The ethnic democracy debate: how unique is Israel?

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM J O U R N A L O F T H E A S S O C I AT I O N FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNICITY A N D N AT I O N A L I S M AS EN Nations and Nationalism 16 (4), 2010, 657–674. The ethnic democracy debate: how unique is Israel? MOSHE BERENT Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, The Open University of Israel, Israel ABSTRACT. Sammy Smooha’s ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ model challenged the notion of the uniqueness of Israel by setting it as the archetype of a special type of democracy: ‘‘ethnic democracy’’. But contrary to what Smooha suggests, Israel’s national identity is indeed unique. In each of Smooha’s East European examples, besides the concept of a core ethnic nation, exists the notion of a civic territorial nation, which makes possible the integration or ‘assimilation’ into the dominant culture of those who are not members of the core ethnic nation. Yet, Israel’s national identity does not recognise the existence of a civic territorial nation and makes no provisions for the integration or assimilation of non-Jews, especially Arabs, into the dominant Hebrew culture. Setting Israel as an archetype for his model prevents Smooha from exploring the possibility that, unlike Israel, East European ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ could be a transitional phase towards a liberal democracy. KEY WORDS: East Europe; Estonia; ethnic democracy; Israel; Latvia; Sammy Smooha; Slovakia Israel seems to deviate from the normal nation-state. While the latter is considered as belonging to its territorial nation, Israel is considered as belonging to the entire ‘Jewish People’ and the existence of an Israeli territorial nation is not recognised. This deviation has usually been explained by the unique character of Judaism which is, according to this explanation, both a nationality and a religion. Thus, while in the normal nation-state there is a formal identity between nationality and citizenship in Israel there is an identity between nationality and religion. This abnormal nature of Israel is also reflected by the fact that, unlike most if not all the political entities which have gained independence since the French Revolution, Israel does not have a constitution and has never been formally declared a republic (Agassi 1999). Until recently the abnormal character of Israeli national identity was taken for granted. Yet, recently, perhaps as a reaction to the so called ‘‘postZionist’’ criticism, the question whether Israel is ‘‘normal’’ has been pushed to the center of the academic debate. Paradoxically, it was Sammy Smooha’s ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ model which had challenged the notion of the uniqueness of Israel (Smooha 1997, 2002). Smooha had proposed that Israel was an r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 NATIONS AND NATIONALISM 658 J O U R N A L O F T H E A S S O C I AT I O N FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNICITY A N D N AT I O N A L I S M AS EN Moshe Berent archetype of a special type of democracy – ethnic democracy – which he distinguished from ‘‘civic democracy’’. While the latter is characterised by the existence of democratic institutions within an ‘‘ethnically neutral state’’, ethnic democracies ‘combine the extension of political and civil rights to individuals and certain collective rights to minorities with institutionalized dominance over the state by one of the ethnic groups’. Thus, unlike civic democracies, in ethnic democracies the state is identified with a ‘core ethnic nation’, not with its citizens (Smooha 1990: 391; Smooha 1997: 199–200). Smooha’s notion of Israel as an ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ maybe did not flatter Israel as a (liberal) democracy, yet it was an attempt to ‘normalise’ Israel and Israeli national identity by classifying it alongside other democracies that are ‘‘ethnic’’ (Smooha 1990: 391; Smooha 2000: 565–6; Smooha 2002: 477). Indeed, Smooha’s model was heavily influenced by the classical typology which divided European nationalisms into western/civic/liberal on the one hand, and eastern/ethnic/illiberal, on the other. Within this typology, Zionism, as an east European phenomenon, has been traditionally classified as ‘‘ethnic’’ (Shimoni 1995: 46–51). Here the reawakening of East European ‘‘ethnic’’ nationalisms had also contributed to the idea that maybe Israel is not so unique in its national identity as it was assumed before, and indeed some of Smooha’s examples of ethnic democracy which are discussed below are from contemporary East Europe, namely Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia. Smooha’s model came under attack from both ‘‘left’’ and ‘‘right’’. All in all, the debate tended to focus on the question whether the ‘‘ethnic’’ political community that the model describes in general, and Israel, in particular could be properly termed a ‘democracy’ (Dowty 1999; Smooha 2002: 495). The criticism from the left considered the concept ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ as a contradiction in terms and consequently the countries that are ‘‘ethnic’’ as nondemocratic, or as ‘‘ethnocracies’’ (Ghanem et al. 1998; Yiftachel 1999). It also questioned the stability of this model, especially in the case of Israel (Yiftachel 1992). The main thrust of Smooha’s critics from the right was the well-known criticism against the civic/ethnic typology of nationalism, that is the idea that there is no pure civic nationalism, or that there is no ‘‘neutral’’ nation-state, and that consequently, as Alan Dowty (1999: 9) observes, ‘Israel’s link to ethnicity is not unique’. From this point of view Israel was a western liberal democracy (Yakobson and Rubinstein 2003), though maybe stained (Neuberger 2000). Yet, there was something in common to Smooha and his critics from both left and right. While they disagree about the question to what extent the ethnicity of Israel would render it a democracy, or about what, if anything, is to be done in order to improve democracy in Israel, they all share the notion that Israel national identity is not unique. Some might want to classify Israel according to the traditional typology alongside countries that are ‘‘ethnic’’, others would classify Israel with countries that are ‘‘civic’’, and still others see the dichotomy civic/ethnic as invalid. Yet, all seem to agree with Dowty (1999: 8) that Israel ‘is not a category by itself; there are many other states in which ethnicity is likewise closely intertwined with the definition of the state’. r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 The ethnic democracy debate 659 To what extent, then, is Israel’s national identity unique? In the present