Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe
Abstract
The birthplace of the nation-state and modern nationalism at the end of the eighteenth century, Europe was supposed to be their graveyard at the end of the twentieth. Yet, far from moving beyond the nation-state, fin-de-siècle Europe has been moving back to the nation-state, most spectacularly with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia into a score of nationally defined successor states. This massive reorganisation of political space along national lines has engendered distinctive, dynamically interlocking, and in some cases explosive forms of nationalism. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu and the 'new institutionalist' sociology, and comparing contemporary nationalisms with those of interwar Europe, Rogers Brubaker provides a theoretically sophisticated and historically rich account of one of the most important problems facing the 'New Europe'.
... Studies on nationalism are legion (see, for example, Hobsbawm, 1990;Greenfeld, 1992;Brubaker, 1996;Guibernau, 2013;Smith, 2013;Gagnon, 2014;Keating, 2001). Nonetheless, the issue of competing representations of national minorities by majority groups in the public space has received less attention in political science (Rocher and Carpentier, 2022;Rocher, 2023;Budd, 2024). ...
The central question is whether the majority group's portrayal of the national minority group is based on a strong critique of the latter's identity representation and political claims. Does this strong critique contribute to reinforcing the social norms and identity representations of the majority group, which constructs itself, among other things, in opposition to its national minority? Is the use of negative discursive representations of the national minority part of differentiation and an inferiorization process, or does it instead contribute to defining the identity of the majority political community? How are these discursive representations transposed into the political relations between the two political communities? These are the main questions addressed by the authors of the special Research Topic.
... Not to take categories of practice as categories of analysis (Brubaker 1996), national states play an important role in mobility (Jessop 2016 asylum. As one of my former Iranian students put it: 'I escaped the country, but it is like I cannot escape my nationality.' ...
This article is an autoethnographic reflection on the complexities of transnational power relations involved in knowledge production on migration. It is based on the author’s experiences in German academia between 2015 and 2022 as a first-generation migrant from the Middle East. The article engages with the complexity of transnational spaces and the consequences of this complexity for conceptualisation, categorisation and problematisation in migration studies. Tracing such complexities is followed by a discussion on colonial legacies in academic discourses in Germany, on the one hand, and oppressive regimes’ appropriation of anti-colonial efforts in the Middle East, on the other. By drawing on examples from teaching, research and public discussions, the article demarcates a ‘reorientalist’ tendency in migration studies, which renders Middle Eastern people mere victims of colonial intervention, casting them as passive subaltern subjects, and reproducing a Eurocentric gaze with a decolonial façade. Lastly, it discusses the researchers’ multiple and shifting positionalities from the viewpoint of a migrant researcher conducting research on migration. The article calls for consistent mapping of studies through inclusive partnerships spanning diverse geographies to explore multifaceted perspectives.
(Y)Ezidilik Ortadoğu kökenli bir dindir. Günümüzdeki mensupları bu bölgeden çok Avrupa ve Amerika’da yaşamaktadır. Yezidilerin tarihsel olarak yaşadıkları en eski yurtlarından bir kısmı da Türkiye Cumhuriyeti sınırları içerisinde kalmaktadır. Hakkâri ve Mardin bu bölgelerin başında gelmektedir. Günümüzde Türkiye’de çok az Yezidi kalmış olsa da, bu bölgelerdeki hatıraları ve Türk toplumunda uyandırdıkları izlenim ve algı hala yaşamaya devam etmektedir. Bu çalışmada Türk toplumunda Yezidi algısı incelenmiştir. Bu amaca ulaşabilmek üzere, Türkiye’de internet ortamında ulusal olarak erişime açık ve güncel tanımlama yapmak suretiyle sözlük oluşturma platformlarında Yezidilerle ilgili yorumlar incelenmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda Türkiye’de böylesi üç sözlük bulunduğu tespit edilmiş ve bu üç sözlüğün her birinde ayrı ayrı “(Y)Ezidiler” ve “(Y)Ezidilik” maddeleriyle ilgili toplam 173 tanım ve yorum kendi içinde tasnif edilmek suretiyle çalışmanın verileri elde edilmiştir. Çalışma sonucunda Türk toplumunda Yezidilik ve Yezidilerle ilgili farklılık arz eden bir dizi algı ve imajın varlığı tespit edilmiştir. En öne çıkanları itibarıyla, Türkiye’de Ezidilerle ilgili steriotipin “şeytana tapanlar” olduğu anlaşılmıştır. Bununla birlikte bunun karşısında ayrı bir kutup olarak çok güçlü bir hümanist yaklaşımın varlığı da tespit edilmiştir. Türk toplumunun Ezidilik algısı da, nesnesi gibi senkretik, eklektik ve istikrarsızdır.
