The Rise of Vo¨lkisch-Nationalism and the Decline of German Liberalism: A Comparison of Liberal Political Cultures in Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia 1912-1924

Historians have tended to focus on political economic and political organisational factors in order to explain the rise of liberalism in the nineteenth century and the decline of liberalism in the twentieth. But these factors tell only part of the story, particularly in the German case. For the precipitous decline of German liberalism after 1890 cannot be understood without examining the rise of Austro-German völkisch (ethnic) nationalism in the same period. Comparing Germany's two most liberal regions, Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia, this article argues that liberalism became increasingly dependent for its political survival on an accomodation with ethnic nationalism. It is hoped that such a comparison will lead to a reexamination of the conventional ways in which German liberal success and failure are understood, and a re-evaluation of what it meant to be a liberal in Germany and Europe during the first third of the twentieth century.     

Liberal intolerance in European education debates

The reaction against non‐western immigrants and especially Muslims has been analysed both in terms of an exclusionary civic nationalism and in terms of an assertive liberalism. Similar to exclusionary civic nationalism, assertive liberalism purports to defend liberal democratic principles and society against illiberal principles and forces predominantly represented by Muslims. This article argues that nationalism and liberalism are analytically distinguishable but difficult to disentangle empirically. It contends that a more detailed analysis of assertive liberalism can be obtained by subdividing it into four categories of liberal intolerance and demonstrates this by analysing six national debates on the accommodation of cultural and religious diversity in education. The analysis indicates that the nature of liberal intolerance understood as the combination of the four categories of liberal intolerance varies with the state tradition regarding religious neutrality of public institutions and the type of welfare state, but also that many liberal arguments for and against accommodation repeat themselves across national contexts.     

Anti‐cosmopolitan liberalism: Isaiah Berlin,Jacob Talmon and the dilemma of national identity

ABSTRACT. The debate between contemporary cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism is hardly new. Nevertheless, much of it is based on the erroneous assumption that cosmopolitanism should be seen as an outgrowth of liberalism, and that both should be considered as the complete conceptual opposites of nationalism. In this article I focus on two of the post‐war Jewish anglophile intellectuals who took part in this debate during the Cold War years: the Oxonian liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) and the Israeli historian Jacob L. Talmon (1916–80). I use their examples to argue that the dividing line between cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism should not be regarded as signifying the distinction between liberals and anti‐liberals; in fact, this debate also took place within the camp of the liberal thinkers themselves. I divide my discussion into three parts. Firstly, I examine Berlin's and Talmon's positions within the post‐war anti‐totalitarian discourse, which came to be known as ‘liberalism of fear’. Secondly, I show how a sense of Jewish identity, combined with deep Zionist convictions, induced both thinkers to divorce anti‐nationalist cosmopolitanism – which they regarded as a hollow, illusionary ideal associated with impossible assimilationist yearnings – from the liberal idea. I conclude by suggesting that, although neither man had ever developed a systematic theoretical framework to deal with the complex interactions between ethno‐nationalism, liberal individualism and multiculturalism, Berlin's vision of pluralism provides the foundations for building such a theory, in which liberalism and nationalism become complementary rather than conflicting notions.     

German modernity,barbarous Slavs and profit‐seeking Jews: the cultural racism of nationalist liberals

This paper examines emblematic texts by two important protagonists of post‐1848 liberalism in Germany, Gustav Freytag and Heinrich von Treitschke, focusing on their treatment of Jews and Poles. The paper analyses the social content of their statements and argues that the elements of anti‐Semitism and anti‐Slav racism that they contain were motivated by the specific kind of nationalist liberalism that frames their affirmation of the process of modernisation. This affirmation was directed against the Poles on the one hand, seen as backward Easterners who had to be pushed into civilisation by Prussian–German colonialism, and, on the other hand, the Jews, largely perceived as representing the wrong kind of modernity against which benign (supposedly German) modernity had to be protected. At the same time, the image of the Jew in Freytag and Treitschke also participates in that of the backward Easterner, permitting to see undesirable, allegedly Jewish aspects of modernity also as distortions resulting from an alien and ancient culture. This analysis has consequences for theorisations of both liberalism and nationalism: it suggests that the racism and anti‐Semitism of nationalist liberals were intrinsically related to core aspects of the liberal world‐view rather than being merely contingent opinions held by particular individuals. It also indicates that the nationalism of many German post‐1848 liberals was ethnic as well as liberal. In this way, the paper contributes to the growing body of literature discussing the illiberal aspects of liberalism as well as the shortcomings of the long‐established conceptual dichotomy of ethnic vs. liberal nationalism.     

Critical Nationalism: A Liberal Prescription?

Abstract. In this article I examine the coherence of ‘liberal nationalism’, namely, the attempt to combine liberal and nationalist ideas. Attempts have been made to marry these ideas because of the belief that nationalism has continuing influence and importance for the achievement of liberal objectives, such as respect for identity, democracy and justice. Two central ideas in liberalism are the idea of self‐respect as a primary good and the idea of critical reflectiveness. A central idea in nationalism is the idea of the importance of the nation as a community. If critically reflective individuals are to possess self‐respect then, I argue, the value of membership of particular national communities needs to be argued for against criticism. By rejecting an appeal to universal principles, however, nationalists are unable to provide a reasoned defence of the importance of particular national communities, and therefore unable to satisfy the liberal commitment to self‐respect resulting from critical reflection on membership of a national community. The particularism of nationalism, indeed, pulls against the universalism of liberalism so that ‘liberal nationalism’ constitutes an incoherent construct.     

