Political Nationalism Research Articles

Ireland, Reading and Cultural Nationalism, 1790–1930, Bringing the Nation to Book

Ireland, Reading and Cultural Nationalism, 1790–1930, Bringing the Nation to Book

A Liberal before Liberalism: Karl Hermann Scheidler and the New Hegelians

This paper is the first substantial investigation in English or German of the work and career of the student of Jacob Fries, leader of theBurschenschaften, educational reformer, and professor of philosophy and law Karl Hermann Scheidler. It examines Scheidler's interventions into political and constitutional debates during the GermanVormärzand argues that he developed a unique brand of liberal corporatism that has been overlooked or misunderstood by intellectual historians—one that attempts to bridge the gap between eighteenth-century natural law and nineteenth-century political nationalism by defending the corporate autonomy of the churches and universities, and by promoting a combination of public virtue and moral perfection that he dubbed “political Protestantism.” It emphasizes Scheidler's polemical articles against the “Hegel school” and the “New Hegelians” in Rotteck's and Welcker'sStaats-Lexikon. It proposes that a detailed examination of Scheidler's work provides a clearer understanding of how liberalism emerged as a distinct political ideology during theVormärzand how one strand of German liberalism defined itself against Hegelianism.

A Path Toward Inclusive Social Cohesion: The Role of European and National Identity on Contesting vs. Accepting European Migration Policies in Portugal.

The Western hemisphere has witnessed recent increased immigration flows generating social and political debate across Europe. In one view, migration flows represent an opportunity to construct a diverse social cohesion. In another view, migration flows are perceived as a threat to existent national cultures. This view is held by political nationalisms and right-wing populist forces installed in the majority of EU countries’ parliaments, accentuating discrimination against immigrants and residents in Europe. We theorize that European identity predicts positive attitudes toward immigrants (prosocial behavior and support for inclusive policies), whereas national identity’s predictions of attitudes toward immigrants’ inclusion depends on participants’ political tendency. Moreover, we test the mediation effect of positive (humanitarian concerns and economic benefit) and negative (jobs scarcity, cultural deterioration, and invasion) arguments used in political discourses regarding immigrants’ inclusion on the relation between national and European identities and attitudes toward immigrants’ inclusion. Results (Portuguese sample, N = 176) show that national identity predicts negative attitudes toward immigrants’ inclusion, but only among right-wing individuals. Among left-wing individuals, national identity predicts less contestation to immigrant’s inclusion sustained by humanitarian concerns. Interestingly, European identification weakened right-wing individuals’ adherence to discriminatory arguments and increased perceived economic contribution that immigrants bring to society, increasing agreement with prosocial behavior and immigrants’ inclusion. We discuss that European identity, sustained in humanitarian values and economic benefit, may stimulate a stronger multicultural social cohesion, intergroup trust, and social well-being based on democratic values, social justice, and equality, and on the respect for human dignity.

Social Frustration and Budgetary Restrictions: Rethinking the Public Agenda in Post-Pandemic

Using political economy analysis, this document aims at a better understanding of the recent juncture of global social protests expressing against the establishment and the international trade agreements. Brexit and America-First form part of apparent solutions exploiting political nationalism during 2017-2020. We use signal-to-noise ratio principles to characterize the pro-market status-quo of the United States and the high State interventionism in Europe and then we assess the evolution of the “Welfare State” in those regions. A key element in this characterization is the consolidation of the “middle-class” and its motivational roots, contrasting those driven by “economic progress” Vs. “citizenship values”. The latter tends to better solidify the stance of the middle class, while the former tends to be short-lived, as apparently has occurred in Latin America. We offer a narrative interpretation about the “social elevator” in Latin America, operating from poor to middle class, over 1995-2020, and provide a snap-shot of recent events, including Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. After significant social progress in lowering the portion of population under-poverty rates from 50% down to 30% during 1995-2014, the period after the super-cycle of energy-mining commodities (2015-2020) has shown stagnation in social progress due to low real-GDP growth, escalating unemployment, and fiscal restraints in Latin America. Given the negative effects of the covid-19 pandemic, the expected recovery of 2020-2021 will be even more complex to achieve. Very likely, world weighted GDP-growth will contract -4% in 2020 (Vs. an expected 3% before pandemic), but world´s growth could rebound to +5% in 2021 under a “V”-shape recovery. However, LATAM will be stalled in a 2% growth recovery in 2021 after a contraction close to -6% in 2020. Finally, we provide a minimum agenda of structural reforms dealing with quality of public schools, better deployment of infrastructure to deepen the gains from international trade, and additional budgetary allocations pro-poor to improve income distribution indicators. This public agenda needs to be complemented by private sector initiatives to properly allocate the scant fiscal resources.

