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Essay on Nation and Nationality

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Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Nation and Nationality’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Nation and Nationality’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay Contents:

• Essay on the Concept of Nation and Nationality
• Essay on the Definition of Nation and Nationality
• Essay on the Factors in the Growth of a Nation (Marks of Nationality)
• Essay on the Difference between Nation and Nationality
• Essay on the Difference between a Nation and a State
• Essay on the Theory of One Nation, One State
• Essay on the Conclusion to Nation and Nationality

Essay # 1. Concept of Nation and Nationality:

A nation is body of persons inhabiting a definite territory and thus united to one another because they belong to the same country. These persons constituting a nationality are drawn from a number of different races or breeds which, after wandering in many places, got settled down in a particular territory.

A nation is therefore, not necessarily a race like the Nordic, Alpine or the Mediterranean, but rather a mixture of races.

As a result of long mixing together, the members of a nation develop two forms of mental sympathy. First, they have a common tradition which has grown up in the course of a common past history, a common language, a common religion, a common culture or way of life and common social habits. Secondly, they have a common will to live together, because they are under the impression that they have a liking for the institutions and laws which suit their way of life. In this way, a nation tends to form a separate state for the expression and realisation of its national character and will.

The French idea of the nation that began with the French Revolution of 1789 is, however, very simple. According to the French conception, the nation is simply the population of the territory of France united by the bond of “love of the national soil”.

Thus the French nationality was something rooted in the soil of France, its sunshine, its wine, its speech, its social habits and its way of life. The idea of the nation is generally the basis of a state. But it is not always that in a state there is, only one nation. For example, India is a nation, though consisting of diverse interests.

Essay # 2. Definition of Nation and Nationality:

The word “nation” is derived from the Latin term Natus which means born. So in its derivative sense nation means a group of people that have a common racial origin. This was the conception of nation for the German philosophers. This idea of nation is definitely misleading because there is no nation in the world belonging to the same racial stock.

According to J. W. Garner- “A nation is a culturally homogeneous social group which is at once conscious and tenacious of its unity of psychic life and expression.”

So Lord James Bryce said- “Nation is a union of men having racial or ethnographic significance”.

According to J. K. Bluntschli- “Nation is a union of people bound together by language and customs in a common civilisation which gives them a sense of unity and distinction from all foreigners.”

For R. N. Gilchrist, nationality may be defined as “a spiritual sentiment or principle arising among a number of people usually of the same race, residents on the same territory, sharing a common language, the same religion, similar associations and common ideals of political unity.”

J. W. Burgess’ definition of nation is- “a population with ethnic unity, inhabiting a territory, with geographical unity.” For Stephen Butler Leacock, “a body of people united by common descent and common language” makes a nation. To Ernest Barker- “A nation is a community of persons living in definite territory and thereby bound together by the bonds of mutual love.” In the same vein, Ramsay Muir defined nation as “a body of people who fell themselves to be naturally linked together by certain affinities which are so strong and real for them that they can live happily together, are dissatisfied when disunited and cannot tolerate subjection to peoples who do not share the ties.”

According to A. E. Zimmern, it is “A body of people united by a corporate sentiment of peculiar intimacy, intensity and dignity, related to a definite home-country.” Again, Pradier Fodere’s definition is- “Affinity of-race, community of language, of habits, of customs and religion are the elements which constitute the nation.”

In all such definitions most of the political thinkers emphasise that every society which has enough of a distinct tradition to be called a character has a natural right to political independence and what is called, in the jargon of the hour, self-determination. John Stuart Mill thinks that any portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nation if they are united among themselves by common sympathies.

But racial purity cannot be found in the modern world because the population of every modern country has a mixed blood. Nation has also nothing to do with a definite territory, though this is the general notion of a nation. So it is said that nationality is not a matter of political frontiers or round skulls and broad noses, but a matter of the heart and soul. In this connection V.P. Singh, the former Prime Minister of India said- “A nation is not a map on a piece of paper. It lies in the heart of the people”.

We may conclude about the definition of nation with the words of Ernest Renan- “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. To have a common glory in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to want to do them again; these are the conditions for the existence of a nation.”

Essay # 3. Factors in the Growth of a Nation (Marks of Nationality):

The following are some of the factors responsible in the growth of a nation, though none of them is indispensable:

i. Linguistic Unity:

Language, which is the dress of thought, is another cementing factor in the making of a nation. A common language and a common literature create a kind of like mindedness which emotionally unites several people covered by the bond of language and literature.

Since language is directly linked to a specific territory and these together provide the basis for a common life-style, language should be made the basis for administrative units, wherever possible. But language is never an essential factor in the growth of the state. For example, India having 17 major languages, which create some artificial barrier among the entire population, is still a nation.

ii. Religious Unity:

A common religion can be very helpful for a nation. But this too is not an indispensable factor. India is a country where almost all the religions of the world are to be found existing side by side. Even then, India is a nation. Pakistan, which was created on the basis of the Islamic faith in 1947, was shattered by a co-religious sector in East Pakistan that broke away from Pakistan and established a new state called Bangladesh. The tie of a common religion could not hold together the two parts of Pakistan. Here language proved to be more important than religion.

E. H. Carr on traits of nation:

(i) The idea of common government whether as a reality in the present or past or as an aspiration of the future;

(ii) A certain size and closeness of contact between all individual members;

(iii) A more or less defined territory;

(iv) Certain characteristics of which the most predominant trait is language;

(v) Some common interests of the individual members;

(vi) Some common feelings associated with the idea of nation in the minds of the individual members.

iii. Geographical Unity:

Geographical factor has proved to be a remarkable source for the formation of national unity. It is a design of nature to bring a kind of identity by way of climate and other phenomenon of geography which provide the people an opportunity to live together. They have a tendency of like-minded or common behaviour which ultimately unite them into one homogeneous people.

iv. Historical Unity:

Historical unity is considered to be very essential for the formation of nationality. A common heritage binds people together. The Indians nurtured the lesson of unity because of their bondage under the British imperialists. A common political aspiration brought together the Greeks though separated by geographical barriers.

In this connection John Stuart Mill observes- “The possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections, collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret connected with the same incidents in the past are strongest of all the factors which generate the feeling of nationality.”

v. Cultural Unity:

A common way of life and mannerism can foster the cause of a nationality. Thus we find the culture pattern as a responsible factor in the growth of a single nation.

Essay # 4. Difference between Nation and Nationality:

There is a subtle point of distinction between nation and nationality. When a group of people have some kind of identity with regard to any of race, language, mannerism, etc. or even a sentimental or emotional affinity, that group constitutes a nationality.

When that group aspires for or actually attains a political status like independence that nationality becomes a nation.

The moment a nationality gets a separate state of its own, it becomes a nation.

So Lord James Bryce rightly said:

“The difference between the two is of political organisation. Nationality is a nation in the making. As soon as a nationality secures political independence it becomes a nation.”

Thus a nation is the total of a nationality plus statehood. So when a nationality demands for a homeland of its own, it becomes a nation.

According to C. J. H. Hayes: 

“A nationality by acquiring unity and sovereign independence becomes a nation.”

For example, former East Bengal in Pakistan was a nationality. But the moment East Bengal became independent of Pakistan under the name of Bangladesh she became a nation.

There is another way of distinguishing a nation from a nationality. According to some political scientists, the distinction between the two is not of a political organisation but of number. When there is one ethnic or racial group it is a nationality.

When several ethnic or linguistic groups join together in a bigger way that conglomeration is called a nation. For example, in India, there are various linguistic and racial groups like Bengalis, Marathis, Punjabis, etc. Each group is a nationality and India is a nation.

Essay # 5. Difference between a Nation and a State:

Although we use the two terms nation and state to mean the same thing, in actuality there is some difference.

Nation is one of feeling while state is one of reality. We know that a state is composed of population, territory, sovereignty and government. Whenever these four elements are available a state is constituted.

Absence of any of them negates the statehood. A state may have more than one nation. For example, before the First World War, Austria and Hungary, two distinct nations, made one state, though there was no element of unity between Austria and Hungary.

Again, the basis of the two concepts is different – a nation is based on the consciousness of unity because of psychological or spiritual feelings. But in a state there is a political unity.

So A. E. Zimmern distinguishes the two thus:

“Nationality, like religions, is subjective, statehood is objective, nationality is psychological, statehood is political; nationality is a condition of mind, statehood is a condition of law, nationality is a possession, statehood is enforceable obligation; nationality is a way of feeling, thinking and living, statehood is a condition inseparable from all civilised ways of living.”

Most of the modern states are nation-states. We may, for example, cite England, Italy, Germany, etc. There is a trend among the modern political writers to equate nation with the state. This gives rise to the theory of one nation, one state.

It is insisted that there should be as many states as there are nations. In other words, statehood should be identified with nationhood, and there should not be any state having more than one nation. This right is known as the right of self-determination.

Sir John Stuart Mill, who is the strongest exponent of this theory, maintained:

“The boundaries of a state should coincide in the main with those of nationalities.”

According to him, a multinational state is unsatisfactory because there is no unity except obeying the common authority.

Whether India is a Nation:

We refer to India as a nation-state. Is the term appropriate? The term state stands for a political entity, while the word nation in the sociological sense means the state. Let us take the case of state. India is definitely a political entity. But the problem comes with the expression nation. Is there one society, in the sociological sense, in India? To give the answer in the positive, India must have commonness in race, religion and language.

It is common knowledge that India does not have common racial unity. All races of the world are to be found in India, it is for this reason that India is called an anthropological museum. This goes on the minus side of nation. As for religion, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism are the main religions of India today. Hindu-Muslim animosity is persistent in Jammu and Kashmir, of course, with the backing of Pakistan.

Otherwise also, there is sporadic incidents of communal riots in India. In 1980 Hindu- Muslim riots broke out in Moradabad and rocked the entire province of Uttar Pradesh. So it is difficult to say that India has religious oneness.

The position with regard to common language is equally disappointing. Indian constitution recognises 17 languages which are called official languages. In addition, there are 1,500 recognised mother tongues, which cannot be excluded from the definition of language.

Language means communication. And modern day developments have shown that communication is imperative in order to bring about participatory development and authentic nation-building.

As a matter of fact, in the context of a vast multi-lingual entity like India, appropriate communication is possible only through the language of its peoples i.e. their mother tongues. Language in India, instead of becoming a means of communication has very often degenerated into a basis of dispute and identity crisis. This has led to creation of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Meghalaya.

The process is still on the anvil. So neither racially nor religiously nor linguistically India offers a homogenous whole. So it is difficult to call India one nation. This is at least what comes up at the first sight. But if we have a close-up view of it we must be impelled to draw a different conclusion.

We have borrowed the term nation-state from the west. There each nation demanded its own “political roof” and applied it to a condition where numerous nations and cultural conglomeration came to form a state in the wake of the two World Wars. In India, the term has not been used to mean one state but one cultural mainstream, i.e., to build one nation at the cost of other cultural collectivities.

In that case Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, though having differences, have a unified combine which is the state. As several flower plants constitute one garden despite the colour, and odour, differing, so several cultural units combine to make one nation and one state. All said and done, India must be one nation, because the Indians feel that they are so.

Essay # 6. Theory of One Nation, One State:

When a group of people have an identical entity in race, religion or language or even some kind of emotions and ideals of like nature, they qualify to form one nation.

Their next desire becomes to form one state. This idea became current in the wake of the First World War. President Woodrow Wilson was a priest of his theory of one nation, one state.

Thus the moment each group of people develop a national character, each must have an opportunity to have its independent political life.

The most prominent exponent of this doctrine is John Stuart Mill who is said to have maintained in this book Representative Government – “ It is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities.”

The theory has two lines of arguments. First, if a state consists of only one nationality, there will be more unity and the united energy may be channelized for the all-round progress of the state. Conversely, if the states are formed according to their national character, there will be an end of the majority ruling over the minority.

This will close the story of exploitation. So Pakistan had been created by carving a slice of land having Muslim population in 1947. Again, the Bengali-speaking population felt the need for an independent homeland. So was created Bangladesh in 1971.

Criticism of the Theory of One Nation, One State:

The theory evoked the following criticism. In the first place, if various nationalities live together, there will be an exchange of cultures, which will strengthen each group and enrich their outlook. In the second place, the theory is impracticable.

The race group, language culture and religion orders are so widely and indiscriminately distributed that it is almost impossible to give every nation group a separate slice of land to form a state.

We may give the example of Czechoslovakia. After the First World War, Czechoslovakia was separated from Germany. But many Germans who were inhabitants of Czechoslovakia were left without any political entity for them. They were made a minority population in the new state.

The USSR, which had been a union of several ethnic population, allowed in 1991 to break away from the union and form as many as fifteen states. It is apparent that these states are feeling uneasy in the absence of a strong inherent power to ensure economic viability and defence potentiality. So although the theory one nation, one state may sound attractive, it has several practical difficulties.

Essay # 7. Conclusion to Nation and Nationality:

All the factors listed above are strong forces in the creation of nationality. But none of them is indispensable. Nationality is something sentimental and subjective, while the factors mentioned above are all objective, so the presence or absence of any of the factors may not necessarily lead to the birth or death of nationality.

For example, Switzerland is a nation, though there are diverse races, languages and religions. Similarly, the Jews constituted one nation even though there is no. geographical unity so much so that they have no common or definite territory to live in. So Harold J. Laski rightly said- “ Nationality is essentially spiritual in character, a sentiment, the will of the people to live together.”

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Nationalism

The term “nationalism” is generally used to describe two phenomena:

• the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and
• the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.

(1) raises questions about the concept of a nation (or national identity), which is often defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and specifically about whether an individual’s membership in a nation should be regarded as non-voluntary or voluntary. (2) raises questions about whether self-determination must be understood as involving having full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less is required.

Nationalism came into the focus of philosophical debate three decades ago, in the nineties, partly in consequence of rather spectacular and troubling nationalist clashes. Surges of nationalism tend to present a morally ambiguous, and for this reason often fascinating, picture. “National awakening” and struggles for political independence are often both heroic and cruel; the formation of a recognizably national state often responds to deep popular sentiment but sometimes yields inhuman consequences, from violent expulsion and “cleansing” of non-nationals to organized mass murder. The moral debate on nationalism reflects a deep moral tension between solidarity with oppressed national groups on the one hand and repulsion in the face of crimes perpetrated in the name of nationalism on the other. Moreover, the issue of nationalism points to a wider domain of problems related to the treatment of ethnic and cultural differences within democratic polity, arguably among the most pressing problems of contemporary political theory.

In the last two decades, migration crisis and the populist reactions to migration and domestic economic issues have been the defining traits of a new political constellation. The traditional issue of the contrast between nationalism and cosmopolitanism has changed its profile: the current drastic contrast is between populist aversion to the foreigners-migrants and a more generous, or simply just, attitude of acceptance and Samaritan help. The populist aversion inherits some features traditionally associated with patriotism and nationalism, and the opposite attitude the main features of traditional cosmopolitanism. One could expect that the work on nationalism will be moving further on this new and challenging playground, addressing the new contrast and trying to locate nationalism in relation to it.

In this entry, we shall first present conceptual issues of definition and classification (Sections 1 and 2) and then the arguments put forward in the debate (Section 3), dedicating more space to the arguments in favor of nationalism than to those against it in order to give the philosophical nationalist a proper hearing. In the last part we shall turn to the new constellation and sketch the new issues raised by nationalist and trans-nationalist populisms and the migration crisis.

1.1 The Basic Concept of Nationalism

1.2 the concept of a nation, 2.1 concepts of nationalism: classical and liberal, 2.2 moral claims, classical vs. liberal: the centrality of nation, 3.1 classical and liberal nationalisms, 3.2 arguments in favor of nationalism, classical vs. liberal: the deep need for community, 3.3 arguments in favor of nationalism: issues of justice, 3.4 populism and a new face of nationalism, 3.5 nation-state in global context, 4. conclusion, introduction, other internet resources, related entries, 1. what is a nation.

Although the term “nationalism” has a variety of meanings, it centrally encompasses two phenomena: (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their identity as members of that nation and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take in seeking to achieve (or sustain) some form of political sovereignty (see for example, Nielsen 1998–9: 9). Each of these aspects requires elaboration.

• raises questions about the concept of a nation or national identity, about what it is to belong to a nation, and about how much one ought to care about one’s nation. Nations and national identity may be defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and while an individual’s membership in the nation is often regarded as involuntary, it is sometimes regarded as voluntary. The degree of care for one’s nation that nationalists require is often, but not always, taken to be very high: according to such views, the claims of one’s nation take precedence over rival contenders for authority and loyalty. [ 1 ]
• raises questions about whether sovereignty requires the acquisition of full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less than statehood suffices. Although sovereignty is often taken to mean full statehood (Gellner 1983: ch. 1), [ 2 ] possible exceptions have been recognized (Miller 1992: 87; Miller 2000). Some authors even defend an anarchist version of patriotism-moderate nationalism foreshadowed by Bakunin (see Sparrow 2007).

There is a terminological and conceptual question of distinguishing nationalism from patriotism. A popular proposal is the contrast between attachment to one’s country as defining patriotism and attachment to one’s people and its traditions as defining nationalism (Kleinig 2014: 228, and Primoratz 2017: Section 1.2). One problem with this proposal is that love for a country is not really just love of a piece of land but normally involves attachment to the community of its inhabitants, and this introduces “nation” into the conception of patriotism. Another contrast is the one between strong, and somewhat aggressive attachment (nationalism) and a mild one (patriotism), dating back at least to George Orwell (see his 1945 essay). [ 3 ]

Despite these definitional worries, there is a fair amount of agreement about the classical, historically paradigmatic form of nationalism. It typically features the supremacy of the nation’s claims over other claims to individual allegiance and full sovereignty as the persistent aim of its political program. Territorial sovereignty has traditionally been seen as a defining element of state power and essential for nationhood. It was extolled in classic modern works by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau and is returning to center stage in the debate, though philosophers are now more skeptical (see below). Issues surrounding the control of the movement of money and people (in particular immigration) and the resource rights implied in territorial sovereignty make the topic politically central in the age of globalization and philosophically interesting for nationalists and anti-nationalists alike.

In recent times, the philosophical focus has moved more in the direction of “liberal nationalism”, the view that mitigates the classical claims and tries to bring together the pro-national attitude and the respect for traditional liberal values. For instance, the territorial state as political unit is seen by classical nationalists as centrally “belonging” to one ethnic-cultural group and as actively charged with protecting and promulgating its traditions. The liberal variety allows for “sharing” of the territorial state with non-dominant ethnic groups. Consequences are varied and quite interested (for more see below, especially section 2.1 ).

In its general form, the issue of nationalism concerns the mapping between the ethno-cultural domain (featuring ethno-cultural groups or “nations”) and the domain of political organization. In breaking down the issue, we have mentioned the importance of the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity. This point raises two sorts of questions. First, the descriptive ones:

Second, the normative ones:

This section discusses the descriptive questions, starting with (1a) and (1b) ;the normative questions are addressed in Section 3 on the moral debate. If one wants to enjoin people to struggle for their national interests, one must have some idea about what a nation is and what it is to belong to a nation. So, in order to formulate and ground their evaluations, claims, and directives for action, pro-nationalist thinkers have expounded theories of ethnicity, culture, nation, and state. Their opponents have in turn challenged these elaborations. Now, some presuppositions about ethnic groups and nations are essential for the nationalist, while others are theoretical elaborations designed to support the essential ones. The definition and status of the social group that benefits from the nationalist program, variously called the “nation”, “ethno-nation”, or “ethnic group”, is essential. Since nationalism is particularly prominent with groups that do not yet have a state, a definition of nation and nationalism purely in terms of belonging to a state is a non-starter.