This chapter considers interculturality through majority and minority power relations in the European contexts of ethnic nationalism, migration and diaspora from a comparative historical perspective. In the phenomenological framework of thinking, interculturality goes beyond a mere ‘tolerance of the other’. It requires engagement by employing a comparative gaze. The chapter starts with three propositions: first, international relations both influence and are influenced by the dominant worldviews and scholarly endeavours such as social Darwinism; second, the condition of international relations and the psycho-cultural norms of Volksgemeinschaft based on ‘blood and soil’ ( Blut und Boden ) have set boundaries and created biases in international and intercultural relations; and third, there is a conflation of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ as if all states are territorialised nations with sovereignty. Within this framing, the chapter examines the Jewish and East Asian cases and illustrates the institutionalisation of strangerhood in the context of ethnic nationalism and interculturality in Europe. The conclusion suggests the need for rethinking the dynamics of majority-minority power relations.
The toppling of enslaver Edward Colston’s statue in the former slave-trading port city of Bristol by Black Lives Matter protesters in June 2020 was a seismic event that sent shock waves around the world. It was one action of many in a city that has grappled for over thirty years with how to understand, acknowledge, and commemorate in public its history of enslavement. Written from a position of engaged memory activism, this article reflects on the collaborative public memory project Decolonising Memory: Digital Bodies in Movement. Working across academic, community, creative, and digital arts sectors and through an African-centered methodology, the project sought to make a meaningful, new intervention in Bristol’s long and contested public memory of transatlantic enslavement after Colston’s fall. The project centered a radical decolonial praxis by using dance, movement, and creativity as a method for researching different kinds of knowledge about past and present. This article considers two major outputs of this work: a new memorial folk dance and an augmented-reality mobile phone app. It argues that the project was radical in its conception as an African-centered anti-monumental act of counter-memory cocreated “from below” through alternative arts and performance-based memorialization.
We outline a framework for comparative analyses of minority education and present four illustrative Central and Eastern European (CEE) cases: Bulgaria, Estonia, the Republic of North Macedonia and Romania. The fourfold typology we develop relies on literature on minority rights and diversity management and proposes a holistic approach, differing from narrower legal analysis. We investigate education as part of larger macro-approaches of minority policies and focus on the interrelation between educational equity and identity reproduction. In our case studies, we employ a diachronic perspective, focusing on historical dynamics and pathways of educational policies, aiming to identify both gradual change and more radical shifts in institutional processes. The concept of de facto discrimination plays an important role as well: next to the historical analysis of legislative and policy changes, we use various statistics to measure educational equity. We rely on the 2022 PISA results, a tool popular in the comparative research of educational systems but underutilized in the fields of minority rights and minority policies. In our comparative inquiry, we argue that the educational systems of CEEs diverge in terms of minority identity reproduction, but few of them can be labelled as integrative, as intercultural elements are rather weak, while education usually fails to provide equity for minority students.
This article examines the elimination of minority language education in Belarus following the 2022 Education Code revision, which effectively erased programs previously available in Lithuanian and Polish in a small number of schools. While nominally permitting minority language study, the new code, implemented under the Lukashenka administration, restricts instruction to language and culture classes contingent upon formal student requests and official approvals. Given Belarus’ position outside the Council of Europe and the resulting lack of influence from legally binding minority rights instruments, this article explores the relevant legal framework, the Lukashenka administration’s political reasoning and communication tactics, and reactions from neighboring kin-states within Brubaker’s triadic nexus. It reveals how broad discretionary power undermines minority language rights, silences minority voices, and dismantles prior educational achievements within this complex political and legal landscape.
The article is devoted to the position of Albania and the Great Powers towards the Kosovo crisis in the late 20th - early 21st centuries. Special attention is paid to the policy of Albania on the Kosovo independence. The perspectives of the realization of “Greater Albania” idea take the special place in the article.
This article is based on fieldwork conducted between 1999 and 2010 in the village of Bansko, Republic of North Macedonia, whose religious landscape is characterized by a dense network of Christian and Muslim holy places. After primarily focusing on a local female Christian-Orthodox seer whose activities, based on dream revelations, led to a Christian-Orthodox re-interpretation of the local religioscape, I question how various legends and narratives of dreams and visions - especially the legends of a miracle-working icon of Theotokos believed to be the Virgin’s body, and the disputes over the wooden sculptured head of a sheik that marked the place of his tomb - are used as metaphors to describe the shifting relationship between the two religious communities over time.
