DAVID SIDORSKY
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tion of the newly created sovereign state is that it advances the positive
liberty or self-realization of the group by expressing in political forms
the latent identity of the historical people.
With the third concept of liberty, the possibilities of "constructed"
nationalism have emerged. For this liberty involves the right to define
oneself, leaving the group free to choose its own form of self-identifica–
tion. On the basis of this self-identification, it can assert its claims for
national self-determination with the accompanying claim for interna–
tional recognition of its existence and rights. Accordingly, in national
contexts, the conceptual interpretation of freedom as the right to create,
invent, or choose one's identity can serve to legitimate the aspiration to
territorial sovereignty of the self-defined group.
In practice, the construction of a group identity often involves ele–
ments of continuity with historical origins. The demand for recognition
of the rights of the newly self-defined group is usually connected to
aspects of its historical experience and particularly with its assertion of
its collective status as a victim of history. The understanding of the ide–
ological shift to the third concept of liberty is relevant to the recent
surge in new nationalist, as well as new secessionist, movements. While
many of these are faithful to the pattern of nineteenth-century national–
ism which embodied the positive concept of liberty, whether in Croatia
or Slovakia, Kurdistan or Chechnya, other cases reflect the significance
of constructed nationalism involving the third concept of liberty.
Among the diverse contemporary nationalist movements, two of the
most prominent cases that exhibit the use of the third concept of liberty
are the movements for Quebecois secession and for Palestinian state–
hood. Although these reflect very different historical experiences, a cru–
cial element in each is the legitimation of the right to define forms of
group identity.
The French population in Canada had, for centuries, asserted its role
as an integral member of the Canadian nation. From its formation, the
Canadian confederation was to be a bilingual state whose founding
laws recognized the right to a separate cultural and religious develop–
ment of the French-Canadian population. Within the Quebecois seces–
sionist movement, there has been a denial or revision of that historical
self-identification and the assertion of a right to develop a new group
identity. The secessionist movement asserts a new identity for the Que–
becois which rejects their continuation as a participant in the Canadian
confederation and requires the creation of a new national sovereignty.
There is, in part, a confirmation of the implicit recognition of a third
concept of liberty in the nearly universal acceptance of the right of