Indeed, purely “civic” loyalties are often categorized separately under the title “patriotism”, which we already mentioned, or “constitutional patriotism”. [ 4 ] This leaves two extreme options and a number of intermediates. The first extreme option has been put forward by a small but distinguished band of theorists. [ 5 ] According to their purely voluntaristic definition, a nation is any group of people aspiring to a common political state-like organization. If such a group of people succeeds in forming a state, the loyalties of the group members become “civic” (as opposed to “ethnic”) in nature. At the other extreme, and more typically, nationalist claims are focused upon the non-voluntary community of common origin, language, tradition, and culture: the classic ethno-nation is a community of origin and culture, including prominently a language and customs. The distinction is related (although not identical) to that drawn by older schools of social and political science between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism, the former being allegedly Western European and the latter more Central and Eastern European, originating in Germany. [ 6 ] Philosophical discussions centered on nationalism tend to concern the ethnic-cultural variants only, and this habit will be followed here. A group aspiring to nationhood on this basis will be called an “ethno-nation” to underscore its ethno-cultural rather than purely civic underpinnings. For the ethno-(cultural) nationalist it is one’s ethnic-cultural background that determines one’s membership in the community. One cannot choose to be a member; instead, membership depends on the accident of origin and early socialization. However, commonality of origin has become mythical for most contemporary candidate groups: ethnic groups have been mixing for millennia.

Sophisticated, liberal pro-nationalists therefore tend to stress cultural membership only and speak of “nationality”, omitting the “ethno-” part (Miller 1992, 2000; Tamir 1993,2013; Gans 2003). Michel Seymour’s proposal of a “socio-cultural definition” adds a political dimension to the purely cultural one: a nation is a cultural group, possibly but not necessarily united by a common descent, endowed with civic ties (Seymour 2000). This is the kind of definition that would be accepted by most parties in the debate today. So defined, the nation is a somewhat mixed category, both ethno-cultural and civic, but still closer to the purely ethno-cultural than to the purely civic extreme.

Let us now turn to the issue of the origin and “authenticity” of ethno-cultural groups or ethno-nations. In social and political science one usually distinguishes two kinds of views, but there is a third group, combining element from both. The first are modernist views that see nationalism as born in modern times, together with nation-states. [ 7 ] In our times the view was pioneered by Ernst Gellner (see his 1983). [ 8 ] Other modernist choose similar starting points with century or two of variation. [ 9 ] The opposite view can be called, following Edward Shils (1957) “primordialist”. According to it, actual ethno-cultural nations have either existed “since time immemorial”.

The third, quite plausible kind of view, distinct from both primordialism-ethno-symbolism and modernism, has been initiated by W. Connor (1994). [ 10 ] A nation is a politicized and mobilized ethnic group rather than a state. So, the origins of nationalism predate the modern state, and its emotional content remains up to our times (Conversi 2002: 270), but the actual statist organization is, indeed, modern. However, nation-state is a nationalist dream and fiction, never really implemented, due to the inescapable plurality of social groups. So much for the three dominant perspectives on the origin of nationalism.

Indeed, the older authors—from great thinkers like Herder and Otto Bauer to the propagandists who followed their footsteps—took great pains to ground normative claims upon firm ontological realism about nations: nations are real, bona fide entities. However, the contemporary moral debate has tried to diminish the importance of the imagined/real divide. Prominent contemporary philosophers have claimed that normative-evaluative nationalist claims are compatible with the “imagined” nature of a nation. [ 11 ] They point out that common imaginings can tie people together, and that actual interaction resulting from togetherness can engender important moral obligations.

Let us now turn to question (1c) about the nature of pro-national attitudes. The explanatory issue that has interested political and social scientists concerns ethno-nationalist sentiment, the paradigm case of a pro-national attitude. Is it as irrational, romantic, and indifferent to self-interest as it might seem on the surface? The issue has divided authors who see nationalism as basically irrational and those who try to explain it as being in some sense rational. Authors who see it as irrational propose various explanations of why people assent to irrational views. Some say, critically, that nationalism is based on “false consciousness”. But where does such false consciousness come from? The most simplistic view is that it is a result of direct manipulation of “masses” by “elites”. On the opposite side, the famous critic of nationalism Elie Kedourie (1960) thinks this irrationality is spontaneous. A decade and a half ago Liah Greenfeld went as far as linking nationalism to mental illness in her provocative 2005 article (see also her 2006 book). On the opposite side, Michael Walzer has offered a sympathetic account of nationalist passion in his 2002. Authors relying upon the Marxist tradition offer various deeper explanations. To mention one, the French structuralist Étienne Balibar sees it as a result of the “production” of ideology effectuated by mechanisms which have nothing to do with spontaneous credulity of individuals, but with impersonal, structural social factors (Balibar & Wallerstein 1988 [1991]). [ 12 ]

Some authors claim that it is often rational for individuals to become nationalists (Hardin 1985). Can one rationally explain the extremes of ethno-national conflict? Authors like Russell Hardin propose to do so in terms of a general view of when hostile behavior is rational: most typically, if an individual has no reason to trust someone, it is reasonable for that individual to take precautions against the other. If both sides take precautions, however, each will tend to see the other as increasingly inimical. It then becomes rational to start treating the other as an enemy. Mere suspicion can thus lead by small, individually rational steps to a situation of conflict. (Such negative development is often presented as a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma; see the entry on prisoner’s dilemma ). It is relatively easy to spot the circumstances in which this general pattern applies to national solidarities and conflicts (see also Wimmer 2013).

Finally, as for question (1d) , the nation is typically seen as an essentially non-voluntary community to which one belongs by birth and early nurture and such that the belonging is enhanced and made more complete by one’s additional conscious endorsement. Not everyone agrees: liberal nationalists accept the idea of choice of one’s national belonging and of possibility for immigrants to become nationals by choice and intentional acculturation.

2. Varieties of Nationalism

We pointed out at the very beginning of the entry that nationalism focuses upon (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) some form of political sovereignty. The politically central point is (2): the actions enjoined by the nationalist. To these we now turn, beginning with sovereignty and territory, the usual foci of a national struggle for independence. They raise an important issue:

The classical answer is that a state is required. A more liberal answer is that some form of political autonomy suffices. Once this has been discussed, we can turn to the related normative issues:

Consider first the classical nationalist answer to (2a) . Political sovereignty requires a state “rightfully owned” by the ethno-nation (Oldenquist 1997). Developments of this line of thought often state or imply specific answers to (2b) , and (2c) , i.e., that in a national independence struggle the use of force against the threatening central power is almost always a legitimate means for bringing about sovereignty. However, classical nationalism is not only concerned with the creation of a state but also with its maintenance and strengthening.

Classical nationalism is the political program that sees the creation and maintenance of a fully sovereign state owned by a given ethno-national group (“people” or “nation”) as a primary duty of each member of the group. Starting from the assumption that the appropriate (or “natural”) unit of culture is an ethno-nation, it claims that a primary duty of each member is to abide by one’s recognizably ethno-national culture in all cultural matters.

Classical nationalists are usually vigilant about the kind of culture they protect and promote and about the kind of attitude people have to their nation-state. This watchful attitude carries some potential dangers: many elements of a given culture that are universal or simply not recognizably national may fall prey to such nationalist enthusiasms. Classical nationalism in everyday life puts various additional demands on individuals, from buying more expensive home-produced goods in preference to cheaper imported ones to procreating as many future members of the nation as one can manage (see Yuval-Davies 1997, and Yack 2012).

Besides classical nationalism (and its more radical extremist cousins), various moderate views are also now classified as nationalist. Indeed, the philosophical discussion has shifted to these moderate or even ultra-moderate forms, and most philosophers who describe themselves as nationalists propose very moderate nationalist programs.

Nationalism in this wider sense is any complex of attitudes, claims, and directives for action ascribing a fundamental political, moral, and cultural value to nation and nationality and deriving obligations (for individual members of the nation, and for any involved third parties, individual or collective) from this ascribed value. The main representative of this group of views is liberal nationalism , proposed by authors like Miller, Tamir, and Gans (see below).

Nationalisms in this wider sense can vary somewhat in their conceptions of the nation (which are often left implicit in their discourse), in the grounds for and degree of its value, and in the scope of their prescribed obligations. Moderate nationalism is less demanding than classical nationalism and sometimes goes under the name of “patriotism.” (A different usage, again, reserves “patriotism” for valuing civic community and loyalty to state, in contrast to nationalism, centered on ethnic-cultural communities).

Let us now turn to liberal nationalism, the most discussed kind of moderate nationalism.

Liberal nationalists see liberal-democratic principles and pro-national attitudes as belonging together. One of the main proponents of the view, Yael Tamir, started the debate in her 1993 book and in her recent book talks about the nation-state as “an ideal meeting point between the two” (2019: 6). Of course, some things have to be sacrificed: we must acknowledge that either the meaningfulness of a community or its openness must be sacrificed to some extent as we cannot have them both. (2019: 57). How much of each is to give way is left open, and of course, various liberal nationalists take different views of what precisely the right answer is.

Tamir’s version of liberal nationalism is a kind of social liberalism, in this respect similar to the views of David Miller who talks about “solidaristic communities” in his 1999 book Principles of Social Justice and also takes stance in his 1995 and 2008 books. They both see the feeling of national identity as a feeling that promotes solidarity, and solidarity as means for increased social justice (Tamir 2019, in particular ch.20; compare Walzer 1983, Kymlicka 1995a, 2001, and Gans 2003, 2008).

Liberal nationalists diverge about the value of multiculturalism. Kymlicka takes it as basic for his picture of liberalism while Tamir dismisses it without much ado: multicultural, multiethnic democracies have a very poor track record, she claims (2019: 62). Tamir’s diagnosis of the present day political crisis, with politicians like Trump and Le Pen coming to the forefront, is that “liberal democrats were paralyzed by their assumed victory” whereas “nationalists felt defeated and obsolete” (2019: 7).

Tamir lists two kinds of reasons that guarantee special political status to nations. First kind, that no other political entity “is more able than the state to promote ideas in the public sphere” (2019: 52), and the second kind that nation needs continuous creative effort to make it functional and attractive.

The historical development of liberalism turned it into a universalistic, anti-communitarian principle; this has been a fatal mistake that can be and should be corrected by the liberal nationalist synthesis. Can we revive the unifying narratives of our nationality without sacrificing the liberal inheritance of freedom and rights? Liberal nationalism answers in the affirmative. From its standpoint, national particularism has primacy: “The love of humanity is a noble ideal, but real love is always particular…” (2019: 68).

Interestingly, Tamir combines this high regard of nation with an extreme constructivist view of its nature: nations are mental structures that exist in the minds of their members (2019: 58).

Is liberal nationalism implemented anywhere in the present world, or is it more of an ideal, probably end-state theory, that proposes a picture of a desirable society? Judging by the writings of liberal nationalists, it is the latter, although presented as a relatively easily reachable ideal, combining two traditions that are already well implemented in political reality.

The variations of nationalism most relevant for philosophy are those that influence the moral standing of claims and of recommended nationalist practices. The elaborate philosophical views put forward in favor of nationalism will be referred to as “theoretical nationalism”, the adjective serving to distinguish such views from less sophisticated and more practical nationalist discourse. The central theoretical nationalist evaluative claims can be charted on the map of possible positions within political theory in the following useful but somewhat simplified and schematic way.

Nationalist claims featuring the nation as central to political action must answer two crucial general questions. First, is there one kind of large social group that is of special moral importance? The nationalist answer is that there certainly is one, namely, the nation. Moreover, when an ultimate choice is to be made, say between ties of family, or friendship, and the nation, the latter has priority. Liberal nationalists prefer a more moderate stance, which ascribes value to national belonging, but don’t make it central in this way. Second, what are the grounds for an individual’s obligations to the morally central group? Are they based on voluntary or involuntary membership in the group? The typical contemporary nationalist thinker opts for the latter, while admitting that voluntary endorsement of one’s national identity is a morally important achievement. On the philosophical map, pro-nationalist normative tastes fit nicely with the communitarian stance in general: most pro-nationalist philosophers are communitarians who choose the nation as the preferred community (in contrast to those of their fellow communitarians who prefer more far-ranging communities, such as those defined by global religious traditions). [ 13 ]

Before proceeding to moral claims, let us briefly sketch the issues and viewpoints connected to territory and territorial rights that are essential for nationalist political programs. [ 14 ] Why is territory important for ethno-national groups, and what are the extent and grounds of territorial rights? Its primary importance resides in sovereignty and all the associated possibilities for internal control and external exclusion. Add to this the Rousseauian view that political attachments are essentially bounded and that love —or, to put it more mildly, republican civil friendship—for one’s group requires exclusion of some “other”, and the importance becomes quite obvious. What about the grounds for the demand for territorial rights? Nationalist and pro-nationalist views mostly rely on the attachment that members of a nation have to national territory and to the formative value of territory for a nation to justify territorial claims (see Miller 2000 and Meisels 2009). This is similar in some respects to the rationale given by proponents of indigenous peoples’ rights (Tully 2004, but see also Hendrix 2008) and in other respects to Kolers’ 2009 ethno-geographical non-nationalist theory, but differs in preferring ethno-national groups as the sole carriers of the right. These attachment views stand in stark contrast to more pragmatic views about territorial rights as means for conflict resolution (e.g., Levy 2000). Another quite popular alternative is the family of individualistic views grounding territorial rights in rights and interests of individuals. [ 15 ] On the extreme end of anti-nationalist views stands the idea of Pogge) that there are no specific territorial problems for political philosophy—the “dissolution approach”, as Kolers calls it.

We now pass to the normative dimension of nationalism. We shall first describe the very heart of the nationalist program, i.e., sketch and classify the typical normative and evaluative nationalist claims. These claims can be seen as answers to the normative subset of our initial questions about (1) pro-national attitudes and (2) actions.

We will see that these claims recommend various courses of action: centrally, those meant to secure and sustain a political organization for the given ethno-cultural national community (thereby making more specific the answers to our normative questions (1e) , (1f) , (2b) , and (2c) ). Further, they enjoin the community’s members to promulgate recognizable ethno-cultural contents as central features of the cultural life within such a state. Finally, we shall discuss various lines of pro-nationalist thought that have been put forward in defense of these claims. To begin, let us return to the claims concerning the furthering of the national state and culture. These are proposed by the nationalist as norms of conduct. The philosophically most important variations concern three aspects of such normative claims:

• The normative nature and strength of the claim: does it promote merely a right (say, to have and maintain a form of political self-government, preferably and typically a state, or have cultural life centered upon a recognizably ethno-national culture), or a moral obligation (to get and maintain one), or a moral, legal, and political obligation? The strongest claim is typical of classical nationalism; its typical norms are both moral and, once the nation-state is in place, legally enforceable obligations for all parties concerned, including for the individual members of the ethno-nation. A weaker but still quite demanding version speaks only of moral obligation (“sacred duty”).
• The strength of the nationalist claim in relation to various external interests and rights: to give a real example, is the use of the domestic language so important that even international conferences should be held in it, at the cost of losing the most interesting participants from abroad? The force of the nationalist claim is here being weighed against the force of other claims, including those of individual or group interests or rights. Variations in comparative strength of nationalist claims take place on a continuum between two extremes. At one rather unpalatable extreme, nation-focused claims take precedence over any other claims, including over human rights. Further towards the center is the classical nationalism that gives nation-centered claims precedence over individual interests and many needs, but not necessarily over general human rights (see, for example, MacIntyre 1994, Oldenquist 1997). On the opposite end, which is mild, humane, and liberal, the central classical nationalist claims are accorded prima facie status only (see Tamir 1993, Gans 2003, and Miller 2013; and for applications to Central Europe Stefan Auer 2004).

Universalizing nationalism is the political program that claims that every ethno-nation should have a state that it should rightfully own and the interests of which it should promote.

Alternatively, a claim may be particularistic, such as the claim “Group X ought to have a state”, where this implies nothing about any other group:

Particularistic nationalism is the political program claiming that some ethno-nation should have its state, without extending the claim to all ethno-nations. It claims thus either by omission (unreflective particularistic nationalism), or by explicitly specifying who is excluded: “Group X ought to have a state, but group Y should not” (invidious nationalism).

The most difficult and indeed chauvinistic sub-case of particularism, i.e., (B), has been called “invidious” since it explicitly denies the privilege of having a state to some peoples. Serious theoretical nationalists usually defend only the universalist variety, whereas the nationalist-in-the-street most often defends the egoistic indeterminate one.

The nationalist picture of morality traditionally has been quite close to the dominant view in the theory of international relations called “realism”. Put starkly, the view is that morality ends at the boundaries of the nation-state; beyond there is nothing but anarchy. [ 16 ] It nicely complements the main classical nationalist claim about the nation-state, i.e., that each ethno-nation or people should have a state of its own, and suggests what happens next: nation-states enter into competition in the name of their constitutive peoples.

3. The Moral Debate

Recall the initial normative question centered around (1) attitudes and (2) actions. Is national partiality justified, and to what extent? What actions are appropriate to bring about sovereignty? In particular, are ethno-national states and institutionally protected (ethno-) national cultures goods independent from the individual will of their members, and how far may one go in protecting them? The philosophical debate for and against nationalism is a debate about the moral validity of its central claims. In particular, the ultimate moral issue is the following: is any form of nationalism morally permissible or justified, and, if not, how bad are particular forms of it? [ 17 ] Why do nationalist claims require a defense? In some situations they seem plausible: for instance, the plight of some stateless national groups—the history of Jews and Armenians, the historical and contemporary misfortunes of Kurds—lends credence to the idea that having their own state would have solved the worst problems. Still, there are good reasons to examine nationalist claims more carefully. The most general reason is that it should first be shown that the political form of the nation-state has some value as such, that a national community has a particular, or even central, moral and political value, and that claims in its favor have normative validity. Once this is established, a further defense is needed. Some classical nationalist claims appear to clash—at least under normal circumstances of contemporary life—with various values that people tend to accept. Some of these values are considered essential to liberal-democratic societies, while others are important specifically for the flourishing of creativity and culture. The main values in the first set are individual autonomy and benevolent impartiality (most prominently towards members of groups culturally different from one’s own). The alleged special duties towards one’s ethno-national culture can and often do interfere with individuals’ right to autonomy.

Liberal nationalists are aware of the difficulties of the classical approach, and soften the classical claims, giving them only a prima facie status. They usually speak of “various accretions that have given nationalism a bad name”, and they are eager to “separate the idea of nationality itself from these excesses” (Miller 1992, 2000). Such thoughtful pro-nationalist writers have participated in an ongoing philosophical dialogue between proponents and opponents of the claim. [ 18 ] In order to help the reader find their through this involved debate, we shall briefly summarize the considerations which are open to the ethno-nationalist to defend their case (compare the useful overview in Lichtenberg 1997). Further lines of thought built upon these considerations can be used to defend very different varieties of nationalism, from radical to very moderate ones.