paper I will argue – also by examining the East European examples cited by Smooha – that the identity between nationality and religion that characterises the present national ethos in Israel is indeed unique, and that to the extent that it could be labeled ‘‘ethnic’’, as Smooha claims, it would be so unique as to create a category on its own. The uniqueness of Israel’s link to ethnicity lies in the following elements: First, almost all ethnic nationalisms are in fact ethnocultural, that is they base national identity on culture, while Israel’s identity between nationality and religion is different in the sense that it creates a national identity that is primarily based upon blood ties and origins. Second, as Anthony Smith (1986: ch. 7) says, ethnic groups, when they wish to become nations, ought to also adopt territorial and civic elements. While all East European countries cited by Smooha as ‘‘ethnic democracies’’ have incorporated civic and territorial elements into their national identity, Israel’s identity between religion and nationality lacks civic and territorial elements. Consequently, all East European countries cited by Smooha as ‘‘ethnic’’ still retain the basic identity of citizenship and nationality. In other words, to the extent that these countries consider themselves as belonging to a particular core ethnic nation, they still recognise the existence of a territorial ‘‘civic nation’’ that is identified with the citizen body which is multi-ethnic. While this ‘‘civic’’ nation is indeed culturally biased in favor of the dominant ethnicity, it still enables members of non-core minorities to integrate into the dominant culture and to be equal members of the (territorial) nation. Israel is unique in the sense that it does not recognise the existence of an Israeli territorial nation, hence it does not allow integration into the dominant culture to those who are not considered as members of the ‘‘core’’ ethnic nation. The uniqueness of Israeli national identity poses a problem for Smooha’s model of ethnic democracy. Setting Israel as an archetype for this model (rather than one of its peculiar variants) prevents Smooha from seeing the possibility that, unlike Israel, East European ‘‘ethnic democracies’’ could be seen as a means for nation-building or as a transitional phase on the road towards a liberal democracy. Israel national identity and the ethnic/civic nationalism dichotomy To what extent, or in what sense, is Israel’s national identity unique? Anthony Smith (1995), in a paper dedicated to the question to what extent Jewish nationalism is unique, answers that in as much as it is unique (as any other nationalism) it is still in accordance with his model of nationalism. Yet, it is important to distinguish between Zionism, as a (pre-independence) movement for national self-determination, on the one hand, and ‘‘Zionism’’ as the formal or semi-formal ethos that characterises post-independence Israel, on the other. Using Rogers Brubaker’s terminology (1996: 79), one should distinguish between polity-seeking or polity upgrading nationalisms (that is pre-independence r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 660 Moshe Berent Zionism) that aim to establish or upgrade an autonomous national polity; and polity-based, nation shaping (or nation promoting) nationalisms (that is postindependence ‘‘Zionist’’ ethos) that aim to nationalise an existing polity. Consequently it is wrong to conclude, as Yakobson and Rubinstein (2003: 119–22) do, from the statement that pre-independence Zionism was not unique the statement that Israel national identity is not unique. In any case what I discuss in this paper is Israel’s post-independence ethos. The traditional typology has divided European nationalism into two categories: western civic nationalism, on the one hand, and eastern ethnic nationalism, on the other. West European nationalism was civic: it had a territorial, or civic or political definition of the nation, and consequently it was also liberal. East European nationalism, on the other hand, defined the nation ethnically or culturally and consequently it was also illiberal. This classical dichotomy, which was first introduced by Hans Kohn (1944), lies at the base of Smooha’s model of ‘‘ethnic democracy’’: In civic democracies the basic defining element is citizenship while in ethnic democracies the basic defining element is membership of the ethnoreligious community. ‘‘Ethnic democracies’’ are less democratic and less liberal than civic democracies. Though Smooha cites several western examples of ethnic nationalism1 he points out that there is a tendency in East European countries towards ethnic nationalism. As for Israel, Smooha emphasises that ‘Zionism emerged in Eastern Europe as a brand of ethnic nationalism’ (Smooha 2002: 489). Indeed, as a predominantly East European national movement, Zionism has been traditionally classified as ‘‘ethnic’’. Yet, as noted above, it is the link with ethnicity of the current post-independence ‘‘Zionist’’ ethos which I wish to examine now. To what extent, then, can the identity between nationality and religion could be classified as ‘‘ethnic’’? The notion of ‘‘ethnic nationalism’’ is somewhat misleading because it immediately invokes that of a national identity that is based on blood ties, race, common (biological) origins and so on. Yet, while ethnic nationalists certainly invoke all those elements when they speak about the nation, their prime goal seems to lie elsewhere. What they are really interested in is the success or predominance of a certain culture (which they identify with their ethnicity) (Brubaker 1999: 59–60). Thus, as Rogers Brubaker (1998: 299), notes [E]thnic nationalism may be interpreted narrowly, as involving an emphasis on descent, and, ultimately, on race, on biology. In this case, there is very little ethnic nationalism around, for on this view an emphasis on common culture, without any marked emphasis on common descent, has to be coded as a species of civic nationalism. But the category of civic nationalism then becomes too heterogeneous to be useful, while that of ethnic nationalism is underpopulated. On the other hand, ethnic nationalism may be interpreted broadly, as ethnocultural, while civic nationalism may be interpreted narrowly, as involving an acultural conception of citizenship, a sharp separation of citizenship from culture as well as ethnic nationality. But in this case the problem is just the opposite: civic nationalism gets defined out of existence, and virtually all nationalisms would be coded as ethnic or cultural. Even the r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 The ethnic democracy debate 661 paradigmatic cases of civic nationalism – France and America – cease to count as civic nationalism, since they have a crucial cultural component. