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State formation, parties and democracy. Studies in comparative European politics (2011)

State formation, parties and democracy. Studies in comparative European politics

(2011)–Hans Daalder–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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III.
The consociational model

chapter ten | on building consociational nations: the cases of the netherlands and switzerland

Introduction*

Of late, the term ‘consociational’ has been increasingly used to characterize a certain pattern of political life in which the political elites of distinct social groups succeed in establishing a viable, pluralistic state by a process of mutual forbearance and accommodation. In modern social Science, the word was first used by David Apter.1. The term was further elaborated into a general classificatory concept by Arend Lijphart.2. Independently of him and sometimes under different terms like Proporzdemokratie or Konkordanzdemokratie, Gerhard Lehmbruch, Jürg Steiner, and Rodney Stiefbold have sought to analyze comparable types of political experience.3.

The word consociatio originated with Johannes Althusius.4. It is significant that a term first adopted to analyze the development of a new polity in the Low Countries in the early seventeenth century, is now being revived in the study of comparative political development in the twentieth century. A process of building-up a new political society from below, to some degree by the consent of participating communities, in which deliberate compromises by elites carefully circumscribe and limit the extent to which political power can be wielded by one political center, may be a relatively rare political phenomenon. Yet it provides at least a significant footnote to the prevailing mood in the study of nation-building which so often proceeds from the assumption that nationhood should be forged from above, by the deliberate imposition of a ‘modern’ state on traditional society.

The term ‘consociational democracy’ has been used by Lijphart to characterize the political life of European countries (the Low Countries, Austria, Switzerland) as well as countries on other continents (e.g. Israël, Lebanon, Uruguay, Colombia). This chapter will deal only in its conclusion with the general model of consociational democracy. Its major emphasis will be on a two-country comparison prompted by the suggestion of Stein Rokkan that a treatment of the Dutch and Swiss cases of nation-building might open ‘fascinating possibilities of comparative historical analysis.’5. Inevitably, in the context of a short chapter, the argument will proceed mainly in the form of propositions that stand in need of more detailed historical substantiation.

Comparison presupposes common as well as contrasting characteristics. In the first section of this chapter, common elements in the political development of the

Netherlands and Switzerland will be traced. In the second section, the focus will shift to differences between the two countries. The chapter will conclude with some remarks on more theoretical questions that are prompted by a comparison of Dutch and Swiss experiences in nation-building with those of other countries.

Common characteristics of Swiss and Dutch nation-building processes

Both the Netherlands and Switzerland provide examples of states that attained international sovereignty with only minimal internal consolidation. Some violence did occur both in the processes of external demarcation and internal integration; but nationhood typically grew through extensive processes of accommodation and compromise. In the typology of European states6. the two countries resemble the United Kingdom and Sweden in their centuries-old status as independent polities that show strong traditions of continuous representative organs and that grew slowly - but without reversals - into modern democratic societies. But unlike these two countries, nationhood was achieved without dynastic guidance or early central government. Like Italy and Germany, the modern state developed through unification of once highly dispersed political communities. But whereas conquest and forceful unification stood at the cradle of Italian and German statehood, Swiss and Dutch statehood as well as nationhood were formed on the whole by compact and accommodation.

If one seeks to account for the Dutch and Swiss developments, the following factors would seem to stand out.

Geopolitical Factors

Otto Hintze long ago drew attention to the importance for later developments of the specific location of certain countries at the periphery of the Holy Roman Empire.7. Due to the weakness of central authority in the Empire, independent dukedoms, bishoprics, counties, cities, cantons and provinces maintained themselves with a high degree of political self-sufficiency and independence when in other countries like France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the Scandinavian countries, dynastic rule resulted in centralized statehood. The development notably of the United Kingdom and France as strong power centers on the international scene, assisted the further development of political independence of Switzerland and the Netherlands: Swiss independence after the fifteenth century was strengthened by a special relationship with France, and Dutch nationhood was achieved not least because Habsburgs, Bourbons, and Stuarts were unwilling to see political control over the European Delta go to any one of them.

