BAUR ENGLISH VERSION.docx (original) (raw)

This chapter systematically analyses Otto Bauer's nation concept as a non-essentialist community, as an evolutionary process of political construction, as open and contingent as it is plural and contested. This innovative concept enabled him to overcome the nineteenth-century monist equation, underlying both postulates of the national state (a State = a Nation) and its secular antagonist, Principle of Nationalities (a Nation = a State). The pluralist and processual conception of the nation enabled it, in turn, to postulate a normative proposal, unthinkable from classic presuppositions of sovereignty, not only for the nation state, but also for nationalism against the state: a democratic multinational state bound to facilitate coexistence of several nations in a plural scenario of mutual respect, interterritorial solidarity, cooperation and reciprocal cultural and linguistic enrichment. The institutional and cultural design that enlighten this new scenario is provided by federalism, reformulated with a novel format, plurinational federalism, characterized by self-government and shared government, by unity and diversity, and by the conciliation of territorial and personnel principle, thought for recognition, material equality and respect between majorities and national minorities. Recent developments in studies on ethnic and national pluralism, with reference to territorial and non-territorial autonomy mechanisms, illustrates the fecundity of his thought.