Belarusianism in the Context Stolypin’s Nationalism

The article examines the political potential of the two programs and practices of nation-building at the beginning of the twentieth century associated with all-Russian and Belarusian national movements. The all-Russian project was formulated by the Prime Minister of the Russian Empire P.A. Stolypin. He proceeded from the idea of gradual and inevitable erosion of the estate system and democratization of the social system of Russia. Stolypin envisioned the creation of the political nation, the core of which would be the Russian people, quite traditionally understood as the trinity of Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians. According to Stolypin, the creation of the Russian nation led not to the restriction of the rights of ethnic minorities, but to their gradual expansion in the future, but on condition of loyalty to the state system and the national development of Russia. Until 1917, Russian nationalism in the Northwest region was much more influential than Belarusianism. The latter was represented by only a small circle of «Nasha Niva» journal supporters. Unlike Stolypin’s project, Belarusianism had no impact on any significant part of the local population.

Dynamics of Humanitarian Priorities in the Political Life of the Independent Ukraine: The Dilemma of Intentions and Actions

The dynamics of humanitarian priorities in the political life of the Ukrainian society are investigated. It is shown that the humanitarian priorities of the state policy must be determined by the national interests of the whole society, the protection of the rights and freedoms of its citizens. Basic humanitarian priorities include the level of human development, democratic society, high standards of living, gender equality, and more. The following characteristics are important for the formation of a consolidated political nation: common national interests, preservation of historical memory, resolution of interethnic and interdenominational issues, establishment of social tolerance and consensus. The dynamics of the processes of decommunization, language policy, acquisition of local status by the Ukrainian church have been traced. Some inconsistency and contradiction between the intentions and actions of the higher authorities in determining the priorities of state humanitarian policy have been revealed. Also, some regressive manifestations and deviations from the strategic orientations of state formation are observed. The decisive factor in such phenomena is the destructive influence of external factors, in particular the Russian one, aimed at the formation of separatist and collaborative movements in the Ukrainian society, social disagreement and disobedience, disorder and chaos. The military aggression of the Russian Federation and its annexation of a part of the Ukrainian territory became a direct challenge and threat to the very existence of the state, guaranteed rights and freedoms of its citizens. Special attention is paid to the procedural incompleteness of reforms in the humanitarian sphere, which is manifested, in particular, in the declarative nature and lack of practical decisions and actions on the implementation of a number of strategic state projects.

Immigration and Politics in the 21st Century: The Rise of Nationalism Versus Pluralism in the United States

This paper examines the changing concept of pluralism in the United States, especially, in the aftermath of President Trump’s zeitgeist hard line immigration policy. Trump’s immigration agenda is forcefully manifested in ultra-nationalism tendencies including “trade war” (Economy, 2019), “economic populism” (Lenz and Gunter, 2017), “separation of young children from their parents at the border,” “claim of presidential powers to nullify the constitutional right to birthright citizenship” (Shapiro, 2019), “white identity politics” (Confessore, 2016), “racial resentment” (Harris, 2018), “racist nativist micro-aggressions” (Gomez and Huber, 2019), inciting racist and xenophobic rhetoric, such as “anti-Mexicanism and Islamophobia” (Huerta, 2017, p. 57) by the President in the push to advance his “Make America Great Again” and “America First” agendas. The meanness associated with Trump’s rhetoric evokes isolationism, anti-multiculturalism, intolerance, hate, and undermines America’s leadership role in the world. Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft Corporation, is not remiss: “America First worldview concerns me. It’s not that the United States shouldn’t look out for its people. The question is how best to do that. My view is that engaging with the world has proven over time to benefit everyone, including Americans, more than withdrawing does” (Gates and Gates, 2018). Using Trump’s efforts to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program as a case study, this paper will discuss the administration’s attempts to roll back American pluralism. In addition, the paper will discuss the political ascendency of Trump and its unfolding implications. Furthermore, the paper will discuss the ideals of America’s pluralism not only as the pillar of the American way, but also, as the important glue that binds and fosters American diversity, and boosts the U.S. economy. The paper will utilize nationalism theory framework of analysis to conceptualize and explain Trump’s brand of nationalism in contemporary global politics. The paper will add to the body of knowledge and literature on the subject of nationalism. The terms populism and nationalism will be used interchangeably. Keywords : immigration, nationalism, pluralism, DACA, economy, globalization, and Trump DOI : 10.7176/JLPG/99-06 Publication date :July 31st 2020

