Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Ali Akbar Gorji Azandaryani ¹
• Shahriar Hoseini ²

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Public Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

² M.A, Department of Public Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Introduction
Ethnic and cultural diversity, as a social reality, has always existed in the world; however, these diversities become a significant issue when they are integrated into the process of nation-building. Diversities, as an issue, can either lead nation-building to a stable point or ignite the flames of civil wars. In the early stages, states adopted homogeneous cultural policies to resolve diversity through ethnic and cultural assimilation in the name of national unity and integration, as they perceived ethnic and cultural diversity as a kind of obstacle to the creation of a national state. In an ethnically and linguistically diverse society, cultural matters must also be considered pluralistic within the framework of that society's characteristics. However, in the process of nation building within a diverse society, cultural matters are sometimes narrowly defined to accelerate the process and gain political legitimacy, with their scope limited to the cultural components of the majority group. In this case, since the driving force behind nation building urgently requires the support of the majority group, cultural matters are subsumed under political matters. Here, cultural matters are hidden behind the hegemony of power, leading to the destruction of the cultural matters of other groups. In this model of nation building, leaders strive to maintain the internal cohesion of the group they claim to represent by extending political matters into cultural ones. To advance their political goals, they alter cultural markers, even fabricating them, and ultimately subordinate culture to politics. It seems that drawing a hypothetical line to prevent the interference of cultural matters under political matters in the process of nation building is an extremely difficult and complex task.
Materials and Methods
The process of nation-building in Switzerland since the early 19th century has puzzled researchers, raising the question of how Switzerland, with its cultural and linguistic diversity, managed to survive in the heart of Europe amidst neighboring homogeneous nation-building processes. In other words, for those who consider linguistic and cultural homogeneity as essential elements of nation-building, Switzerland's nation-building process is somewhat of a significant anomaly. The approach of this research is legal, historical, and interpretive, based on texts collected through library research, aiming to answer the following questions:
Given the linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity in Switzerland, what path has the foundation and process of nation-building in this country taken to embrace all diversities without the dominance of one language or one culture in the nation-building process? Has cultural matter been separated from political matter in the completion of this country's nation-building process? What is the identity of the Swiss nation? Given the linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity, is it a single-nation or multi-nation state?
Results and Discussion
In the first part, by examining the historical process of the concept of the nation, we have divided nation-building into democratic and non-democratic in relation to the function of cultural matters. In democratic nation-building, efforts are made to define ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversities alongside one another. In the non-democratic process, cultural matters are often subsumed under the concept of political matters, which is why ethnic, cultural, and religious pluralities come into conflict with one another. This leads to the neglect of the fundamental rights of minorities. It is also noteworthy that although short-term successes may be achieved in such nation-building processes, in the long term, they not only fail to bring stability and coherence to the political community in nation-building but also result in a highly fragile constructed nation, which is somewhat incompatible with the ideals of democracy. Non-democratic nation-building involves the strategic selection of specific segments of the population for identity construction, typically those with an ethnic or linguistic majority. From the perspective of various scholars, Switzerland's nation-building can be analyzed through three theoretical frameworks: liberal-multinational, postnational-liberal, and liberal-nationalist or single-nation theories. In fact, what is surprising is that proponents of these theories use Switzerland's nation-building process as a unique case study for their research. However, according to the authors of this study, Switzerland's situation is unlike nation-building processes based on objective components such as shared language, culture, or religion. In other words, in Switzerland, political matters are defined under cultural matters. Therefore, Switzerland's nation-building process cannot be solely limited to a shared or dominant language, race, culture, or religion. In other words, another concept of the nation can be considered, one that does not rely exclusively on the aforementioned components. This concept envisions a subjective state of the nation, which in a way returns to the issue of self-awareness. In Switzerland's nation-building process, cultural matters were never sacrificed or politicized, and the construction of the nation was never the exclusive domain of a privileged class with specific ethnic, linguistic, or religious concepts. Thus, Swiss elites explicitly defined the nation-building process as non-ethnic. Rather, they took into account the existing pluralism at every stage and defined political matters based on it.
Conclusion
The nation in Switzerland is the product of a classical process, and in its completion, no state apparatus, political party, or individual will—unlike most nation-building projects—has been involved. In other words, in most nation-building projects, which follow a top-down process, the cultural matters of the majority group are treated as a political tool. However, in Switzerland's nation-building process, cultural matters such as ethnicity, language, or religion were not used as political instruments under state control to satisfy the majority and forcibly retain the minority. By examining Switzerland's nation-building process, we understand that it has moved from the lowest level of society upward, following a democratic process. Therefore, the classical understanding of Swiss national identity is, to some extent, a political understanding based on a shared conception of republicanism, federalism, direct democracy, and neutrality. None of these political matters are founded on the cultural matters of the majority ethnic group. However, this does not mean that cultural matters were not involved in shaping national identity and completing the nation-building process in Switzerland. On the contrary, both cultural and political matters were involved in this process, but the crucial point lies in how the boundaries between cultural and political matters were drawn, ensuring that one was not sacrificed for the other. Accordingly, Swiss national identity is a two-dimensional identity. At the cantonal and local levels, there are shared and common ethnic and cultural elements, but when the Swiss nation is considered as a whole, there is a political and neutral understanding of linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity. This indicates that being a nation does not require a homogeneous and uniform conception of the elements involved in the nation-building process. Therefore, the conclusion of the research is that a democratic process in nation-building defines political matters under cultural matters, based on which the existing diversities within the society are accepted. This process is time-consuming, but the nation and the national identity constructed from it will be stable and enduring.

Keywords

•  Nation-building in Switzerland
• the cultural and the political
• Multicultural nation-building
• Multilingualism  

Main Subjects

• Political Science