This article studies the ongoing memorialization of the Ukrainian War of Independence from a nation-building perspective, comparing six urban sites of commemoration spanning from Lviv in Galicia to Kramatorsk in the Donbas. Against the background of Ukraine's troubled history of memory politics, I explore similarities and differences across contexts, showing where, how and why different aspects of nation-building are present. The main conclusions are that wartime nation-building in memory sites relies on creating narrative links to the Ukrainian nation's past existential challenges, that the Ukrainian nation is increasingly defined as being the antithesis of Russia, that the Soviet past is treated with disdainful marginalization as "historical junk", that nation-building can find new stepping stones in the mobilization of local pride and identities , that "domestic" and "external" communication of memory differs and that this underlies much of the observable diversity among Ukrainian war remembrance sites, and that the politics of memory in frontline cities is muted by fear and cautiousness, particularly in cities that have experienced Russian occupation. ARTICLE HISTORY
The modern nation-state finds its origins in the combination, and construction, of a fantasy‒reality continuum. The socio-political figuration, conceptualised as a collectivising survival unit (Elias), refers both to the invention of traditions and the positivistic research on ethno-national mythologies, building up a kinship‒people‒nation triad, and to the secularisation and routinisation of power holders, providing material representation of a polity-based society.
In the introduction, we emphasised how the concept of nation has historically been both divisive and unifying. This characteristic makes it one of the most critical aspects of the articulation of the political sphere.
This article aims to show how the Ethiopian ethnofederation, rather than stabilizing the country, has resulted in a web of problems that are shaking the state to its core. Most importantly, how it is putting citizens, especially those regarded as non‐indigenous, in dire situations, by taking its sub‐federal arrangements or self‐administration units by using the concept of ‘camp’ Agamben elaborated in his different works. It is believed that these self‐administration units are very important foundations of the Ethiopian federal system, as they allow previously overlooked identities in guaranteeing equality. Moreover, they are understood as the manifestation of the right to self‐determination of the nations, nationalities and peoples of the country. However, the article argues that these units have turned into geographical spaces and locations or camps whereby biopolitical subjects are produced. The article used the large number of Amhara people dispersed throughout the federation and are politically as well as economically disenfranchised; referred to as using derogatory nomenclatures; and also constantly targeted, attacked, killed and displaced, as a case. To do so, the article mainly used secondary sources to collect data: different reports from various sources were collected and analysed.
This paper explores how the mobile lifestyle of digital nomads informs national identity and collective belonging through technological means, focusing on the Israeli digital nomad community. This study reveals that despite embracing a hypermobile and individualistic lifestyle, Israeli digital nomads use technology to construct a new form of national identity, which I describe as 'tailor-made nationalism'. Through interviews with 21 digital nomads, this research demonstrates how technology mediates a process of national affiliation that allows individuals to customise their national identity without the traditional territorial and civic obligations. The concept of tailor-made nationalism contributes to mobilities studies by illustrating how hypermobility and digital technologies inform national belonging. It also extends debates on technology's impact on nationalism , suggesting that digital platforms enable more flexible and person-alised forms of national affiliation. By examining the Israeli case, this paper shows that digital nomadism does not necessarily deny nationalism and is not in itself a post-national, cosmopolitan phenomenon. It offers insights into how mobile lifestyles facilitate the negotiation of national identity through technology, shedding light on the interaction between mobility, technology, and national belonging.
The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how Megrelians perceive their identity and the way in which this identity relates to the wider Georgian identity. Megrelians, a sub-ethnic Georgian group, primarily inhabit the West Georgian region of Samegrelo and the Gali region in Abkhazia. Based on field research conducted in October 2022, the study reveals that Megrelians identify as a community connected through language, history, traditions, and regional ties. Their distinction from Georgians is understood regionally rather than ethnically, making the two identities complementary and overlapping, rather than mutually exclusive. Efforts to separate Megrelians from Georgians are widely seen by informants as part of a historical Russian divide and rule strategy. This perception has been heightened by the conflicts of the 1990s and the ongoing war in Ukraine, reinforcing a strong sense of belonging to the broader Georgian identity.
In recent years the topic of acculturation has evolved from a relatively minor research area to one of the most researched subjects in the field of cross-cultural psychology. This edited handbook compiles and systemizes the current state of the art by exploring the broad international scope of acculturation. A collection of the world's leading experts in the field review the various contexts for acculturation, the central theories, the groups and individuals undergoing acculturation (immigrants, refugees, indigenous people, expatriates, students and tourists) and discuss how current knowledge can be applied to make both the process and its outcome more manageable and profitable. Building on the theoretical and methodological framework of cross-cultural psychology, the authors focus specifically on the issues that arise when people from one culture move to another culture and the reciprocal adjustments, tensions and benefits involved.