Beyond Nationaloper. For a critique of methodological nationalism in reading nineteenth-century Italian and German opera

ABSTRACT This article challenges traditional narratives that have tended to highlight the role of opera as a tool of political nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe. Instead, I will show how opera (both the form and the repertoire) served as a means of creating cultural and intellectual connections between peoples, and how it participated in the emergence of a European public. Claims that particular operas played a role in rousing nationalist sentiment are often methodologically unsound, due to the limitations of related sources of reception; or they are based on myths that were constructed long after these works’ original production. Moreover, even works written or described at the time as explicitly ‘national’ operas often relied on musical techniques amalgamated from different national contexts, raising questions over their classification in terms of national culture. Instead, Italian opera in particular assumed a central role in building cultural bridges between and within nations and polities. This was especially the case for the Habsburg monarchy, where opera was understood as a reference to Italy’s humanist legacy, based on a long tradition of reading opera as the reinvention of Greek drama. After 1815 and throughout the 1820s, the triumph of Rossini’s works on almost every stage in Europe shows how opera transcended barriers between peoples, states and nations. A mere ‘national’ reading of such works risks missing the point of why opera became a European art form of a truly global appeal.

DEPICTION OF THE EVENTS OF THE POLISH-UKRAINIAN WAR OF 1649 IN THE POLISH HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Summary. The purpose of the research is to study the peculiarities of depicting the events of the military campaign of 1649 in Polish historiography of the first half of the twentieth century, and in particular the siege of Zbarazh by the Cossack troops and the Battle of Zborow; isolate various stereotypes, patterns and historical myths; analyze the approaches of Polish scholars to the image of various historical figures, the creation of educational ideals of heroes of the homeland or anti-heroes for the younger generation of Poles; study the diversity of historians’ approaches to the analysis of the circumstances of the conclusion and conditions of the Zboriv Peace Treaty; consider the visions of Polish scholars on the international context of the events of 1649, on the vision of the influences on the Cossacks of various foreign policy forces.The research methodology is based on the scientific principles of historical science, namely the principles of historicism, objectivism, systematization and verification, scientific constructivism, as well as the general scientific principles of analysis, synthesis and generalization. Special historical methods are used, such as historical-genetic, historical-comparative and historical-typological.The scientific novelty of the study lies in the coverage of a whole range of problems raised by Polish scholars in the first half of the twentieth century while constructing an image of the events of the Polish-Ukrainian confrontation in 1649. Great attention is paid to the ideological approaches of historians and their political beliefs through the prism of which they considered historical events. The research investigates historical mythologies, stereotypes and patterns that influenced the representation of the past in Polish historiography and received their response in the historical consciousness of Poles and all further development of studies on the history of Polish-Ukrainian relations in the Polish science.Conclusions. The events of the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1649 became significant in the presentation of the image of Khmelnytsky region by Polish researchers. The main accents on them were laid at the end of the XIX century by the Polish historian L. Kubala and the writer G. Sinkevych and continued to develop actively in the historiography of the first half of the XX century. Their images were significantly influenced by the educational ideals of the Polish society in its stateless period, which served to «strengthen the hearts» of the people. After World War I, scholarsʼ approaches to historical material were superimposed on their ideological attitudes due to their commitment to one or another political camp of the Second Polish Republic, and in particular the ideology of the National Democrats or the camp of Marshal J. Pilsudski. Through their prism, the international context of the event was considered, in particular the influences of the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire or the Moscow Empire. Researchersʼ political visions also influenced their views on internal processes among the Ukrainian people, in particular the formation of a political nation and state-building processes.Layering of mythological archetypes in the presentation of various facts of the military campaign is of particular interest, which had an impact on the formation of anti-Ukrainian stereotypes and phobias. Polish researchers and artists paid a lot of attention to the creation of the ideal of a hero-defender of the fatherland and an exemplary representative of the noble «Sarmatian people» from the figure of Prince Jeremia Vyshnevetskyi. In the context of the analysis of the significance and consequences of the Zboriv Peace Treaty, historians considered the very circumstances and processes of transformation of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, its internal social and cultural incentives.

