutions is that they operate on the basis of the necessary fiction of society as a totality, and that it is towards this imaginary totality which political strategies aim when striving to speak 'in the name of society' (1995:123 paraphrasing Easton 1965:54; trl. by upg).

Hence, national political institutions – in the Eastonian sense: a functionally differentiated subsystem of society responsible for the authoritative allocation of value – produces a set of discursively privileged positions which may be utilized in hegemonic struggles (1995:127f).

The nation state as a discursive structure produces, first and basically, privileged positions for the included to participate in identity politics from, and – corresponding – relatively de-privileged positions for the excluded to participate in identity politics from. Secondly, the nation state as a discursive structure points out – within its already privileged inside – a privileged text producing centre.⁷⁰

70 The analytical implications of both these stratifications in relation to the focus of the dissertation are discussed in chapter 4.

2.3.5 Identity configuration: identity politics as interaction generating