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ISSUES OF SELF-DETERMINATION, ed. William Twining, Aberdeen University Press, 1991, 163 pages, Price: £18.95. The disintegration of the Russian Empire, the rise of intense nationalism in Western Europe and the Third World controversially so-called and attempts to forge a new political order transcending the sovereign state without dissolving the nation provide an international setting for the evaluation of the anthology of essays entitled Issues of Self-Determination. This book grew out of carefully selected and revised papers presented at The Fourteenth World Congress of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy organised in Edinburgh, Scotland in August 1989 on behalf of the U.K. chapter of the Association. The book addresses in twelve chapters five main issues, viz (i) the concept of nationalism and its philosophical underpining, (ii) the North/South dichotomy and the alleviation of "radical inequality" in the Third World, (iii) self-determination and self-development as fundamental human rights, (iv) the issue of autochthony in the post-colonial era even though the constitutional term is nowhere mentioned in the text, and finally (v) the feasibility and desirability of creating supra-national states transcending sovereign states without dissolving the latter. The contributors fall naturally into two camps, namely, the Europeans whose political and moral philosophies are GraecoRoman and Judeo-Christian respectively (see De George, ch. l; MacCormick, ch. 2; and Gosling, ch. 6) and the Third World contributors who are adherents of the critical legal scholarship (see Shivji, ch. 5, Macduff, ch. 9; and Rivera-Ramos, ch. 10). In considering nationalism, the core of the disputation, the objective definition of the term "nation" seems to have been adopted. It is generally accepted that common heritage such as language, literature, legend and mythology - - in short, some degree of common consciousness-- is a sine qua non. Only Bengoetxea(ch. 11) rediscovered Professor B.O. Nwabueze's subjectivist approach 1 which "focuses attention on the way people see and explain themselves to 1

See Constitutionalism in the Emergent States, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973, 82-83.

104 The Liverpool Law Review VoL XIV(1) [1992]

themselves and to others" (Bengoetxea, p. 139). If there are nations or sub-nations as defined above within a nation-state, the issue of nationalism is not only philosophically defensible as persuasively argued by Professor MacCormick in Chapter 2 but also brings into focus the rights naturally vested in these peoples collectively and as members of ethnic groups (i.e. the rights of self-determination and self-development). Whilst the right of self-determination is universally recognised as a fundamental right but does not include the right to secede (see MacCormick, ch. 2; Michalska, ch. 7; and Bhalla, ch. 8), the right of self-development is a nascent right (Shivji, ch. 5). This raises the pertinent questions: is the right of self-development a "nascent right" or an integral part of the right of self-determination? Are the Russian states breaking away from the Federalist USSR exercising the same right of self-development that the Biafrans sought to exercise but were denied by the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the bitter struggle that raged between 1967 and 1970? Suprisingly, the European contributions failed to look beyond the West for an understanding of the rise of nationalism; which is not a European problem but a global problem. If they did, some interesting answers to the questions posed would have emerged. An interesting paradigm inadvertently omitted is Nigeria. Nigeria is a Federal Republic made up of 400 ethnic groups divided into thirty sub-states with a population of over 100 millions inhabiting an area of 913,072.64 square kilometers. In other words, one African in six is Nigerian.2 A serious attempt to tackle the issues of nationalism and self-determination should have taken cognizance of Nigeria in particular because of its sociological significance sharing similar attributes as the USSR and on a knife-edge or any other populous Third World country for that matter. Two important contributions broach the problem of grinding poverty in the Third World (Ramose, ch. 4 and Gosling, ch. 6). Whilst Ramose evaluates the philosophy of decolonisation, Gosling reviews the underpinning philosophy of the North/South debate concluding that the North for historical reasons owe the South the duty to alleviate radical inequality. The "captive mind syn2

See Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism, University of Wisconsin Press, 1976, 275.

Book Review 105 d r o m e " - - the blind emulation of the practices and systems of their erstwhile colonial masters by the new independent s t a t e s - is also a problem addressed by two contributors (Shivji, ch. 5 and RiveraRamos, ch. 10). For Rivera-Ramos, the reproduction of consent by overt cultural imperialism (in this case the USA over Puerto Rico) is a denial of self-determination whilst Professor Shivji maintains that the relations between the South and the North remain exploitative in favour of the latter and a negation of the right of the African peoples to self-determination. Arising from this is the issue of constitutional and legal autochthony n the development of home-bred systems in the " I t . d World as a means of transforming flag independence to economic i n d e p e n d e n c e - which is passed over in silence by Shivji and Rivera-Ramos and glossed over by Ian Macduff in his critical legal study of Maori rights in New Zealand under the Treaty of Waitangi 1840 (ch. 9). Perhaps the most important contribution to the discourse on selfdetermination is the stimulating discussion by Bengoetxea and Thomas of the feasibility or desirability of creating a supra-national state in Europe without dissolving the nation states. Although both arrived at similar conclusions, Huw Thomas's sophisticated framework based on the ideas of Jean Monnet and the neofunctionalists is deceptively attractive and, according to Thomas, will operate at three levels, namely, supranational, national and sub-state national. In this order, the national entities (such as Wales and Scotland) within the EC will move up from "sub-state" to the "state" level of membership and there will be "general probing of sovereignty pledged to the cause of European Union" on Federalist or Confederalist basis and the EC will be the chief actor on the international level. Whilst this might lead to "nationalism decoupled from the traditional "'sovereign~ state, [producing] a healthy outcome" for Scottish and Welsh nationalism, its implementation bristles with practical constitutional problems. A confederation is a political association of strong autonomous states with a loose centre but the tendency to secede makes it unattractive. Federalism, according to Kenneth Wheare, is "the method of dividing powers so that central and regional governments are each, within a shere, coordinate and i n d e p e n d e n t ~. Under this constitutional arrangement there is a strong centre and four possible paradigms viz (i) classical federalism

106 The Liverpool Law Review VoL XIV(1) [1992] or federalism of the "Federalist Essays" (the USA and Australia), (ii) quasi-federalism (a term coined by Wheare to designate federal systems in Switzerland and Canada which fall short of the classical system), fiii) military federalism, a term coined by Dr. Elaigwu 3 to describe the military superstructure imposed on the federal system in Nigeria and (iv) cooperative federalism-- the mere reduction of independent governments to mere administrative entities. If one could look into the seeds of time and say which grain would grow and which would not, one could clearly say that the harsh realities of politics and the political climate in the United Kingdom suggest a different synthesis from Huw Thomas's juridico-political structure. In spite of the hiatuses, the book is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate on nationalism and is strongly recommended to those interested in philosophy of law and social philosophy. Solomon E Salako"

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In A.B. Al