Ukrainian science in the time of "military communism" (on domestic books printed in 1920)

The article presents the problem of spiritual achievements of the Ukrainian National-Democratic Revolution of 1917. With the legitimation of their own power institutions, Ukrainian studies became widespread, as a generalized complex of knowledge about the modern Ukrainian nation. The process of uniting Ukrainians into a political nation needed to educate and educate the society on the basis of Ukrainian values. Recognizing this important component of its development activities, the national governments of Ukraine (General Secretariat of the Ukrainian People's Republic, State Secretariat of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, Council of Ministers of Hetmanat Paul Skoropadsky, the Council of People's Ministers during the Development of the Directory of Ukraine). Having been defeated in the struggle for the preservation of Ukrainian statehood, national forces, meanwhile, were able to preserve and show to the society the potential of Ukrainian studies as a factor in the education of ethnic identity. Even the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat, intensified by the policy of "war communism", did not become a hindrance. Moreover, the Bolsheviks, in their own way, accepted from the national forces the "baton" of public dissemination of Ukrainian studies. Considering the latter as an effective mechanism for gaining authority among the masses, the leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet government treated Ukrainian economics with economic prudence. Not only did the Soviet authorities retain the achievements of their opponents in the civil war, but also transformed them into their own political "indigenization" campaign, which began in 1923 and brought numerous bonuses to the Bolsheviks, both on the internal and external contours of life. The author made the aforementioned analysis and his conclusions in this article on the basis of the study of the national books in 1920, kept in the State Archives of the Book of Ukraine named after Ivan Fedorov.

Nation, Nationality, and National Identity: Uses, Misuses, and the Hungarian Case of External Ethnic Citizenship

The article looks at the changing terrain of inclusion and exclusion, through mapping the shifts in Hungarian citizenship law and its political context. More specifically, it deals with the legal aspects of the definitional exercise of belonging to the Hungarian nation, starting with an analysis of the relevant provisions of the 2011 Fundamental Law of Hungary and moving on to assess the phenomenon of external ethnic citizenship. The surrounding political and legal debates are read together with insights from normative scholarship to trace the changing meaning of who belongs to the nation, in what sense and with what practical consequences. The paper discusses the political context of the changing constitutional and citizenship rules to demonstrate the circularity in defining the nation: who gets to vote will have an impact on who decides on who gets to vote which in turn will have an impact on who gets to vote, how, and for how long. The article concludes that supplanting the political nation with the ethno-cultural concept means that overinclusion has given way to underinclusion. For instance, some who used to be defined as part of the ethno-cultural nation have come to be viewed as voluntary outsiders: with the availability of non-residential naturalization, those who opted not to acquire Hungarian citizens can now be seen as also falling outside the nation, rewriting basic tenets of national identity.

Between Rome and Byzantium: The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture—Second Half of the Fifteenth Century to the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

Between Rome and Byzantium: The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture—Second Half of the Fifteenth Century to the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

Redefining refugee: white Christian nationalism in state politics and beyond

ABSTRACT Although immigration is the domain of the federal government, recently there has been a movement to introduce anti-refugee legislation in state legislatures across the country. In 2017 and 2018 there were 86 anti-refugee state-level bills introduced to limit refugee resettlement in the US. We examine public testimony from South Carolina’s 2016 anti-refugee bill, S-997. Building upon the literature on racist nativism, we find those who sought to eliminate refugee resettlement reconstructed the meaning of a legal status, refugee, to be synonymous with Brown, Muslim, Terrorist, Third World, by presenting these population categories as unified in a legal status in opposition to the white, Christian, civilized, United States. We show how even those who supported refugees and refugee resettlement engaged in and supported the logic of white Christian nationalism.