A second common geopolitical factor between the Netherlands and Switzerland is their location at some of the most important trade routes of Europe. This location led to the early development of mercantile cities. Both in the Netherlands and in some of the more important Swiss cantons, cities thus gained a dominant position that they also extended over the surrounding countryside. But these cities remained at the same time highly particularist political communities. In both countries a polycephalous city network developed in which no single city could become

the ‘capital city’ for the whole country. Switzerland as well as the Netherlands remained for a long time, much to the dislike of nineteenth-century unifiers like Friedrich List, a Konglomerat von Munizipalitäten.8. Moreover, in both countries strong rural cantons and provinces retained an independent political title beside the more prosperous city-dominated polities.

Third, for geographic reasons, neither country saw the development of large land ownership. Communal grazing practices in Switzerland, common needs for the protection of land against the ever-present threat of the sea and rivers in the Lowlands, made for an early development of self-reliant peasant communities. If not always in practice, this arrangement provided at least in political theory for the idea of self-governing communes administered by commoners. Later political developments could, therefore, be inspired by ancient traditions.

The Peculiar Development of Sovereignty

Both in the Netherlands and in Switzerland, independent national existence was originally decided by the force of arms. Territorial consolidation was achieved only by extensive military battles against foreign claimants and, to some extent, at least in Switzerland, by a show of strength against internal dissidents. Local military conflicts decided the course of later frontiers, and military alliances began the process of later development of national identity. To state that nationhood emerged from the completely voluntary association of free communities, would therefore be an unwarranted simplification. In the Netherlands, the seven United Provinces conquered Brabant and Limburg in the 1620s and 1630s and ruled them as dependent territories for 150 years. Switzerland for long was a patchwork of Urkantone, associated cantons and a host of dependencies of which Ticino and Vaud were the most important. The essence of Dutch and Swiss political life remained for very long a motley arrangement of particularist communities, not national cooperation among equals.

Yet, this very particularism had important consequences for later developments. Interestingly, even the more important, potentially more powerful provinces and cantons did not aspire to become central administrative capitals. And even in dependent territories, local traditions and local governments were permitted to persist. A measure of traditionalist self-sufficiency could eventually substantiate later claims for a separate identity on a par with former overlords. The much dispersed power structure gave ample scope, moreover, for local elites to maintain themselves, and for the confederation as a whole to continue irrespective of political changes within any of the constituent political communities. If there was hardly any national political life, there were also no strong national cleavages or conflicts.

Both the Netherlands and Switzerland emerged therefore as independent political societies without either a strong central government apparatus or an articulate national identity. Common affairs were decided ad hoc by political procedures that resembled international conferences rather than legitimate national government. Neither the United Provinces nor the Swiss Confederation knew a central army or a central bureaucracy. There were no organs of state that could act directly on the individual and there was no concept of common citizenship.

Does this mean that one cannot speak of a Dutch or a Swiss nationality in this period? The answer is somewhat in the nature of a petitio principii. If one defines ‘the central factor of nation-building’ as ‘the orderly exercise of a nation-wide public authority,’9. the answer must be negative, as no such nationwide public authority existed. If one speaks of nations only when there has been a ‘process whereby people transfer their commitment and loyalty from smaller tribes, villages, or petty principalities to the larger central political system,’10. [emphasis added] the conclusion must be equally negative. But one could also argue that at least one condition of nationality - sovereign political existence - had been fulfilled. And if one defines nationality more in terms of at least some consciousness of togetherness rather than as an exclusivist transfer of loyalties to a new state, signs of an incipient nationhood could be found at least among the leading political strata of Swiss and Dutch society.

The Persistence of Pluralism in Modernization

The French Revolution, undoubtedly, had a major effect on the development of Dutch and to a lesser extent on that of Swiss nationhood. In the Netherlands, French occupation brought a lasting unitary state, common citizenship, common laws, and equal rights for the various religions. In Switzerland, the institutions of the Helvetic Republic proved abortive, but old inequalities between the cantons disappeared and virtually equal rights were secured for the main languages. Eventually, Switzerland too moved to more definite forms of (federal) statehood in 1848.