For brevity, each line of thought will be reduced to a brief argument; the actual debate is more involved than one can represent in a sketch. Some prominent lines of criticism that have been put forward in the debate will be indicated in brackets (see Miscevic 2001). The main arguments in favor of nationalism will be divided into two sets. The first set of arguments defends the claim that national communities have a high value, sometime seen as coming from the interests of their individual member (e.g., by Kymlicka, Miller, and Raz) and sometimes as non-instrumental and independent of the wishes and choices of their individual members, and argues that they should therefore be protected by means of state and official statist policies. The second set is less deeply “comprehensive”, and encompasses arguments from the requirements of justice, independent from substantial assumptions about culture and cultural values.

The first set will be presented in more detail since it has formed the core of the debate. It depicts the community as the source of value or as the transmission device connecting its members to some important values. For the classical nationalist, the arguments from this set are communitarian in a particularly “deep” sense since they are grounded in basic features of the human condition.

The general form of deep communitarian arguments is as follows. First, the communitarian premise: there is some uncontroversial good (e.g., a person’s identity), and some kind of community is essential for acquisition and preservation of it. Then comes the claim that the ethno-cultural nation is the kind of community ideally suited for this task. Then follows the statist conclusion: in order for such a community to preserve its own identity and support the identity of its members, it has to assume (always or at least normally) the political form of a state. The conclusion of this type of argument is that the ethno-national community has the right to an ethno-national state and the citizens of the state have the right and obligation to favor their own ethnic culture in relation to any other.

Although the deeper philosophical assumptions in the arguments stem from the communitarian tradition, weakened forms have also been proposed by more liberal philosophers. The original communitarian lines of thought in favor of nationalism suggest that there is some value in preserving ethno-national cultural traditions, in feelings of belonging to a common nation, and in solidarity between a nation’s members. A liberal nationalist might claim that these are not the central values of political life but are values nevertheless. Moreover, the diametrically opposing views, pure individualism and cosmopolitanism, do seem arid, abstract, and unmotivated by comparison. By cosmopolitanism we refer to moral and political doctrines claiming that

• one’s primary moral obligations are directed to all human beings (regardless of geographical or cultural distance), and
• political arrangements should faithfully reflect this universal moral obligation (in the form of supra-statist arrangements that take precedence over nation-states).

Confronted with opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, many philosophers opt for a mixture of liberalism-cosmopolitanism and patriotism-nationalism. In his writings, B. Barber glorifies “a remarkable mixture of cosmopolitanism and parochialism” that in his view characterizes American national identity (Barber 1996: 31). Charles Taylor claims that “we have no choice but to be cosmopolitan and patriots” (Taylor 1996: 121). Hilary Putnam proposes loyalty to what is best in the multiple traditions in which each of us participates, apparently a middle way between a narrow-minded patriotism and an overly abstract cosmopolitanism (Putnam 1996: 114). The compromise has been foreshadowed by Berlin (1979) and Taylor (1989, 1993), [ 19 ] and in the last two decades it has occupied center stage in the debate and even provoked re-readings of historical nationalism in its light. [ 20 ] Most liberal nationalist authors accept various weakened versions of the arguments we list below, taking them to support moderate or ultra-moderate nationalist claims.

Here are then the main weakenings of classical ethno-nationalism that liberal, limited-liberal, and cosmopolitan nationalists propose. First, ethno-national claims have only prima facie strength and cannot trump individual rights. Second, legitimate ethno-national claims do not in themselves automatically amount to the right to a state, but rather to the right to a certain level of cultural autonomy. The main models of autonomy are either territorial or non-territorial: the first involves territorial devolution; the second, cultural autonomy granted to individuals regardless of their domicile within the state. [ 21 ] Third, ethno-nationalism is subordinate to civic patriotism, which has little or nothing to do with ethnic criteria. Fourth, ethno-national mythologies and similar “important falsehoods” are to be tolerated only if benign and inoffensive, in which case they are morally permissible despite their falsity. Finally, any legitimacy that ethno-national claims may have is to be derived from choices the concerned individuals are free to make.

Consider now the particular pro-nationalist arguments from the first set. The first argument depends on assumptions that also appear in the subsequent ones, but it further ascribes to the community an intrinsic value. The later arguments point more towards an instrumental value of nation, derived from the value of individual flourishing, moral understanding, firm identity and the like.

• The Argument From Intrinsic Value . Each ethno-national community is valuable in and of itself since it is only within the natural encompassing framework of various cultural traditions that important meanings and values are produced and transmitted. The members of such communities share a special cultural proximity to each other. By speaking the same language and sharing customs and traditions, the members of these communities are typically closer to one another in various ways than they are to the outsiders.
• The Argument from Flourishing . The ethno-national community is essential for each of its members to flourish. In particular, it is only within such a community that an individual can acquire concepts and values crucial for understanding the community’s cultural life in general and the individual’s own life in particular. There has been much debate on the pro-nationalist side about whether divergence of values is essential for separateness of national groups.

The Canadian liberal nationalists Seymour (1999), Taylor, and Kymlicka pointed out that “divergences of value between different regions of Canada” that aspire to separate nationhood are “minimal”. Taylor (1993: 155) concluded that it is not separateness of value that matters.

• The Argument from Identity . Communitarian philosophers emphasize nurture over nature as the principal force determining our identity as people—we come to be who we are because of the social settings and contexts in which we mature. This claim certainly has some plausibility. The very identity of each person depends upon his/her participation in communal life (see MacIntyre 1994, Nielsen, 1998, and Lagerspetz 2000). Given that an individual’s morality depends upon their having a mature and stable personal identity, the communal conditions that foster the development of personal identity must be preserved and encouraged. Therefore, communal life should be organized around particular national cultures.
• The Argument from Moral Understanding . A particularly important variety of value is moral value. Some values are universal, e.g., freedom and equality, but these are too abstract and “thin”. The rich, “thick” moral values are discernible only within particular traditions; as Charles Taylor puts it, “the language we have come to accept articulates the issues of the good for us” (1989: 35). The nation offers a natural framework for moral traditions, and thereby for moral understanding; it is the primary school of morals.

The ‘physiognomies’ of cultures are unique: each presents a wonderful exfoliation of human potentialities in its own time and place and environment. We are forbidden to make judgments of comparative value, for that is measuring the incommensurable. (1976: 206)

Assuming that the (ethno-)nation is the natural unit of culture, the preservation of cultural diversity amounts to institutionally protecting the purity of (ethno-)national culture. The plurality of cultural styles can be preserved and enhanced by tying them to ethno-national “forms of life”.

David Miller has developed an interesting and sophisticated liberal pro-national stance over the course of decades from his work in 1990 to the most recent work in 2013. He accepts multicultural diversity within a society but stresses an overarching national identity, taking as his prime example British national identity, which encompasses the English, Scottish, and other ethnic identities. He demands an “inclusive identity, accessible to members of all cultural groups” (2013: 91). miller claims such identity is necessary for basic social solidarity, and it goes far beyond simple constitutional patriotism. A skeptic could note the following. The problem with multicultural society is that national identity has historically been a matter of ethno-national ties and has required sameness in the weighted majority of cultural traits (common language, common “history-as-remembered”, customs, religion and so on). However, multi-cultural states typically bring together groups with very different histories, languages, religions, and even quite contrasting appearances. Now, how is the overarching “national identity” to be achieved starting from the very thin identity of common belonging to a state? One seems to have a dilemma. Grounding social solidarity in national identity requires the latter to be rather thin and seems likely to end up as full-on, unitary cultural identity. Thick constitutional patriotism may be one interesting possible attitude that can ground such solidarity while preserving the original cultural diversity.

The arguments in the second set concern political justice and do not rely on metaphysical claims about identity, flourishing, and cultural values. They appeal to (actual or alleged) circumstances that would make nationalist policies reasonable (or permissible or even mandatory), such as (a) the fact that a large part of the world is organized into nation-states (so that each new group aspiring to create a nation-state just follows an established pattern), or (b) the circumstances of group self-defense or of redressing past injustice that might justify nationalist policies (to take a special case). Some of the arguments also present nationhood as conducive to important political goods, such as equality.

• The Argument from the Right to Collective Self-determination . A group of people of a sufficient size has a prima facie right to govern itself and decide its future membership, if the members of the group so wish. It is fundamentally the democratic will of the members themselves that grounds the right to an ethno-national state and to ethno-centric cultural institutions and practices. This argument presents the justification of (ethno-)national claims as deriving from the will of the members of the nation. It is therefore highly suitable for liberal nationalism but not appealing to a deep communitarian who sees the demands of the nation as independent from, and prior to, the choices of particular individuals. [ 22 ]
• The Argument from the Right to Self-defense and to Redress Past Injustices . Oppression and injustice give the victimized group a just cause and the right to secede. If a minority group is oppressed by the majority to the extent that almost every minority member is worse off than most members of the majority simply in virtue of belonging to the minority, then nationalist claims on behalf of the minority are morally plausible and potentially compelling. The argument establishes a typical remedial right, acceptable from a liberal standpoint (see the discussion in Kukathas and Poole 2000, also Buchanan 1991; for past injustices see Waldron 1992).
• The Argument from Equality . Members of a minority group are often disadvantaged in relation to the dominant culture because they have to rely on those with the same language and culture to conduct the affairs of daily life. Therefore, liberal neutrality itself requires that the majority provide certain basic cultural goods, i.e., granting differential rights (see Kymlicka 1995b, 2001, and 2003b). Institutional protections and the right to the minority group’s own institutional structure are remedies that restore equality and turn the resulting nation-state into a more moderate multicultural one.
• The Argument from Success . The nationstate has in the past succeeded in promoting equality and democracy. Ethno-national solidarity is a powerful motive for a more egalitarian distribution of goods (Miller 1995; Canovan 1996, 2000). The nation-state also seems to be essential to safeguard the moral life of communities in the future, since it is the only form of political institution capable of protecting communities from the threats of globalization and assimilationism (for a detailed critical discussion of this argument see Mason 1999).

Andreas Wimmer (2018) presents an interesting discussion of the historical success of nation-state (discussed in Knott, Tolz, Green, & Wimmer 2019).

These political arguments can be combined with deep communitarian ones. However, taken in isolation, their perspectives offer a “liberal culturalism” that is more suitable for ethno-culturally plural societies. More remote from classical nationalism than the liberal one of Tamir and Nielsen, it eschews any communitarian philosophical underpinning. [ 23 ] The idea of moderate nation-building points to an open multi-culturalism in which every group receives its share of remedial rights but, instead of walling itself off from others, participates in a common, overlapping civic culture in open communication with other sub-communities. Given the variety of pluralistic societies and intensity of trans-national interactions, such openness seems to many to be the only guarantee of stable social and political life (see the debate in Shapiro and Kymlicka 1997).

In general, the liberal nationalist stance is mild and civil, and there is much to be said in favor of it. It tries to reconcile our intuitions in favor of some sort of political protection of cultural communities with a liberal political morality. Of course, this raises issues of compatibility between liberal universal principles and the particular attachments to one’s ethno-cultural nation. Very liberal nationalists such as Tamir divorce ethno-cultural nationhood from statehood. Also, the kind of love for country they suggest is tempered by all kinds of universalist considerations, which in the last instance trump national interest (Tamir 1993: 115; 2019: passim, see also Moore 2001 and Gans 2003). There is an ongoing debate among philosophical nationalists about how much weakening and compromising is still compatible with a stance’s being nationalist at all. [ 24 ] There is also a streak of cosmopolitan interest present in the work of some liberal nationalists (Nielsen 1998–99). [ 25 ]

In the last two decades, the issues of nationalism have been increasingly integrated into the debate about the international order (see the entries on globalization and cosmopolitanism ). The main conceptual link is the claim that nation-states are natural, stable, and suitable units of the international order. A related debate concerns the role of minorities in the processes of globalization (see Kaldor 2004). Moreover, the two approaches might ultimately converge: a multiculturalist liberal nationalism and a moderate, difference-respecting cosmopolitanism have a lot in common. [ 26 ]

“Populism” is an umbrella term, covering both right-wing and left-wing varieties. This section will pay attention to right-wing populist movements, very close to their traditional nationalist predecessors. This corresponds to the situation in the biggest part of Europe, and in the US, where nationalist topics are being put forward by the right-wing populist. [ 27 ]

However, it has become quite clear that nationalism is only one of the political “isms” attracting the right-wing populists. The migration crisis has brought to the forefront populist self-identification with linguistic-cultural communities (“we, French speaking people” for the former, “we Christians” for the later) that goes beyond nationalism.

Jan-Werner Müller (2016) and Cas Mudde (2007) note that the form common to all sorts of populism is quite simple and describe it as “thin”. Mudde explains: “Populism is understood as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the People” (2007: 23). Populism, so defined, has two opposites: elitism and pluralism. First, there is the elite vs. people (“underdog”) contrast. Second, it is possible to distinguish two ways of characterizing “the people”: either in terms of social status (class, income-level, etc.) or in terms of ethnic and/or cultural belonging (see also de Cleen 2017).

The second, horizontal dimension distinguishes the predominantly left-wing from the predominantly right-wing populisms and leaves a place for a centrist populist option. Take classical strong ethnic nationalism. The relation between right-wing populism and such a nationalism is very tight. This has led some theoreticians (Taguieff 2015) to present “nationalist populism” as the only kind of populism. The term captures exactly the synthesis of populism and the strong ethnic nationalism or nativism. From populism, it takes the general schema of anti-elitism: the leader is addressing directly the people and is allegedly following the people’s interest. From nationalism, it takes the characterization of the people: it is the ethnic community, in most cases the state-owing ethnic community, or the ethno-nation. In his work, Mudde documents the claim that purely right-wing populists claim to represent the true people who form the true nation and whose purity is being muddied by new entrants. In the United States, one can talk about populist and reactionary movements, like the Tea Party, that have emerged through the recent experience of immigration, terrorist attacks, and growing economic polarization. We have to set aside here, for reasons of space, the main populist alternative (or quasi-alternative) to national populism. In some countries, like Germany, some populist groups-parties (e.g., German AfD party (Alternative for Germany)), appeal to properties much wider in their reach than ethno-national belonging, typically to religious affiliations. Others combine this appeal with the ethno-national one. This yields what Riva Kastoryano (2006) calls “transnational nationalism”.

Interestingly, liberal nationalism is not very attractive to the populists. On the theoretical side one can note that Tamir (2019) sees her liberal nationalism as a good recipe against the threat of demagogues like Trump and Boris Johnson (she avoids the use of the label “populist”, e.g., 2019: 31).

The rise of populism is changing the political playfield one must work with. The tolerant (liberal nationalist or anti-nationalist) views are confronting new problems in the populist age marked by migration crisis, etc. The dangers traditionally associated with military presence are gone; the national populists have to invent and construct a presumed danger that comes into the country together with foreign families, including those with children. In short, if these conjectures hold, the politicians and theoreticians are faced with a change. The traditional issue of the contrast between patriotism/nationalism and cosmopolitanism has changed its profile: the current drastic contrast is between the populist aversion to the foreigners-migrants and a more generous attitude of acceptance and Samaritan help. Finally, the populist understanding of “our people” (“we-community”) encompasses not only nationalist options but also goes way beyond it. The important element is the promiscuous character of the populist choices. It is probable that the future scholarship on nationalism will mainly focus on this new and challenging playfield, with an aim to address the new contrast and locate kinds of nationalism in relation to it. [ 28 ]

The migration crisis has made the nation-state in global context the central political topic concerning nationality. Before moving on to current events, the state of art before the crisis should be summarized. First, consider the debates on territory and nation and issues of global justice.

Liberal nationalists try to preserve the traditional nationalist link between ethnic “ownership” of the state and sovereignty and territorial control, but in a much more flexible and sophisticated setting. Tamar Meisels thus argues in favor of “taking existing national settlements into account as a central factor in demarcating territorial boundaries” since this line “has both liberal foundations” (i.e., in the work of John Locke) and liberal-national appeal (2009: 159) grounded in its affinity with the liberal doctrine of national self-determination. She combines it with Chaim Gans’ (2003: Ch. 4) interpretation of “historical right” claims as “the right to formative territories”. She thus combines “historical arguments, understood as claims to formative territories”, with her argument from settlement and insists on their interplay and mutual reinforcement, presenting them as being “most closely related to, and based on, liberal nationalist assumptions and underlying ideas” (Meisels 2009: 160). She nevertheless stresses that more than one ethnic group can have formative ties to a given territory, and that there might be competing claims based on settlement. [ 29 ] But, given the ethno-national conflicts of the twentieth century, one can safely assume that culturally plural states divided into isolated and closed sub-communities glued together merely by arrangements of modus vivendi are inherently unstable. Stability might therefore require that the pluralist society envisioned by liberal culturalists promote quite intense intra-state interaction between cultural groups in order to forestall mistrust, reduce prejudice, and create a solid basis for cohabitation.

But where should one stop? The question arises since there are many geographically open, interacting territories of various sizes. Consider first the geographical openness of big continental planes, then add the modern ease of interaction (“No island is an island any more”, one could say), and, finally and dramatically, the substantial ecological interconnectedness of land and climate. Here, the tough nationalistic line is no longer proposed seriously in ethical debates, so the furthest pro-national extreme is in fact a relatively moderate stance, exemplified by Miller in the works listed. Here is a typical proposal of his concerning global justice based on nation-states: it might become a matter of national pride to have set aside a certain percentage of GDP for developmental goals—perhaps for projects in one particular country or group of countries (2013: 182).

This brings us to the topic of migrations, and the heated debate on the present scene. [ 30 ] In Europe immigration is probably the main topic of the present day populist uproar, and in the United States it is one of the main topics. So, immigration plus the nationalist-populist reactions to it are in the current decade the main testing ground for nationalist and cosmopolitan views.

Let’s look at the pro-national side in the debate. Liberal nationalists, in particular Miller, have put forward some thoughtful pro-nationalist proposal concerning immigration. Miller’s proposal allows refugees to seek asylum temporarily until the situation in their country of origin improves; it also limits economic migration. Miller argues against the defensibility of a global standard for equality, opportunity, welfare, etc., because measures of just equality are context-bound. People do have the right to a minimum standard of living, but the right to migrate only activates as a last resort after all other measures within a candidate-migrant’s country of origin have been tried. However, he also (particularly in his book on “Strangers in our midst”, 2016), claims that national responsibility to accept immigrant refugees is balanced by considerations of the interest of would-be immigrants and the interests that national communities have in maintaining control over their own composition and character.

If we agree with the liberal nationalists on the positive side, we can ask about the dynamics of the help required for the immigrants. Distinguish at least three stages, first, the immediate emergency (starvation, freezing, urgent medical problems) and catering to it, second, settlement and learning (on the host and the immigrant newcomer side), and third, the stage of (some kind of) citizenship, of relatively stable life in the host country.

In the first phase, the immediate help comes first, both normatively and causally: just accept the would-be refugees (indeed, the would-be refugees should be helped in leaving their countries and travelling to the host country). In longer term, staying should involve opportunity for work and training.

But there is more. The Samaritan obligation can and should function as a preparation for wider global activity. [ 31 ] So, we have two theoretical steps, first, accepting Samaritanism and second, agreeing with deeper trans-national measure of blocking distant causes, like poverty and wars in the Third world. Let us call this “Samaritan-to-deeper-measures model”. The model is geared to the dramatically changed playground in which the nationalism issues are played out in the context of populism and refugee crisis, raising issues that were not around two decades ago.

