Kriesi, Hanspeter

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Hanspeter Kriesi

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Enlightened Understanding, Empowerment and Leadership - Three Ways to Enhance Multiculturalism: Comment on Will Kymlicka’s article: “Solidarity in Diverse Societies”

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Kriesi Comparative Migration Studies  (2015) 3:18 DOI 10.1186/s40878-015-0019-2COMMENTARY Open AccessEnlightened Understanding, Empowermentand Leadership - Three Ways to EnhanceMulticulturalism: Comment on WillKymlicka’s article: “Solidarity in DiverseSocieties”Hanspeter KriesiCorrespondence: Hanspeter.Kriesi@eui.euStein Rokkan Chair, EUI (EuropeanUniversity Institute), Florence, Italy©(ycIn my comment on Will Kymlicka’s (2015), very stimulating essay, I would like toargue that his basic scheme is sound, but incomplete and that his proposal for the pro-gressive forces falls short in several respects. To begin with, Will Kymlicka stresses, inmy view correctly, that the welfare state is built on national solidarity. The idea of the‘people’s home’ (folkshemmet) of the Swedish Social Democrats, to which he refers inhis text, serves as a perfect illustration of this point. Even the ‘universalistic’ Nordicwelfare state intends to be universalistic within the boundaries of the national politicalcommunity only. The welfare state is, as Kymlicka underlines, generally tied to animage of social membership, not to universal humanitarianism. In this respect it is im-portant to keep in mind, as Kymlicka also argues, that the national community is con-ceived in egalitarian terms: the two fundamental principles of the nation – popularsovereignty and equality of all members of the national community – are at the sametime the two core principles of democracy (Greenfeld, 1992: 10). The idea of democ-racy was, in Greenfeld’s nice formulation, contained in the idea of the nation like thebutterfly in the chrysalis. (Kymlicka, 2015).Accordingly, Kymlicka (2015), suggests that appeals to national solidarity constitutea resource for progressives. One might add that appeals to national solidarity fall onparticularly open ears among the poor, who identify more with the nation than therich, because they have less to be proud of in their immediate social group comparedto the rich and because they are more similar to the average member of their nation(Shayo, 2009: 162). However, national solidarity is an ambiguous resource for progres-sives – not only, as Kymlicka argues, because of its tendency to exclude groups notperceived as belonging to the nation, but also for yet another reason: as Shayo (2009)shows, people with a strong national identity are less supportive of redistribution ingeneral, and, at the macro-level, the most nationalistic countries are known for beingthose with the least redistributive welfare states (and vice versa). The Swedes mayagain serve as an illustrative example. They are comparatively (compared to theAnglo-Saxon settler states, in particular) little nationalistic – class identities were rela-tively strong compared to national identities in Sweden – and, accordingly, Sweden did2016 Kriesi. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, providedou give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate ifhanges were made.Kriesi Comparative Migration Studies  (2015) 3:18 Page 2 of 4construct a relatively redistributive welfare state. If the construction of the ‘folkshem-met’ did benefit from appeals to national solidarity, we should not forget that it wasabove all constructed by a social movement based on class identities, a movement that,in the process, succeeded in decisively shaping the Swedish national identity – con-structing a ‘social democratic image of society,’ as Frank Castles (1978) has aptly put it.However, as Kymlicka (2015), goes on in his argument, national solidarity is not onlya resource for progressives, but it also poses endemic risks for all those who are notperceived as belonging to the nation. His list of excluded groups (indigenous peoples,sub-state national groups and immigrants) is, however, incomplete. First of all, nationalsolidarity generally tends to exclude those members of the nation who are perceived asundeserving – because they are perceived as not having appropriately contributed tothe common good (in violation of the norm of reciprocity), or because they are per-ceived as abusing the common good (in violation of the norm of self-reliance). Second,with respect to the non-nationals, we need to distinguish between immigrants on thenational territory and the residents of other nation-states. Thus, within the EuropeanUnion, not only the immigrants pose problems for national solidarity, but also theclaims of other member-states, as has been illustrated by the recent