But the drive of radical forces for unification (as represented by the Dutch Patriotten beweging or the Swiss Helvetic Society towards the end of the eighteenth century, or again by innovative radicals around 1848) never succeeded in achieving a sharp break with older pluralist traditions. If thinkers of the French Enlightenment put the twin concepts of absolutism and individualism against what they conceived as the dead weight of privileged corporate interests, Dutch and Swiss traditions consistently regarded an entrenched pluralism as the safeguard of liberties. Admittedly, these old liberties (in the plural) might frustrate individual equality and individual liberty (in the singular). Yet, corporate rights were regarded as important in themselves, as well as a protection against threatening claims by an omnipotent new state.

The formation of the Dutch and Swiss nations could therefore become the result of a slow process of genuine national integration, rather than that of deliberate nation-building. It would be difficult to point to one social group, or one political center, or one legal institution that might be regarded as the chief nation-building force. Data on elite recruitment (whether on Dutch Cabinet personnel or on Swiss members of Parliament show that elite positions in the nineteenth century were shared widely by all the major regions of the country.11. National integration first evolved slowly on the level of accommodating elites, to filter down later to the more parochial orders of society. The slow development of a stronger national sentiment in the population at large was therefore in the main complementary to, rather than destructive of, older local allegiances.

In Dutch and Swiss nineteenth-century history one also looks in vain for a salient role of the usual agencies of nation-building: the army, the bureaucracy, national schools.

National armies appeared relatively late on the Dutch and Swiss scenes. Although they may have played some role in the political socialization of recruits into a developing national political culture - a role so often attributed to armies12. - a definite sense of national identity preceded the introduction of compulsory military service.

Especially in Switzerland, the national bureaucracy has remained of relatively modest dimensions, not the least because the cantonal governments retained very major political and administrative functions in the federal structure. In the Netherlands also, which was a unitary state from 1795 onwards, the central bureaucracy remained of modest size until the early twentieth century. Recruitment to higher civil service roles has retained many of the features of earlier particularist elite practices. To this day, the Swiss and the Dutch bureaucracy remain in many respects not only nationalizing agencies, but also points of brokerage between highly differentiated subgroups of society.

Schools have undoubtedly played an important role in fostering the development of national sentiment. But in Switzerland control over education has, in practice, remained a highly regionalized and localized affair. In the Netherlands, an attempt by secular, liberal elite groups in the second part of the nineteenth century to build up a centralized school system soon ran into strong opposition from Calvinists and Catholics who successfully fought for autonomy of religious schools under their own control.13. An inspection of the course content of Dutch and Swiss schools would probably reveal an insistence on both national and sub-national allegiances, typically regarded as fully compatible.

Thus, older traditions of elite accommodation, which had grown from the necessities of the highly dispersed power structure of the pre-1789 confederations, could be carried over into the modernization process. Older pluralist elite attitudes facilitated the gradual settlement of participation demands from new social groupings in society. Both in Switzerland and in the Netherlands verbal adherence to ancient ideals of accountable government had gone together in practice with effective rule by relatively narrow - albeit also pluralist - elite groups. But typically, these groups had enjoyed a high degree of legitimacy. The franchise was extended only slowly and older practices by which policies were preferably determined in negotiations and compromises outside the public market place, have retained a strong hold in the political culture. Both the Netherlands and Switzerland substantiate two of Stein Rokkan's hypotheses: (a) ‘The stronger the inherited traditions of representative rule, whether within estates, territorial assemblies or city councils, the greater the chances of early legitimation of opposition;’ and (b) ‘the stronger the inherited traditions of representative rule, the slower, and the less likely to be reversed, the processes of enfranchisement and equalization.’14.

Finally, in the two countries, a strong emphasis on the need to insure that political power could not become concentrated in one political center, has continued to form part of the political culture. More so in Switzerland than in the Netherlands,

local governments have been kept strong and relatively independent political sites.15. In both countries, central government institutions have been so arranged as to insure a definite duality between the executive and the legislature. Within each, older pluralist traditions and modern electoral devices have seen to it that political power has been divided over a variety of political parties: the distance that separates even the largest party from the majority point has been greater in Switzerland and in the Netherlands than in practically any other European countries.16. Coalition government is ingrained both within the official government structures and in the decision-making processes of the large number of interest groups.

