CONCEPTS of liberty are sometimes divided into "negative" and "positive" varieties. While the distinction is open to criticism, it suggests an analogous distinction with respect to the ideal of state autonomy. The negative aspect of state autonomy is expressed by the principle of nonintervention, which protects the right of a state already recognized as independent "to choose its political, economic, social and cultural systems, without interference in any form by another State."57 The positive aspect of state autonomy is expressed by the principle of self-determination, which holds that colonies or other entities under foreign control have a right to independent statehood.
The difference between these two aspects of state autonomy is that nonintervention imposes a negative requirement that other states not interfere, while self-determination imposes a positive requirement that other states (here, specifically, the colonial or dominant power) stop exercising control over entities claiming the right to be allowed independent statehood.58 Nonintervention is a conservative principle in the sense that its observance tends to preserve the structure of the international order against all nonconsensual changes. Self-determination, however, requires that the structure of the international order be changed and might support intervention by third parties in a group's struggle for independence from foreign rule. While nonintervention takes the political order as it is, self-determination looks behind the political order to the order of social (cultural, ethnic, linguistic) groups and supports efforts to bring political boundaries into alignment with boundaries between groups. Thus, rather than reinforcing each other, the principles of self-determination and of nonintervention may conflict.
Self-determination is one of the most important and most obscure principles of contemporary international law and practice. The principle is important as the justification of the most far-reaching political realignments in recent international history, those associated with the collapse of imperialism and the post-World War II movement toward colonial independence. As a result, the principle has rapidly been accepted as a main principle of international law. The concept is twice mentioned in the United Nations Charter (articles 2[4] and 55) and is cited as authority for the General Assembly's call for "the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples" in Resolution 1,514 (XX) of 14 December 1960. 59 In the last fifteen years, the General Assembly has reaffirmed this call almost annually, each time citing the principle of self-determination as if it were a self-evident first principle 60
While self-determination derives its importance from its role in the justification of colonial independence, it derives its obscurity from attempts to use it to justify other international realignments. In the mid-nineteenth century, the principle was formulated (e.g., by Mazzini) to justify the unification of such fragmented nations as Italy and Germany. Early in the twentieth century, it was appealed to by Woodrow Wilson, among others, in negotiations over the post-World War I boundaries in Europe and the settlement of colonial claims.61 Lenin relied on the principle to promote opposition to colonial regimes, and in his polemic with Bukharin, Luxemburg, and others to characterize nationalism as a revolutionary force in the age of imperialism 62 More recently, the principle has been invoked in support of the struggles of oppressed racial majorities (in Rhodesia and South Africa) for self-rule. It has been appealed to in criticism of the effects on poor countries of private foreign investment and multinational corporate activity. What may become another period of international realignment has been signaled by the demands of racial and cultural minorities within established states for recognition as independent peoples under this principle.
As the diversity of appeals to self-determination suggests, the principle can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Indeed, it has become so flexible a rhetorical device that some might think it to have lost its moral content. Although, as I shall argue, such a conclusion would be extreme, the principle as stated above is ambiguous in at least three important ways, all illustrated by the various appeals to it mentioned. First, it is not clear whether the "self" in "self-determination" refers to the government or to the population of a group. Does the principle simply require the creation of an independent government among a previously dependent group, or does it require, in addition, that the new government be "self-government," i.e., institutionally responsible to its people? A second ambiguity concerns the identities of groups eligible to claim a right of self-determination. Standard applications of the principle involve colonial populations with memberships that are, in some sense, already established; but why should the scope of the principle be so restricted? Finally, one might wonder what kind of "independence" would satisfy the principle. Is the severing of legal bonds sufficient, or does the principle also require dissolution of the economic and social relationships that may permit foreigners to continue to exert influence inside the colonized area even after formal independence has been achieved?
These are the philosophical perplexities that any account of the moral basis of self-determination should address. I shall attempt to do so by beginning with standard cases of colonial self-determination, and asking whether and to what extent the moral arguments in those cases shed light on the ambiguities distinguished above. My overall concern is to see how our common-sense understanding of self-determination is affected by my earlier criticisms of the idea of state autonomy.