In presenting the claims that the pro-nationalists defend, we have proceeded from the more radical towards more liberal nationalist alternatives. In examining the arguments for these claims, we have presented metaphysically demanding communitarian arguments resting upon deep communitarian assumptions about culture, such as the premise that the ethno-cultural nation is the most important community for all individuals. This is an interesting and respectable claim, but its plausibility has not been established. The moral debate about nationalism has resulted in various weakenings of culture-based arguments, typically proposed by liberal nationalists, which render the arguments less ambitious but much more plausible. Having abandoned the old nationalist ideal of a state owned by a single dominant ethno-cultural group, liberal nationalists have become receptive to the idea that identification with a plurality of cultures and communities is important for a person’s social identity. They have equally become sensitive to trans-national issues and more willing to embrace a partly cosmopolitan perspective. Liberal nationalism has also brought to the fore more modest, less philosophically or metaphysically charged arguments grounded in concerns about justice. These stress the practical importance of ethno-cultural membership, ethno-cultural groups’ rights to have injustices redressed, democratic rights of political association, and the role that ethno-cultural ties and associations can play in promoting just social arrangements.

The events in the current decade, the refugee crisis and the rise of right-wing populism, have dramatically changed the relevant practical and theoretical playground. The traditional nationalism is still relevant, but populist nationalism attracts much more attention: new theories are being produced and debated, coming to occupy the center stage. On the other hand, migration crisis has replaced the typical cosmopolitan issue of solidarity-with-distant-strangers with burning issues of helping refugees present at our doors. Of course, the causes of the crisis are still the same ones that cosmopolitans have been worrying about much earlier: wars and dramatically unequal global distribution of goods, and of threats, like illnesses and climate disasters. The task of the theory is now to connect these deeper issues with the new problems occupying the center-stage of the new playground; it is a challenge now formulated in somewhat different vocabulary and within different political conceptual frameworks than before.

This is a short list of books on nationalism that are readable and useful introductions to the literature. First, two contemporary classics of social science with opposing views are:

• Gellner, Ernest, 1983, Nations and Nationalism , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Smith, Anthony D., 1991, National Identity , Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Three presentations of liberal nationalism, two of them by the same author, Yael Tamir, offer the best introduction to the approach:

• Miller, David, 1995, On Nationality , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198293569.001.0001
• Tamir, Yael, 1993, Liberal Nationalism , Press, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2019, Why Nationalism , Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Two short and readable introductions are:

• Özkirimli, Umut, 2010, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction , second edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan. First edition is 2000; third edition is 2017.
• Spencer, Philip and Howard Wollman, 2002, Nationalism, A Critical Introduction , London: Sage.

The two best anthologies of high-quality philosophical papers on the morality of nationalism are:

• McKim, Robert and Jeff McMahan (eds), 1997, The Morality of Nationalism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Couture, Jocelyne, Kai Nielsen, and Michel Seymour (eds.), 1998, Rethinking Nationalism , Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Supplement Volume 22, Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.

The debate continues in:

• Miscevic, Nenad (ed), 2000, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: Philosophical Perspectives , La Salle and Chicago: Open Court.
• Dieckoff, Alain (ed.), 2004, The Politics of Belonging: Nationalism, Liberalism, and Pluralism , Lanham: Lexington.
• Primoratz, Igor and Aleksandar Pavković (eds), 2007, Patriotism, Philosophical and Political Perspectives , London: Ashgate.
• Breen, Keith and Shane O’Neill (eds.), 2010, After the Nation? Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism , London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230293175

A good brief sociological introduction to nationalism in general is:

• Grosby, Steven, 2005, Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

and to the gender-inspired criticism of nationalism is:

• Yuval-Davis, Nira, 1997, Gender & Nation , London: Sage Publications.
• Heuer, Jennifer, 2008, “Gender and Nationalism”, in Herb and Kaplan 2008: vol. 1, 43–58.
• Hogan, Jackie, 2009, Gender, Race and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood , London: Routledge.

The best general introduction to the communitarian-individualist debate is still:

• Avineri, Shlomo and Avner de-Shalit (eds.), 1992, Communitarianism and Individualism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

For a non-nationalist defense of culturalist claims see:

• Kymlicka, Will (ed.), 1995a, The Rights of Minority Cultures , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

A very readable philosophical defense of very moderate liberal nationalism is:

• Gans, Chaim, 2003, The Limits of Nationalism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511490231

And for application to Central Europe see:

• Auer, Stefan, 2004, Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe , London: Routledge.

A polemical, witty and thoughtful critique is offered in:

• Barry, Brian, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

And a more recent one in

• Kelly, Paul, 2015, “Liberalism and Nationalism”, in The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism , Steven Wall (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 329–352. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139942478.018

Interesting critical analyses of group solidarity in general and nationalism in particular, written in the traditions of rational choice theory and motivation analysis, are:

• Hardin, Russell, 1985, One for All, The Logic of Group Conflict , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Yack, Bernard, 2012, Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

There is a wide offering of interesting sociological and political science work on nationalism, which is beginning to be summarized in:

• Motyl, Alexander (ed.), 2001, Encyclopedia of Nationalism , Volumes I and II, New York: Academic Press.

A fine encyclopedic overview is:

• Herb, Guntram H. and David H. Kaplan, 2008, Nations and Nationalism: a Global Historical Overview , four volumes, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio.

A detailed sociological study of life under nationalist rule is:

• Billig, Michael, 1995, Banal Nationalism , London: Sage Publications.

The most readable short anthology of brief papers for and against cosmopolitanism (and nationalism) by leading authors in the field is:

• Cohen, Joshua (ed.), 1996, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism , Martha Nussbaum and respondents, Boston, MA: Beacon Press
• Anderson, Benedict, 1983 [2006], Imagined Communities , London: Verso; revised edition, 2006.
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• Barry, Brian, 1999, “Statism and Nationalism: a Cosmopolitan Critique”, in Shapiro and Brilmayer 1999: 12–66.
• –––, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
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• Betts, Alexander and Paul Collier, 2017, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System , London: Penguin.
• –––, 2017, “Banal Nationalism and the Imagining of Politics”, in Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging after Banal Nationalism , Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 307–321. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-57098-7_15
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Nussbaum, Martha C. 2002, “ Beyond the Social Contract: Toward Global Justice ”, Tanner Lecture, Australian National University.
• Waldron, Jeremy, 2005, “ Proximity as the Basis of Political Community .”
• Nationalism – A Bibliography , compiled by Peter Rasmussen. A good collection of links and bibliographies, but no longer maintained.
• The Warwick Debates , debate between Ernest Gellner and Anthony D. Smith at the London School of Economics, 1995.
• ARENA: Centre for European Studies ; ARENA is a research centre at the University of Oslo studying the dynamics of the evolving European systems of governance. This site contains a good selection of papers on ethics of international relations.
• Global Policy Forum , has papers on the future of nation-states.
• Academy of European Law , at the European University Institute.
• Territory and Justice network: repository of pre-publication papers .

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• Nation building , United Nations

• Mon 16 Oct 2023

‘The Imagined Unity’: Understanding Nations, Nationalism and Their Bedrock

• By Alexander Stoney

Few terms in political science hold as complex a definition as “Nation”. As UN-aligned launches its new volume of The Gordian, exploring Nation Building, it becomes crucial to establish a clear understanding of the term and its multilayered complexities. 

What is a nation?

A nation is defined as “a group of people who share a history, traditions, culture and, often, language – even if the group does not have a country of its own”, writes National Geographic. 

This definition crucially highlights that a nation does not mandate all its citizens to reside within the same territory. Over the last half century, ‘nation’ has become a synonym for a state – a defined territory with hard borders. However, buried within the definition of nation is a clash between the concrete and the abstract. 

While a nation contains tangible and concrete markers of identity such as history and language, it also contains fluid and intangible markers such as culture and tradition. This complexity of definition is further complicated by the absence of clear borders to help confine and align such abstract aspects of identity with a specific geographical territory.

In many ways, the term ‘nation’, highlights human nature’s need for belonging and identity. While this concept frequently intertwines with the state, resulting in the term ‘nation-state’, it is not solely confined to it. 

In his 1983 book, political scientist Benedict Andersen, described nations as “imagined communities”. He argues that nations are “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them. Yet, in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”. 

What is nationalism? 

This, of course, leads to the need for a separate definition of nationalism. Drawing from Anderson’s work, if we accept that nations are imagined communities, nationalism therefore explains why and how these imagined communities are created. 

As per Webster’s Dictionary, nationalism is defined as “a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests”. This dynamic force, as history has shown, can stir nations and shape their futures. 

In the last century, however, nationalism has developed a negative connotation, often associated with far-right political movements and major global conflict. 

Nevertheless, some contend that without the motivational force of nationalism, specifically national competition, many technological advances, exploration and social progress would have not been possible.

While both views present compelling evidence, we offer an alternative perspective in this new volume. Rather than viewing nationalism as a force for good or bad, we propose perceiving it in a neutral light as a powerful emotion capable of captivating an entire group of people, and ultimately, a key factor in nation building. 

How is a nation built?

With these two definitions firmly established, we can now turn our focus to Nation Building. While the terms nations and nationalism have taken centre stage in the past century, UN-aligned predict that the mechanisms by which nations are formed will be instrumental in moulding the next century and a better United Nations.

Nation building is both a simple and deeply complex process. Fundamentally, nation building means creating a sense of unity, belonging and national identity amongst a group of diverse people. Essentially, it is about the many becoming one nation. However, this definition does not begin to cover the myriad of challenges that comes with this process. 

Nation building stirs debates of language, histories, conflict, cultures and religion. It raises profound questions over state borders and territories, constitutional dispensation and governments. In addition, it requires a formulation of a shared identity and of shared values agreed upon internally, and externally displayed through international relations. 

The Global Constitution: And Why we Need it

Examples of nation building can be found on every continent. Canada, since its birth in 1867, has been in a perpetual state of nation building, aiming to build a national identity separate from its British and French colonial past and the looming shadow of the USA. 

Simultaneously, Canada has been forced to look at its internal identity and the relationships between indigenous peoples and colonial descendants. For this reason, Canada’s version of nation building has been a process of accepting and celebrating its diversity, creating a national “mosaic” of identity. 

In post-apartheid South Africa, on the other hand, the process of nation building has been one of unification, reconciliation and equality. Throughout South Africa’s post-apartheid history, the ANC-led government has undertaken a distinct nation-building programme in pursuit of “a truly united, democratic and prosperous South Africa”. 

Similar to Canada, the South African government introduced the “rainbow nation” concept, focusing on what Andrew Stinson, refers to as “interculturalism”. This process is one that focuses on recognising commonalities while reducing tensions and promoting the formation of social partnerships amongst different cultural groups. 

From these two examples, it is clear that nation building is far from a universal, one-size-fits-all process. Instead, it requires careful tailoring to a country’s history, culture, national values, language and religion. Despite both being former British colonies, the nation building process of Canada and South Africa have been remarkably different, facing different distinct challenges. 

These divergent patterns undoubtedly remain true when examining other countries, ranging from the rise of China to the creation of a new country in South Sudan. If nation building varies so greatly worldwide, is there any common ground? Can there be a universal definition of nation building?

The answer lies in the objective of nation building. Harris Mylonas, professor of political science at George Washington University, asserts that nation building aims to unify the people within the state to ensure long-term political stability and viability. 

Ultimately, nation building is a process defined by its outcomes. The effectiveness of nation building could be judged by whether it fosters a healthier sense of national identity and whether it garners internal and external recognition, sovereignty and credibility.

The desire to unify a people, bolster stability and power, and work towards the future prosperity of a country is a common thread binding diverse nations like South Africa, Canada, China and South Sudan. It is the inherent desire for improvement that drives the process of nation building.

What does it mean to be part of a nation? 

With this foundation, we set the stage for the next few issues of The Gordian, where we aim to delve into this and many related essential questions. Our focus will be on examining the trends, challenges and opportunities of nation building, alongside the people, movements and leaders who are relentlessly propelling it forward.

And as you read, we urge you to consider what it means to be part of a nation. Consider your own individual place, your people’s place and your region’s place in the nation building process. 

Think of what nation building means for international organisations such as the United Nations. And finally, consider your own country and what changes you would like to see through the process of nation building. 

It is not just about understanding, it is about igniting the first flame for a truly cohesive and effective United Nations.

Empower us to do more!

‘Reaping what you sow’: Why Trump’s assassination attempt is unworthy to steal headlines

‘If it ain’t broke… break it’: How the US betrayed free speech and the First Amendment

“We’ve seen this before”: Inside Israel’s war on truth, journalists and the free media

‘Embracing genocide’: How Iranian monarchists are championing Israel’s deadly onslaught on Palestine

Looking away from Gaza will not assuage our conscience; only action will

The end of a charade: Israel’s collapse under global condemnation

To be or not to be European alone: Horizons of EU expansion

Frail and Ambiguous Words: How Diplomacy Hinders Peace in Gaza

Nation-Building and Indigenous Struggles: Histories, Rights and Representation

From Table Tennis to the UN: How Kosovo Used Sports for Nation Building

How Tibet’s Peaceful Nation-Building Challenges Chinese Rule

Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence: Geopolitical Bravado or Our Obligation Towards Peace? 

To be or not to be European alone — The Gordian Magazine

Welcome to the February issue of The Gordian Magazine. In this edition, we venture into the depths of a question that has, for centuries, puzzled and provoked: “To be or not to be European alone”. As we stand at the crossroads of history, the fabric of our collective identity is being stretched and tested by the forces of nationalism and globalisation, each tugging in its direction.

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Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism by Douglas Bradburn LAST REVIEWED: 29 June 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 29 June 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0070

Nationalism reflects the desire of “nations” for a system of government that secures their interests and fundamental character. Nationalism has also come to mean an expression of identity that glorifies, or at least invokes, a deep and abiding connection between individuals of the “nation” that informs, complements, and often transcends other identities rooted in religious belief and affiliation, class imperatives, gender roles, and regional affinities. The real sticking point in much of the literature relates to how one defines a “nation” and how early “true” nationalism can be said to exist. Originally nations were assumed to be self-evident. Nations were a people sharing a common immutable ethnicity, which dated to the mists of time and could be seen by their shared language, history, bloodline, culture, character, habits, and manners. It was not necessary that these national peoples had an independent existence as a state, but there was a growing assumption that the nation was the people, the people were ultimately sovereign, and therefore nations should have their own state—a vision which had a certain efflorescence in the late 18th century in the Americas and Europe, a perspective that dominated the transformations of Europe after World War I, and an agenda that gave succor to numerous anti-imperial movements throughout the world in the 20th century. More recently, as the study of nationalism has exploded—it is a concept seriously studied by sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians, philosophers, and critical theorists—most theorists of nationalism have argued for the manufactured and “modern” quality of all national identity, that nations are “constructed” and “imagined” out of a very diverse collection of polities and that nationalism is a fairly recent phenomenon that dates to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, although debate continues on this historical narrative. While nationalism remains a major concern of contemporary politics in the world, and thus spawns a massive scholarly literature, this bibliography will confine itself (with the exception of some major theoretical approaches) to studies of nationalism in the history of the Atlantic world before the mid-19th century.

Selected here are works that represent the current dominant approach to the problem of nationalism, both as a historical phenomenon and as an ongoing dilemma. Until the late 1970s the assumptions of most sociologists and many historians about the character of nationalism in history reflected a view articulated by Kohn 1944 , which asserted that nationalism had been important throughout Western history but its scope had changed over time. The spirit of community that once characterized a person’s relationship to a region or a city-state gradually came to be expressed over a larger territory. While Hobsbawm 1990 , Kedourie 1993 , Gellner 1983 , Anderson 1991 , and Breuilly 1985 associate the birth and rise of nationalism with the birth of “the modern” or modernization , their approaches are somewhat distinct. While Hobsbawm 1990 argues for the “invention” of the nation as a political program of an interested elite, or a middle class that sought to control development, Breuilly 1985 understands nationalism to be a political strategy that heals the crisis of community caused by the rise of the modern state. Gellner 1983 links an insistence on national uniformity with the demands of industrialization, and Anderson 1991 sees the “imagined community” as an impulse and an identity made possible by the modernization of communications, the spread of literacy, and print capitalisms. While this range of work has been extremely influential, it has also been criticized by other theorists, such as in Smith 1986 and Greenfeld 1992 , which reject the idea that national identity and nationalism are necessarily modern.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism . Rev. ed. London and New York: Verso, 1991.

Argues that nationalism only arrived with the spread of print capitalism and the growth of vernacular literacy, which allowed people to imagine themselves to be part of a community in which one individual could never see all his or her fellow nationals face-to-face. Located the decisive emergence of nationalism on the periphery of the European world, in the United Sates and most importantly the Spanish Americas in the early 19th century.

Breuilly, John. Nationalism and the State . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Breuilly argues that nationalism is a political movement that only becomes important after the rise of the modern state. The modern state needs to mobilize resources on a grand scale and therefore requires a political rhetoric with broad reach that claims to represent the essential element—the nation. One of the historians in the debate.

Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Classic account of nationalism as a phenomenon of the modern world. Geller focuses attention on the importance of the Industrial Revolution and the needs of capitalism for a common language. Not particularly applicable to the Atlantic world.

Greenfeld, Leah. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Argues that England, with the national takeover of the church, became the first modern nation and that nationalism essentially emerged as other polities competed with the original. The further from the ideal, Greenfeld argues, the more extreme the version of nationalism.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

One of the most aggressive proponents of the understanding of nations and nationalism as a modern phenomenon, Hobsbawm asserts that nationalism should be linked to the emergence of class consciousness and vernacular language, both necessary for the mass politics that characterizes nationalism.

Kedourie, Elie. Nationalism . 4th ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

Classic series of lectures from the 1950s in which Kedourie provided an intellectual history of nationalism, calling it an ideology and tracing its pedigree to the late 18th century. He understood nationalism to be the opposite of socialism, which allowed a new sense of national community to soften the impact of the breakdown of traditional society from industrialization.

Kohn, Hans. The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins and Background . New York: Macmillan, 1944.

For much of the 20th century, what the scholarly community understood about nationalism reflected the perspective of Hans Kohn, who first articulated a distinction between civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. Kohn used this analysis to argue for both a Western and an Eastern version of nationalism. A recent edition edited with a scholarly introduction by Craig Calhoun helps to orient the importance and influence of Kohn.

Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations . Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

Rejects the argument of modern theorists by emphasizing the long past of most nations and the common “ethnic” formed from a shared language, memory, and culture, which are the fundamental elements of any successful nation.

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Introduction

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While nationalism is an attachment to the ethnic, cultural, and spiritual homogeneity of a nation, patriotism refers to the love of the republic and the political institutions that sustain it. The language of patriotism avoids the dangers of intolerance inherent in a nationalistic conception of civic virtue by appealing to the non‐exclusive love of common liberty that is nevertheless rooted in the concrete culture and history of a particular people. The project of the book will be to explore the possibilities of political patriotism as an alternative to the rhetoric of nationalism through a historical interpretation of the evolution of patriotism.

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Article contents

Nationalism.