In sum, ancient pluralism has facilitated the development of a stable, legitimate, and consistently pluralist modern society.17. Both the Netherlands and Switzerland are countries with strong subcultural divisions. Yet, of the six possible ways to deal with subcultural conflicts according to Robert A. Dahl, violence and repression as well as secession or separation have been remarkably absent.18. Instead, a respect for autonomy, a habitual reference to proportional representation, and sometimes a willingness to abide by mutual veto rather than undiluted majority decisions have been characteristic features of Dutch and Swiss political culture.19. And this instinctive respect for diversity has, paradoxically, eased modern processes of assimilation.

Contrasts between Dutch and Swiss nation-building processes

If ‘the inevitability of gradualness’ in a consistently pluralist evolution is the most obvious common characteristic of the two countries, certain differences between them should also be noted.

Geopolitical Factors

Geographic factors have differentiated Dutch and Swiss political development on the following points.

First, Dutch geography provided less durable barriers to processes of social mobility than did the Swiss terrain. Particularism was therefore more easily broken up once the homogenizing processes of political modernization set in. The most conspicuous illustration of this process is the relatively unhindered development of one national language. To this day Frisian remains a separate language spoken by a few hundred thousand persons; in addition there are numerous slowly disappearing Dutch dialects, but there was never any real issue about the acceptance of the original tongue of the burghers of the cities of the Netherlands as the national language. This fact, in turn, facilitated easy communication throughout the country, and paved the way for stronger assimilatory processes than could be found in Switzerland.

Second, Switzerland is a land-locked country, the Netherlands very much a sea-faring nation. The latter country acquired a colonial empire, and also developed other strong overseas links. At the same time, the Netherlands psychologically stood for a long time - to use a habitual Dutch metaphor - with its back against the European continent (strong trading links with the Hinterland notwith-

standing). The Dutch self-image was therefore relatively little influenced by the country's precarious position as a small European state at the borders of larger European powers. Switzerland, on the other hand, was acutely conscious of its larger neighbors. The very fact that Swiss citizens spoke the languages of three larger neighboring states - and that each of these tended to define nationality in linguistic terms - made it imperative to separate the concept of nationhood from any possible link with seemingly objective ‘national’ criteria of language, culture, or ethnic descent.20. Of the two countries, the Netherlands became the more homogeneous, unconsciously nationalized society; Switzerland the more heterogeneous diversified State which embraced a self-conscious ‘political’ definition of nationhood.21.

Differences in Political Centralization

Since 1795, the Netherlands has been the more centralized political community, but even before, some vestiges of centralization could be found in the Low Countries. The Dutch Republic, after all, developed when mediaeval traditions inspired particularist societies in the sixteenth century to revolt against the Burgundians who seemed destined to become the most successful centralizing dynasty of Europe.22. If the Dutch Revolt arrested this drive towards centralization, some remnants of it could yet be found in some of the curious political organs of the Dutch Republic. Notably, the office of the stadhouder (literally, the Sovereign's remplaçant) retained vestiges of earlier centralizing practices, and provided a political base for the Orange dynasty that had no counterpart in Swiss history. Technically, the stadhouders were servants of each of the provinces, and for long periods the city aristocracies successfully kept the Orange princes from power. But the office carried the command of fleet and army, and eventually developed even before the arrival of the unitary state into a unifying force, complete with court and court circle.

Much more than the Swiss Confederation, the Dutch Republic was for a time an active participant on the international scene. Some of the Orange princes - as well as the Grand-Pensionary of Holland - were actively involved in high diplomatic maneuvers. The Dutch fleet, and the Dutch colonies, also made for a stronger international presence. This more active international stance hardly contributed towards internal consolidation. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, activist foreign policies were settled in the most narrow circles, in which the otherwise highly particularist representatives of the Province of Holland had a decisive voice. Typically, activism in foreign policy was more characteristic of the loosely structured Dutch Republic than of the nineteenth-century centralized kingdom. But the role played by the Republic in international affairs created at least a self-conscious image of the international importance of the Netherlands, which later nationalist historians could exploit on behalf of nationalist mythology.