McClelland's human motivation theory has been used to predict wars and conflicts since its inception. This article offers two novelties. First, the study contextualizes assessments of the imperial motivational pattern by comparing it across countries. Second, it uses an effect size metric, Cohen's d , instead of observed frequencies of power and affiliation words. The resulting assessment can indicate the prospects of negotiation or escalation in a conflict situation depending on the parties' motives. The analysis focuses on the Russo‐Ukrainian War and covers five countries: Russia, Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The scope of comparisons includes war‐related speeches of those countries' leaders, war coverage by selected mass media outlets, and speeches and news items produced during WWII. Text corpora containing more than 93 million words in four languages (English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French) were processed using a version of the motive lexicon (dictionary). Although the Russo‐Ukrainian War did not reach WWII‐level animosity, the study indicates that the prospects for finding a negotiated solution remain dim. A high “power‐minus‐affiliation” gap characterized the speeches of the belligerent countries' leaders and war coverage by the national media.
This paper uses the gradual expansion of the European railway network to investigate how this key technological driver of modernization affected ethnic separatism between 1816 and 1945. Combining new historical data on ethnic settlement areas, conflict, and railway construction, we test how railroads affected separatist conflict and successful secession as well as independence claims among peripheral ethnic groups. Difference-in-differences, event study, and instrumental variable models show that, on average, railway-based modernization increased separatist mobilization and secession. These effects concentrate in countries with small core groups, weak state capacity, and low levels of economic development as well as in large ethnic minority regions. Exploring causal mechanisms, we show how railway networks can facilitate mobilization by increasing the internal connectivity of ethnic regions and hamper it by boosting state reach. Overall, our findings call for a more nuanced understanding of the effects of European modernization on nation building.
This editorial introduces the special issue “Paths to Peace? Infrastructures, Peace and Conflict”, which seeks to bridge transport and mobility history with historical peace and conflict studies – two fields that have largely evolved separately. Drawing on Johan Galtung’s definitions of “peace” and “violence”, the issue shifts beyond a traditional international history and diplomacy focus to explore societal dynamics more broadly, including social inequalities and racism. Building on scholarship that examines the interplay between technology and ideology or infrastructure and power, the contributions investigate themes such as state formation, nation-building and the structural violence inherent in infrastructure provision. Collectively, they emphasise the importance of incorporating the material and physical structures of the past into historical peace and conflict studies, while advocating for infrastructure history to engage with broader conceptual frameworks of peace and conflict.
This chapter outlines the specific transnational context in which memory-making in Russian tourism unfolds, based on the idea of the post-Soviet space as a ‘post-imperial space’. The notion of a post-imperial space is used for several reasons. First, it centres the attention on Russia’s historical status as an empire and its relation to its former territories, allowing a close examination of the role of the past in the present. Second, the notion of a post-imperial space is based on a longue durée perspective that includes the history of the Russian empire alongside the Soviet Union, a past that is significant for Russian tourism. Finally, the idea of a post-imperial space allows for comparison with other post-imperial spaces and mobilities and enables us to see similarities and differences. After an introduction of the idea of post-imperial space, the chapter provides an overview of Russia’s history as an empire and the relation between empire and tourism. It subsequently discusses variations in (post-)imperial relations and the development of tourism industries, focusing on Estonia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, that is, the three countries that form the case studies examined in the book.
This article examines the construction of language ideologies on social media in the context of the use of Kazakh and Russian languages in Kazakhstan following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Through the analysis of Instagram and YouTube posts and comments from popular Kazakhstani bloggers and opinion‐makers, which were selected for the heated online debates they generated, this study explores how the choice of speaking Russian or ‘shala‐Kazakh’ (a mixed form of Russian and Kazakh) is perceived in relation to the national identity of individuals in Kazakhstan. The analysis of social media content reveals the dominance of ideologies centred around notions of linguistic purity, national authenticity and decolonizing anti‐Russianness. Utilizing Agha's theory of enregisterment and drawing on Irvine and Gal's concept of language ideologies, this research investigates the impact of social changes on language ideologies. It also explores how language regulation and mocking practices on social media serve as significant mechanisms for the circulation and maintenance of these ideologies and broader linguistic and social hierarchies.