Multilateral forestry research and tertiary forestry education for development: reflections on progress since the 1970s

The contemporary institutional landscapes for multilateral forestry research and tertiary forestry education for development were shaped largely in the last three decades of the 20 th century. Some limitations of largely post-colonial arrangements in the 1970s for forestry research for development were addressed by the establishment of CIFOR and incorporation of ICRAF into the CGIAR system in the early 1990s, following international processes in which FAO, IUFRO and the World Bank played central roles. Contemporaneously, tertiary forestry education evolved and internationalised in conjunction with that sector more generally. Institutional arrangements for multilateral forestry research are now undergoing another phase of change, as key actors seek more impact without more investment. Traditional models of tertiary forestry education for development are similarly challenged by ongoing changes in higher education systems. Both forestry research and education need now to address the profound challenges and potential opportunities associated with major forces such as ongoing forest loss and degradation, climate change, economic globalisation, and social and demographic change. In parallel, the value of evidence-based policy and practice, and of multilateralism, are being challenged by resurgent political populism and nationalism. Together, these contexts suggest that those engaged in forestry research and education for development will need to be politically and institutionally astute, and proactive and strategic, in catalysing and pursuing opportunities; and that various collaborative models, both nationally and internationally, will remain important vehicles for sharing resources, commanding the attention of decision-makers, and realising development impacts.

The algorithm of the application of history as a destructive factor in communication systems

The article presents the problem of the function of historical science, its place and significance in the life of society. The author argues that the dominant historical paradigm is an effective mechanism of communication processes that occur at all stages of social development of the state. The continuity of historical knowledge provides inter-age communication in society, mutual understanding between representatives of different generations — carriers of material and spiritual achievements of different historical eras. The author analyzes the causes of the destruction of spiritual unity of generations, and notes the danger of this process for the public health of Ukraine. The article presents the author's classification of the destructive use of historical knowledge for influencing public consciousness. The distortion and transformation of the latter, according to the author, gives rise to a new mentality, which means that it radically changes the formats and characteristics of Ukrainianness as an ethnic and political nation. The algorithm of using history as a destructive factor in communication systems, according to the author, consists of several stages, namely: pseudoscientific promotion of national history; imposing false stereotypes and mythology on society; narrowing of the scientific segment of Ukrainian history in society, encapsulation and schooling of Ukrainian historical science; the use of negativization as a front-line method for studying the Soviet period of Ukrainian history; total distortion of the historical outlook of society; general trauma to the public consciousness; mental transformation of modern Ukrainian society. The author emphasizes that the mechanism of destructive application of history has become a perfect fact of the spiritual life of modern Ukraine.

Going National: Immigration Enforcement and the Politicization of Local Police

ABSTRACTThis article develops a theory of when and how political nationalization increases interest in local elections using evidence from county sheriff elections. A quintessentially local office, the sheriff has long enjoyed buffers from ideological or partisan politics. However, many sheriff elections since 2016 were waged on ideological grounds as progressive challengers—often backed by outside money—linked their campaigns to opposition to President Trump. I argue that this “redirected nationalization” becomes possible when a salient national issue impinges on a local government service, enabling challengers to expand the scope of conflict against valence-advantaged incumbents. In the highly nationalized 2018 midterm election, the question of cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the nation’s jails provided a compelling link between local sheriffs and national politics, infusing new interest and energy in these races. Although redirected nationalization can help align local policies with voter preferences, the politicization of local law enforcement also might undermine police professionalism and credibility.