Both during the days of French supremacy, and after the defeat of Napoleon, there was a definite revulsion against centralized structures in both countries. But whereas Switzerland reverted almost completely to the old order in 1813, the Netherlands knew its period of strongest autocratic rule after 1815. Fears of the older diversity caused the new kings to obtain strong powers. Control over local

governments remained strongly centralized, and to this day the appointment of provincial governors and local mayors rests with the central government.23. Decisive powers were explicitly vested in the national government. Ever since 1813, Dutch political life has tended to be national in scope: constitutional conflicts centered on the national institutions, and political oppositions tended to develop as contestants in one national political arena.

In contrast, nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in Switzerland have been far less centralistic in nature. Not only after 1813, but also after the formation of a genuine political federation in 1848, Swiss politics has remained a very specific compromise between local, regional, and national forms of government. The Swiss Gemeinde has retained many characteristics of autonomous polities, including lifelong administrative and sentimental ties with persons born within its boundaries. The Swiss cantons have remained powerful bodies, with great diversities in structure and policies. And even in the national institutions, regional interests hold an important place. The Swiss Upper House (like the American Senate) continues to give absolute parity to cantons, large or small; the Dutch Eerste Kamer is also elected by the provincial councillors but only after a complex weighting arrangement makes the vote of each council or proportional to population. The Swiss Executive (Bundesrat), composed of only seven members, preserves a careful balance between linguistic and regional interests, unlike the much larger Dutch Cabinets that are formed almost exclusively with an eye to the relative strength of political parties. Also in the election of the Lower House - as well as the day-to-day functioning of political parties - regional forces play a much greater role in Switzerland than in the Netherlands. Being more important than Dutch local government posts, cantonal government positions provide much greater sources of leverage for local politicians within their national parties than can be found in the Netherlands.

Differences in the Cleavage Structure

The much greater, continuing influence of regional factors in Swiss political life strongly affects the degree of politicization of various cleavages. This factor may perhaps be best illustrated in the very different manner in which religious factors have affected the growth of national integration.

Both the Netherlands and Switzerland belong to the mixed religious belt in Europe in which Protestants and Catholics live side by side. In the United Provinces, Calvinism became the established church, even though Catholics never numbered less than a third of the Dutch population. Catholics not only lived in the conquered provinces of Brabant and Limburg, but also formed large minorities - and locally even majorities - in the western parts of the country. Switzerland did not know a national established church; the effective independence of each of the cantons made for the development of specific Catholic and specific Protestant cantons (true to the old Augsburg formula of cuius regio eius religio). Much more so than in the Netherlands, religion was therefore tied to specific regional positions.

This factor had great effect on later developments. The localization of religion in Switzerland in particular cantons exacerbated regional strife. It polarized con-

flict to such an extent that religious conflict led to the regional Sonderbund war in 1847.24.

In the Netherlands, on the other hand, national unification after 1795 had insured equal rights for all religious groups throughout the state. But both the secular claims of the new state and the widespread processes of secularization in society at large provoked Calvinists and Catholics to demand autonomy for their churches and denominational control over education. This issue made religion the dominant dividing line in the formation of modern political parties in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, religion therefore became both an integrative and a divisive force. It split mixed religious local communities, and built strong organizational links among like-minded believers across the nation. The strong institutional build-up of Calvinist and Catholic organizations led to a strong segmentation of the Dutch nation in separate subcultural communities of Calvinists, Catholics, and more secular groups. But this new division, while splitting the country along a new dimension, integrated and nationalized political life.

The subordination of regional to religious cleavages can be best illustrated by the example of the Dutch Catholics. About half of the Dutch Catholics live in the two southern provinces of Brabant and Limburg. These provinces shared a common history, similar patterns of speech, and religious outlook with neighboring Belgium. Belgian Catholicism exercised a strong influence on these southern provinces, not the least because a Catholic hierarchy had disappeared in the north when Calvinists captured the leadership of the Dutch Revolt at the end of the sixteenth century. Until very late, only weak administrative links and at most tenuous integrationist contacts on the level of a narrow political elite linked Brabant and Limburg between 1650 and 1850 with the remainder of the Netherlands. These circumstances would seem to make Brabant and Limburg natural candidates for secessionist stirrings. Why then did these not materialize?