Euro-crisis and theEuropean refugees’ crisis: the Germans are called upon to be solidary not only with theflood of refugees, but also with the Greeks. Third, with respect to immigrants in par-ticular, we should distinguish between access to the national territory and integrationof those who have gotten access and are likely here to stay. To counter the endemicrisks of national solidarity, Kymlicka argues that we need multiculturalism. However, ifmulticulturalism may contribute to counter the exclusion of the second and third type,it may not at all help to counteract the exclusion of the first type. Moreover, the mea-sures of multiculturalism it takes to enhance solidarity with other nations, or to grantaccess to immigrants in the first place, may well be different from the measures de-signed to integrate immigrants who are already more or less permanent residents inone’s country.The progressives’ dilemma, as Kymlicka (2015), sees it, derives from the fact that,while we need multiculturalism to counteract the endemic risks of national solidar-ity, it at the same time undermines national solidarity. For Kymlicka, this dilemmais expressed by the stark contrast between neoliberal multiculturalism (inclusionwithout solidarity) and welfare chauvinism (solidarity without inclusion). On theone hand, multiculturalism may degenerate into a project of market inclusion ra-ther than citizenship. On the other hand, national solidarity may degenerate intowelfare chauvinism – an attitude that supports a ‘system of social protection onlyfor those who belong to the ethnically defined community and who have contrib-uted to it’ (Kitschelt & McGann, 1995), and, I would add, into welfare populism –an attitude that combines a sense of egalitarianism with the exclusion of the un-deserving poor (De Koster, Achterberg & Van der Waal, 2012, Michel, 2015). Theway out proposed by Kymlicka constitutes a third option – solidarity with inclu-sion. This way to frame the alternatives, however, leaves out a fourth option, whichhas actually been the one originally embraced by the European radical populistright and which, according to Kitschelt and McGann (1995), represented its ‘winningformula’: nationalist neoliberalism, i.e., in Kymlicka’s terms, exclusion without solidarity.Figure 1 situates the four options.inclusionsolidarityexclusionneoliberalismNeoliberal nationalismNeoliberal multiculturalismInclusive solidarityWelfare chauvi-nism/populismFig. 1 The four options for solidarityKriesi Comparative Migration Studies  (2015) 3:18 Page 3 of 4Now, it seems to me that, at least in Western Europe, the progressives (i.e., the left)have always embraced the option of inclusive solidarity: they have always been solidary(in the sense of attributing priority to the norm of equality over the norms of reci-procity and self-reliance), and multicultural (in the sense of favoring international soli-darity and inclusiveness of the national solidarity). The problem for the progressives isthat their traditional constituency has not followed suit, but has been attracted by theappeals of the new populist right, which, in response to its success in the working class,has gradually been shifting its position from its original nationalist neoliberalism to-wards welfare chauvinism and welfare populism. As a result of these correspondingshifts on the demand and the supply side of the political space, the progressives’ con-stituency has become predominantly middle class. More specifically, it has becomedominated by the social and cultural professionals who form a key segment of the newmiddle class and for whom the inclusive solidarity of the progressives has been mostappealing. Formulated in somewhat different terms, the dilemma of the progressives(the left) is that they need to forge an alliance between their traditional and their newconstituencies both of whom agree in terms of national solidarity, but who could notbe more different in terms of inclusion. Or, more pointedly, the core of the dilemma ofthe progressives is that their traditional constituency does not endorsemulticulturalism.How to attenuate the opposition of the working class to multiculturalism? This is themillion dollar question. At this point, arguments about the relative weight of culturaland economic threats typically enter the discussion, but, increasingly, I tend to thinkthat, in reality, the distinction between the two types of threat is difficult to make, be-cause the borderline between the two is blurred (Häusermann & Kriesi, 2015): increas-ing economic security is likely to attenuate the perception of cultural threats, just asincreasing cultural confidence is likely to attenuate the perception of economic insecur-ity. I would like to suggest that the two kinds of threats have common roots – ignor-ance, powerlessness, and disorientation – and require