Social Norms

7 NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION: THE EMERGENCE OF AN INTERNATIONAL NORM Michael Hechter and Elizabeth Borland THIS CHAPTER contrasts two leading views on the emergence of norms: an institutionalist view advocated by many sociologists (see chapters 1 and 10, this volume) and an individualist view, which underlies most economic, rational choice, and evolutionary analyses (see chapters 2, 3, 4, and 9, this volume). These two views are used as prisms through which to examine the emergence of the norm of national self-determination . Self-determination can refer to individuals as well as to groups like nations. For individuals, self-determination is a synonym for the attainment of personal autonomy; it refers to "acting as a causal agent in one's life and making choices and decisions regarding one's quality of life free from ... external influence or interference" (Wehmeyer 1992, 305). For nations, self-determination entails two distinct elements that are often conflated . The first is the belief that citizens should choose their own form of government. The second is the idea that citizens have both the right and the responsibility to determine their own collective identity-that is, "we decide who we are." If, as James Coleman (1990, 243) argues, a norm concerning a specific action exists when the socially defined right to control the action is held not by the actor but by others, then national self-determination surely qualifies as a norm. Here, the act in question is the attainment of sovereignty or substantial autonomy within the framework of a state; and the actor affected by the norm is that collectivity known as the nation-that is, a culturally distinct, spatially concentrated group with a sense of its own history (Hechter 2000). The"others" controlling the action are the members of the community of sovereign states having the power to recognize the sovereignty of any given nation.1 186 NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION 187 The Institutionalist View Although individualists traditionally have paid scant attention to them, norms have always loomed large in the sociologist's lexicon (see chapters 1 and 10, this volume). For many sociologists, norms are quintessentially and irreducibly social; they represent that emergent je ne sais quoi that Emile Durkheim ([1893] 1933) once referred to as the noncontractual basis of contract . Durkheim's emphasis is placed not on the emergence of norms (for he presumed that this process lay beyond the reach of social science) but rather on the conditions promoting their maintenance and diffusion. In one currently popular institutionalist view, norms are regarded as cognitive templates, or frames, that define and designate as appropriate given agendas for action, shaping social institutions and policies in their wake (Meyer et al. 1997; chapter 5, this volume). To the degree that norms are countenanced as part and parcel of people's cognitive apparatus rather than as externally imposed obligations, their enforcement is largely unnecessary . Many such norms are universalistic and diffuse inexorably outward from cultural centers to peripheries. The mechanisms responsible for their diffusion are identity formation and legitimation.2 On this view, the international environment is conceived as nothing less than a world society replete with shared values and norms. Hence, when the norm of national self-determination arises, it becomes a dominant cognitive frame. From this follows a number of empirical implications. Far from requiring enforcement, the norm operates more as an internal state than as a collective obligation. Thus, with respect to national selfdetermination , cultural groups learn to organize their claims for resources around a "national" identity that implies specific kinds of institutions, programs , and policies. To be regarded as a legitimate participant in the international community, actors (here, sovereign polities) must present a face (that is, an identity) that is readily recognizable to other members. Unless an actor sufficiently resembles other members, it cannot be countenanced as a community participant. Because institutionalists believe that norms diffuse through mimicry, they expect norms to be adopted regardless of their instrumental appropriateness .3 For example, a newly sovereign but utterly impoverished country with little in the way of paved roads is nonetheless likely to create a national airline-especially one with at least one Boeing 747. The reason is that having this kind of a national airline is part and parcel of what it means to be a sovereign state in the contemporary era. No state lacking such an airline could be considered legitimate. Even if the necessary resources could be more profitably invested elsewhere-in road construction , for instance-this normative pressure for a national airline...