The explanation probably lies in differences in the timing of political mobilization. Brabant and Limburg remained for a long time the least developed, most traditional part of the Netherlands. Northern Catholics, on the other hand - living as distinct minority groups in a part of the country that modernized earliest - developed a more definite political consciousness than their southern brethren. Sensitive to the massive Protestantism that surrounded them, these Catholic minorities demanded a return of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in order to secure their identity with a definite organizational base. The resurrection of the Catholic hierarchy in 1853 - and later joint political action for other Catholic interests - strengthened organizational links between Catholics of all parts of the country. The fight on behalf of separate Catholic interests simultaneously promoted the integration of Brabant and Limburg in the Dutch nation.

In both the Netherlands and Switzerland, then, religion was an important cleavage line. But the much greater political centralization of the Dutch state made religion less a regional than a national source of political conflict. Much more so than in Switzerland, regional factors were subordinated to national partisan alignments. If in Switzerland religion was one factor in a highly diversified society, in the Netherlands the contest between Calvinists, Catholics, and more secular ele-

ments of the society became of overriding importance; in this process a strongly integrated, but religiously segmented political community developed.

We can make this statement more general. Partly due to the much greater role of regional factors, Swiss political culture is more highly fragmented than Dutch political culture.25. Factors of class, religion, language, and regionalism intersect one another at numerous points. None of these factors have assumed dominant importance, and in many cases the potential for politicization of any one cleavage line has been minimized by rival claims of other possible divisions. Swiss politics, too, might be dubbed ‘the politics of accommodation.’26. But accommodationist practices are diffused among many more sites and arenas than in the Netherlands, where religion (and to a lesser extent class) came to subordinate other potential cleavages as the basis on which political organizations were formed and political decisions made.

Consociational democracy and Dutch and Swiss experience

In this final section, we shall raise, on the basis of Swiss and Dutch experience, some more general theoretical questions. These are important if one seeks to generalize from the experiences of these two countries to wider issues of possible models of nation-building. Two issues deserve special attention: (a) to what extent is consociationalism a matter of free choice for political elite groups; and (b) is the model of consociationalism restricted to nations of smaller size?

Consociationalism as Free Choice?

In the argument of Arend Lijphart, consociational democracy should be seen above all as a result of ‘deliberate efforts to counteract the immobilizing and destabilizing effects of cultural fragmentation,’ undertaken by leaders of rival subcultures; Lijphart defines consociational democracy as ‘government by elite cartel designed to turn a democracy with a fragmented political culture into a stable democracy.’ Implicit in this reasoning is the statement that certain political societies develop such sharp cleavages, that only the ‘deliberate joint effort by the elites [can] stabilize the system.’27.

Lijphart's argument is directed against the writings of a generation of scholars who have ascribed the stability of political systems to a combination of a homogeneous political culture and a group structure in which ‘cross-cutting cleavages’ make for overlapping memberships and hence for political moderation. He attributes a vital importance to the stance of political elites who may turn the expected dangers of a fragmented political culture into a ‘self-denying prophecy,’ by counteracting the divisive effects through conscious policies of accommodation. He mentions certain conditions that should be fulfilled for a successful consociational democracy: (1) that the elites have the ability to accommodate the divergent interests and demands of the subcultures; (2) that they have the ability to transcend cleavages and to join in a common effort with the elites of rival subcultures; (3) [that they have] a commitment to the maintenance of the system and to the improvement of its cohesion and stability; (4) finally, that the elites understand the perils of political fragmentation.

These are demanding conditions, but they remain largely on the level of free choice by strategic elite groups. The major theme of the earlier part of this chapter has been that, in the Netherlands and Switzerland, traditions of pluralism and political accommodation long preceded the processes of political modernization. Against Lijphart's views of consociational democracy as the outcome of a desire on the part of elites to counteract the potential threat of political divisions, one might put forth the reverse thesis: earlier consociational practices facilitated the peaceful transition towards newer forms of pluralist political organization in these two countries. Consociationalism, in this view, is not a response to the perils of subcultural splits, but the prior reason why subcultural divisions never did become perilous.