• Renaud-Philippe Garner Renaud-Philippe Garner Department of Political Science, Aarhus University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.2039
• Published online: 18 May 2022

Nationalism is a set of beliefs about the nation: its origins, nature, and value. For nationalists, we are particular social animals. On the one hand, our lives are structured by a profound sense of togetherness and similarity: We share languages and memories. On the other hand, our lives are characterized by deep divisions and differences: We draw borders and contest historical narratives. For nationalism, humanity is neither a single species-wide community nor an aggregation of individuals but divided into distinct and unique nations. At the heart of nationalism are claims about our identity and needs as social animals that form the basis of a series of normative claims. To answer the question “what should I do” or “how should I live,” one must first answer the questions “who am I” and “where do I belong.” Nationalism says that our membership in a nation takes precedence and ultimately must guide our choices and actions. In terms of guiding choice and action, nationalist thought proposes a specific form of partiality. Rather than treat the interests or claims of persons and groups impartially, the nationalist demands that one favors one’s own, either as a group or as individual persons. While nationalism does not claim to be the only form of partiality, it does claim to outrank all others: Loyalty or obligations to other groups or identities are subordinated to national loyalty. Together, these claims function as a political ideology. Nationalism identifies the nation as the central form of community and elevates it to the object of supreme loyalty. This fundamental concern for the nation and its flourishing can be fragmented into narrower aims or objectives: national autonomy, national identity, and national unity. Debate on nationalism tends to divide into two clusters, one descriptive and one normative, that only make partial contact. For historians and sociologists, the questions are explanatory: What is nationalism, what is a nation, how are they related, and when and how did they emerge? Philosophers and political theorists focus on the justification of nationalism or nationalist claims: Is national loyalty defensible, what are the limits of this loyalty, how do we rank our loyalties, and does nationalism conflict with human rights?

• nationalism
• perennialism
• civic nation
• ethnic nation
• liberal nationalism
• globalization

Introduction: A Contested Concept

Nationalism is not a consensual idea: We might say that it is doubly contested. On the one hand, there is little consensus on what it is . Primarily, historians and sociologists have conducted descriptive research: They argue for a definition of nationalism as well as an account of its emergence, and they advance typologies of nationalism or stages of its transformation. Arguably, the central debate concerns the origins of nationalism and nations: When did they emerge and why did they do so? Modernists claim that nationalism emerged in the past few centuries and created nations: The ideology invents a new and artificial form of community. Their critics, often experts on premodern eras, either respond that nations are far older than the modernist paradigm allows or that they are transformations of older communities rather than ex nihilo creations.

These debates are not merely about dates. Behind the answer to the question “when did nationalism first emerge?” we find questions like “what is nationalism?” “what is its function?” and “which conditions made it possible or inevitable?” Even among those who agree on an approximate timeline or place for its emergence, we find a range of competing explanations on what produced nationalism: new economic conditions, political transformations, or the power of new ideas.

Nor is there any consensus on the precise relationship between nationalism and nations. For some, nations predate nationalism but are transformed by it, while for others, nationalism creates nations, and for others yet, nations are the modern transformation of prenational communities.

On the other hand, we find intense disagreement about the morality or justification of nationalism. While some scholars seem ambivalent, noting both achievements and failures, and others defend some version of it, there is no gainsaying that nationalism is the object of sustained criticism. The normative debate is further complicated by the fact that what philosophers call “nationalism” only partially overlaps with what historians and sociologists mean by it. Many philosophers and political theorists seem interested in national partiality— the idea that one can, should, or must be partial to fellow nationals—rather than an ideology that orders domestic life and the international order.

Generally, the seminal works on nationalism are explanatory accounts. In addition, to this difference in age and output, there is a question of reliance. Normative debates depend on descriptive ones. Those making normative arguments tend to draw on the descriptive research—from their conception of nationalism to the extent to which they think the nation is artificial. Consequently, this entry focuses on central descriptive and normative questions, with a longer examination of the former. It begins with a clarificatory section (“ Nationalism or Patriotism? ”) that distinguishes the two eponymous concepts and provides a “core” definition of nationalism. The section “ The Origins and Nature of Nationalism ” provides a critical survey of the central descriptive debate: How and when did nationalism emerge? This section divides into subsections: “ Modernism and Its Proponents ” as well as “ Antimodernism .” The section “ Conceptions of the Nation ” addresses the question of what kind of community the nation is through a critical discussion of the ethnic–civic distinction. Normative questions are considered in the section “ The Justification of Nationalism .” The subsection “ Liberal Nationalism and Its Defense ” distinguishes liberal nationalism from core nationalism before turning to prominent arguments made in favor of and against the former.

Nationalism or Patriotism?

While nationalism and patriotism are sometimes treated as synonymous, there are good reasons to differentiate them. First, patriotism is far older than nationalism. While modernists all believe that nationalism is recent, none contest Greek patriotism during the Medic Wars ( Kohn, 1944 ). This chronological difference depends upon a more basic one: Nationalism and patriotism belong to different categories. Typically, patriotism is viewed as a love for or loyalty to one’s community, whether an emotion or character trait ( Kedourie, 1960 ; Kleinig et al., 2015 ; MacIntyre, 1984 ; Oldenquist, 1982 ). 1 Either way, patriotism is neither an ideology nor a form of politics. Understood as an emotion or a character trait, we can grasp the futility of asking when it first appeared: We do not ask when courage was invented or which society discovered love. 2

This distinction also helps explain why the two phenomena are related and sometimes conflated. If patriotism is older and more basic, it makes sense that nationalism draws on this emotion or character trait that arises naturally within human communities. Conversely, it is unsurprising that those who cultivate love and loyalty for their community are drawn to an ideology centered on it.

Nationalism, however, cannot be reduced to sentiment or a character trait. The standard view is that it is an ideology, whatever else it might be ( Billig, 1995 ; Eriksen, 2002 ; Kedourie, 1960 ; Smith, 1991 , 1998 , 2010 ). 3 Despite a wide variety of nationalisms and nationalist thinkers, we can still identify a few core propositions that were shared by seminal thinkers as well as by nationalist movements. We can refer to this as “core” or “classical nationalism.”

Nationalism begins with a claim about the nature and order of the world: It is divided into distinct and unique nations (i). 4 Then it adds a claim about the human good: Human freedom (or flourishing) is dependent upon membership in a nation (ii). Upon these claims about the world and our nature, they add normative claims. The nation, and only the nation, is the source of political legitimacy (iii). Nations must be autonomous and express their characters (iv). Finally, national loyalty outranks all other loyalties (v) ( Kedourie, 1960 ; Smith, 1991 , 1998 , 2010 ). 5

Together, these propositions can explain a great deal of what we call nationalism. 6 For instance, the quest for authenticity depends upon (i) and (iv). If nations are not unique, then it is hard to understand why authenticity should matter. Nor does it make much sense to stress the value of self-expression is what is being expressed is banal or common. Similarly, the nationalist aim of achieving statehood largely follows from (iii) and (iv). On the one hand, if all alien rule is illegitimate, then why should a nation accept it? On the other hand, it seems plausible that the best guarantee of autonomy and self-expression is state sovereignty. Or consider how nationalism is associated with mass mobilization and self-sacrifice. This is in part a function of (v). These projects are justified by an appeal to rank-ordering; if national loyalty reigns supreme, then all other loyalties must be subordinate.

In sum, while nationalist thinkers and nationalist movements present us with additions or iterations, these five beliefs capture much of what is shared. When one speaks about the age of nationalism or its spread, one is invariably speaking about some or all of these propositions. 7

The Origins and Nature of Nationalism

Since the mid- 20th century , the origins and nature of nationalism have been fiercely debated between modernists and their critics. While the former view has emerged as the dominant paradigm, steady criticism has produced notable rival views.

Modernism developed as a rejection of previous scholarship. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries , school manuals and scholarship presented nations as ancient, even immemorial. History was taught as a multimillennia narrative of nations and their great members. For example, Germans were taught that their nation long predated unification under Otto von Bismarck. The Hermannsdenkmal— a 19th-century monument celebrating the victory of Arminius, a 1st-century warlord, over the Romans at Teutoburger Forest—embodies this belief in continuity between contemporary Germans and their alleged ancestors ( Grosby, 2005 ).

Modernism and Its Proponents

Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist—but it does need some pre-existing differentiating marks to work on, even if, as indicated, these are purely negative. ( Gellner, 1964 , p. 168)

For modernists, nationalism and nations are products of modernity, even necessary features of it. They emerge, together, sometime between the English Revolution ( Greenfeld, 1992 ; Kohn, 1940 ) or Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation ( Kedourie, 1960 ). Central to modernism is the relationship between nationalism and nations: Nationalism invents nations. The latter are not organic communities. Unlike families or religious communities, they have not and cannot emerge anywhere, any time. The nation is created by nationalism, which in turn is the product of a particular set of sociohistorical circumstances.

This shared belief is also the point of departure for deep disagreement. Which features of modernity best explain the emergence of nationalism and the invention of nations? There are roughly five kinds of answers to this question: cultural, economic, political, ideological, and radical constructivism.

Modern man is not loyal to a monarch or a land or a faith, whatever he may say, but to a culture. ( Gellner, 1983 , p. 36)

Primarily associated with Ernest Gellner, the cultural view claims that modernization created nationalism, which in turn created nations, out of necessity ( Gellner, 1964 , 1973 , 1983 ). The disruption of premodern life caused by industrialization made it necessary to produce a homogeneous culture that would allow workers to communicate independently of context. To overcome fragmented local premodern cultures, one needs an overarching culture: a national culture. For this reason, a high culture is constructed and later a mass education system is devised to ensure its uniform transmission. Nationalism is a product of necessity: It constructs a new form of identity and community as a response to urban uprooting and industrialization. The dislocating effects of modernity require a refashioning of culture and identity.

People is all they have got: this is the essence of the underdevelopment dilemma itself. ( Nairn, 1977 , p. 100)

A rival view explains the origins of nationalism by appealing to another modern phenomenon: capitalism. For theorists like Tom Nairn, nationalism is a strategic response to the uneven spread of capitalism and the power that it provides ( Nairn, 1977 ). The unequal development and spread of capitalism distribute resources and power unequally: There are centers that benefited from the development of capitalism and there are poorer peripheries. Peripheral elites design an ideology that takes advantage of their only abundant resource: people. And to effectively mobilize and motivate those who do not share their class or interests, these peripheral elites must create a powerful sense of belonging. The solution is to draw on popular beliefs and practices to create a new interclass community: the nation. Thus, economic variants of modernism explain the advent of nationalism in terms of recent economic change, namely, capitalism.

On these views, nationalism is both a form of elite manipulation and transformation. The elites must construct a new sense of community to persuade the masses to endorse their priorities and projects. Yet, they must also change; they must become conversant in a language that draws on popular culture, its myths, and symbols, to mobilize this sense of interclass community.

But the clarity of focus on the nation as coterminous with the state cries out for a predominantly political explanation. ( Mann, 1995 , p. 48)

Yet another variant considers the territorial state to be the best explanation for the advent of nationalist ideology. Bluntly put, political changes are what call for a new political ideology. Nationalism emerges within the past few centuries because it is intimately linked to the modern state. The latter is not a collection of fiefdoms or local power structures but a stable administrative structure, centered in a capital, ruling over well-defined territories ( Giddens, 1985 ).

Here too modernity is cast as a disruptive force and nationalism is part and parcel of a response to it. Whatever else it disrupts, modernity destroys premodern polities and political frameworks. Instead of drawing on religious symbols or myths of descent, nationalism is the attachment to those symbols or representations of the modern state such as citizenship.

Other political variants of modernism emphasize interstate competition and the role that militarization plays ( Mann, 1986 ; Tilly, 1975 ). Still, the argument is essentially the same: Nationalism is created by modern states to help them function competitively and effectively in domestic or international affairs. Either way, it is a largely psychological phenomenon, a special esprit de corps tailor-made for the inhabitants of these new large administrative states.

Again, since a nation, ipso facto, must speak an original language, its speech must be cleansed of foreign accretions and borrowings, since the purer the language, the more natural it is, and the easier it becomes for the nation to realise itself, and to increase its freedom. ( Kedourie, 1960 , p. 67)

A fourth variant considers nationalism to be the response to the discontentment brought by modernity. Powerfully articulated by Elie Kedourie, this view presents nationalism as a civic religion, complete with a narrative of the fall, a path to redemption, and exhortations to sacrifice and purification. This creed was birthed by disillusioned marginal German intellectuals and then exported worldwide ( Kedourie, 1960 , 1971 ).

Collective humiliation and powerlessness are to be explained by national disunity, loss of identity, and autonomy. Like ancient Hebrews explaining their political subjugation in terms of their sinful ways, the nationalist blames contemporary discontentment on a failure to honor and safeguard one’s unique and distinct nation. The solution is national revival: The nation must be reunited, autonomy restored, and national identity restored to its authentic self.

Unlike other variants of modernism that see nationalism as the creation of elites seeking to secure the rising power structures or to provide the necessary social identity for the changing times, this view of nationalism as civic religion is invented by powerless members of society.

No surprise then that the search was on, so to speak, for a new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together. Nothing perhaps more precipitated this search, nor made it more fruitful, than print-capitalism, which made it possible for rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to other, in profoundly new ways. ( Anderson, 1983/2006 , p. 36)

Finally, there are radical constructivist accounts that emphasize the artificiality of the nation: Nationalism is a narrative and the nation is a cultural artifact. For instance, Benedict Anderson has famously argued that changes in terms of how we conceptualize time, the combination of the printing press and capitalism, as well as political change meant that we could imagine new forms of community in which large groups of people can simultaneously imagine themselves as equal members ( Anderson, 1983/2006 ).

The convergence of factors explains what is needed for the narrative to take form and succeed. Print capitalism provides both the material means and an economic incentive to help construct and sustain reading publics, united by a vernacular language. Yet, the impetus to tell this story, to imagine such communities, comes from disaffected civil servants. Here we find echoes of the ideological account: Disaffected functionaries in Latin America came to resent their careers stunted by imperial metropoles. In short, the construction of nations through the nationalist narrative is made possible by several factors: new technology, changing ideas, and a class of people motivated to reimagine their sense of belonging.

Modernism is an attractive paradigm. Undeniably, nationalism spread and came to prominence in the past few centuries. Moreover, the nation-state and the notion of popular sovereignty certainly do not appear at home in the premodern world of multinational empires and dynastic power. And its advocates are right to show that much of what has been called ancient or authentic by nationalists was, in fact, neither. 8 Yet, for all its strengths, the modernist paradigm faces important hurdles.

The proliferation of variants reveals deep disagreement; irreconcilable modernisms cast doubt on the promise of modernism. For example, while modernists agree that the nation is a recent creation, they cannot agree on who created it. If nationalism invented nations, who invented nationalism?

For authors who defend economic modernism, it is the invention of peripheral elites who need a new form of mobilization to outcompete richer and more powerful elites ( Hechter, 1975 ; Nairn, 1977 ). Similarly, for those who consider nationalism as a form of political messianism, it is the invention of the marginal and frustrated among the educated and the skilled ( Kedourie, 1960 , 1971 ). Yet, conceiving nationalism as a rational strategy for weaker parties cannot be reconciled with the claim that nationalism emerges as the state’s official ideology to reinforce militarization or with the view that it is devised by elites for the sake of modernization and industrialization ( Gellner, 1964 , 1983 ; Tilly, 1975 ). One is left wondering whether nationalism is the ideology of the downtrodden who seek liberation or the ideology of the ruling class who seek consolidation.

There are deeper problems for modernist accounts. All of them purport to offer a unitary explanation and yet none do. Each variant draws its strength from its ability to compellingly explain certain cases, but none can explain all the central let alone the plausible cases. While economic theories rightly show how nationalism can be a strategy in an unequal contest, this hardly proves that nationalism is the consequence of such conditions: Underdevelopment often fails to produce nationalism, and nationalism regularly emerges among the (over)developed ( Connor, 1994 ). Similarly, explaining nationalism as a response to industrialization fails to account for those cases where the former precedes the latter ( Smith, 1983 ). And political accounts of nationalism fail to explain why nationalist energies can focus on something besides the state or sovereignty. If nationalism is only about the pursuit or consolidation of state power, what are we to make of cultural nationalism: artistic renaissances, campaigns for moral regeneration, and attempts to transform through education? And given that cultural and political nationalism feed off each other, why focus solely on the latter ( Hutchinson, 1987 , 1994 )?

Finally, the modernist paradigm struggles to persuasively answer important questions. Even if modern societies require new forms of community, this does not explain why the nation arouses such powerful and awe-inspiring passions. Put otherwise, how can instrumental accounts, which consider the nation an artificial community invented to serve some further end, explain its motivational power? Some modernists try to explain the power of nationalism by pointing to its self-referential quality: It is a form of self-worship ( Breuilly, 1993 ). But such replies must inevitably fail. Even if group worship provides great motivational power, this fails to answer a comparative question: Why is the national identity so much more powerful than other available identities? Why should an artificial and recent form of self-worship prove so effective?

Antimodernism

The appearance of the nation and its continuation over time is not a historically uniform process that can be attributed to one cause, such as the requirements of industrial capitalism, or confined to one period of time, such as the last several centuries. ( Grosby, 2005 , p. 58)

The primary fault line between modernists and their critics concerns not the origins of nationalism as an ideology but the nature of nations and their antiquity. Rather than conceive of nations as artificial and recent, the critics of modernism consider them to be either ancient forms of community or transformations of premodern forms of community.

Either way, critics of modernism tend to stress the extent to which nations must build upon dimensions of human identity that are far from modern, such as ethnicity or religion ( Armstrong, 1982 ; Gat, 2012 ; Grosby, 1991 , 2005 ; Hastings, 1997 ; Reynolds, 1983 , 1984 ; Smith, 1986 , 1991 , 1998 , 2000 ).

The argument tends to center on an existential claim: Is it or is it not the case that a nation has existed before modernity? For modernists, the answer must be negative. Indeed, if a single nation precedes nationalism, then the former can exist independently of the latter. And this demonstrates that nationalism neither invents the nation as a type of community nor all tokens of it. For this reason, considerable time and energy are expended to show that some nations, or at the very least one nation, existed before modernity.

We should distinguish between two antimodernist strands. Primordialism is the belief that nations are natural: They have always existed, or their origins are lost in time. While such views were more common in the 19th century , there are late- 20th-century attempts to defend primordialism. Sociobiological primordialism considers the nation as an extension of kin selection; our national ties are the product of our evolutionary inheritance and our tendency to favor those who are genetically similar ( van den Berghe, 1978 ). However, such views quickly break down. If the nation is primarily about kin selection, then it makes little sense to cooperate with and sacrifice oneself for those who are genetically unrelated. Even ethnic nations are bound by myths of common descent rather than actual genetic proximity.

Alternatively, we can speak of “cultural primordialism” when (national) culture is treated as a social given, something inherited that arouses powerful and nearly irresistible passions, even if this is only how we feel or perceive these ties ( Geertz, 1973 ). However, this view quickly falters. While “given” or “primordial” ties can be powerful, they are also subject to change, revision, and rejection. Moreover, the theory does not explain the power of these ties so much as rename them. Why should the given be stronger than the chosen?

Far more influential, perennialism accepts that nationalism is a modern ideology, that nations are historical objects—they appear at a point in time—but rejects that they were invented by nationalism in the modern era. 9 We can distinguish between perennialists who believe that the nation is persistent and those who argue that it is best understood as a recurrent phenomenon. The former is the idea that nations, or at least some of them, are continuous intergenerational communities that have existed without interruption while the latter is the view of nations as recurring, going in and out of existence throughout the ages ( Smith, 1998 ).

