Council Democracy as a Mode of Autonomy: a Comparative Approach

One of the most persistent questions in modern political theory is how to accommodate minority aspirations before they become demands claims to nationhood and demands for independence. Most nation-states have been ignoring this question, while several liberal democracies have adopted liberal multicultural models of integration or accommodation (Kymlicka 2007). In general, though, these models of integration and accommodation take their cue from Eurocentric interpretations of democracy, in which (I) the nation is promoted as the primary political community/agency/subject; (II) the nation-state is promoted as the primary political organisation; and (III) representative institutions and processes are the primary means of political participation. This mode of democracy, with its models of territorial and cultural autonomy tailored for minorities, inevitably leads to competing nationalisms. For, in this mode of democracy “‘society’ is defined in terms of the nation‐state”, where “the state and nation coincide”; which, in turn, means the normalisation of state (and minority) nationalism(s) that might eventually “either split up multination states so as to enable all national groups to form their own nation‐state, through secession and the redrawing of boundaries; or enable the largest or most powerful national group within each multination state to use state‐nationalism to destroy all competing national identities” (Kymlicka and Straehle 1999, 65–67, 76). However, there are political movements that propose and experiment with a completely different mode of democracy, and by extension, of autonomy. This paper focuses on three of such proposals: those of the Kurdish movements in Turkey and Syria, and two indigenous movements, the Zapatistas and the town of Cheran, in Mexico. The movements seem to experiment with an alternative form of government that echo Arendt's arguments about the council system. Despite important differences, what appears to be common to these movements is that members bear arms, that they claim that their council democracy enables them to make laws in accordance with their customs and live by them, and that they make no claim to independence; on the contrary, they seek to reconcile their aspirations with the Turkish, Syrian and Mexican constitutions. Moreover, council democracy in these cases is conceived as a form of autonomy alternative to representative democracy: citizens participate in political decision-making processes directly via convening in local councils and assemblies. These organs appear to have the ultimate authority over public affairs within territories that constitute a residential community such as villages, neighbourhoods, towns and cities. Therefore, autonomy based on councils, which I call council autonomy, appears to be at odds with the principles of parliamentary sovereignty and representative democracy. Challenging nationalism, national sovereignty, the nation-state and representative institutions and processes, these movements promote (I) direct political participation; (II) identify small-scale communities as primary political communities with political power and agency; (III) and propose confederal political organisation within and/or instead of nation-states. The paper argues that these are re-configurations of democracy, akin to the council system as an alternative to the party system proposed by Hannah Arendt (1958; 1963).