This article investigates the reimagining and representation of the Yugoslav idea by the Alliance of Reformist Forces (SRSJ), a party established by federal Prime Minister Ante Marković in 1990. The SRSJ sought to reshape the structure of the federal state and revive the narratives of shared history and culture foundational to the Yugoslav multinational and supranational community. This conception includes both similarities with and departures from interpretations of Yugoslavism during the socialist and late‐socialist eras. The SRSJ's approach, which both challenged and was directly targeted by ethnic nationalisms, offers insights into Yugoslavia's failed transition, and these developments need to be understood within the broader context of the restructuring of the European political space between 1989 and 1992.
This chapter examines peacebuilding in the context of violent conflicts in Nigeria using Immanuel Kant’s theory of “Perpetual Peace”, taking into account the role that religion and ethnicity play in protracting conflict in the country. It raises the issue of justice, considering it from the perspective of fairness, equality, and management as a preventive measure, engaging political, reorientation, and economic solutions. It seeks to show how Kant’s concept of Republicanism that emphasises equal rights of representation to challenge the Nigerian system, especially in the current political configuration that encourages hegemony in the face of intricately varied religious and ethnic compositions. How can ethno-religious diversity be managed to achieve sustainable peace within Nigeria’s democratic space? How may economic involvement and reorientation help Nigerians achieve sustainable peaceful coexistence?
Although irredentism-the attempt by states to retrieve 'lost' lands and peoples-rarely occurs, it has highly destabilizing effects on international security and is difficult to resolve given the number of actors drawn into these conflicts. For this reason, a large body of research debates the range of factors that account for the convertibility of irredentist claims. The most plausible theories concern how material interests and ideational factors form interacting dynamics that compel nationalist politicians and elites to pursue irredentist objectives. Yet, although ideational processes are an indispensable component of irredentism, the content of these forms is less well understood. To address this gap, this article deploys an inductive approach to identify the key ideational frames used by irredentist actors across case studies and historical periods. Three frames are identified as particularly common to irredentist movements: Myth of Ancient Statehood, Sacred Lands and Causes and The National Family. These frames are called 'proprietary claims': the interrelated and complex panoply of narratives, symbols and myths deployed by sections of the kin state to legitimate its assertion of ownership of a particular territory and its people. The article seeks to deepen our understanding of the main framing processes that legitimates irredentas by focusing on the panoply of myths, cultural forms, narratives and emotive symbols that arm irredentist movements. The article draws on evidence from a wide range of irredentas.
This study examines whether public attitudes of national belonging influence levels of democracy. We investigate how non-voluntary perceptions of national belonging – requirements of ancestral ties – affect the development across 63 countries over three decades. We analyze both the bottom-up effects of public attitudes and the top-down influence of political elites’ nationalist articulation. Our results show that countries where the majority holds a non-voluntary national identity tend to have lower levels of democracy. Furthermore, these challenges to democratic governance are amplified when non-voluntary national identity interacts with nationalist political articulation by elites. Longitudinal analyses reveal that countries with a stronger emphasis on non-voluntary identity experience a greater decline in formal democracy over time, suggesting an inherent incompatibility between non-voluntary national identity and democratic principles. By explicitly linking majority public attitudes about national belonging to democratic outcomes, our study offers new empirical insights into the relationship between national identity and democracy.
Bosna i Hercegovina je u toku svog postojanja prolazila kroz različite drţavne, organizacione i političke faze. U 20. stoljeću Bosna i Hercegovina je bila u sastavu dvije Jugoslavije u kojima je imala potpuno različit status od skoro potpunog negiranja njenog postojanja do njenog priznanja kao posebnog subjekta, sa velikom autonomijom, pa sve do priznanja Bosne i Hercegovine kao samostalne drţave raspadom druge Jugoslavije. Dvije Jugoslavije imale su potpuno različito ureĎenje, jedna je bila kraljevina dok je druga bila socijalistička republika, što se odrazilo i na samu Bosnu i Hercegovinu. U Bosni i Hercegovini postavljeni su temelji druge Jugoslavije i narod Bosne i Hercegovine dao je veliki doprinos u pobjedi nad fašizmom. 20. stoljeće za Bosnu i Hercegovinu predstavlja jedan dinamičan period u pogledu njenog drţavnopravnog razvoja i izgradnje kao samostalnog meĎunarodnopravnog subjekta. Upravo u ovom radu se obradio drţavnopravni razvoj Bosne i Hercegovine u okvirima dvije Jugoslavije koji će rezultirati stvaranjem samostalne drţave Bosne i Hercegovine.