Whereas our analysis starts from a developmental perspective of centuries, Lijphart gives a critical analysis of certain general sociological models that have a somewhat static character. In doing so, Lijphart remains, to some extent, hostage to some of the mechanistic fallacies that underlie the literature on political cleavages. This body of literature often assumes, without adequate political analysis, that social divisions automatically translate themselves into political conflicts, hence the search for cross-cutting cleavages to dampen the explosive potential of polarized cleavage lines. Hence, also Lijphart's quest for counteracting forces on the elite level, when he finds societies in which cross-cutting cleavages seem to be replaced by mutually reinforcing dividing lines. Both views tend to neglect the important question of what forces make for the politicization, or non-politicization of dividing lines. Under general terms like ‘subcultural splits,’ ‘segmentation,’ ‘fragmentation,’ ‘cleavages,’ all manner of social divisions are regarded as loaded with potential political content. Rarely are different cleavage-lines distinguished according to their potential for politicization. Too little attention is paid to the issue of whether earlier politicization of one cleavage line may prevent the exploitation of other possible cleavages. Elite cultures are regarded too much as a dependent variable only: Lijphart's elites act to counteract the perils of ‘objective’ cleavages. In our view, on the other hand, the elite culture is in itself a most important independent variable that may go far to determine how cleavages are handled in a political society, to what extent they become loaded with political tension, and to what degree subcultural divisions are solved in a spirit of tolerance and accommodation, or by violence and repression.

The importance of these theoretical matters for the comparative study of nation-building processes should be obvious. The view of elite culture as an important independent variable forces one to take a long developmental perspective. Differences between existing nation-states are seen to be to a considerable extent the product of earlier forms of state formation.28.

Similarly, the future of nation-building efforts in the new states becomes highly dependent on prior elite experiences. Prevailing ideological outlooks in the new states are not favorable for consociationalist choices. Older pluralist traditions in the new states are strong, but they are regarded generally by present-day political elites as obstacles that should be cleared away, rather than as building-stones from which a new, pluralist nation might be constructed. Later developments will de-

pend to a very large extent on choices now taken. The importance of stressing the various alternative roads to modern statehood, including the consociational one, lies in the need to destroy the widespread assumption that Blut und Eisen is the ‘normal’ path to nation-building.29.

Consociationalism - A Luxury of Small Nations?

Both the Netherlands and Switzerland are smaller nations. It has often been argued that their specific political experiences are related to that fact. A Standard argument holds that smaller nations can practice a certain pattern of political life that larger states could not endure, exactly because these latter states cannot escape the international responsibilities their size forces on them.30. According to this theory, larger states carry a greater political load. They must have certain institutions that allow them to act with sufficient decisiveness. Considerations of defense necessitate a larger army that in turn requires a strong bureaucracy. The need to act rules out the cumbersome accommodationist styles of Swiss or Dutch politics; for that reason electoral systems like proportional representation or accommodationist coalition systems on the level of the cabinet or chief executive are impracticable. In the particular case of Switzerland (or the Netherlands before 1940), the stance was moreover facilitated by the fact that the surrounding powers liked to see neutral states in charge of strategic locations. Even this factor implied neutrality by imposition; it gave these countries a license for internal tolerance and cumbersome pluralism that larger nations could not afford.31.

It is not easy to assess the justification of this body of reasoning. Undoubtedly, countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands fared better in international politics than did many of the larger states, and to the extent to which small size assisted this development, it helped them to maintain the accommodationist practices of older times. But should one grant the argument that larger states must carry the burden of international politics as distinct from actually carrying, let alone preferring to carry it? Did not the once-subject inhabitants of Ticino consciously prefer in 1798 to join the archaic Swiss Republic rather than join an incipient national state in Italy because they preferred internal freedoms to foreign grandeur? Did not in the early nineteenth century many Kleinstaatler in Germany foresee the dangers that the development of a large, new German state might spell both for internal freedoms and external aggressiveness?

The statement that smaller states carry in fact a smaller load in international politics remains debatable. Handling a foreign environment and the impact of foreign influences within their boundaries pose large problems for small states. Not the least of these is survival itself. The Netherlands’ and Switzerland's survival among the states of Europe may possibly be due in some measure to their ability to handle not only internal diversity, but also foreign-imposed loads.


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