Perhaps the most obvious justification of self-determination follows from the prima facie impermissibility of governing people without their consent.63 Arguments of this variety hold that the state legitimately exercises coercive power over its members only if they have previously consented to their terms of association. Thus, colonial rule, which is seldom con-sensual, is illegitimate and must give way to a form of government to which the governed have agreed. On this view, self-determination is merely a special case of freedom of association; to deny a group this right is to infringe what is widely thought to be a fundamental personal liberty.
I have considered the inadequacies of freedom of association as the basis of governmental legitimacy in my discussion of nonintervention. I argued that there are few, if any, governments that can be described accurately as free associations in the sense of actually having been consented to by all of their citizens. Nevertheless, we are prepared to regard non-voluntary political institutions as legitimate provided they conform to appropriate principles of justice. These considerations undermine the argument for self-determination in the following way. If government in general need not be based on consent, then colonial rule cannot be opposed simply because it is not based on consent. The successor governments to colonial ones-that is, the indigenous governments that take over after colonies gain their independence-will be as arbitrary as the colonial governments themselves in the sense that neither can be justified by considerations of consent. Mill pictured self-determination as liberation from repressive foreign "yokes" imposed on people without their consent.64 But if successor governments are similarly nonconsensual, one might wonder what makes a domestic yoke more acceptable than a foreign one.
A possible response would be that colonial independence is usually marked by plebiscites, free elections of government officials, and the like. One might say that such measures of consent provide a justification of claims for self-determination in two ways. First, they express a desire for independence that deserves respect regardless of the justice of colonial arrangements. Persons have a right to withdraw from the political institutions of which they are members even when the institutions are perfectly just, provided, at least, that their particular outstanding obligations have been satisfied. Second, consent to new institutions expressed through these devices provides the institutions with some measure of legitimacy even if they do not conform to appropriate principles of justice. Unjust institutions may carry out policies that are actually favored by the vast bulk of a population, and it may well be the case that postcolonial governments, even when they are no more just than colonial ones, are preferable for this reason.
This response is unsatisfactory. First, its premise is problematic. While such measures of consent as plebiscites and free elections of government officials may be typical of the achievement of colonial independence, they are not present in all such cases. Consider, for example, cases in which it is institutionally impossible to conduct free and fair elections but claims of a right to self-determination are pressed by revolutionary leaders on behalf of the population of a colony. Even in the absence of a majority's expressed desire for independence, such claims sometimes seem to be justifiable. If this is correct, majority consent to colonial independence is not necessary to justify claims of a right to self-determination pressed on behalf of a colony's population. Furthermore, majority consent does not seem sufficient to justify such claims. As I pointed out above, the institutions through which consent is expressed are themselves in need of justification. Furthermore, in most cases of colonial self-determination, there will probably be minorities who do not give their consent to the new arrangements, either because they oppose independence altogether or because they favor a different postcolonial government than that supported by the majority. The independent government requires a justification against the competing preferences of such minorities, but such a justification cannot be provided in terms of consent. The independent government also requires a justification from the point of view of others who are nonvoluntarily subject to its control, like succeeding generations of citizens, children, the illiterate, and those who are simply too apolitical to care. In all of these cases, the majority's expressed desire for independence is not sufficient to justify its claim for self-determination. Something more needs to be said.
Although the argument from consent to self-determination is inadequate as given above, it suggests the direction in which to look for a more satisfactory account. As in the case of nonintervention, we might formulate the argument in terms of hypothetical consent. Then the argument for self-determination is that colonial rule violates principles of justice that would be agreed to by rational citizens of the colony as expressing the terms of their association, and independence is required to remedy the injustices of colonial rule. Perhaps one principle that would be chosen is -a principle of representative self-government: legitimate governments must include mechanisms that make government officials electorally responsible to their citizens. If such a principle would be chosen, then colonial rule almost always would be illegitimate since, almost always, it violates the principle of representative self-government. Thus majority consent might be taken into account as part of a broader doctrine of political legitimacy. But the principle of representative self-government is probably not the only principle that would be agreed to--another would be some sort of principle of just distribution--and perhaps it would not be agreed to at all. It is at least conceivable that representative institutions would be limited in their scope because of the demands of rapid and equitable economic development or the constraints of low levels of education and primitive systems of mass communication.65 In any event, this reformulation of the argument for self-determination as a remedy for injustice helps to explain the fact that self-determination has been appealed to by those suffering a wide variety of perceived injustices. The claim may be as firmly justified on grounds of exploitation and distributive inequity as it is, on the more conventional interpretation, on grounds of an absence of representative institutions.