This article aims to shed light on the paradigm shifts in the academic studies on Turkish nationalism from the 1950s to the present by examining the approaches of these studies to the concept of Turkishness and Turkish nationalism. This study first examines various nationalism theories and current debates in the field, as the transformation in Turkish nationalism parallels theoretical discussions in nationalism studies. It then focuses early studies until the 1990s analyzing Turkish nationalism through modernization theory, and post-1990s research highlighting its hybrid, eclectic, and pervasive nature, alongside its connections to diverse political visions and previously overlooked aspects. Finally, the article centers on pioneering studies that emphasize the active role of subjectivity in the construction and reproduction of the nation by tracing Turkish nationalism in everyday life. The recent studies on Turkish nationalism highlight the positioning of the individual not as a passive recipient of nationalism, but as an active agent in its making.
This chapter continues the discussion of Romanian and Hungarian ethnic extraterritorial citizenship policies introduced in Chap. 2, shifting the analytical focus to the lived experiences and citizenship constructs of so-called ‘trans-border nationals’—those who enjoyed extraterritorial access to the national citizenships of their ethnic kin-states while being citizens by birth and residents of a neighbouring country—who moved to the UK. In the strategies, interpersonal encounters and narratives of trans-border national migrants the linkages and tensions between citizenship, mobility and national identity reach peak complexity. The chapter outlines the mobility restrictions faced by many ‘trans-border’ nationals and discusses how access to (a more comprehensive array of) EU citizenship rights expands their opportunity structures. The chapter identifies the ‘mobility citizenship’ quality and ‘expansive’ character of EU citizenship as the main mechanisms shaping the opportunity structures of those on the margins of the European citizenship constellation.
This chapter traces citizenship constellation effects through policy developments in three very different ‘transnational’ political communities. The first section discusses the development of British citizenship law as an example of how colonial legacies have a lasting influence on ideas of nationhood. The second section discusses the legal framework of EU citizenship as a supranational constellation. The final section explores ethnic extraterritorial citizenship in the context of the Hungarian-Romanian citizenship constellation. These three cases of intersecting ‘transnational citizenship constellations’ mark out the historical, legal and political context that shapes the citizenship opportunity structures of those migrants whose mobility experiences will be explored in later chapters.
The idea of Bosnia and Bosnian identity is a constant companion of Bosnian history from the Middle Ages, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule, through Yugoslavia to the present day, but at the same time, its denial as a heretical idea is also present. In recent times, among the most prominent promoters of the idea of the Bosnian nation are Senadin Lavić and Slavo Kukić, who understand the concept of nation from different theoretical positions: one that sees the nation as a community of origin and the other that sees the nation as a community of citizens-citizens. Unlike these two approaches to the nation, which are mutually exclusive, Schnapper believes that there are no two approaches to the idea of the nation. The nation, she believes, represents a specific form of "political unity", and its ideal is the transcendence of particularity by integrating a diverse population into a community of free and equal citizens. Political unity is the ontological basis that holds the nation together as a specific social group. If the social connective tissue of a nation is political, which separates friend from foe, and if in the case of Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks the political (national) is derived from the confessional, the question arises whether it is possible to rise from the three confessional-national particularities to the the level of the universal and build a political community of friends, formally equal and free citizens, or is BiH as a modern democratic state possible? The Bosnian nation, as a political community, which the author advocates, is derived from the Bosnian myth (belief) in the common origin of all indigenous inhabitants medieval Bosnia, who were called Bosnians, Bosniaks, Bosnians, and which immanently transcends the confessional pluralization of Bosnians and establishes a historically substantial continuity of the unity and diversity of Bosnian identity. However, the question of the reality of the idea of the Bosnian nation remains.
By combining research on banal and unconscious nationalism with cognitive psychology, this article outlines a novel framework for so-called “implicit nationalism.” In the first part of the article, I detail how different events, symbols, and discourses affect nationalist attitudes and sentiments beyond conscious awareness and control. I argue that certain events and symbols affect implicit—but not necessarily explicit—nationalism by changing the accessibility of implicit nationalist associations. In the second part of the article, I use this framework to analyze the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The study consists of a natural experiment, including respondents from Germany, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. Winning the World Cup increased implicit nationalism in Germany, and losing decreased implicit nationalism in Brazil and the United Kingdom. Importantly, winning and losing had no corresponding effect on explicit nationalism in any country. The article concludes by discussing the implications for research on nationalism and implicit cognitions.
It is generally accepted that violations of state-nation congruence can cause conflict, but it remains unclear which configurations cause civil and interstate conflict, and how these conflict types interact. Inspired by Myron Weiner’s classical model of the “Macedonian Syndrome,” we propose an integrated theoretical framework that links specific nationality questions to both conflict types. Using spatial data on state borders and ethnic settlements in Europe since 1816, we show that excluded and divided groups are more likely to rebel and, where they govern on only one side of the border, to initiate territorial claims and militarized disputes. To make things worse, rebellion and interstate conflict reinforce each other where ethnic division coincides with partial home rule. We obtain similar findings for civil wars and territorial claims in a global sample post-1945. Yet governments shy away from engaging in interstate disputes to address nationality questions and instead support ethnic rebels abroad.