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss to what extent Brubaker’s observations render the classical civic/ethnic typology almost meaningless (Kuzio 2001). Yet these observations do imply that almost all, if not all, nationalisms, perhaps to different degrees, are both ‘‘ethnic’’ and ‘‘civic’’. Thus all nationalisms that have been considered as ‘‘civic’’ are also, to a certain extent, ‘‘ethnic’’ because they have a crucial cultural component. Yet, what is more important to our case, all nationalisms which have been considered ‘‘ethnic’’ are also, to a certain extent ‘‘civic’’, because they are ethnocultural. The ‘‘civic’’ potential lies in the fact that culture, as opposed to descent, is something that could be acquired, which makes it possible for other ethnic groups to join the dominant culture (which in certain cases ‘belongs’ to the dominant ethnic group) in the nation-building process, thus creating a territorial multiethnic (civic) nation. It was in this respect that Will Kymlicka (1995: 24) remarked that, ‘What distinguishes ‘‘civic’’ nations from ‘‘ethnic’’ nations is not the absence of any cultural component to national identity, but rather the fact that anyone can integrate into the common culture, regardless of race or color’. As most ‘‘ethnic’’ nationalisms are indeed ethnocultural, ‘‘ethnic’’ countries could at least potentially integrate or could allow integration into the dominant culture. Yet, the post-independence Israeli case is different for its national identity does not have a cultural element and is based solely on descent. Consequently, it does not allow, even potentially, the integration of non-Jewish minorities into the dominant culture. In order to see why, we must examine the concept of the ‘‘Jewish State’’ as it is employed in contemporary Israel. What is a Jewish State? While it is agreed by most if not all the Israelis that Israel is a ‘‘Jewish State’’, in the absence of a constitution, it is not easy to determine, at least from an official or formal point of view, what this means. Here it might be helpful to use Israeli Supreme Court Rulings as the latter are considered by many Israelis as a sort of substitution for the constitution or as an institution which lays down in its rulings the constitutional foundations of Israel. Thus Alan Dowty, asking ‘of what, minimally, does the ‘‘Jewishness’’ of the Jewish state consist?’, points out that the Israeli Supreme Court, in dealing with the eligibility of parties to participate in elections, has tried to answer this question. Acceptance of Israel as a ‘‘Jewish State’’, the court ruled, means at least (a) maintenance of a Jewish majority, (b) the right of Jews to immigrate, and (c) tie with the Jewish communities outside Israel (Dowty 1999: 10). What would strike one immediately in the ruling of the Supreme Court is that this minimal definition of the Jewishness of Israel lacks any cultural elements. Thus, for instance, it does not say that the Jewishness of r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 662 Moshe Berent Israel means the predominance of the Hebrew language or any ‘‘Jewish’’ culture. All it says deals with demography and descent rather than with culture: A Jewish State is one that has a Jewish majority and gives predominance to Jewish immigration. There are several reasons for the fact that the identity between religion and nationality creates a national identity which is based on descent and not on culture. First, but not necessary, the most important is that the identity between religion and nationality resulted in the adoption of the (orthodox) religious criterion for belonging to the nation: a Jew is someone that either was born to a Jewish mother or has converted to Judaism (Smooha 2001: 50). Putting aside the question of conversion, this definition has no cultural dimension and is based upon descent only. As for conversion, this has a cultural element, yet the non-missionary character of (traditional) Judaism makes it negligible. Any attempt to reform conversion has to tackle the problem that there is no agreement among Israelis or among the Jewish communities on any (reformed) version of conversion. This brings us to the second reason for the absence of a cultural dimension in the ‘‘official’’ definition of the Jewishness of Israel: not only that there is no agreement among Jews about one accepted version of Judaism, but also Judaism today is a universal religion in the sense that Jews are members of various nations and various cultures. Thus, defining the ‘‘Jewish People’’ culturally or ethnically is hardly possible. This leads us to the third and most important reason for the absence of any cultural definition of Jewishness of Israel: the absence of agreement among Israelis about what Judaism means. All in all, we come to a somewhat odd definition of the Jewish State: A Jewish state is a state in which most of its citizens have a Jewish mother. Indeed, according to Smooha, core ethnic nation numerical majority is one of the conditions of ethnic democracy’s stability, as ‘it can rule democratically on its own account without the necessary political support and legitimacy of the non-core groups’ (Smooha 2001: 37). Nevertheless, while perhaps aspiring for numerical majority of the ethnic core nation, Smooha’s ethnic democracy East European examples have chosen to express their links with ethnicity in clear cultural terms (the most important being the predominance of the national language), rather than by the demand for core ethnic nation majority. Thus in those countries members of the dominant ethnic group are privileged because they share the culture which the State has declared as privileged, while in Israel it is the other way around: A certain culture (that is the Hebrew culture) is privileged because it is shared by an ethnic group which has been declared by the State as privileged. This peculiar nature of the identity between nationality and religion could be seen also from a slightly different angle. Anthony Smith writes that ethnic groups, when they wish to become nations, ought to also adopt territorial and civic elements (Smith 1986: ch. 7). The nation, writes Smith, is a symbiosis, not always peaceful, but necessary, of ethnic and civic components (Smith 1996: 100–1). Probably the crucial moment for an ‘‘ethnic’’ nationalism to adopt r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 The ethnic democracy debate 663 civic and territorial elements is when the goal of independence is reached, because it is through the identity between nationality and citizenship which characterises the nation-state that such elements become more influential in the shaping of the national identity. Yet the ‘‘Jewish People’’ is not a territorial or civic entity, and consequently Israel’s national identity could