Because the critics of modernity do not claim that all or most nations are ancient, they readily concede that Tanzania is quite modern. Instead, the debate focuses on the antiquity of specific nations that serve as litmus tests. Thus, Adrian Hastings argued that England had already emerged as a functional national community during the Middle Ages. For him, there is an English national identity, modeled on the biblical model of Israel: a united people keenly aware of their identity, possessing a language and territory, a government, and a shared religion ( Hastings, 1997 ). Later developments, like the Reformation and the spread of a vernacular-language Bible, might reinforce and transform English identity, but what is being changed must be older than these transformations.

Naturally, if the English nation is modeled on something older, then the antiquity of the nation can be pressed further. Perhaps the hardest case for the modernist paradigm is that of ancient Israel. Here we are faced with what appears to be the uninterrupted intergenerational community that was conscious of its distinct identity, as well as possessed a unique language and religion and a homeland. In addition, they shared memories of an independent political community and rebellions against foreign occupation ( Grosby, 1991 ).

Again, cases such as medieval England or ancient Israel are designed to show that while premodern nations might be exceptional, modernism is wrong to assert that nationalism invents the concept of the nation and all instances of it. In a way, we might say that critics of modernity imagine nations like democracy: Most democracies are quite young, and the success of the idea is recent, but that does not show that democracy is a modern invention.

While radical critics of modernism argue that some nations have existed long before modernity, others present a moderate critique. Nations might be recent, but they are continuous with premodern communities. It is reasonable to understand these critics as rejecting the radical modernism of Eric Hobsbawm, who denies any serious continuity between older forms of community, ethnic or religious, for instance, and the nations invented by nationalism ( Hobsbawm, 1990 ; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983 ).

These moderate critics argue that nationalism does not create ex nihilo a novel form of community. Instead, nationalism transforms preexisting identities (cultural, ethnic, religious, etc.) to produce the modern nation. For medievalists like Susan Reynolds, it is a mistake to overlook the existence of communities that identified themselves through myths of ethnic descent, customs and laws, and the use of proper nouns. Nations might appear later, but many are rooted in the regnal kingdoms that possessed popular consciousness and a sense of identity ( Reynolds, 1983 , 1984 ).

Yet, the most sophisticated attempt to show continuity between the premodern and modern identity is probably the work of Anthony D. Smith’s. Through several decades of scholarship, Smith has stressed the importance of the longue durée , long-term analysis. To appreciate the emergence of nationalism and nations, we need to look at very long periods in part to avoid becoming narrowly focused on a particular era or set of cases that would lead to hasty generalizations. Where studies of short periods see invention, long-term analysis reveals that “invention” is often reinterpretation or reconstruction of older materials. Attention to the longue durée also helps explain why nationalism resonates. While many of its claims are inaccurate or false, the continuity between ethnic communities and modern nations shows that behind myths of antiquity and rootedness lie real shared memories and practices, an intergenerational sense of belonging that is not the invention of political elites ( Smith, 1986 , 1991 , 1998 , 2000 , 2009 ).

However insightful these rival views are, they are not without their weaknesses. To begin, none of them quite propose a rival grand narrative or general theory that explains the emergence of nationalism or nations. Again, many arguments center on the most convincing cases that can falsify modernism’s claims. Consequently, these case-study arguments often leave us with important questions about patterns and widespread change. Why do some nations like Israel emerge so early while others like Germany emerge much later? Why does the age of nationalism arrive so late if the nation is so old? What explains the appearance of major changes to collective identity if modernity does not invent nations?

Modernists also raise important methodological objections for their critics. For one, they accuse them of assuming that there is more continuity than the evidence supports ( Breuilly, 1996 ). A leitmotiv is that we have little idea what ordinary or plain persons believed in the premodern world given that they have left behind few writings. The writings of literate elites cannot be presumed to represent widespread beliefs or sentiments. 10 Furthermore, even when we do have some insight into what plain persons thought thanks to partial or fragmentary testimony, we must be careful to avoid reading the past through contemporary lenses.

In turn, this focus on written sources has itself been criticized. Azar Gat (2012) has argued that too much has been made of the written word or the lack of it. Not only is very little of human history covered by written documentation, but it is far from the only available evidence. For instance, while we have few texts documenting the sentiments of ordinary people, we have accounts of events that depended upon ordinary people. Gat repeatedly returns to the case of mobilization and war in the premodern world to argue that it is unrealistic to maintain that ordinary sentiments or identities are unknown or unknowable. Small and weak states did not simply coerce thousands if not tens of thousands of men to fight who barely recognized themselves in their elites. A fortiori , this is true of popular uprisings. 11 Simply put, Gat rejects the idea that we are begging the question of national identity or consciousness if they are part of the best explanation of phenomena ( Gat, 2012 ).

Still, this question of national consciousness is not solely methodological. It is one thing to ask on what grounds we attribute such beliefs or sentiments, and it is quite another to ask why this must be demonstrated. Here we shift from a discussion about whether nationalism invents nations to the very nature of the nation. Even if modernists and their critics could agree on how to conduct their inquiry, they might still disagree on its object. If a nation is defined as a group in which mass national consciousness must exist , then demonstrating that nations existed in the premodern world is far harder than if nations only require moderate consciousness. 12 Fundamentally, the question of how to prove the existence of premodern nations is a function of what the nation is.

Conceptions of the Nation

A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things that, in truth, are but one constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form. ( Renan, 2018 , p. 261)

Despite its centrality, the question “what is a nation?” has been debated since Ernest Renan’s eponymous lecture at La Sorbonne in 1882 . Disagreement over what the nation is—what kind of community is it, how does it differ from other forms?—has produced some striking responses.

Faced with this question, Hugh Seton-Watson admits that there is nothing else to say save that a nation exists when enough people within a community believe that they belong to a nation or act as if they do ( Seton-Watson, 1977 ). Others like Rogers Brubaker deny that the nation is a particular kind of object. Instead, we should consider the “nation” as a category of practice rather than a form of community with set properties. Hence his proposal to “think about nationalism without nations” ( Brubaker, 1996 , p. 21).

Nevertheless, we can identify some broadly consensual beliefs about the nation. To begin, nations are territorial communities: They claim land as rightfully theirs. The homeland is sacred territory. It is imbued with meaning because it is the site of past events that define the group: where battles were fought, the dead are buried, and past generations flourished.

Moreover, nations are always understood as bounded and limited communities. No nation, however ambitious, understands itself as universal. Unlike certain religious communities, the nation does not aspire to or imagine itself as encompassing humankind. Finally, the nation is primarily a group in which membership is inherited, even when it is open to outsiders. Newborns are not without nationality until they reach the age of reason; one receives a nationality at birth even if one later opts to renounce it or to try to obtain another.

Beyond these shared and widely accepted features, we remain confronted by a central question: What is the nature of the community? What unites conationals?

Civic and Ethnic Views of the Nations

Two main concepts of nation and fatherland emerged in the intertwining of influence and conditions; conflicting and fusing, they became embodied in currents of thought in all nations and, to a varying degree, in entire nations. The one was basically a rational and universal concept of political liberty and the rights of man, looking towards the city of the future. In it the secularized Stoic-Christian tradition lived on: in England, it is Protestant form, in France, in its Catholic form. It found its chief support in the political and economic strength of the educated middle classes and, with a shift of emphasis, in the social-democratically organized labor movements. The other was basically founded on history, on monuments and graveyards, even harking back to the mysteries of ancient times and of tribal solidarity. ( Kohn, 1944 , p. 574)

Nations, and nationalisms, are often sorted according to two ideal types: French and German, Western and Eastern, or civic and ethnic. 13 This typology refers to the nature of the community or the identity that defines the nation. The Western or civic nation is primarily a political association and therefore more of a voluntary community. On this view, the nation is a pact or covenant, a social contract. The nation qua political community occupies a territory that is governed by laws and institutions. This is the view of the nation most associated with Western nations, particularly France, where republicanism played an important part in defining membership in the nation.

The Eastern or ethnic nation is defined by descent, or rather the presumed shared descent of its members. Here members understand themselves as ancestrally related, possessing an identity that is inherited and unchosen on the model of the family. The idea of the ethnic nation is often compared to the family as in Walker Connor’s well-known claim that it is perceived as “the family fully extended” ( Connor, 1994 , p. 202).

We might summarize these two views of the nations in terms of competing conceptions of nationality and its attribution— jus soli and jus sanguinis . How one acquires membership is a function of the nature of the community. The former attributes nationality to those born within the national territory while the latter attributes nationality based on the identity of one’s parents. 14

Of course, one’s conception of the nation is linked to other crucial concepts, namely, national identity. How one understands the nature of the community called the nation affects one’s conception of national identity. What it means to be an X—American or Turkish—will depend on the nature of the community in question. If one considers that the United States of America is a civic nation, a social contract in which members of the republic share political ideals and obey the same laws, then being or becoming an American is a function of becoming a member of a political union. On the civic view, who one’s parents are or which religion one practices will often be orthogonal to determining one’s national identity. Yet, if one holds an ethnic view of the nation, then the identity of one’s parents is no longer irrelevant but essential. On this view, to be Turkish is to be ancestrally related to other Turks and thus filiation is central.

However, these are ideal types. They allow us to make analytical distinctions, to explain patterns of thought and behavior, but they do not correspond to social reality. No actual nation is purely civic or purely ethnic but contains both civic and elements. For example, during the Third French Republic, while students learned about la Répulique, une et indivisible , they also learned that their country used to be called Gaul and their ancestors were Gauls. We find both the civic view embodied by the Republic and the ethnic view embodied in shared ancestry. While it is useful to speak of civic or ethnic to pick out what is emphasized, real nations only approximate these models ( Smith, 1991 ; Yack, 1996 , 2012 ). It is perhaps most useful to think of nations as ranging from more civic (e.g., the United States of America) to more ethnic (e.g., Japan).

The division of nations into civic and ethnic communities is not merely a descriptive question. Behind this categorization loom normative issues: We consider the civic nation to be more open and compatible with consent while the ethnic nation is bound through unchosen features—hence the reason why the civic nation is referred to as voluntarist conception while the ethnic nation is an organic conception. While ethnic nationalism might like to describe itself with the language of the family— fatherland, motherland, brotherhood, and so on —a less controversial unchosen association, it remains the case that the ethnic conception of the nationality makes it harder for newcomers to join. One can profess one’s faith in the republic, one can consent to the social contract, but one cannot so easily choose to change one’s (presumed) descent.

Here again, we must not lose sight that if we consider civic nations to be voluntary and ethnic nations to be organic, and that all actual nations combine elements of both models, then no nation is purely voluntarist or organic. This mixed view, which combines consent and inheritance, was already present in Ernest Renan’s seminal lecture. As it is often highlighted, he insists on the importance of consent, famously calling the nation an “everyday plebiscite” ( Renan, 2018 , pp. 262–263). Nevertheless, he also speaks about the importance of an indivisible past, an inheritance of “glory and regrets” ( Renan, 2018 , p. 261).

The Justification of Nationalism

Despite its unrivaled appeal and motivational power, nationalism has seduced few scholars. Several of its most prominent scholars could hardly disguise their contempt like Elie Kedourie or Eric Hobsbawm. Among philosophers and political theorists, it is often met with skepticism or hostility. Ethnic nationalism, the most ubiquitous form, past and present, is largely thought to be indefensible. Civic nationalism, while judged less harshly, is not universally embraced. In the words of an eminent political theorist, nationalism is “the starkest political shame of the twentieth century , most intractable and yet most unanticipated blot on the political history of the world since the year 1900 ” ( Dunn, 1979 , p. 55). Normatively, nationalism is on the back foot.

And yet, there is also considerable misunderstanding. To a large extent, the descriptive and the normative work fail to make contact. Consider what is arguably the most prominent anthology of high-profile philosophical papers on the justification of nationalism, The Morality of Nationalism ( McKim & McMahan, 1997 ). The endnotes reveal that many chapters contain few or no references to major or minor studies of nationalism. Several philosophers base their arguments on a commonsense understanding or on one or two works. Something similar holds the other way around. In Nations and Nationalism: A Reader ( Spencer & Wollman, 2010 ), 3 out of 19 of the authors from the above anthology appear very cursorily in the references. None of those contributing to the first anthology are the authors of any essential texts in the reader.

There are likely many reasons for this situation, but two should retain our attention. First, many normative works on nationalism either fail to distinguish it from patriotism or conflate them. In his defense of “nationalism,” Hurka defines it as “people being partial to their conationals” ( Hurka, 1997 , p. 140). However, so defined, it is indistinguishable from a widespread understanding of patriotism. Similarly, Judith Lichtenberg seems to think that the only difference between nationalism and patriotism is that the former applies before the establishment of the state while the latter applies after it ( Lichtenberg, 1997 ). This is an astonishing claim as it would make patriotism more recent than nationalism.

Second, and more fundamentally, many normative theorists use “nationalism” to mean something very different from the core ideology of nationalism or some variant. Typically, they mean national partiality , which amounts to the idea that one may, should, or must favor the claims or interests of one’s conationals over those of foreigners. For instance, when Thomas Hurka defends a moderate form of national partiality, he is very far from justifying the claim that national loyalty outranks all others, which was proposition (v). It is perfectly possible to favor one’s conationals over foreigners and yet believe that friends and family command a greater loyalty still.

We can add that nationalists, with few notable exceptions, do not have a purely instrumental view of loyalty and sacrifice: They do not love the nation to better serve humankind. 15 Rather, the nation itself is the ultimate end. In other words, the instrumental defenses of national partiality that we find in the philosophical literature share little with the classical view of nationalism. 16

In short, many philosophers are using “nationalism” in a very narrow sense compared to the scholars of nationalism. While we can find important contributions in these piecemeal or partial discussions of the morality of nationalism, we can also find defenses of something that goes beyond some measure of partiality or an isolated defense of self-determination. 17 However, we do not find much of a defense of classical or core nationalism. Commonly, we find a defense of liberal nationalism .

Liberal Nationalism and Its Defense

Liberals then need to ask themselves whether national convictions matter to their way of thinking, to their values, norms, and modes of behaviour, to their notions of social justice, and to the range of practical policies they support. In other words, they must rethink their beliefs and policies and seek to adapt them to the world in which they live. ( Tamir, 1993 , pp. 3–4)

Liberal nationalism is not part of an explanatory theory of nationalism. 18 Instead, it is an attempt to revise nationalism so that it can be reconciled with the dominant post-Enlightenment political framework, liberalism. Recall that the core ideology of nationalism involves certain claims about morality and human flourishing. On the one hand, we find claims about the value of community and membership. For instance, we saw that proposition (ii) of core nationalism was that individual freedom or flourishing required membership in a nation. Either way, the point is the connection between membership in a nation and human well-being. On the other hand, we find claims that are action-guiding: Proposition (v) is that national loyalty always comes first.

To be schematic, the classical view of the nation can be summarized as an ideology with a demanding view of partiality, which rests upon very strong claims about the value of nations. This demandingness is captured by the insistence that one sacrifice everything on the national altar. We find it in a Swiss “political catechism,” exhorting citizens to “sacrifice willingly and joyfully” their property and lives to the fatherland ( Kohn, 1944 , p. 385). Or in the poetry of Thomas Babington Macauley famously taught to British schoolchildren:

Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate; “To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods.”

In sum, the morality view put forward by classical nationalism emphasizes the utmost importance of national membership in human flourishing and consequently affirms a rigid hierarchy of duties that places national loyalty above all else. These features—its demandingness, its absolute claims about communal life and flourishing—help explain why many have been so critical.

On the one hand, internal critiques seek to show that the classical view of nationalism is incapable of defending its strong claims. Prominently, we find objections concerning the relative value of the nation and nationality. A popular form of this objection lists the various communities to which one belongs and asks for a clear explanation as to why membership in the nation is so important. To be clear, the argument is not that the nation does not matter but that even if one can establish that it plays a very important role in human flourishing, perhaps even that it is the most valuable form of communal life, this does not yet show that national loyalty must always trump other loyalties ( Lichtenberg, 1997 ).

Here it is worth pointing out how descriptive research is mobilized to make normative arguments. If modernism is true, then the defenders of nationalism must explain why human flourishing depends so much upon a recent invention. Were premodern lives all deeply marred? If nations were invented, why can we not invent more inclusive communities to replace them? Conversely, if the critics of modernity are right, then it is easier to argue that national membership like family membership is a deep feature of human life and flourishing.

On a similar line of thought, one can admit that national autonomy is valuable or defensible and accept that national identity should be expressed and yet challenge precisely what is required to achieve either. If neither national autonomy nor national self-expression requires a nation-state, at least not in all cases, then it becomes much harder to justify nationalist demands for one.

On the other hand, we find external critiques that point to the conflict between nationalism and other normative beliefs or commitments we might have. First, it is difficult to reconcile the core ideology of nationalism with any demanding form of cosmopolitanism. Indeed, given the rigid rank-ordering of loyalties in core nationalism, one’s loyalty to humankind is at best something to be attended to once one’s duties to the nation are discharged. If cosmopolitanism is a commitment to impartial benevolence and the belief that our common humanity is our overriding identity and the object of our strongest loyalty, then they are flatly incompatible.

A similar point can be made about human rights. Understood as bedrock normative claims, human rights would represent (nearly) absolute side constraints. Here too there is a very real possibility that human rights and nationalism conflict. If national loyalty dominates all other loyalties, then it is difficult to understand how a nationalist can coherently choose to honor human rights when these conflict with the demands of the nation. Indeed, when scholars and plain persons evoke how nationalism can be belligerent or fanatical, this is largely what they mean. If loyalty always takes precedence, then there is little or nothing nationalists will not do. And this, its critics say, is precisely why the 20th century was so bloody. 19

Finally, classical nationalism can seem hard to reconcile with a strong commitment to autonomy or political consent. One is obligated to one’s nation and fellow nationals, and yet one’s nationality is often unchosen. This worry is at its strongest when applied to ethnic nationalism as on this view, membership is doubly unchosen: One cannot choose one’s ancestors at birth, nor can one easily later choose to be ancestrally related to members of a new group. Yet, ethnic nationalism is not unique in imposing obligations based on unchosen identities ( Scheffler, 1994 ). Even membership in civic nations is largely unchosen and can be demanding.

Liberal nationalism seeks to reconcile nationalism and liberalism, even showing them to be mutually reinforcing. Proposed initially by Yael Tamir in her seminal Liberal Nationalism , variants of this moderate form of nationalism have also been prominently defended by David Miller and Chaim Gans ( Gans, 2003 ; Miller, 1995 , 1999 , 2007 , 2016 ; Tamir, 1993 , 2019 ). Before addressing arguments for liberal nationalism, we should consider how it generally differs from classical or core nationalism.

First, liberal nationalists abandon the rigid acontextual hierarchy of duties of core nationalism. National loyalty may still outrank other loyalties, but it does not always do so. Most notably, when the human rights of foreigners are at stake, our duties to fellow nationals or to the nation itself must come second. This is the spirit of the “weak cosmopolitanism” we find endorsed by liberal nationalists ( Miller, 2016 ). We might also say that while we have stronger positive duties to fellow nationals than to foreigners, our negative duties to not violate human rights apply equally to all and take precedence over positive duties to fellow members ( Miller, 2005 ).

