The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (174 page)

(1689–1755)
French political philosopher, historian, and novelist, often seen as one of the founders of sociology. As feudal landowner, magistrate, and president of the Parlement of Bordeaux, he was a complete member of the
ancien régime
establishment, but his extreme relativism cast doubt on all absolutes, not only the doctrines of the Church but even those of the French
Enlightenment
to which he belonged.
Montesquieu saw human beings as fundamentally insecure. They have neither the certainty of instinct without any capacity for choice as have other animals, nor the certainty of perfect knowledge as has God. Individuals must accept the influence of their environment—perhaps Montesquieu's best known idea is the effect of climate—but as societies develop, more choices can be made although human beings must always use their limited reason with care.
In his best political work,
L'Esprit des lois
(usually translated as
The spirit of the laws
, 1748), Montesquieu divided political systems between despotism based on fear, republics based on virtue, and monarchies based on honour. Despotism is unnatural, whereas other political systems are natural. Which should be adopted depends upon particular circumstances.
In the modern world, Montesquieu preferred monarchy. One ideal form was the pre-modern French system, with the Church, the military aristocracy, and the legal aristocracy as three groups able to restrain the monarch and each other because of their independent moral or social positions. The other was the English system, which added the new commercial spirit to the monarchical principle of honour. This permitted the development of liberty in its modern form, as a sphere of life for each individual free from collective interference, as opposed to the ancient form, typical of the republic, which involved the direct exercise of power through participation by the citizen class, but excluded modern liberty.
Montesquieu argued that English government, unlike French, was characterized by a working separation of powers. Whether or not this was true, it deeply influenced the framers of the US Constitution.
CS 

 
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(1858–1941)
Italian sociologist. His
The Ruling Class
(1896) was one of the first detailed statements of the claim that even in a representative democracy there was a small circulating élite which not only did rule but ought to. See also
élitism
.

 
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Most Favoured Nation
(MFN)

The Most Favoured Nation principle is contained in Article One of
GATT
and its successor, the
World Trade Organization
(WTO). The name is confusing. It prohibits discriminatory treatment in international trade by providing that trade concessions or agreements with any one GATT partner must unconditionally be extended to all others. In this way any bilateral concession immediately becomes ‘multilateralized’. Customs Unions are permitted as exceptions to MFN under certain conditions, and the principle may also be violated as part of ‘antidumping’ retaliation.
GU 

 
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The term ‘multiculturalism’ emerged in the 1960s in Anglophone countries in relation to the cultural needs of non-European migrants. But it now means the political accommodation by the state and/or a dominant group of all minority cultures defined first and foremost by reference to race or ethnicity; and more controversially, by reference to nationality, aboriginality or religion, the latter being groups that tend to make larger claims and so tend to resist having their claims reduced to those of immigrants.
The ethnic assertiveness associated with multiculturalism has been part of a wider current of ‘identity’ politics which has transformed the idea of equality as sameness to equality as difference. Black power, feminist and gay pride movements challenged the ideal of equality as assimilation and contended that a positive self-definition of group difference was more liberative. The rejection of the idea that political concepts such as equality and citizenship can be colour-blind and culture-neutral, that ethnicity and culture cannot be confined to some so-called private sphere but shape political and opportunity structures in all societies, is one of the most fundamental claims made by multiculturalism and the politics of difference. It is the basis for the conclusion that allegedly ‘neutral’ liberal democracies are part of a hegemonic cultures that systematically de-ethnicize or marginalize minorities. Hence, the claim that minority cultures, norms and symbols have as much right as their hegemonic counterparts to state provision and to be in the public space, to be ‘recognised’ as groups and not just as culturally-neutered individuals.
The African-American search for dignity has contributed much to this politics, yet, ironically, it has shifted attention from socio-economic disadvantage, arguably where African-Americans' need is greatest. For multiculturalism in the US seems to be confined to the field of education and, uniquely, to higher education, especially arguments about the curriculum in the Humanities. Academic argument has, however, no less than popular feeling, been important in the formulation of multiculturalism, with the study of colonial societies and political theory being the disciplines that have most forged the terms of analysis. The ideas of cultural difference and cultural group have been central to anthropology and other related disciplines focused on ‘primitive’ and non-European societies. The arrival in the metropolitan centres of peoples studied by scholars from these disciplines has made the latter experts on migrants and their cultural needs. They also enabled critics from previously colonised societies, often themselves immigrants to the ‘North’, to challenge the expert and other representations of the culturally subordinated. These intellectual developments have been influenced by the failure of the economic ‘material base’ explanations of the cultural ‘superstructure’.
The prominence of political theory too is due to a disciplinary dynamic. John Rawls' focus on justice in a context of value pluralism has led the next generation of political theorists to define their questions more in terms of the nature of community and minority rights than in terms of distributive justice, no less than their social theory peers define it in terms of difference and identity rather than class conflict, and in each case the intellectual framework lends itself to multiculturalism, even when the term itself is not favoured.
Multiculturalism has had a less popular reception in mainland Europe. Its prospect has sometimes led to the success of extreme nationalist parties in local and national polls. In France, where intellectual objections to multiculturalism have been most developed, multiculturalism is opposed across the political spectrum, for it is thought to be incompatible with a conception of a ‘transcendent’ or ‘universal’ citizenship which demands that all ‘particular’ identities, such as those of race, ethnicity and gender, which promote part of the republic against the good of the whole, be confined to private life. The implosion of Yugoslavia, with its
ethnic cleansing
, marks the most extreme reaction to multi-national statehood and plural societies, and the political status of historic minorities, including the Roma (gypsies), is a conflictual issue throughout the territories of the former Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires (see Balkan politics). Many post-colonised states in Asia and Africa are experiencing ethnonationalist and secessionist movements and some, such as India and Indonesia, are also struggling with non-territorial multiculturalism. Malaysia in particular seems to have managed ethnic conflict in a peaceful way.
The political accommodation of minorities, then, is a major contemporary demand across the world, filling some of the space that accommodation of the working classes occupied in most of the twentieth century and constitutes powerful, if diverse, intellectual challenges in several parts of the humanities and social sciences.
TM