not be expressed in territorial or civic terms. Here Yakobson and Rubinstein (2003: 392) deny the fact that Israel lacks civic components in its national identity: . . . a sovereign state should maintain civic routes to join the nation which will not involve conversion. Actually, such routes indeed exist and are widely in use: immigrants of non-Jewish origin, who are entitled to naturalisation according to the ‘Law of Return’ because of their family ties with Jews, had arrived in the country since independence and even before it. The way they join the Jewish-Israeli society matches that which characterises civic nationalism: citizenship, the adoption of the Hebrew language and culture, full integration into the state and the society, including military service. . . . the law of return, which is attacked because of its ethno-religious exclusive nature, has contributed much to make Israeli nationality more civic and less ethnic. Yet, it seems that Yakobson and Rubinstein confuse the fact that integration into the dominant culture happens as a social fact with the existence of civic routes which allow for such integration. For it might be true that the outcome of the Law of Return in its present formulation was the creation of a multireligious Israeli society or even a multireligious Israeli nation. Yet, this does not mean that there are civic routes to join this nation or that this social fact (the existence of a multireligious society) ‘makes Israeli nationality more civic’. First, it should be noted that under the present Israeli Law of Citizenship, those who are entitled by the Law of Return to immigrate to Israel are given automatic citizenship. In other words, in the Israeli case what makes the new immigrants citizens is not the fulfillment of any civic conditions, but, as Yakobson and Rubinstein themselves note, the fact that they could be linked, through family ties, to the Jewish people. These are clearly ‘‘ethnic’’ rather than ‘‘civic’’ conditions. ‘[T]he adoption of the Hebrew language and culture, full integration into the state and society, including military service’ are the outcome of their naturalisation and not what have made them eligible for it in the first place. The fact that they are considered non-Jews according to orthodox or some other definitions of Judaism does not mean that the criterion for membership in the nation has become civic, but rather that the definition of the ‘‘ethnos’’ was taken from the orthodox rabbis and delivered to the State. As Rubinstein himself noted elsewhere, those who are not recognised as Jews by the State cannot become citizens and consequently ‘[t]he problem in Israel is . . . the absence of practical options for non-Jews to become citizens’ (Rubinstein 2000: 17). That the conditions which Yakobson and Rubinstein list do not constitute civic routes to join Israel’s nation is also obvious from the exclusion of the Arabs. Thus, there are individuals of Arab origin who are citizens, speak Hebrew and also serve in the army, yet they are not considered members of the nation and are not allowed to integrate fully with the State and the society. r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 664 Moshe Berent Ethnic democracy, postcommunist East Europe and Israe As Smooha’s ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ model is based upon the traditional civic/ ethnic typology, so some of his examples are from postcommunist East Europe – mainly Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia. Here, I would like to show that all Smooha’s East European examples are different from Israel in the sense that they have also incorporated territorial and civic elements into their formal national identity. Re-phrasing Anthony Smith, it is possible to say that in those countries there is a symbiosis, not always peaceful, but necessary, between a civic concept of the nation and an ethnic concept of the nation. When they regained independence, both Latvia and Estonia legislated citizenship laws which automatically conferred citizenship upon those who were citizens of these countries on the eve of their annexation to the Soviet Union and to their descendents while the others (mainly Russian speakers who had settled in both countries at the time of the Soviet occupation) were made eligible to apply for citizenship in as much as certain conditions were fulfilled: Residency requirements, speaking the local national (titular) language and a declaration that the candidate had never been connected to the Soviet occupation. Among all those conditions, the most demanding one was the language barrier as most of the Russian speaking minorities in both countries did not speak the local language. The outcome of these laws of citizenship was a drastic change in the social and political status of some onethird of the total population of these two countries. The Russian speaking minorities had turned from ‘‘citizens’’ (in as much as this concept could be applied to the dictatorships of the Soviet era) to strangers. The fact that mastering the national (titular) language in both countries had been made a pre-condition for working in the public sector had led to widespread dismissal of Russian speakers who were replaced by members of the local ‘‘ethnic’’ nationality. All in all, the non-inclusive policy in both countries carried with it obvious social and economic advantages for those who were considered members of the core ‘‘ethnic’’ nation (Linz and Stepan 1996: 402–3; G. Smith et al. 1998: 94). Indeed, there seems to be much resemblance between Israel, on the one hand, and Latvia and Estonia, on the other, in the predominance of one ethnic group, in Israel’s case the Jews, who are considered to be the group which ‘‘owns’’ the State, and in the social and economic advantages that come from this ethnic dominance. Yet, some important differences should be observed as well. First, both Estonia and Latvia still retain, besides the notion of an ‘‘ethnic’’ nation, also a notion of a civic nation which is created by the identity between nationality and citizenship. Moreover, the laws of citizenship (which resulted in the de-nationalisation of the Russian-only speakers) were justified also by the vision of the nation-state in which the nation and the state overlap, that is in which the citizen body constitutes a nation (G. Smith et al. 1998: 97; Linz and Stepan 1996: 432–3). In other words, both Latvia and Estonia are republics, which means that they entrust r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 The ethnic democracy debate 665 sovereignty to ‘‘the people’’, which is identified with the multiethnic citizen body. It should be emphasised that in both countries, citizenship was defined on the basis of the pre-1940 citizenship which was ‘‘civic’’ and included also individuals who were not