Argumentative Contexts of National Identity Definition

People define the membership of their national groups in a variety of more or less inclusive ways. This has implications for how immigrants and minority groups are treated. Traditionally, variation national boundaries has been understood as a distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism. However, despite a developed empirical literature, it is difficult to find strong defenders of this distinction or its ability to capture the empirical reality of popular conceptions of nationhood. This chapter explores some of the deficiencies of the ethnic–civic distinction, arguing that these problems arise because when people report the importance of various criteria to national belonging, they are not selecting from philosophically derived ideal types on nationhood but rather are positioning themselves within the particular and local debates about nationality relevant in their time and place. The chapter proposes a situated and bottom-up investigation of how national boundaries are constructed and contested in particular places and how this differs across what this chapter will call ‘argumentative contexts’.

‘Solidarity’ versus Values as Drivers of Support for Immigrants’ Access to Social Benefits

A large literature argues that ‘inclusiveness’ on the provision of social benefits flows from positive social identification with immigrants on the basis of mutually shared national identity. This chapter, however, argues that ‘identification with’ is perhaps sufficient but not necessary. The evidence demonstrates the limited influence of national identity as a social identity beyond a set of core values: (1) Americans, on average, are willing to extend social benefits to immigrants they do not identify with, and withhold them from those they do; (2) a ‘categorical’ response dominates questions about rights and benefits but not about ‘identity’, indicating that the two are considered differently; (3) a respondent’s own national identity does not necessarily influence how people approach questions about rights and benefits. Americans support or withhold benefits based on whether they see immigrants as living ‘civic’ lives, even if they do not necessarily identify with them on this basis. In terms of normative theory, most Americans are not liberal nationalists, they are simply liberal.

National Identity, Pride, and Chauvinism—their Origins and Consequences for Globalization Attitudes

Theorists of liberal nationalism argue that national identities serve as essential glue binding a nation. However, national identities can create tensions among subgroups of co-nationals and breed suspicion of outsiders. This chapter analyses the psychology of national attachments to better understand the effects of national identity, identifying three types of national attachment: chauvinism, pride, and identity. The chapter then investigates their differing origins and consequences, focusing on their effects on support for globalization, such as attitudes towards protectionism and immigration. The chapter finds that national chauvinism undercuts and pride enhances support for globalization, underscoring the diverse political effects of national attachments.

An Unscientific Postscript

This chapter explores some of the tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, from above, and ethnic identity and nationalism, from below, in the light of some of the other chapters in this book. To do so, it sketches a general account of identity, with its three components: criteria of membership, psychological identification, and the treatment of members by others as members of the group, and argues that all are standardly contested. It then incorporates the insights of some of the earlier chapters that show that identification can involve (a) feelings of warmth for the nation, or (b) celebrating national culture and achievements, or (c) conceiving of one’s nation as superior to others, and it discusses the different effects of these on redistributive solidarity with minorities and migrants. Finally, it urges attention to the role of national honour in thinking about national identity and suggests that there is scope for more work on the political psychology of nationalism.

Dual or Divided Identities?

Over the years, the size of the immigrant population has increased considerably in many Western countries and raised concerns whether the majority population within a nation-state identify with and share a number of common values despite increased ethnic and religious diversity. This chapter includes the immigrant population into the ‘national identity’ debate by examining the extent to which non-Western immigrants identify with and feel proud of their host nation, and it investigates the community values with which they identify, utilizing a nationally representative survey taken among five large non-Western groups living in Denmark and a comparable group of native Danes. The chapter finds that non-Western immigrant groups and their descendants feel less Danish and have less nationalist pride than the majority. These non-Western immigrant groups share a number of crucial values with the native population—most notably a number of liberal and republican values, raising a number of key issues for political theory.

Liberal Nationalism and the Challenge of Essentialism

One of the criticisms that is sometimes made of liberal nationalism is that it is essentialist. The assumption seems to be that essentialism is a problem for any theory that relies on or appeals to the idea of cultural groups. This chapter considers two conceptions of culture that claim not to be essentialist—Miller’s family resemblance conception, and Patten’s social lineage conception. It evaluates both of these, arguing that they share a similar difficulty in individuating between cultural groups, and then proposes an amendment to these accounts, which addresses this problem, while remaining non-essentialist.

Where the Heart Is

This chapter offers an internal critique of liberal nationalism as a normative political theory. It argues that, even in its most inclusive form, liberal nationalism cannot accommodate individuals belonging to more than one nation. Drawing on the philosophical literature on social trust, the chapter reconstructs the case for national identity as the basis for trust in a wide scale, anonymous society. Liberal nationalists appeal to cultural conceptions of national identity to avoid the exclusionary implications of the civic and ethnic conceptions, but this move comes at a cost for the political equality of multinational individuals. Using cultural markers as evidence for trustworthiness, trust in multinational individuals remains conditional and uncertain, rendering their status as citizens unequal. With its implicit assumption that each individual belongs to only one nation, this chapter argues that liberal nationalism is ill-equipped for the social and political reality of multinational belongings.

Inclusive Identities

This chapter defends an account of a cultural identity that is able to build trust in diverse, democratic states. It is developed using both normative and empirical material, with the objective of defining the parameters of its moral permissibility, from a specifically liberal perspective, with attention to capturing the role a shared identity must play in a democracy. The chapter begins by outlining the ways in which trust relations underpin and support robust democratic practice before offering a careful delineation of the features of a cultural identity in order to outline the range of possible features a morally permissible cultural identity may possess. Finally, this account of cultural identity is defended against three broad objections, one which proposes that the account remains too thin to be motivationally efficacious, a second which proposes that it remains too thick to be appropriate in liberal, democratic societies, and a third which protests that a cultural identity can permissibly include religious elements and remain inclusive in a democratic state.

National Attachment—Cohesive, Divisive, or Both?

A large number of empirical studies of in-group sympathy and helpfulness suggest that the sheer strength of a person’s national attachment should increase her solidarity with her co-nationals. This relationship is likely to be independent of how she conceives the content of that identity and the extent to which she believes her co-nationals share this commitment. The direction of this link, moreover, might look different depending on whether the dimension of national attachment at hand is national identity, national pride, or national chauvinism. The chapter utilizes survey data from the Netherlands (LISS), arguably a more relevant context for liberal nationalists than the more typically studied cases of the USA and Canada. The Dutch demonstrate significant relationships between national attachment and support for egalitarianism, even when controlling for ideology. National identity turns out to be consistently related to more willingness to share resources with our co-nationals, whilst national pride shows a negative link to redistributive solidarity.

The Coherence of Liberal Nationalism

After briefly sketching the history of liberal nationalism, the chapter distinguishes the weaker thesis that liberalism and nationalism are compatible from the stronger thesis that liberalism needs national identification in order to survive. The weaker thesis can be attacked on the grounds that liberals must be cosmopolitans, but a stronger challenge points to the discriminatory effects that national identities may have for minority groups. There will be some matters over which a collective decision must be reached, and here the majority’s view must prevail. Taking the case of religion, the chapter points out that the state cannot avoid engaging with religious questions, since it has to legislate on religious matters and it is compatible with liberal principles to give some degree of precedence to the established religion, provided civil and political rights are equally protected, and other religions are accorded respect. Because national identities are not monolithic, the liberal nationalist conception of a shared identity that is accessible to everyone, including immigrants and other minorities, remains coherent.