The debate on nationalism has long been framed in a specific, unfruitful way. We want to legitimize claims to territorial autonomy of certain national minorities, modeled after the typical western minority nations: homogenized but being part of a multinational state. Small, dispersed and immigrant minorities, either incapable or, according to us, unworthy of territorial self-government, are thereby overlooked. Nevertheless small, dispersed and immigrant communities share every for national autonomy significant feature with national minorities. In other words, because of our focus on territorial autonomy, we end up with a tension between upholding a straightforward definition of the nation and corrupting this definition in order to exclude small, dispersed and immigrant minorities. This is no long-lasting solution to the question of nationalities. An alternative is available though. I will argue that the true merit of Bauer’s The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy lays in his rigorous and straightforward definition of the nation and of national autonomy.
In a first part I will indicate how this tension is at the heart of the debate on nationalism. Concepts like ‘societal cultures’, ‘encompassing groups’ and ‘national identities’ illustrate this tension: they are vague and meant to legitimize territorial autonomy. In a second part I will show how Bauer solves this tension by upholding a straightforward definition of the nation, forfeiting any right to territorial autonomy and giving a plausible account of national autonomy. In a third part I will argue that it is because of our attempts at legitimizing territorial autonomy that we framed the debate in this way. I will conclude that we need to drop territorial autonomy as one of the entitlements of nations. Thereby I will have given a normative defense of NTA that claims to solve a core tension in many contemporary theories of the nation.