How has identification and differentiation based on ethnicity shaped the economic experience in postsocialist Europe? We propose that creation of neoliberal capitalism in the context of ethnic conflict led to a sense of economic marginalization of East European ethnic minorities. Findings from Life in Transition Survey analysis show greater economic discontent by ethnic minorities in 2006 than in 1989 and persistent discontent in 2016, controlling for social class standing and other relevant demographics. Economic marginalization may also lead ethnic minorities to support more involvement of state in guaranteeing employment and low prices and to dislike markets as a way to organize the economy, both supported in our data. We conclude by suggesting how our findings about marginalization of ethnic minorities help put into perspective contemporary receptivity of East Europeans (and others) to nationalist and populist leaders.
The securitization of Russian-speakers has been central to nation-building in Estonia and Latvia since they regained their independence in 1991. Securitization at the levels of discourse and policy varies over time as a result of historical legacies, Russia’s kin state activism, and the minority protection requirements of European institutions. This article introduces a typology that links discursive frames with policies to map securitizing trends in Estonia and Latvia after the Soviet collapse: securitizing exclusion — less accommodating policies are justified by presenting the minority as a threat to the state or core nation; securitizing inclusion — more accommodating policies are justified to “win over” the minority in order to decrease the threat; and desecuritizing inclusion — more accommodating policies are justified on grounds of fairness or appropriateness without reference to security. The utility of the typology is demonstrated by analyzing frames in the public broadcast media and recent policy developments in Estonia and Latvia immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The analysis points to increasing convergence across countries in favor of securitizing exclusion. The analysis points to increasing convergence across countries in favor of securitizing exclusion. We conclude by evaluating these trends in light of minority mobilization and recent data on support for the active defense of the state among Russian-speakers and titulars.
Why does the presence of coethnics across the border sometimes lead to categorizing that land as part of the homeland, but sometimes not? We argue this variation is shaped by whether regimes use ethnic logics to elicit domestic legitimacy. Relying on shared ethnicity for legitimacy elevates ethnicity’s political salience, making ethnic groups living across borders socially meaningful and enabling continued claims to their land as part of the homeland. Using survival analysis, we demonstrate that coethnics’ presence on lost lands significantly influences whether those lands maintain their homeland status largely in contexts where ethnic legitimacy is prominent, such as autocracies, states that marginalize populations along ethnic lines, and countries where the government’s legitimacy cannot be based on economic performance. We also illustrate this phenomenon with a case study of Croatia. Our findings have important implications for understanding how ethnicity interacts with domestic politics to shape territorial conflict.
This article discusses how Soviet nationality policies have continued to influence nation-building efforts in post-Soviet states in relation to the region’s sociolinguistic situation and the question of language use. Despite the Soviet Union's dissolution, the region remains shaped by its legacies, particularly by the tension between ethnolinguistic nationalism and multilingual social reality. This tension also manifests in the political narratives of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The article argues that the tension stems from Soviet policies that promoted immutable ethnolinguistic identities as the basis of nation-building while simultaneously fostering freedom of language choices and welcoming linguistic assimilation. This contradiction continues to complicate post-Soviet efforts to reconcile national identity with linguistic diversity. The article provides a historical account of Soviet policies, emphasizing their linguocentric nature and contradictory character. It concludes by discussing the challenges that post-Soviet states face in balancing national language policies with the sociolinguistic realities inherited from the Soviet era.
Scholars have examined the effects of mainstreaming on ethnic parties in various geopolitical contexts throughout Europe. These ethnic parties consistently promote socially liberal policies, constrain 'illiberal' actors and prevent democratic backsliding. However, the mainstreaming of right-wing populist (or far-right) parties in Europe is causing mainstream ethnic parties to change their behaviours in some unexplored ways, too. In this analysis, we argue that right-wing populists can cause ethnic parties to experience political relapse-that is, to backtrack on non-ethnic ideological issues, thereby appearing to compromise on socially liberal policies. Political relapse occurs when ethnic and right-wing populist parties must work together (such as in coalition governments). While political relapse can polarize and fragment ethnic parties, it also yields some strategic upshots-namely, by appealing to more conservative and disaffected voters. Based on the Swedish People's Party of Finland, this analysis explores the aftermath of the political relapse, which occurred as a result of the leadership's decision to form a coalition government with Finland's influential right-wing party, the Finns Party, in 2023. K E Y W O R D S ethnic parties, Europe, far right, Finland, political relapse, Swedish People's Party
Nationalism is a political phenomenon with deep roots in Southeast Asia. Yet, state attempts to create homogenous nations met with resistance. This Element focuses on understanding the rise and subsequent ebbing of sub-state nationalist mobilization in response to state nationalism. Two factors allowed sub-state nationalist movements to be formed and persist: first, state nationalisms that were insufficiently inclusive; second, the state's use of authoritarian tools to implement its nationalist agenda. But Southeast Asian states were able to reduce sub-state nationalist mobilization when they changed their policies to meet two conditions: i) some degree of explicit recognition of the distinctiveness of groups; ii) institutional flexibility toward regional/local territorial units to accommodate a high degree of group self-governance. The Element focuses on four states in the region – namely Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Myanmar.