Petitions, Parliament and Political Culture: Petitioning the House of Commons, 1780–1918*

Abstract This article analyses nearly one million petitions received by the House of Commons to reveal a culture of petitioning that recast the political culture of modern Britain and Ireland. It argues, first, that petitions provided a much more regular and continuous form of interaction between people and Parliament than elections. Second, petitioning–meaning the practices associated with the drafting, signing and presentation of petitions–enabled a vibrant, performative public politics. Third, petitions and petitioning were relatively open, inclusive forms of political participation since all British subjects enjoyed the formal right to petition. We examine the role of formidable campaigns of mass mobilisation, but also humble appeals of marginalised individuals. Our data has significant implications for our understanding of the nationalisation, organisation, and popularisation of politics in this period. We argue that attention to petitions helps us to decentre parliamentary elections as the principal connection between local and national politics. Indeed, petitioners responded to the shifting boundaries between the central and devolved state in deciding to which authorities they would direct petitions. Petitioning campaigns pioneered the mass, organised, national movements that would gradually emerge as the hallmark of stronger political parties. This did not undermine petitioning. However, the consequent growth of disciplined parties strengthened executive power, at the expense of parliamentary government, redirected petitions from the Commons. Furthermore, the continuing expansion of petitioning alongside extensions of the franchise suggests that petitions did not function as an ersatz ballot. Rather, petitions and debates between parliamentarians and petitioners over the meaning of growing lists of signatories suggest that petitioning catalysed a range of other forms of participation and hence forged an ever more popular politics.

Dutch Naval Decline and British Sea-power Identity in the Eighteenth Century

During the eighteenth century, various British authors analysed the decline of Dutch naval power. Anticipating the politico-cultural frame of reference of the British political nation, they invoked the memory of the seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch wars to dramatize the failure of Dutch sea power. They disagreed about the causes of this development, but seemed unanimous in their conviction that the British nation should not suffer a similar fate. Their choice of the Dutch Republic as an apt lesson in naval failure was motivated by the perceived politico-cultural similarities between both nations. The Dutch were seen as a copy of the ‘self’ – Protestant, globalizing, commercially oriented and averse to absolutist oppression – but they had somehow strayed from the right naval path. Thus, their analytical interest in Dutch naval failure originated from an ideological interpretation of British identity and consequently reinforced and enriched this cultural construct.

A Church for Scotland? The Free Church and Scottish Nationalism after the Disruption

The 1843 Disruption of the Church of Scotland, which split the national church in two, was one of the most important events in Victorian Britain. The evangelical ministers who seceded from the Kirk to form the Free Church of Scotland did so in protest against the British state's intrusion in the church's affairs. The anti-English and patriotic rhetoric of the Disruption has led historians such as David Bebbington to argue that it represented something close to a nationalist movement. This paper questions this claim by assessing the nationalist characteristics of the Disruption and their role in shaping the political ‘unionist-nationalism’ of the mid-nineteenth century. It examines the kind of nationalist sentiment, if any, evident at the Disruption, the role of Free Church members in the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, the short-lived proto-nationalist pressure group, and the nationalism of the Free Church minister James Begg, who called for Home Rule for Scotland in 1850. By assessing the influence of the Disruption's constructionist critique of the union on political nationalism, the paper argues that the religious nationalism evident in 1843 failed to translate to a political context in the mid-nineteenth century. The new religiously pluralist environment of the post-Disruption period saw the Free Church turn inwards and begin to focus upon its own denominational fortunes as a single Scottish national identity was replaced by a variety of competing confessional identities, each with their own claim to nationhood.

Nation-building oraz nation-preserving w Polsce w dobie transformacji i integracji europejskiej

The aim of the article is to show the centuries-old tradition of Polish elites working for nation-building and nation-preserving purposes. It dates back to at least the 18th century. The nation-preserving formula was developed in the 19th century, that is, during the partitions, when the Polish nation did not have its own statehood. In the first part of the article, I describe the specificity of Poles’ historical experiences, primarily after the partitions that took place at the end of the 18th century. I try to indicate three main approaches to nation-building (and nation-preserving) activities during this period. In the next part of the article, I try to show that this tradition lasted during the period of political transformation and European integration. While the nation-building approach, related to the reconstruction of sovereign statehood, democracy and a political nation, was dominant in the first case, the nation-preserving policy was observed more often, especially among the right-wing elites, after joining the EU, primarily due to the experiences of subsequent European crises.