ethnic Estonians, among them individuals of Russian origin. Furthermore, the citizenship laws in Latvia and Estonia had made it still possible for Russian speakers to join the civic nation. The criteria which had made them eligible for citizenship were indeed civic: residence, knowing the national (titular) language and so on. Svetlana Diatchkova (2005: 113) remarks that ‘regarding the ‘‘full membership’’ of minorities in the core nation and in the state, their exclusion is not systematically based on ethnicity, for proficiency in the state language and loyalty to the Latvian nation-state are much more important conditions for inclusion than ethnicity’. Thus, in both Latvia and Estonia, besides the concept of a core ethnic nation there exists also the notion of a civic territorial nation. The symbiosis between the two concepts is visible in the Preamble to the Estonian Constitution. Priit Järve notes that the Preamble which, according to him, constitutes the legal foundation of the ethnic democracy in Estonia, uses two different concepts: eesti rahvus, which means Estonian (ethnic) nation and Eesti rahvas, which means the people (citizens) of Estonia regardless of their ethnic origin. According to Järve, the former refers to ‘‘ethnic nation’’ and the latter to the ‘‘civic nation’’ (Järve 2000: 1, 7). Järve quotes from the Preamble: Unwavering in their faith and with a steadfast will to secure and develop a state which is established on the inextinguishable right of the Estonian people [in Estonian: Eesti rahvas] to national self-determination . . . which shall guarantee the preservation of the Estonian nation [eesti rahvus] and its culture throughout the ages, the Estonian people [Eesti rahvas] adopted . . . the following Constitution. . . (Järve 2000: 1). Järve’s interpretation of the Preamble is very similar to Smooha’s (2001: 73): The logic of the Preamble, not very explicit though, is simple: the citizens (all ethnic groups together) establish a state and adopt a constitution to preserve one ethnic group – the Estonians – and its culture. Thus, one ethnic group has manifested its specific claims to the state in which it establishes itself constitutionally as a single core ethnic nation (Järve 2000: 7). In a more recent paper Järve (2005) seems to abandon this interpretation and sees ethnic democracy in Estonia as an intermediate stage on the road to liberal democracy (see below). Yet, it seems that both Järve and Smooha ignore and fail to quote the civic elements of the Preamble. First, it should be noted that self-determination is proclaimed as a right of the Estonian civic nation, rather than the right of the ethnic nation. Further, before the preservation of the ethnic Estonian and its culture is mentioned, the Preamble states that the purpose of self-determination is ‘to protect internal and external peace and provide security for the social progress and general benefit of present and future generations’. These could be interpreted as republican statements that refer to the future of the Estonian people, that is, the ‘‘civic nation’’. Thus it seems that as far as the r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 666 Moshe Berent Constitution is concerned, ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ is expressed more in terms of cultural domination and privileges than in purely ethnic ones: it establishes the domination of the Estonian culture and not that of the Estonian ethnic core nation. While cultural domination entails a ‘favored status in general and on the job market in particular when compared to individuals who are not fluent in the Estonian language’ (Järve 2000: 13), it is still important that this bias in favor of the core nation is expressed in cultural terms and that as far as citizens’ rights and welfare are concerned the state is indeed ‘‘ethnically neutral’’. Indeed, Estonia is a republic: Chapter 1 Article 1 of the Constitution says that ‘Estonia is an independent and sovereign democratic republic wherein the supreme power of the state is held by the people’. Here, the people is identified with the citizens and not with the core ethnic nation. In Smooha’s model of ethnic democracy this would mean that while Estonia complies with feature 1 of the model, namely that ‘The dominant ethnic nationalism determines that there is only one ethnic nation that has an exclusive right to the country’, it does not comply with feature 3, that ‘The state is owned and ruled by the core ethnic nation’, or that ‘it is the core ethnic nation that possesses and controls the state, not its citizens’ (Smooha 2001: 29–31). The same is true for the Republic of Latvia: Article 1 of the Constitution of Latvia states that ‘Latvia is an independent democratic republic’, while Article 2 says that ‘The sovereign power of the State of Latvia is vested in the people of Latvia’.2 Thus, at least from a formal point of view, the constitutions of both Latvia and Estonia have made provision for the creation of a multiethic (civic) nation. An analysis of Slovakia’s Constitution, also singled out by Smooha as ‘‘ethnic democracy’’, yields similar results. As in the Estonian case, it seems that the Preamble of the Constitution of Slovakia expresses ‘[t]he ethnonational ideological foundation of the Slovak Republic’ (Van Duin 2001: 123): We, the Slovak nation, mindful of the political and cultural heritage of our forebears, and of the centuries of experience from the struggle for national existence and our own statehood, in the sense of the spiritual heritage of Cyril and Methodius and the historical legacy of the Great Moravian Empire, proceeding from the natural right of nations to self-determination, together with members of national minorities and ethnic groups living on the territory of the Slovak Republic, in the interest of lasting peaceful cooperation with other democratic states, seeking the application of the democratic form of government and the guarantees of a free life and the development of spiritual culture and economic prosperity, that is, we, citizens of the Slovak Republic, adopt through our representatives the following Constitution: . . . (emphasis added). Again, the symbiosis between the notion of the ethnic nation and that of the civic nation could be easily discerned. The ethnic bias of the Preamble is obvious: it singles out the Slovak heritage or Slovak ‘‘ethnic nation’’. Nevertheless, it contains also important civic elements: it is still a declaration of all the citizens, including the minorities, and is ratified equally by all of them. In other words, as the Preamble and Article 1 of the Constitution declare, Slovakia is a republic in which, as Article 2 declares, ‘State power is derived r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 The ethnic democracy debate 667 from citizens’. This seems to