Second, liberal nationalism is essentially a nonethnic form of nationalism. This does not make it a pure civic nationalism because it focuses on the preservation and transmission of a national identity and a public culture that are not exhausted by constitutionalism. 20 However, it does essentially abandon myths of ethnic descent or ancestral relatedness as a part of national identity ( Smith, 2010 ). While nationality might still be attributed at birth, it becomes considerably easier to join and become accepted within another nation once ethnic descent is jettisoned.

Third, liberal nationalists are more concerned with the relationship between the nation and liberal democracy ( Tamir, 1993 , 2019 ). While many classical nationalists were strong advocates of democratic or republican regimes, it was by no means universal. Indeed, core nationalism is compatible with an authoritarian government so long as it is authentic or expressive of the national character. Indeed, some very prominent nationalists were antidemocratic, like Charles Maurras and l’Action française as well as Russian nationalists, who summed up their view as “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” ( Riasanovsky, 2005 ).

To justify their views, liberal nationalists essentially offer two kinds of arguments. Recall, their project is not to revise or rehabilitate democracy or liberalism as it is to revise and rehabilitate nationalism; this explains why their arguments presume the value of democracy and liberalism and focus on establishing the ethical credentials of (a reformed) nationalism.

The first kind of argument put forward by nationalists might be called communitarian . These arguments are all noninstrumental in the sense that they do not derive the value of national community or loyalty from its contribution to either liberal democracy or liberal conceptions of justice. The arguments focus on the value of community independently of its contribution to democracy or social justice. We might further divide this argument into arguments over the intrinsic worth of national communities and the constitutive role of national communities in human flourishing.

The former strives to demonstrate that nations are valuable communities; they are the site of shared meaning and values. Cultures or cultural communities are good things, and they should continue to exist. Moreover, if we add that these cultures are distinct and unique—proposition (i) from core nationalism—then we ought to appreciate that preserving and sustaining nations provides the world with a diversity of cultures ( Berlin, 1976 ). If culture is good, then nations are valuable as incarnations of culture, and if we value a diversity of cultures, we ought to value the irreducible plurality of nations.

The latter kind of argument seeks to show how nations are constitutive of human flourishing. In their strongest form, they claim that one cannot flourish outside of the nation while weaker versions simply highlight how dispensing with the nation or national makes human flourishing harder or less complete than it otherwise might be. Here, we find various iterations. Some focus on the relationship between national identity and self-esteem ( Berlin, 1979 ; MacCormick, 1982 , 1991 , 1996 ; Margalit & Raz, 1990 ; Nielsen, 1999 ; Tamir, 1993 ; Taylor,1992 ), others on how our understanding of morality is conditioned by our membership in a nation and our participation in its moral traditions, its interpretation of principles or values ( MacIntyre, 1981 , 1984 , 1988 ; Taylor, 1989 ; Walzer, 1983 , 1987 , 1994 ). Others still insist on how choice and personal development require communal membership ( Kymlicka, 1995 ; Tamir, 1993 ).

The key point is that all these arguments seek to show that without the nation, human life would be greatly impoverished. Our national identities and our national loyalty constitute, at least for many of us, part and parcel of what it is to live a meaningful or good life.

The second kind of argument is instrumental: The value of the nation is derived from its role in sustaining either liberal democracy or liberal conceptions of justice. National identity and loyalty are either presented as necessary or uniquely valuable means of achieving our political aims of popular rule or social justice. Put otherwise, these arguments all work back from our commitments to democracy or justice and argue that once we properly appreciate how nations can help us achieve our aims, we will value them.

The most famous, the trust argument , has many variations. Essentially, we begin with the need for trust: To cooperate, to sacrifice for others, we must trust that others will reciprocate. For instance, in a democracy, the minority must believe that the majority will not abuse its power and will relinquish it when it loses. All must believe that others are equally committed to the common good. Yet, within large groups, trust cannot rest on personal knowledge of individual track records. To establish trust and motivate people to cooperate and make sacrifices, people need to feel committed to something above and beyond the partisan factions. The nation is presented as an engine of social trust because national identity will bind together and motivate nationals to work as a team. Liberal nationalists present the nation as (uniquely) capable of providing the identification and trust necessary to overcome the various forces, like disagreement or egoism, that threaten social cooperation, sacrifice, and trust ( Canovan, 1996 ; Kymlicka, 2001 ; Miller, 1995 ; Moore, 2001 ; Schnapper, 1998 ).

Of course, not only democracy requires social trust. Redistributive policies and social justice also require cooperation and sacrifice from people who are personally unacquainted. Here too, the argument goes, national identity provides the necessary identification and motivation.

In short, liberal nationalism is defended on two grounds. Noninstrumental arguments are fundamentally arguments about the value of community tout court or its constitutive role in human flourishing. Either way, they need to defend a certain conception of human nature or one about intrinsic value. The instrumental arguments are less ambitious as they begin from the commitments held by many critics of nationalism, such as democracy and social justice, and seek to show the cost of eliminating national identities and loyalties.

While more moderate than classical nationalism, liberal nationalism has not been spared criticism. On the one hand, it faces internal critiques. For instance, the trust argument has been the target of a fair amount of skepticism. Does national identity bind and motivate as its advocates claim? Critics have argued that it is far from clear that national identity can or does create the kind of affective bond and trust that its proponents claim. For instance, there appear to be plenty of cases in which fellow nationals distrust each other and would prefer to deal with foreigners if they had the choice ( Abizadeh, 2002 ). Moreover, given that a central claim can be empirically verified, we are entitled to ask what quantitative evidence can be produced in addition to sociohistorical narratives about the relationship between nation-states and welfare states. Here, even defenders of liberal nationalism concede that testing the claim has only provided partial support ( Miller & Ali, 2014 ).

Multiple external criticisms have been formulated, but two are particularly noteworthy against the backdrop of globalization. 21 An older and quite prominent critique is egalitarian. Essentially, these critics begin by identifying our commitment to equality and then show how nation-states contribute to inequality: They favor nationals at the expense of foreigners. While this might be tolerable in a world where everyone had access to a decent life, it is intolerable when so many lack so much and others live in abundance. In sum, the argument seeks to show that liberal nationalism, or any variation that does not significantly depart from the status quo, is deeply incompatible with a commitment to human equality ( Caney, 2005 ; Pogge, 2002 ; Singer, 1972 ; Steiner, 1994 ).

The second critique focuses on how liberal nationalism remains at odds with certain conceptions of human rights. Here, research is undeniably influenced by the political reality of the early 21st century ; migration and refugee crises have stimulated debate on the morality of borders. Behind talk of borders, we find the deeper conflict between, on the one hand, the notion of collective autonomy or the self-determination of peoples and, on the other hand, a human right to free movement or to immigrate. If liberal nationalism allows that one can exclude people from one’s group or territory, then we must ask whether self-determination comes at the expense of a basic right. For those who endorse a human right to immigrate, liberal nationalism’s support for borders and exclusion is objectionable ( Carens, 2013 ; Oberman, 2016 ).

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1. Classically, patriotism was classified as a virtue (i.e., an admirable character trait). Yet, its ethical credentials have been increasingly questioned in the wake of World War I. Still, proponents and opponents of patriotism tend to agree that it is a character trait.

2. One view is that patriotism is loyalty to political institutions, specifically republican, rather than to an ethnocultural community ( Connor, 1994 ; Dietz, 1989 ; Taylor, 1997 ; Viroli, 1995 ). However, this definition is questionable. Even if “patriots” has often been used to name advocates of republicanism, it is certainly not the only recorded use. Nor does this view match the common uses of “patriot” or “patriotism” to speak of the intense loyalty of those who have no institutions or do not necessarily believe in republicanism (e.g., patriotic Kurds). Worse, if patriotism is loyalty to institutions and nationalism is loyalty to an ethnocultural group, then those who defend this distinction seem committed to the claim that nationalism is ancient. How else can they describe loyalty to the Jewish people and Kingdom during the Jewish-Roman wars?

3. A prominent dissenter in the literature is Benedict Anderson. He claimed that nationalism was more like kinship or religion, no doubt in part due to what he considered to be its philosophical poverty and even incoherence ( Anderson, 2006 , pp. 4–5).

4. We might say that nations are numerically distinct and qualitatively distinct as opposed to manufactured objects that are numerically distinct but qualitatively indistinct.

5. The point is not that there existed a clear doctrine called “core nationalism” that people simply adopted or not. There are and have been nationalists of all ideological stripes—conservative, liberal, socialist, and so on. The point of putting forward core nationalism is to identify those beliefs most shared between them that allow us to recognize that despite their differences and nuances, there are common threads.

6. This view is open to the challenge that it primarily summarizes Western nationalism. For those interested in an influential non-Western perspective, see Chatterjee (1986 , 1993 ).

7. An example is the way in which proposition (iii) has become so central to nationalist movements in the wake of the French Revolution. The age of nationalism and later decolonization delegitimized the millennia-old institution of empire by spreading the proposition that all alien rule is illegitimate.

8. From Thanksgiving that commemorates events in the early 17th century but only becomes a national institution in the late 19th century, to the 19th-century invention of distinct clan tartans in Scotland, more than one practice or symbol is far more recent than commonly believed ( Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983 ).

9. Authors like Azar Gat would be unhappy with this label. Nevertheless, his overall argument is far more critical of modernism than anything else. Indeed, insisting on the antiquity of the national state seems like a form of perennialism ( Gat, 2012 ).

10. Modernists are skeptical of identity unsupported by institutions. Identity that is not affirmed and transmitted through institutions is “fragmentary, discontinuous and elusive” ( Breuilly, 1996 , p. 156).

11. The battle of Raphia and the subsequent popular Egyptian revolt against Hellenistic rule is a textbook case drawn from the premodern world ( Gat, 2012 , pp. 118–119). Similar examples abound in Gat’s account.

12. For instance, Walker Connor insists that nations begin at the end of the 19th or early 20th century because they require mass consciousness, which in turn depends upon mass communication and standardized education. Adrian Hastings believed that so long as national consciousness extends to many people beyond government circles and the ruling class, then one can speak of a nation ( Connor, 1994 ; Hastings, 1997 ).

13. These are the most prominent, but they are not the only classification of nations and nationalism. For instance, one may draw the line between secular and religious forms of nationalism ( Juergensmeyer, 1993 ).

14. While many accept that there are different kinds of nations, some reject this pluralism in favor of a monolithic view. Walker Connor insists that all nationalism is ethnic nationalism ( Connor, 1994 ).

15. Perhaps the most notable exception is Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who often defends nationalism as essential for the progress of humanity ( Fichte, 2008 ). Notwithstanding these passages, Fichte certainly sounds like an ardent nationalist.

16. Authors who defend loyalty to the nation or national partiality purely as a means of achieving the greatest happiness or to ensure the maximal discharging of moral duties, such as R. M. Hare and Robert Goodin respectively argue, are hardly endorsing “nationalism” ( Goodin, 1988 ; Hare, 1981 ). Few nationalists think of their nation as a mere tool let alone believe that humanity is the ultimate object of loyalty.

17. An excellent example of the way that debate has proceeded is the way that Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) is cited or discussed. MacIntyre does not discuss let alone defend nationalism but patriotism. His focus is clearly on a character trait and not an ideology: Nowhere does he claim that all political legitimacy comes from the nation or that nations must be as autonomous as possible. Of course, this does not mean that MacIntyre’s defense of patriotism is irrelevant—he does after all make strong claims about communal life and human flourishing. The point is that many philosophers and political theorists treat nationalism and national partiality as interchangeable. Consequently, what is discussed on the heading of “nationalism” in the normative debate is often an anemic understanding of what historians and sociologists are discussing.

18. Authors like David Miller might reply that liberal nationalism is not a contemporary reconstruction of nationalism but a view inspired by historical nationalists such as Giuseppe Manzini and John Stuart Mill ( Gustavsson & Miller, 2019 ). While one might convincingly argue that Manzini advocated something sufficiently like contemporary liberal nationalism, things are less clear for Mill. While he did believe that national sentiment was crucial to representative government, he also advocated colonialism on the grounds that it made the colonized better off—a point hard to square with core nationalism ( Bell, 2010 ).

19. The accusation that nationalism is particularly responsible for brutal and total wars in the 20th century is widespread ( Smith, 1998 , 2010 ). Even if the accusation is correct, nationalism was also a driving force, if not the driving force, behind decolonization. Whatever historical debates are to be had about what causes what, the cost-benefit analysis of nationalism is likely more complex than François Mitterand’s “ Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre .”

20. If by “constitutional patriotism” we mean that people are primarily loyal not to a cultural community but the norms and values of a liberal democratic constitution, then liberal nationalism remains a form of nationalism ( Habermas, 1994 ).

21. There is no shortage of external critiques. Feminist authors have pointed out the extent to which nationalism can be understood as a gendered ideology: one that rarely grants women an equal role in the nation or addresses their concerns ( Elshtain, 1993 ; Enloe, 1989 ; Walby, 1992 ). Similarly, those whose argue that we inhabit an increasingly postnational or globalized world argue that the nation and nationalism are obsolete ( Falk, 2002 ; Horsman & Marshall, 1994 ; McNeill, 1986 ).

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Differences Between a Country, State, and Nation

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• M.A., Geography, California State University - Northridge
• B.A., Geography, University of California - Davis

While the terms country, state, sovereign state, nation, and nation-state are often used interchangeably, there is a difference. Simply put:

• A state is a territory with its own institutions and populations.
• A sovereign state is a state with its own institutions and populations that has a permanent population, territory, and government. It must also have the right and capacity to make treaties and other agreements with other states. Note there are also non-sovereign states.
• A nation is a large group of people who inhabit a specific territory and are connected by history, culture, or another commonality.
• A nation-state is a cultural group (a nation) that is also a state (and may, in addition, be a sovereign state).

The word country can be used to mean the same thing as state, sovereign state, or nation-state. It can also be used in a less political manner to refer to a region or cultural area that has no governmental status. Examples include Wine Country (the grape-growing area of northern California) and Coal Country (the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania).

Qualities of a Sovereign State

State, nation, and country are all terms that describe groups of people who live in the same place and have a great deal in common. But while states and sovereign states are political entities, nations, and countries might or might not be.

A sovereign state (sometimes called an independent state) has the following qualities:

• Space or territory that has internationally recognized boundaries
• People who live there on an ongoing basis
• Regulations governing foreign and domestic trade
• The ability to issue legal tender that is recognized across boundaries
• An internationally recognized government that provides public services and police power and has the right to make treaties, wage war, and take other actions on behalf of its people
• Sovereignty, meaning that no other state should have power over the country's territory

Many geographic entities have some but not all the qualities that make up a sovereign state. As of 2020 there are 195 sovereign states in the world (197 by some counts); 193 are members of the United Nations (the United Nations excludes Palestine and the Holy See). Two other entities, Taiwan and Kosovo, are recognized by some but not all members of the United Nations.

Entities That Are Not Sovereign States

Many entities have geographical and cultural significance and many of the qualities of a sovereign state but are not independent sovereign states. These include territories, non-sovereign states, and nations.

Non-Sovereign States

Territories of sovereign states are not sovereign states in their own right. Many entities have most of the qualities of sovereign states but are officially considered to be non-sovereign states. Many have their own histories, and some even have their own languages. Examples include:

• Puerto Rico
• Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England , which are non-sovereign parts of the United Kingdom

The word state is also used to refer to geographic sections of sovereign states that have their own governments but are subject to a larger federal government. The 50 United States are non-sovereign states.

Nations are culturally homogeneous groups of people who share a common language, institution, religion, and/or historical experience. Some nations are sovereign states, but many are not.

Nations that hold territory but are not sovereign states include:

• The Indian Nations of the United States
• Bosnia (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
• Catalonia (in northern Spain)

In addition to nations that are non-sovereign states, it can be argued that some nations govern no territory at all. For example, the Sindhi, Yoruba, Rohingya, and Igbo people share histories, cultures, and languages but have no territory. Some states have two nations, such as Canada and Belgium.

Nation-States

When a nation of people has a sovereign state of its own, it is called a nation-state. Populations living in nation-states share history, language, ethnicity, and culture. Iceland and Japan are excellent examples of nation-states: The vast majority of people born in these nation-states share the same ancestry and culture.

Additional References

• " State/Nation-State: Introduction/Definition ." Princeton University.
• " State, Nation and Nation-State: Clarifying Misused Terminology ." Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

" Independent States in the World ." Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State, 27 Mar. 2019.

" Member States of the United Nations ." United Nations.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

A nation is a territory where its the people are led by the same government. The word “nation” can also refer to a group of people who share a history, traditions, culture and, often, language—even if the group does not have a country of its own.

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A nation is a territory where all its people are led by the same government . The word “nation” can also refer to a group of people who share a history, traditions , culture and, often, language—even if the group does not have a political territory of its own. People within this type of nation share a common identity, and think of themselves as belonging to the same group. Palestinians, who live in and near the nation of Israel, fit in this category. Though Palestinians share a national identity , elect their own government , and share cultural beliefs, they do not have an internationally recognized nation of their own. The United Nations currently recognizes 193 nations around the world, though only 192 are members of the UN's General Assembly . (Vatican City, which is led by the Roman Catholic Church, is recognized as a sovereign nation but is not a member of the General Assembly.) Other nations are not recognized by one or more states for varying reasons. Sometimes, a single nation does not recognize another nation. North Korea and South Korea do not recognize each other as nations, for instance. They each oppose the politics of the other. The leaders of some unrecognized nations maintain a “ government in exile .” These leaders were ousted by social change , such as a revolution , in their country. The leaders currently live in another country, but consider themselves the leaders of their nation. Sometimes, people of that nation want the leader to return. Many Tibetans, for instance, look forward to a time when the Dalai Lama , the leader of Tibet’s government in exile, will return to the country. The Dalai Lama has not been to Tibet since 1959, when Tibet became a part of China.

Other times, a government in exile can form entirely outside the nation it wants to govern . The Free Republic of Vietnam considers itself a government in exile of the nation of Vietnam. The Free Republic of Vietnam was formed after the Vietnam War by emigrants who did not want to live in the new, socialist government of Vietnam.

First Nations Native American tribes are considered independent nations in the United States and Canada. There are hundreds of nations, from the Ho Chuck Nation of Wisconsin to the Makah Nation of Washington state. For many Americans, the term First Nations has become a term for Indigenous people of North America. First Nations is the official term for Canadian tribes. First Nations include the Dene in Canadas Arctic, the Mikmaq Confederacy on Prince Edward Island, and the Grand Council of the Crees in Quebec.

Nationality One nation may extend across several countries, and one country may include many nations. Kurdistan is an unrecognized nation that includes parts of Turkey, Armenia, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. The United Kingdom is a nation that includes the countries of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Nation Building — Nation-building Process

Nation-building Process

• Categories: Nation Building National Identity Patriotism

About this sample

Words: 2315 |

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Published: Mar 28, 2019

Words: 2315 | Pages: 5 | 12 min read

Table of contents

The concept of nation-building, implementation strategy, new approach, imact of national development policy, works cited.

• Maintain the basic strategy of NEP is the eradication of poverty and restructuring social and economic imbalances between the races and this contribute to strengthening national unity
• To ensure balance development of main economic sectors (mining, service, agricul true, and farming)
• Building a society that has social value and appreciate the positive feelings of pride and patriotism
• Reduce and eliminate social inequality and to promote the sharing of the national economic in a more fair and equitable benefits
• Reduce the inequalities in economic development between urban and rural areas
• Concentrate on the development of a community of Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial
• Ensure appropriate attention is given to environment of protection and ecology so that in the long term to ensure sustainable development of the country continued
• Making science and technology as an integral part of the planning and socio-economic development

Competition in International Markets

Vision 2020, poverty reduction, restructuring society, achivevement of ndp.