The idea that self-determination is a means for promoting conformity with principles that would be agreed to in a hypothetical social contract is supported by an analysis of the moral considerations underlying the foremost arguments of the apologists for imperialism and their critics. It has often been claimed that subject peoples must be prepared for political independence before being granted it. Perhaps Mill's formulation of this claim is the most famous: "[N]ations which are still barbarous have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners. Independence and nationality, so essential to the due growth and development of a people further advanced in improvement, are generally impediments to theirs."66 Mill's view is an example of the more general position that colonialism is justified by its beneficial effects on subject peoples. Thus, for example, Disraeli defended military coercion of subject peoples on the ground that only British rule could provide "order and justice" and that these were good things for any political community,67 and Marx thought that imperialism would lay the groundwork for economic and social modernization.68 These justifications of colonialism implicitly hold that its effects are in the interests of the subject groups.
Today, such justifications are widely rejected. While one reason is that the effects of imperialism are more clearly understood, it is more interesting for present purposes to see what moral considerations are involved in the rejection of these justifications of colonialism. In this regard, the main problem has to do with identifying the interests of subject groups in the absence of a fair social-decision procedure that would make them manifest. When a group is unable to make important choices for itself (because it lacks appropriate institutions), and when others are in a position to choose for it, how should the choices be made?
This is a typical problem of paternalism.69 Some principle is needed for identifying those benefits or burdens that can permissibly be imposed on persons who are unable to give their consent to the imposition. A rough approximation of such a principle is that only benefits the recipients are unable to provide for themselves, but that they would rationally choose to have provided, if they were in a position to choose, should fall into this class.70 Thus, two questions are relevant to the evaluation of the view that colonialism is justified by its beneficial effects on subject peoples. First, are the benefits a subject group might derive from alien rule such that they would be rationally agreed to by members of the subject group if they were in a position to choose for themselves? Second, would they agree to alien rule as the best way to secure these benefits (that is, would the cost involved be acceptable to them)?
If the potential benefits of colonial rule are described in a suitably general way as provision of social infrastructure, agricultural development, education and technology, and so on, it seems relatively uncontroversial that rational members of subject groups would choose them (although there might be disagreement about the form in which these benefits should be provided) because these benefits are necessary for the improvement of living standards and the development of a capacity to sustain these improvements for subsequent generations. Some degree of socioeconomic development might also be necessary, as Mill claims, as a precondition of effective self-government. Perhaps this would not have been so two or three centuries ago, but it seems inescapable today.71 Certainly the demands of colonized areas after the last world war, and of poor countries today, lend support to this supposition. It is the second question-whether the cost of securing these benefits through colonial rule is acceptable-that is the heart of the case against colonialism. The argument usually given is that the colonial policies of the European powers imposed large costs on subject peoples by creating a variety of new social problems, increased distributive inequalities, structural economic distortions, and unbalanced economic growth which may have led, in some cases, to absolute as well as relative deprivation in the lower classes.72 Furthermore, it is widely questioned whether colonial rule was more than marginally effective in providing the immediate benefits that have been advanced as its justification. In any event, it is unlikely that colonial policies generally helped prepare subject peoples for self-government; the instability of postcolonial democracies and the frequency of resort to authoritarian rule suggest that the opposite is more nearly the case.73
These claims seem plausible, but it is not necessary to settle the complex empirical issues raised by them here. The important points are that any moral defense or criticism of colonialism along these lines presupposes a principle distinguishing justified from unjustified paternalism, and that a plausible formulation of such a principle draws the distinction with reference to what the persons affected would consent to, if they were in a position to give their consent. If principles of social justice can be viewed as outcomes of a hypothetical social contract, it might be said that the moral argument about the supposed benefits of colonialism is an argument about whether, and to what extent, it promotes or impedes the development of just institutions among subject groups. This lends support to the proposal that claims of a right of colonial self-determination should be understood as remedies for social injustice.
