Prominent normative theories for accommodating minority national groups appeal to the value of national cultures and/or the psychology of group recognition. This article aims to show that an argument from political authority provides a better justification. Building on Joseph Raz's theory of authority, the article argues that members of minority national groups are disadvantaged in relation to their majority counterparts under standard democratic institutions; such institutions do not provide minority national groups with comparable access to the conditions for legitimate political (...) authority. Constitutional arrangements for accommodating minority national groups—such as territorial self-government or power-sharing—are justified insofar as they might offset this disadvantage. (shrink)

A prevailing understanding of realism, chiefly among its critics, casts realists as those who seek a ‘distinctively political normativity’, where this is interpreted as meaning nonmoral in kind. Moralists, on this account, are those who reject this and believe that political normativity remains moral. Critics have then focused much of their attention on demonstrating that the search for a nonmoral political normativity is doomed to fail which, if right, would then seem to fatally undermine the realist endeavour. This paper makes (...) the case that casting the difference between realism and moralism in these terms is a mistake, one which overlooks the substantial body of realist work which is clear that it has no such aspirations to develop a nonmoral political normativity. The hope is that in drawing attention to this mistake a line can be drawn under these unhelpful debates, and we can move on to more fruitful constructive and critical discussions between realists and their critics. (shrink)

Mucho se ha escrito para analizar y dar sentido a dos términos que vienen intrínsecamente unidos, el nacionalismo y la nación. La principal consecuencia positiva de esto ha sido un vasto debate teórico sobre el nacionalismo y la nación que indudablemente los enriquece. La principal consecuencia negativa, por su parte, es que el desarrollo del propio debate, y cómo se ha ido formando, ha recibido poca atención. El objetivo de este artículo es exponer cómo este debate se ha sido desarrollado (...) alrededor de los cuatros paradigmas clásicos del nacionalismo. Para ello, se aplica el esquema kuhniano para saber cuándo, cómo, y por qué se articularon estos paradigmas clásicos en torno a estos dos términos. Con esto se pretende profundizar en la explicación histórica de Moreno Almendral (2015), pero desde la filosofía de la ciencia, desarrollando una visión mucho más detallada del debate en torno al nacionalismo y la nación. (shrink)