common countervailingmeasures – ‘enlightened understanding’, as Dahl (1989, 1998) used to put it, empower-ment and leadership. The emphasis on specific types of countervailing measures islikely to vary, however, from one form of exclusion to the other. With respect to theexclusion of those members of the national community who are perceived asKriesi Comparative Migration Studies  (2015) 3:18 Page 4 of 4undeserving, multiculturalism may be above all strengthened by a continuous flow ofinformation in the media about the (typically structurally determined) needs of the al-legedly undeserving beneficiaries, about the (often rather limited) number of cases in-volved, and about the prevailing (often quite judicious) administrative measures to dealwith these issues. This kind of factual information should help to dispel the beliefsabout violations of the norms of self-reliance and reciprocity. Of course, expecting thiskind of information to have the desired impact is a tall order, because such informationhas to compete with the media’s penchant for reporting on individual cases of abuseand with the individuals’ penchant for motivated reasoning, i.e., for receiving andaccepting only information that is in line with their biased preconceptions. With re-spect to solidarity with other nations within the European Union, it is above all demo-cratic empowerment that might help: to the extent that the democratic deficit of theEU is alleviated, i.e., to the extent that European citizens are empowered to jointly de-cide about their fate at the European level, they can be expected to develop a commonEuropean identity and become a solidary European demos. This at least was the argu-ment of Habermas’ (1995, 1998) ‘constitutional patriotism’: the democratic practice asthe precondition for the development of a common identity, which is in turn the precon-dition for solidarity. The Swiss case may serve to illustrate the pertinence of Habermas’ ar-gument (see Lacey, 2015). With respect to the access of immigrants, Ms. Merkel single-handedly demonstrated during the summer 2015 to what extent political leadership canmake a difference. We might want to add that leadership does not end with bold declara-tions, but ought to be followed up by administrative measures that credibly implementthese declarations. Finally, as far as the integration of immigrants who have already gottenaccess to the country in question is concerned, enabling the immigrants to express theirculture and identity as modes of participating and contributing to the national society, asproposed by Kymlicka (2015), in my view, indeed, constitutes a form of empowermentthat promises to contribute to their integration into the host society.Received: 3 December 2015 Accepted: 3 December 2015ReferencesCastles, F. G. (1978). The Social Democratic Image of Society. London: Routledge.Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.Dahl, R. A. (1998). On democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.De Koster, W. Achterberg, P. & Van der Waal, J. (2012). The new right and the welfare state: The electoral relevance ofwelfare chauvinism and welfare populism in the Netherlands. International Political Science Review, 34(1):3–20.Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Habermas, J. (1995). The European Nation-state – its achievements and its limits. On the past and future of sovereigntyand citizenship’. In G. Balakrishnan & B. Anderson (Eds.), Mapping the Nation (pp. 281–294). London: Verso.Habermas, J. (1998). Die postnationale Konstellation. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Häusermann, S. & Kriesi, H. (2015). What Do Voters Want? Dimensions and Configurations in Individual-LevelPreferences and Party Choice. In P. Beramendi et al. (Eds.), The Politics of Advanced Capitalism (pp. 202–230).Cambridge: University Press.Kitschelt, H. & McGann, A. J. (1995). The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Anaylsis. Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press.Kymlicka, W. (2015). Solidarity in Diverse Societies: Beyond Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Welfare Chauvinism. Paperpresented at the IMISCOE “Mobility in Crisis” conference at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy.Lacey, J. (2015). Centripetal democracy. Democratic legitimacy in Belgium, Switzerland and the European Union.(Unpublished doctoral dissertation). European University Institute.Michel, E. (2015). The radical right and the welfare state: the electoral relevance of welfare politics. (Unpublisheddoctoral dissertation). European University Institute.Shayo, M. (2009). A Model of Social Identity with an Application to Political Economy: Nation, Class, and Redistribution.American Political Science Review, 103(2):147–17.

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