In view of my earlier remarks about the arbitrariness of nonconsensual governments, someone might object that colonial regimes and postcolonial (independent) governments could be similar in the sense that neither conforms to the principles of justice that would be chosen by rational members of the group. While colonial rule is usually illegitimate according to these principles, there is no assurance that successor governments will be any more legitimate according to the same principles. Indeed, the historical record provides cases (e.g., that of the South Moluccans in Indonesia) in which the departure of imperialist powers was vocally regretted by members of colonial populations because of the harm they expected to suffer in consequence. Do such possibilities undermine the case for colonial self-determination?
Perhaps it is obvious enough that such an objection is overstated, but it is interesting to see why. The first thing to note is that the objection draws into question the empirical generalization that the granting of independence from colonial rule usually diminishes social injustice, but it does not touch the philosophical claim that self-determination, when it has a justification, should be justified as a remedy for injustice. Beyond this, while it seems unlikely that the generalization is entirely false, it may not be entirely true, either. What is certain is that members of colonized groups have the right to just institutions; whether they have a right of self-determination depends on the extent to which the granting of independence would, in their particular circumstances, help to minimize injustice.74 While this seems frequently to have been true, it can only be settled definitely (if it can be settled at all) with reference to particular cases.
A potentially more serious objection to my view of the moral basis of colonial self-determination emerges from the possible conflict of justice and consent. Imagine the following kind of case. Country A is an imperial country, and area B, a territorially distinct area with generally accepted boundaries, is A's colony. Since A is the most benevolent of all possible imperial countries, there is no reason to think that granting independence to B will decrease the amount of social injustice in B; indeed, the opposite seems more likely because of various political and economic complications inside B which we don't need to explain. Nonetheless, the residents of B, in a fair and free election, overwhelmingly indicate their preference for national independence. On my view of self-determination, A should resist, but, intuitively, this seems implausible. Do such possibilities damage the view?
This objection is weaker than it may seem. It simply does not apply to many real world cases, for one or more of the following reasons: the imperial country involved is not as benevolent as the example requires; or, notwithstanding the benevolence of the imperial country, the long-term interests of justice would best be served by allowing the colony to develop an indigenous governing capacity, despite some short-term costs; or, the majority in favor of independence is not really overwhelming, and important problems of minority rights would be created by yielding to demands for the rapid granting of independence. Any of these conditions would diminish the force of the objection, either because the policy favored by the population would actually accord with justice, or because the supposed consent of the population should carry less weight than we assume at first glance.
The only case in which my view would not suffice is the case in which an overwhelming majority of the colonial population expresses a desire for national independence, great injustices would not be done to dissenting minorities, and the other injustices consequent to independence are known to and would be suffered by the majority itself. If all of these conditions hold, then it is difficult to imagine any reason why the expressed wishes of the population should not take precedence over considerations of social justice. This is a matter about which intuitions differ, but the view that expressed consent takes priority over considerations of institutional justice finds some support in the common-sense idea that apparent wrongs can be legitimized by the actual, informed consent of those who suffer them.75
In summary, claims of a right of self-determination, when pressed by or on behalf of residents of a colony, are properly understood as assertions that the granting of independence would help reduce social injustice in the colony. This view avoids the arbitrariness of flat assertions of a fundamental, absolute right of independence (it can always be asked, why is there such a right?) and the possible parochialism of views linking independence to conceptions of representative self-government prevalent in economically developed, western societies. However, the view has the important consequence that the validity of any particular claim of a right of self-determination can only be assessed with the aid of complex empirical considerations together with a theory of social justice appropriate to the group involved. These areas of complexity may help explain why applications of the principle are so congenitally controversial.
At the beginning of this section, I noted three ambiguities that any satisfactory account of the moral basis of self-determination should illuminate. For the first of these-whether self-determination requires self-government inside a former colony as well as the granting of political independence-the solution should now he evident. Self-determination is a means to the end of social justice. Part of the injustice of colonial rule might he that it involves a denial of a right to representative institutions, hut whether this is, in fact, the case depends on the contents of the principles of social justice appropriate to particular groups. I have taken no position on the contents of these principles, except to suppose that their contents may vary from group to group (perhaps for reasons of cultural value or material circumstance) and that, as a result2 we should not simply assume that social justice always requires representative institutions in the sense familiar to liberal political theory. If this supposition is correct, then no definite solution can be given to the first ambiguity that will apply to all cases. A resolution of the ambiguity for any particular case requires an exploration of the substantive requirements of social justice in that case.