refute Smooha’s claim that ‘in its constitution Slovakia declares itself as the State of the Slovak nation rather as the State of its citizens’ (Smooha 2002: 476). Further, the Preamble also contains a republican declaration which says that the purpose of Slovakia is also ‘lasting peaceful cooperation with other democratic states’, ‘the application of the democratic form of government’, ‘the guarantees of a free life’ and ‘the development of spiritual culture and economic prosperity’; all are clearly republican statements that relate to the welfare of the citizens or the civic nation rather than that of the core ethnic nation. This seems to refute Smooha’s claim that ‘[a]ccording to the preamble of the constitution, both ethnic Slovaks and other citizens ought to develop Slovakia as an ethnic nation-state for the benefit of ethnic Slovaks’ (Smooha 2001: 66). The Constitution, then, distinguishes between the Slovak ‘‘ethnic nation’’, on the one hand, and the citizen body which constitutes a ‘‘civic’’ nation, on the other. It is interesting to note how the meaning of the word ‘‘we’’ changes throughout the Preamble. At the beginning it means the Slovak ‘‘ethnic nation’’ (‘We the Slovak nation’), yet at the end of the Preamble it means the ‘‘civic’’ nation (‘we, citizens of the Slovak Republic’). According to the Preamble, the Slovak civic nation is made up of the Slovak ethnic nation plus ‘members of national minorities and ethnic groups’ who joined it. The careful wording of the Preamble should be noted here: it does not say ‘We the Slovak nation together with other national minorities and ethnic groups’ but rather ‘together with members of other nationalities and ethnic groups’. Thus members of other nationalities have joined us, the Slovak (ethnic) nation, as individuals, not as collectives, to create the ‘We’ which is the citizen body (or the Slovak ‘civic nation’) of the end of the Preamble. Thus, according to its Constitution, though Slovakia a multiethnic State it is not a multinational State, but rather a nation-state, and its citizen body constitutes a civic (Slovak) nation. Though Smooha draws some of his evidence for the existence of ethnic democracy in East Eupropean countries from their constitutions he ignores the fact that, unlike Israel, all his East European examples are republics. Indeed, it could be claimed that Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and many other post-Soviet East European countries are republics only by title. Thus Brubaker (1996: 105) dismisses all republican or constitutional declarations of these countries as something that is directed mainly towards an international audience and do not affect the ‘‘ethnic’’ political and social reality. Indeed, as Smooha rightly observes, within the formal framework of republicanism it is still possible to conduct ‘‘ethnic’’ policies, as the core ethnic nation numerical majority enables it to ‘rule democratically on its own account without the necessary political support and legitimacy of the noncore groups’ (Smooha 2001: 37). Thus, though the Slovakian Constitution was ratified by the citizen body, the Hungarian parties in Slovakia did not vote in favor of the Constitution, while in Estonia and Latvia the Russian speakers were not able to ratify the Constitution because they were not citizens. On the other hand, Brubaker’s position is sharply repudiated by Kuzio (2001: 148), who claims that: r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 668 Moshe Berent [T]he majority of the former European communist states can no longer be defined as ‘ethnic’ or ‘nationalisers’. The majority of them are territorial, civic and inclusive democracies . . . as defined by their willingness to allow integration for all into the societal culture. Nevertheless, we need not enter the debate between Kuzio and Brubaker in order to establish how Israel is different. For it is obvious that at least on the formal or constitutional level, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia recognise the existence of a ‘‘civic’’ nation and make provisions for the integration of noncore minorities into the dominant culture. Whether integration would happen and its scope and shape are dependent upon State policies (or the wish of the members of the dominant core nation), on the one hand, and the wish of noncore minorities, on the other. Indeed, one of the features of an ethnic democracy, according to Smooha, is that it has a no assimilation policy (Smooha 2001: 27). Yet, in the case of Israel it is not that Israel has no assimilation policy, but rather that it could not have any assimilation policy whatsoever. In order to have such a policy there must be a concept of a national entity which assimilates. The Estonian and Latvian case is different; since there is the notion of a civic nation, integration is still an option. Thus, when Linz and Stepan discuss ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ in both Estonia and Latvia, they write that in both countries there are in fact two competing models: the dominant model is that of ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ which indeed has no assimilation policy, yet the other model ‘make(s) major effort to assimilate minorities into national culture and give(s) no special recognition to minority political or cultural rights’ (Linz and Stepan 1996: 429). In as much as Linz and Stepan consider the first model to be dominant, it seems that in recent years an integrative approach has developed. Whether or not the original intent of the laws of citizenship was to dispossess the Russophones or even to drive them out of the country, the present policies of both Latvia and Estonia seem to be of an integrative nature. This was no doubt also a result of international and especially of European pressure and supervision, as both countries had applied and were eventually accepted into the European Union (Kuzio 2001: 145; Järve 2005: 76–7; Diatchkova 2005: 112; Yiftachel and Ghanem 2004: 776). Further, there are also indications that the Russophone minority in these countries, while it has no interest in and ability to assimilate into the ‘ethnic’ or core nation, acknowledges that the local languages should be mastered by the Russophones. Consequently they ‘well might be loyal citizens of Estonia and identify with the ‘state-nation’ of Estonia’ (Stepan 1998: 234). Indeed, it seems that in the short run the minorities in Smooha’s East European examples accepted their new condition and the ‘‘ethnicisation’’ of the state relatively quietly also because many of their members considered the possibility of joining the (civic) nation in the long run and enjoying the social and economic benefits from which they were deprived in their present status. All this analysis is completely irrelevant for Israel. As there is no