This article examines how and why regimes that dominate particular ethnic communities on behalf of a dominant one disguise themselves by claiming to practice accommodation (consociational power-sharing and territorial autonomy) or integration (equal citizenship with respect for private cultural differences). It also explains how to distinguish authentic accommodation and integration from the sham forms used by these regimes. The article seeks to help identify domination regimes that would otherwise be overlooked. This is important for academics. It is also important for international policymakers who seek to condemn domination and make it more difficult to maintain.
Bu çalışma, Kazakistan örneğinde, Türk Devletleri Teşkilatı’na (TDT) üye devletlerin ulus inşa etme politikalarını konu almaktadır. Çalışma kapsamında TDT üyelerinin ulus inşa etme politikalarının nasıl uygulandığı sorusuna cevap aranırken, özellikle Kazakistan örneğinde ulusal kimlik gelişimini çevreleyen konulara ilişkin araştırma yapılmıştır. Araştırmada yöntem olarak, Kazakistan’ın ulus inşası sürecinin tarihi, sosyo-kültürel ve ento-politik yönlerini incelemek için nitel metot kullanılmakta olup, resmi hükümet raporları, açıklamalar, tarihi kayıtlar, akademik yayınlar ve resmi haber ajansları dahil olmak üzere farklı kaynaklardan veri toplanmış ve analiz edilmiştir. Araştırmanın bulgularına göre her TDT üyesi ülke, kendi özgün tarihlerine, kültürlerine ve coğrafyasına uygun şekilde ulusal kimliklerini geliştirmek için farklı stratejiler benimsemiştir ve Kazakistan örneğinde ulus inşa politikalarında kimlik, dil, etnik politika gibi ortak temalar bulunmaktadır.
The article addresses the territorial and demographic aspect of the ethnopolitical processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s. The initial stage of nation-building and ethnopolitical conflict is analyzed on the basis of Miroslav Hroch and Rogers Brubaker approaches synthesis and is backed by the last reliable Yugoslavia census data. The author assumes that studying of the Bosnian ethnopolitical conflict initial stage through the prism of the territorial and demographic aspect allows one to get a clearer and more consistent idea of its causes, actors and logic behind them. For these purposes the ethnic/national composition of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia was systematized. Based on its results, the author managed to identify potential ethnopolitical conflict areas that could be of significant importance in the perspective of Muslim (later — Bosniak) nation-building. Taking into account the internal and external contexts of political processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, the author presented the main conditions, scenarios and risks of the ethnopolitical situation development since 1990. The influence of the territorial and demographic aspect was considered further and revealed the potential and actual ethnopolitical conflict areas overlapping on the example of Serbian and Croatian ethnopolitical projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analyzed case allows the author to consider the approach promising with its possible implementation in the framework of ethnopolitical conflicts monitoring and early warning.
Sociology, as it emerged in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) during the Khrushchev Thaw of the 1960s, was assigned to give decision-makers numerical feedback about the population’s attitudes and living conditions. It functioned as a substitute for the feedback mechanisms that in the West were provided by markets, political democracy, and civil society. With the glasnost policies initiated in 1986, possibilities of criticising the system were opened, but scientists also continued to be held in high esteem in the new situation. For a few years during and immediately after the revolutionary period, sociologists played a visible role in politics. Since the early 1990s, they have rather avoided taking party political stances and acted as experts on certain policy areas, such as social policies and ethnic minority integration. Sociologists have generally shared the political elite’s quest for modernisation and Westernisation, but they have reacted against growing inequality. Some of their political initiatives gained moderate success when they highlighted issues potentially jeopardising Estonia’s membership in the European Union. In recent years, a right-wing populism has been emerging that is less concerned about the previously prevailing modernising and Westernising agenda and directly questions the need for evidence-based politics.
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