National Identity Crisis in Developing Countries in the Global Age and Its Causes

Abstract

After the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, great changes have occurred in the world scenario, with ethnic clashes and national conflicts becoming all the more salient, making national identity a hot topic in reality and the academia. To address the issue of national identity in the age of globalization, a deep-going theoretical discussion of the logic behind it is necessary, a discussion that covers the nature of both ethno-cultural identity and national identity, the superiority of national identity to ethno-cultural identity and the logic behind national identity crisis. In terms of the need for social identity, globalization, while changing the power structure of the world, weakens the autonomy of developing countries, especially that of those which are still in the process of modernization and are confronted with risks inherent in social transformation and where a resultant structural imbalance undermines the state’s integrity and control, making national identity less appealing to ethnic groups. As a result, regional ethnic identity comes to the fore, leading to national identity crises in developing countries.