Territorial Neutrality and Cultural Pluralism in American Federalism: Is the United States the Archenemy of Peripheral Nationalism?

Abstract

This study examines accommodations of ‘national’ minorities in the context of territorial neutrality and territorial democracy in American federalism and critiques Kymlicka's criticism of the United States as the foe of peripheral nationalism. Aside from the imagined nationalism of the white American South, peripheral nationalism has not been politically viable in the United States. Territorial democracy permitted territorially based cultural pluralism that facilitated immigrant assimilation while asymmetrical territorial governance arrangements accommodated ‘national’ minorities not necessarily desiring statehood. Secession, therefore, is not a credible threat in American federalism.