Introduction to

Comparative Politics
NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
 Ethnicity, nation and citizenship- the foundational concepts of modern politics
 Are conflicts natural or constructions of political elites?
 The origins of identities: biological or social?
 The evolutionary biological approach to identities: Primordialism, The social
construction approach to identities: Instrumentalism and constructivism
 Culture as cause or an intervening variable
 Defining ethnicity (‘set of institutions that bind people through culture’, 66)
 Connection through language, culture, religion etc.
 Different types of ascriptive identities (ethnicity, religion, language, common
ancestry, geography, appearance)
 Shared sense of community and belonging
 Identities- Social or political?
 Ethnicity as the basis of group mobilization; outcome of individual
acknowledgement
 From ethnicity to nation-inevitable?
 Nation -> Nationalism?
 Nationalism: pride in one’s nation and belief in its sovereign rights
 Nation <- Nationalism <- Nation-building
 Citizenship: individual and the state- the rights and responsibilities connecting
citizen with the state
 Nation and citizenship?
 Nation a political concept
 Tied together through politial aspirations of self-government and sovereignty
 Nation: political idea; desire for self-rule usually in the form of independent state
 National identity may or may not be rooted in ethnic identity
 The case of American nation
 States and pursuit of homogenous nationhood
 The fluidity and flexibility of citizenship
 Citizenship and ethnicity
 Pride in one’s state: patriotism (national anthem; holidays, memorials)
 Modern identities and nation-states
 Macro-historical changes and national cohesiveness (modernization)
 Nation-states and nation-building processes
 The instruments of nation-building
 French Revolution and rallying around the nation-state (rise of volunteer army)
 Rise of ethnic identities
 Globalization of ethnic- nartional identities
 Ethnic and nationalist conflict: (conflict over resources versus conflict over
political goals like sovereignty)
 Causes of conflicts:
 A) Societal: ethnic diversity and heterogeinty
 B) Economic: struggle for resources
 C) Political: nature of regime
 Making sense of these categories
 Creating inclusive political institutions
 Mapping ethnic conflict-post Cold war dynamics
 Political attitudes and Ideologies
 The secular religion and privatization of faith
 Radicals and revolutionary change
 Liberals and evolutionary change
 Conservatives and the notion of change
 Reactionaries and ‘envisioned past’
 Radicals, reactionaries and change
 Political ideologies as ‘science of ideas’ – post-French Revolutions
 Liberalism, conservatism and Communism (table on p. 89)
 From secular to religious ideologies: fundamentalism and religious extremism
 Return of God in political science and politics at large
 Modernity and nationalism:
 Modern technologies, states, modernization and nationalism
 Anderson: print capitalism