Articles

Does nationalism increase the probability of international conflict? An affirmative answer has intuitive appeal: Nationalists promote force to protect their land and people from foreign threats. Research on nationalism in international conflict implicates elites, masses, and political interactions between these actors when asserting its status as a powerful force that raises the risk for interstate […]

What is the relationship between nationalism and capitalism? Some of the foundational theories of nationalism attribute its emergence to the rise of capitalist economy. For Gellner, industrial capitalism created the social preconditions for nationalism, whereas its uneven development fostered national differentiation (Gellner 1983). Michael Hechter likewise foregrounded uneven capitalist development as the moving force behind […]

Territory and solidarity are two central components of contemporary politics whose connection has come to be embodied in two quite different political phenomena: nationalism and the welfare-state. Nationalism is a form of politics linking territory (a homeland) to a special sense of solidarity deemed to supersede all others (i.e., non-national cleavages). The welfare state represents […]

Come gather ’round peopleWherever you roamAnd admit that the watersAround you have grownAnd accept it that soonYou’ll be drenched to the boneIf your time to you is worth savin’Then you better start swimmin’Or you’ll sink like a stoneFor the times they are a-changin’(Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin’, 1964) Climate change is probably the […]

Is nationalism morally defensible, or is it a destructive holdover from our primitive past? Are certain forms of nationalism normatively preferable to others? To what extent are liberals ethically entitled to accommodate the demands and concerns of nationalists? Do the claims of nationality entail a right to independence or autonomy? Can the ‘politics of cultural […]