Israeli civic nation, it is impossible to include in the nation non-Jewish minorities. Thus, unlike the case of Latvia or Estonia, the Arab minority of Israel has no similar r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 The ethnic democracy debate 669 incentive to support the ethnicisation of the state, either in the short term or in the long term. Indeed, according to Smooha, the best that Israel could hope for is ‘‘improved ethnic democracy’’. The latter is conditioned, so it seems, by peace and by the establishment of a Palestinian state that will make members of the Arab minority in Israel more receptive towards the so-called ‘‘JewishZionist’’ character of the state. Yet, even in this improved ethnic democracy the Arab minority will not integrate into the social and economic Israeli infrastructures but will only benefit from the new opportunities that will be created by the peace, that is cultural and trade relations with the Arab world and serving as mediators between Israel and the Arab world (Smooha 2000: 613). Thus even in the ‘‘improved ethnic democracy’’ the Arabs are not expected to enjoy the same benefits that Israel confers upon its Jewish members. In this respect Oren Yiftachel (1992: 115) has pointed out that Smooha’s model of ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ is not stable and Smooha’s claim that ‘the Arabs do not intend to hurt the state or dissociate themselves from it . . . must be contingent upon the Arabs making some gains within the Israeli economy or political system. . . . such gains have not been achieved, thus casting doubt over the decisiveness of Smooha’s observations’. Yiftachel’s observations could be contested, and it could be claimed that the Arab minority in Israel has gained substantial benefits within the Israeli ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ (when their situation is compared to the situation of Arabs in Arab countries), and that until now there are no indications of secessionism among the Arab minority in Israel. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the model of ethnic democracy carries an inherent contradiction. In as much as the commitment of the Israeli elite to democracy is genuine - as Smooha himself claims - and in as much as this commitment is transferred to the Israeli public as a basic characteristic of Israel (alongside with its being ‘‘Jewish’’), it is obvious that Yiftachel’s observation is well founded, and not only for Israel, but for the model of ethnic democracy in general. Further, it is possible to question Smooha’s claims about the stability of ethnic democracy in Israel given the events of October 2000, or the recent publication of what has been known as ‘Mismachei Hachazon’ by three important bodies of the Israeli Arab sector, which suggested Israel’s transformation into a non-national state (‘a state of all its citizens’) or a bi-national state (Ozacky-Lazar and Kabha 2008). ‘Ethnic democracy’ or nation-building The uniqueness of Israeli national identity and of its link to ethnicity lies in the fact that it does not enable the recognition or the creation of an Israeli ‘‘civic’’ nation and does not make provision for the integration of non-Jews, especially of Arabs, into the dominant Hebrew culture. This situation does not prevail in Smooha’s East European examples where such a civic nation is recognised, and integration or assimilation into the dominant or titular r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 670 Moshe Berent culture is possible. What enables the creation of a civic nation in those countries is the fact that their links to ethnicity are in fact ethnocultural, that is, they are expressed in cultural terms, especially language, whereas in Israel the links to ethnicity are expressed in terms of religion, or descent, which makes integration and assimilation, at least formally, impossible. In fact, Smooha himself comes to similar conclusions when he compares Slovakia with Israel: Another conciliatory factor is the emphasis put in Slovakia on language rather than on ethnicity and religion as a base for the Slovak ethnic nation and nationalism. The expected spread of bilingualism and biculturalism among the Hungarian minority will alleviate the fears and estrangement felt by ethnic Slovaks, promote mutual accommodation and produce some assimilation among them (Smooha 2001: 70). It is questionable, then, whether Israel could be seen as an archetype of the model of ethnic democracy, as Smooha claims, or only as a variant, or indeed ‘‘a category on its own’’. Smooha questions whether his East European examples will follow Israel and produce a ‘‘viable ethnic democracy’’. Yet, the viability of the ethnic democracy in Israel seems to be its ‘‘stability’’, that is, the fact that it is a political dead end. Setting Israel as an archetype of ethnic democracy prevents Smooha from giving enough credit to the possibility that ethnic democracy in Eastern Europe, though not ‘‘viable’’, could be interpreted as a means for nation-building or as a transitional phase towards a liberal democracy, a conclusion reached by two of his fellow researchers, Järve (2005: 78–9) and Diatchkova (2005: 114). Ernest Gellner’s division of the spread of nationalism in Europe into time zones could be helpful here. According to Gellner (1994: 113–8), the industrialised world is bound to conform to the ‘‘nationalist imperative’’ which demands the existence of ‘high cultures’ linked to strong states. The East European type of nationalism rose in what Gellner calls Time Zone III, which was characterised by the existence of several competing weak or ‘‘low’’ cultures, on the one hand, and a weak political system, or state, on the other. According to Gellner, the difference between so-called ‘‘civic’’ or western nationalism, on the one hand, and ‘‘ethnic’’ or eastern nationalism, on the other, should not be attributed to the illiberality or the brutality of the (ethnic) nationalists but rather to the fact that, unlike the case in the west, in the east there was no ready high culture and consequently, ‘to make them conform to the nationalist imperative . . . was bound to take a great deal of forceful cultural engineering’ (Gellner 1983: 100–1). Gellner’s observation means that once this ‘‘national imperative’’ is satisfied by the creation of a high culture, which is married to a strong state, the distinction between east and west disappears. From this point of view, the whole concept of ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ could become problematic, as Smooha’s East European examples could be seen, not as a different type of democracies, but rather as countries which take different kinds of democratic measures needed to carry out this ‘‘cultural engineering’’. Thus Vello Pettai (1996: 49) writes that the Latvians are