There are two other ambiguities-whether self-determination properly applies to groups other than colonial populations, and whether it requires revision of informal (particularly economic) lines of influence as well as severance of formal political bonds. Some light is shed on both problems by my view of the basis of self-determination, but since both problems are complex, I shall discuss them separately in the following sections.
57 General Assembly Resolution 2,131 (XX), 21 December 1965. United Nations General Assembly, Official Records: Twentieth Session, Supp. no.14 (A/6,014) (New York, 1966), p.12.
58 This difference is sometimes put in terms of a distinction between "internal" and "external" self-determination, where internal self-determination refers to nonintervention. See Rupert Emerson, "Self-Determination," 465-66.
59 "All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political Status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development." United Nations General Assembly, Official Records: Fifteenth Session, Supp. to 16 (A/4,684) (New York, 1961), p.67.
60 The most important recent statement of "the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples" is in the "Declaration ... concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States." Annex to Resolution 2,625(XXV), 24 October 1970. United Nations General Assembly, Official Records: Twenty-fifth Session, Supp. 00. 28 (A/8,028) (New York, 1971), pp.123-24. For more detailed discussions of the recent career of the principle in United Nations practice, see Rosalyn Higgins, The Development of International Law through the Political Organs of the United Nations, pp.90-106; and Emerson, "Self-Determination," pp. 459-75. There is a skeptical view of the principle's status in international law in Leo Gross, "The Right of Self-Determination in International Law."
61 See, for example, Alfred Cobban, The Nation State and National Self-determination, pp.52-53. Unfortunately, Wilson never managed to formulate the principle very clearly or to explore the possible difficulties in its application.
62 V.I. Lenin, "The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination," pp.153-54. See also Stephen E Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, pp.34-38
63 Mill justified his principle of national self-determination on similar grounds, among others: "[TI he question of government ought to be decided by the governed." Considerations on Representative Government [1861, ch. 16, p. 547. See also John Plamenatz, On Alien Rule and Self-Government p.1.
64 Mill, 'Non-intervention," p. 176.
65 I do not mean to take a position here on the choice of principles for groups characterized by low levels of development or of well-being. I claim only that it is not obvious that all legitimate governments must include representative institutions in the sense familiar to liberal theory.
66 Mill, "Non-intervention," p. 167. It is worth noting that the General Assembly's "Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples" specifically rules out such a justification for the continuance of colonial control. Resolution 1,514 (XV), 14 December 1960. Official Records: Fifteenth Session, Supp. no. 16 (A/4,684) (New York, 1961), p.67.
67 Speech to the House of Lords, 8 April 1878, quoted in Richard Koebner and Helmut Dan Schmidt, Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840-1960, pp. 136-37.
68 Karl Marx, "The Future Results of British Rule in India" [1853].
69 The connection of imperialism with paternalism is discussed clearly by J. A. Hobson in his seminal, and still valuable, book, Imperialism: A Study [1902], pp.228-32.
70 Here I follow Gerald Dworkin, "Paternalism," pp.1 19-25.
71 See J. Roland Pennock, "Political Development, Political Systems, and Political Goods," pp. 420-26.
72 A useful discussion of this broad issue, which is sensitive to the need to take account of the multiple causes of backwardness in excolonial areas, is Michael Barratt Brown, After Imperialism, esp. pp. 158-86.
73 The question of the causal relevance of colonial conditions to postcolonial authoritarianism in new states has evoked a large empirical literature. As one might expect, findings vary widely with particular historical conditions and assumptions about historical explanation. See, for example, Aristide R. Zolberg, "Military Intervention in the New States of Tropical Africa."
74 The phrase "help to minimize injustice" is used advisedly. It may be that some cases--perhaps including that of the South Moluccans--require a complicated balancing of injustices avoided by, and those created by, decolonization. Obviously, the best political strategy is one that seeks to minimize overall injustice, but it would be silly not to recognize that the elimination of some injustices might give rise to others.
75 For a further discussion, see Michael A. Slote, "Desert, Consent and Justice," esp. pp.332-36 and 343-47.