• women participation in the labour force increases to 53.6 per cent
• rural road coverage increases to 51,262 km
• rural electricity coverage increases to 98 per cent
• rural water supply increases to 94 per cent
• 5,737 villages connected through the wireless village programme
• RM175 billion invested in five regional economic corridors, creating 427,100 jobs
• Malaysian life expectancy increases to 74.8 years
• 102,200 affordable houses completed
• unemployment rate decreases to 2.9 per cent
• 1.8 million new job opportunities created
• 90.7 per cent pre-school enrolment
• 36.5 per cent academic staff with PhD qualification in public universities
• 15 per cent household waste recycling rate
• forest cover increases to 61 per cent
• 23,264 hectares of forest gazetted as Permanent Reserve Forest
• 93,100 km of new roads built
• 46 per cent increase in passenger rate at KL International Airport (KLIA)
• KLIA2 opened and third runway operationalised at KLIA
• urban rail commuters increase 32 per cent
• 70 per cent households with broadband penetration
• 14 areas nationwide with access to Digital Terrestrial Television
• 95 per cent of population receives clean and treated water
• services sector contributes RM2,550 billion to GDP
• manufacturing sector contributes RM1,111 billion to GDP
• agriculture sector contributes RM455 billion to GDP
• construction sector contributes RM194 billion to GDP
• small and medium enterprises contribute RM1,606 billion to GDP
• Malaysia ranked 18th out 189 economies in the 2015 World Bank ‘Doing Business’ Report
• Malaysia ranked 33rd on the Global Innovation Index out of 143 countries
• Abdul Rahman, A. (2000). From Malayan Union to Singapore Separation. Singapore: Eastern University Press.
• Faaland, J., Parkinson, J., & Saniman, R. (1991). Growth and Ethnic Inequality: Malaysia’s New Economic Policy. Oxford University Press.
• Hippler, J. (2002). Nation-building: A Key Concept for Peaceful Conflict Transformation? Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation.
• Mohamed Noordin, S. (2005). The Malays: Their Problems and Future. Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications.
• Najib Tun Abdul Razak. (2008). 1Malaysia: People First, Performance Now. Pelanduk Publications.
• Purcell, V. (1965). The Malayan Communist Party and the Indonesian Revolution. London: Oxford University Press.
• Ratnam, K. J. (1965). Nation-Building in Malaysia 1946–1964. London: Oxford University Press.
• Savunen, J. (2003). Nation-Building and Identity Conflicts: Facilitating the Mediation Process in Southern Philippines. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Schwartz, L. (1991). The State of Malaysia: Ethnicity, Equity, and Reform. Routledge.
• Tambiah, S. J. (1985). Culture, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Tamil Renaissance and the Hill Country Tamils in Sri Lanka. Cambridge University Press.

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Fundamental questions

• Prehistoric forms of democracy
• Classical Greece
• The Roman Republic
• “Constitutional oligarchies”
• A democratic dilemma
• Continental Europe
• The United States
• Democracy or republic?
• Solving the dilemma
• Factions and parties
• Majority rule, minority rights, majority tyranny
• Failures of nondemocratic systems
• Market economies
• Economic well-being
• Political culture
• Presidential and parliamentary systems
• Unitary and federal systems
• Proportional and winner-take-all systems
• Two-party and multiparty systems
• Majoritarian and consensual systems
• The legitimacy of government
• Answers to fundamental questions
• Montesquieu
• Features of ideal democracy
• Ideal and representative democracy
• Actual democracies
• The value of democracy
• Economic insecurity and inequality
• The costs of identity politics
• Democracy and clientelism
• Authoritarian threats
• Technological developments

What is democracy?

Where was democracy first practiced, how is democracy better than other forms of government, why does democracy need education.

• Why is Pericles important?

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• Social Science LibreTexts - Democracies and Democratization
• Khan Academy - Types of democracy
• PBS LearningMedia - The Birth of Democracy | The Greeks
• Princeton University - Populism and Democratic Theory
• The UNESCO Courier - What is democracy?
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Democracy
• Loyola University Chicago - Political Legitimacy and Democracy
• democracy - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• democracy - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” a group historically constituted by only a minority of the population (e.g., all free adult males in ancient Athens or all sufficiently propertied adult males in 19th-century Britain) but generally understood since the mid-20th century to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens.

Studies of contemporary nonliterate tribal societies and other evidence suggest that democracy, broadly speaking, was practiced within tribes of hunter-gatherers in prehistoric times. The transition to settled agricultural communities led to inequalities of wealth and power between and within communities and hierarchical nondemocratic forms of social organization. Thousands of years later, in the 6th century BCE, a relatively democratic form of government was introduced in the city-state of Athens by Cleisthenes .

States with democratic governments prevent rule by autocrats, guarantee fundamental individual rights, allow for a relatively high level of political equality, and rarely make war on each other. As compared with nondemocratic states, they also better foster human development as measured by indicators such as health and education , provide more prosperity for their citizens, and ensure a broader range of personal freedoms.

The hallmark of democracy is that it permits citizens to participate in making laws and public policies by regularly choosing their leaders and by voting in assemblies or referenda . If their participation is to be meaningful and effective—if the democracy is to be real and not a sham—citizens must understand their own interests, know the relevant facts, and have the ability to critically evaluate political arguments. Each of those things presupposes education .

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democracy , literally, rule by the people. The term is derived from the Greek dēmokratia , which was coined from dēmos (“people”) and kratos (“rule”) in the middle of the 5th century bce to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states , notably Athens .

(Read Madeleine Albright’s Britannica essay on democracy.)

The etymological origins of the term democracy hint at a number of urgent problems that go far beyond semantic issues. If a government of or by the people—a “popular” government—is to be established, at least five fundamental questions must be confronted at the outset, and two more are almost certain to be posed if the democracy continues to exist for long.

(1) What is the appropriate unit or association within which a democratic government should be established? A town or city? A country? A business corporation ? A university? An international organization ? All of these?

(2) Given an appropriate association—a city, for example—who among its members should enjoy full citizenship? Which persons, in other words, should constitute the dēmos ? Is every member of the association entitled to participate in governing it? Assuming that children should not be allowed to participate (as most adults would agree), should the dēmos include all adults? If it includes only a subset of the adult population, how small can the subset be before the association ceases to be a democracy and becomes something else, such as an aristocracy (government by the best, aristos ) or an oligarchy (government by the few, oligos )?

(3) Assuming a proper association and a proper dēmos , how are citizens to govern? What political organizations or institutions will they need? Will these institutions differ between different kinds of associations—for example, a small town and a large country?

(4) When citizens are divided on an issue, as they often will be, whose views should prevail, and in what circumstances? Should a majority always prevail, or should minorities sometimes be empowered to block or overcome majority rule?

(5) If a majority is ordinarily to prevail, what is to constitute a proper majority? A majority of all citizens? A majority of voters? Should a proper majority comprise not individual citizens but certain groups or associations of citizens, such as hereditary groups or territorial associations?

(6) The preceding questions presuppose an adequate answer to a sixth and even more important question: Why should “the people” rule? Is democracy really better than aristocracy or monarchy ? Perhaps, as Plato argues in the Republic , the best government would be led by a minority of the most highly qualified persons—an aristocracy of “ philosopher-kings .” What reasons could be given to show that Plato’s view is wrong?

(7) No association could maintain a democratic government for very long if a majority of the dēmos —or a majority of the government—believed that some other form of government were better. Thus, a minimum condition for the continued existence of a democracy is that a substantial proportion of both the dēmos and the leadership believes that popular government is better than any feasible alternative . What conditions, in addition to this one, favour the continued existence of democracy? What conditions are harmful to it? Why have some democracies managed to endure, even through periods of severe crisis, while so many others have collapsed?

Is ‘founder mode’ or ‘manager mode’ better? Here’s what the 22 Fortune 500 companies still run by founders show

The buzziest buzz term in the tech world is suddenly “founder mode,” coined only days ago and fast propagating into business worldwide. Founder mode is a way of running a company—the way a founder would run it—as distinct from manager mode, the way it would be run by “merely a professional manager.” So says Paul Graham, a co-founder of the Y Combinator startup accelerator, who originated the terms in a recent essay . He disdains manager mode and finds founder mode far superior. So—is it?

Graham is well positioned to judge. Over the past 19 years, Y Combinator has helped to birth thousands of companies including Airbnb , DoorDash , Reddit, and Stripe . He was inspired to identify two modes of managing after hearing a recent speech by Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, who described his awful experience bringing in outside managers. The speech struck a chord with other founders in the audience. Graham’s distillation of their views:

“Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it’s described that way, doesn’t it? Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.”

Not a warm vote of confidence in outsider MBAs. To see if such scorn is justified, let’s look at some data.

Founder mode vs. manager mode

The Fortune 500 includes 22 companies that are run by their founders (list below). We calculated each company’s performance during its current founder CEO’s tenure and compared it with the performance of the rest of the 500 over that same timespan. We measured performance by cumulative return, which includes stock price performance and dividends.

Result: a blowout in favor of the founder CEOs. Specifically:

· Cumulative total return during the founder CEOs’ tenures —The founder CEOs’ companies delivered a median of 1,129% vs. 57% for the rest of the 500.

· Performance vs. the S&P 500 (a performance score of 100 equals the market) —The median return of the founder-CEO companies was a performance score of 202, while the median of the rest of the Fortune 500 was 92.

· Performance vs. the sector (a performance score of 100 equals the sector) —The founder-CEO companies delivered a median performance score of 656.

The superiority of the founder CEOs is breathtaking. But if we used this data to declare that founder mode beats manager mode, the world’s statisticians would have us arrested for the crime of survivor bias. Those 22 founder-CEO companies are a tiny fraction of the many thousands of startups launched over the same time periods, and we don’t have data on how each was managed. For starters, what percentage of startups crashed and burned under outsider managers vs. what percentage crashed and burned under the founders? We would like to know that and much more.

Still, we know at least two relevant facts. First, we know that the forces determining who runs a growing startup have been well studied and explained. Noam Wasserman, dean of Yeshiva University’s business school, was on the faculty of the Harvard Business School when he studied thousands of startups and wrote The Founder’s Dilemmas . It describes in detail how entrepreneurs balance conflicting personal preferences that influence who—a founder or outsider—runs the business. In response to Graham’s distaste for outsider managers, he tells Fortune , “Founders who were great for the early stages, but do not have what it takes for the often very different next stage of company development, may instead be the ones who ‘drive the company into the ground.’”

Second, we know that on average, the few founder-run companies that make it to the Fortune 500 are formidably great performers, and we should know more about how they joined that exclusive club. Graham wrote in his essay, “There are as far as I know no books specifically about founder mode. Business schools don’t know it exists…. But now that we know what we’re looking for, we can search for it. I hope in a few years founder mode will be as well understood as manager mode.”

That’s a worthy goal. Founder mode should absolutely be studied and taught, not because outside managers are necessarily toxic, but because the research can make available to others the lessons learned by those rare founders—Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang—who managed their companies from nothing to greatness.

Founder CEOs in the 2024 Fortune 500

Company                                

Airbnb/Brian Chesky

Apollo Global Management/Marc Rowan

BlackRock/Laurence D. Fink

Blackstone/Stephen Schwarzman

Block/Jack Dorsey

Capital One Financial/Richard Fairbank

Carvana/Ernest C. Garcia III

Coupang/Bom Kim

Dell Technologies/Michael Dell

DoorDash/Tony Xu

Intercontinental Exchange/Jeffrey Sprecher

Meta Platforms /Mark Zuckerberg

Nividia/Jensen Huang

Prologis/Hamid R. Moghadam

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals/Leonard S. Schleifer

Salesforce/Marc Benioff

Sanmina/Jure Sola

Skechers U.S.A./Robert Greenberg

Steel Dynamics/Mark D. Millett

Super Micro Computer/Charles Liang

Tesla/Elon Musk

Wayfair/Niraj S. Shah

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National Anthem

Title: Jana Gana Mana

Music by: Rabindranath Tagore

Lyrics by: Rabindranath Tagore

Raga: Alhiya Bilawal

Written on: December 11, 1911

First sung on: December 27, 1911

Declared as National Anthem on: January 24, 1950

Time to play: 52 seconds

Underlying message: Pluralism/Unity in Diversity

National Anthem refers to a musical composition that has been selected by an authorized government bodyand is meant to represent a country’s patriotic ethos. It generally helps citizens relate to the country’s spiritual and philosophical sentiments, its rich culture and colorful history. The national anthem presents a country’s identity to the world and it acts as an instrument of unity among its citizens. 

The National Anthem of India is entitled ‘Jana Gana Mana’. The song was originally composed in Bengali by India’s first Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore on December 11, 1911. The parent song, ‘Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata’ is a Brahmo hymn which has five verses and only the first verse has been adopted as National Anthem. If put forwards succinctly, the National Anthem conveys the spirit of pluralism or in more popular term the concept of ‘Unity in Diversity’, which lies at the core of India’s cultural heritage. 

Lyrics and Translation

The original song ‘Jana Gana Mana’ is written in Bengali, but in a Sanskritized dialect known as Sadhu Bhasha. The words are primarily noun but can be used as verbs alternatively. The words again are common in most of the Indian languages and are accepted as such. They remain unchanged in most of them but the pronunciation varies according to the predominant accent of the region. The lyrics of the song are as follows:

Jana-gana-mana-adhinayaka, jaya he

Bharata-bhagya-vidhata.

Punjab-Sindh-Gujarat-Maratha 

Dravida-Utkala-Banga

Vindhya-Himachala-Yamuna-Ganga 

Uchchala-Jaladhi-taranga.

Tava shubha name jage, 

Tava shubha asisa mage, 

Gahe tava jaya gatha, 

Jana-gana-mangala-dayaka jaya he 

Jaya he, jaya he, jaya he, Jaya jaya jaya, jaya he! 

The idea of translating the song from Bengali to English came to Tagore while he was visiting the Besant Theosophical College on the invitation of Irish poet James H. Cousins. He penned down the English translation during his stay at Madanapalle, a small town in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh. The musical notations for the English version were set down by Margaret Cousin, James Cousin’s wife. The English translation goes as follows:

Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people, 

Dispenser of India's destiny.

The name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sind, Gujarat and Maratha,

Of the Dravid and Orissa and Bengal;

It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas, 

Mingles in the music of the Yamuna and Ganga

And is chanted by the waves of the Indian Sea.

They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise. 

The salvation of all people is in thy hand, 

Thou dispenser of India's destiny.

Victory, victory, victory to thee.

A shorter version of the National Anthem is also sung on occasions and it consists of the first and last lines of the verse, like

Jana-gana-mana-adhinayaka jaya he

Jaya he, Jaya he, Jaya he, Jaya Jaya, Jaya, Jaya he.

History of Indian National Anthem

The song ‘Bharat Bhagya Bidhata’ was first sung on the Day 2 of the annual session of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta on December 27, 1911. Song was performed by Sarala Devi Chowdhurani, Tagore’s niece, along with a group of school students, in front of prominent Congress Members like Bishan Narayan Dhar, Indian National Congress President and Ambika Charan Majumdar. 

In 1912, the song was published under the title Bharat Bidhata in the Tatwabodhini Patrika, which was the official publication of the Brahmo Samaj and of which Tagore was the Editor.  

Outside of Calcutta, the song was first sung by the bard himself at a session in Besant Theosophical College in Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh on February 28, 1919. The song enthralled the college authorities and they adopted the English version of the song as their prayer song which is sung till today.

On the occasion of India attaining freedom, the Indian Constituent Assembly assembled for the first time as a sovereign body on August 14, 1947, midnight and the session closed with a unanimous performance of Jana Gana Mana.  

The members of the Indian Delegation to the General Assembly of the United Nations held at New York in 1947 gave a recording of Jana Gana Mana as the country’s national anthem. The song was played by the house orchestra in front of a gathering consisting of representatives from all over the world. 

Jana Gana Mana was officially proclaimed as India’s National Anthem by the Constituent Assembly of India on January 24, 1950. 

Occasions for playing the Anthem

The full version of the national anthem requires duration of approximately 52 seconds to be played while the shorter version takes about 20 seconds. The national anthem is a symbol of pride for the citizens of the country and is required to be played on specifically designated occasions which are listed below.

1. The full version of the National Anthem is played on the following occasions:

a. Accompanying the performance of National Salute on ceremonial occasions to the President of India or Governors of States/Union Territories.

b. During parade demonstrations in front of the dignitaries referred in the preceding point

c. before and after the President’s address of the nation

d. Before arrival and departure of the President or Governor from a formal ceremony

e. When the national Flag is hoisted during cultural occasions

f. When the Regimental Colors are presented 

2. The National Anthem is not to be played for the Prime Minister generally, except under special circumstances.

3. On the occasion where the National Anthem is performed by a Band, a roll of drums is to precede the actual performance, in order to let the audience know and prepare for paying respect. The roll will be 7 paces of slow march, will start slowly, ascend to a loud volume and should remain audible till the last beat.

National Anthem of India - Code of Conduct

A specific set of rules and regulations have been set by the Government of India to oversee the proper and correct rendition of the National Anthem. The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, was penned down by the Government of India to prevent any intentional disrespect or insult towards the National Anthem of the country. Offenders are punishable with up to three years of imprisonment as well as monetary fine.

The following codes of conduct are to be observed by Indian citizens whenever the National Anthem is played:

1. Should stand up to attention.

2. Individual’s head should be held high

3. One should be looking forward.

4. Mass singing of the National Anthem is to accompany the unfurling of the National Flag.

5. No parody/distortion of words or music of the National Anthem is allowed.

Significance

The National Anthem is perhaps one of the most potent declarations of a country’s independent status. India is a nation of multiple languages and dialects therein. Jana Gana Mana is understood unequivocally throughout India and thus brings forth the spirit of unity among these diverse languages. Our National Anthem conveys very aptly the traditions and values that still hold strong as the backbone of the country. It helps reinforce the accepting and assimilating nature of Indian culture along with its tolerance to pluralism. Jana Gana Mana appeals to the country’s patriotic emotions and helps unifying the different races, castes and creeds by solemn singing of the hymn-like verses.

Controversies

A controversy surrounds the song Jana Gana Mana from its inception. A section of congress leaders alleged that Tagore wrote this song in praise of King George V as indicated by the use of the words like “Adhinayaka” and “Bharat Bhagya Bidhata”. The creation of the song coincided with the England Monarch’s first visit to India and his Coronation at Delhi Durbar in 1911. But in a letter to Mr. Pulin Bihari Sen in December 1939, Tagore dismissed the idea. He wrote “A certain high official in His Majesty's service, who was also my friend, had requested that I write a song of felicitation towards the Emperor. The request simply amazed me. It caused a great stir in my heart. In response to that great mental turmoil, I pronounced the victory in Jana Gana Mana of that Bhagya Vidhata [ed. God of Destiny] of India who has from age after age held steadfast the reins of India's chariot through rise and fall, through the straight path and the curved. That Lord of Destiny, that Reader of the Collective Mind of India, that Perennial Guide, could never be George V, George VI, or any other George. Even my official friend understood this about the song. After all, even if his admiration for the crown was excessive, he was not lacking in simple common sense.”