not moving towards a consociational or r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 The ethnic democracy debate 671 ethnopolitical structure but rather to the establishment within one or two generations of ‘cultural hegemony within the borders of their state, similar to the achievements of the French culture in France’. Or else, if we wish to retain the concept of ‘‘ethnic democracy’’, then it becomes transitional: it could either become a liberal democracy, on the one hand, or fall back to a nondemocratic regime, or ‘‘ethnocracy’’, on the other. Yet, Smooha’s model precludes such a possibility: ethnic democracy could either move towards an ‘improved ethnic democracy’ or fall back to a non-democratic regime: it could not cease to be ‘ethnic’ and become a ‘civic’ western-type nation-state. By this Smooha seems to project from his Israeli archetype onto his East European examples: it is impossible indeed to interpret ethnic democracy in Israel as a means for nation-building or as transitional. Conclusion: towards the recognition of an Israeli Nation? Israel could not serve as an archetype for ethnic democracy because the cultural conditions that prevail in Israel are very different from those that prevail in Smooha’s East European examples, or in Gellner’s Zone III countries. The predominance of the Hebrew culture in Israel resembles more closely countries of Gellner’s Time Zone I where both a strong State and a strong culture exist. This predominance is unquestionable, it is not just political but social: it could not be attributed only to the ‘ethnicity’ of the State or to nationalising policies. In Gellner’s (1983: 50–8) terminology, the Hebrew culture is a ‘‘high culture’’ which creates a homogeneous medium in which a modern industrialised society could function. If ‘‘ethnic democracy’’ was needed during the first years of independence to create a hegemonic Hebrew ‘‘high culture’’, it was more directed towards those who were considered Jews and spoke ‘seventy languages’ rather than being used as an instrument for the marginalisation of the Arabs. Israel is still an immigration country and in recent decades has successfully absorbed over one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Nevertheless, this successful absorption was in many respects similar to the absorption of immigrants in other western democracies, that is, it was due more to the working of a modern industrialised society rather than the ‘‘ethnic’’ policies of the State. Thus, today in Israel, ethnic democracy is not necessary for nation-building, at least it is not necessary to achieve a cultural hegemony. Unlike the Estonian case in which the Russophones do not speak the Estonian language, most if not all Israelis speak Hebrew. Neither is it like the Latvian case, in which the Russophones are the majority in the cities (Linz and Stepan 1996: 432). The situation in Israel is somewhat unforeseen in Gellnerian terms: in this case the Israeli or Hebrew nation already exists, yet it is not recognised by the State to which it is supposed to be ‘married’, nor is it recognised by its own members. What the Hebrew high culture needs now is a formal civic definition that would establish the formal conditions for membership in the Nation. r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 672 Moshe Berent When one examines the various measures offered to solve the problem of establishing democracies in multiethnic societies, the recognition of the existence of an Israeli civic nation becomes a necessary condition for any solution. Thus, if one possible solution is what David Laitin (1996) calls the ‘‘competitive-assimilation game’’, where it becomes in the best interests of some working-class migrants to assimilate in order to enhance the life chances of their children, then the notion of an Israeli civic nation ought to exist politically and legally in order to enable such assimilation. The creation of multiple and complementary identities is another possible solution (Linz and Stepan 1996: 709–10). Yet again, there is a need here for an Israeli national identity within which sub-identities (Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian and many others) could exist. Any consociational arrangements, federalism (territorial or non-territorial), and various degrees of cultural autonomy which are suggested for the Arab minority (Yiftachel 1992: 133–4), would still demand the existence of an overall ‘‘civic’’ identity which would enable both Jews and Arabs to opt out of their communities into a civic or ‘‘ethnically neutral’’ sphere. It should be emphasised that though this civic sphere should be ‘‘ethnically neutral’’, it could not be ‘‘culturally neutral’’, as it is clearly Hebrew and in this respect more Jewish than Arab. The notion of the Israeli Nation is hardly discussed in the Israeli academy nor among the Israeli public. While those who are called ‘‘post-Zionists’’ have successfully pointed out the un-democratic features of the ‘‘Jewish State’’, the solution they offer is not the establishment of an Israeli nation-state, but rather the establishment of a culturally neutral ‘‘citizens’ state’’, or a bi-national state with equal Jewish and Arab components, or both. The recognition, or construction, of an Israeli territorial nation, which is predominantly Hebrew is discussed (if at all) only to be dismissed as undesirable or impractical. In several places, Smooha raises the possibility of the recognition or creation of an Israeli civic nation, or liberal democracy (as opposed to ethnic democracy), only to dismiss it on the grounds that both the Arab minority and the Jewish majority are ‘non-assimilating’ (Smooha 1997: 222, 233; Yakobson and Rubinstein 2003: 371–3). Yet, the definition of the Arab minority (or the Jewish majority) as ‘non-assimilating’ raises the question, what does assimilation mean? In some respects the Israeli Arabs are partially ‘‘assimilated’’. It was Smooha’s breakthrough research that had called attention to the ‘‘Israelisation’’ process that the Israeli Arab minority has gone through. According to Smooha, ‘(A)s a result of Israelization, they became bilingual and bicultural without assimilating into the Jewish majority’ (Smooha 1997: 214). Indeed, to the extent that one could speak about (cultural) assimilation of Arabs into the dominant Hebrew culture, it is not accompanied by integration: the Arabs are still excluded from the cities and substantial parts of the labor market. Yet, while Smooha seems to suggest that ethnic democracy in Israel is based upon non-assimilating ethnic groups, it could be claimed that it is the ethnic democracy in Israel which defines and shapes the minorities in Israel that is ‘non-assimilating’. As noted above, the r The authors 2010. 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