Nationality in the open society: Popper versus Hayes and Kohn

Popper's attitude to nationalism can be analysed by comparison with the position taken by Hayes and Kohn, who distinguished between a communal, malevolent form of nationalism, and a civic and constitutional variant that could coexist with liberalism. By contrast, Popper welcomes communal affiliations whose diversity he perceives as essential to liberalism, while rejecting sovereignty, whether or not invested in a representative body, as a threat to the liberal open society. This perspective reverses the normative priorities that Hayes and Kohn attribute to liberalism. Its basis is Popper's adherence to a pluralist liberalism, which centres on protecting social ties rather than on representation and state organs. This denotation of liberalism competes with the legalist individualism that Hayes and Kohn identify with liberalism and therefore accommodates nationalism differently.     

Tolerant majorities,loyal minorities and ‘ethnic reversals’: constructing minority rights at Versailles 1919*

ABSTRACT. The 1919 Versailles Peace Conference created new states in East Central Europe (ECE), but the imperfect implementation of the ‘one nation, one state’ formula resulted in more than twenty‐five million ‘unassimilable’ minorities. With the introduction of majoritarian democracy, this gave rise to what we term ‘ethnic reversals’: ‘formally dominant majorities’ suffered status decline, while previously ‘minoritised majorities’ found new political powers. Accordingly, the 1919 Minorities Treaties sought to manage these ‘ethnic reversals’ by instituting a liberal minority rights regime that tried to create both ‘tolerant majorities’ and ‘loyal minorities’. While the Treaties reflected the influences of Anglo‐American and Anglo‐American Jewish elites – the most notable voices of liberalism in an age of ethnic homogenisation – we suggest that in contexts of historical diversity with little institutionalised liberalism, ‘ethnic reversals’ raise issues that cannot be resolved within liberal conceptions of minority rights that rely solely or primarily on cultural protections.     

Giuseppe Mazzini and the democratic logic of nationalism

ABSTRACT. This article brings the thought of Giuseppe Mazzini back into the field of nationalism studies, from which it has been largely missing for a half century. It suggests the following: that Mazzini is much more modern and secular than he is usually portrayed; and that his commitment to liberal policies while rejecting liberal principles suggests that the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism has been misconceived. Nationalism, to Mazzini, was not an end in itself but a means to an end – government of, by and for the people. The demand for such a government was manifested in three popular demands in nineteenth‐century Europe: in the West as democracy, in the East as national sovereignty (the precondition for democracy) and in both East and West as social democracy. Thus nationalism may be instrumental rather than an end in itself, and it may be attributable not to ethnic groups' natural striving for autonomy but to the pursuit of democracy.     

The exiles of the Risorgimento: Italian volunteers in the Portuguese Civil War (1832–34)

Abstract

Between 1832 and 1834 during the civil war against the partisans of absolutism in Portugal about a hundred Italians fought as volunteers in the Portuguese liberal army. These Italians were motivated to participate by a Romantic culture of war that was strongly rooted in the liberal nationalism of the Italian Risorgimento, but above all, the decision to fight as a volunteer abroad was the result of an international movement of political solidarity with Portuguese liberalism in the early 1830s with which the Italian liberals came into contact during their political exile in France and in Belgium. For the Italian, fighting as volunteers in Portugal proved to be a decisive political experience which deeply shaped their own political ideas of the nation that the volunteers would subsequently draw on in their different political and professional roles in Italy where they became ministers, diplomats and generals of the Kingdom of Italy.     

Alfred Marshall's economic nationalism

ABSTRACT. Alfred Marshall has been seen as an economic liberal and one of the founders of the neo‐classical school. However, this article challenges such conventional wisdom and argues that Marshall is best understood as an economic nationalist. Economic nationalism has been falsely associated with mercantilism, the zero‐sum view of international economies, and so on. However, a new approach for studying economic nationalism has recently been proposed to redefine its conception. The present article shows that Marshall's economic thought is compatible with this new conception of economic nationalism. Marshall emphasised the role of nationality in the economic process. The characteristics of his economic thought, such as the evolutionary view of economy, conform more closely to Friedrich List's economic nationalism than to economic liberalism. By portraying Marshall's theory as that of economic nationalism, the author concludes that economic nationalism can have a systematic theory.     

Liberalism and nationalism in Russia. Boris Chicherin as a modernist nationalist

This article investigates the link between nationalism and liberalism in Russia by looking at the way the leading spokesman of early Russian liberalism, Boris Chicherin, combined liberal ideas with notions of nation‐building and the idea of the nation as a modernising phenomenon. The article argues that the young Chicherin, at least in the formative years of the 1850s, had an instrumental approach to liberalism. Liberalism served a specific purpose – to integrate the people and shape a community of active citizens so that Russia could modernise. Chicherin was concerned with the formation of a modern nation‐state rather than the establishment of popular rule or political rights. In this sense, his thinking fits well into what, in the context of the Ottoman Empire, has been called modernist nationalism.     

Jacob Talmon between Zionism and Cold War Liberalism

The paper focuses on the problematic relationship between Talmon's liberalism and Zionism. My argument is that Talmon's nationalism (Zionism included)—historicist, romantic, visionary—lived in permanent tension with his liberalism—empiricist, pluralist, pragmatic. His critique of totalitarian democracy, reflecting his British experience, emerged independently from his Zionism, grounded in Central European nationalism. The two represented different worlds. Talmon lived in both, serving as an ambassador in-between them, without ever bringing them together.

The essay's first section describes the political education of the young Jacob Talmon (née Flajszer) and the making of The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. It demonstrates the independence of Talmon's Cold War liberal project from his Zionism. The second section places Talmon in the context of Cold War liberal discourse, showing how integral his critique of revolutionary politics was to contemporary liberalism. The third illustrates the tensions between Talmon's view of Jewish history and his liberalism, between his Zionism and his critique of revolutionary politics. Focusing on Talmon's analyses of nationalism, it highlights the ambiguity of his Zionism.     

Untangling liberal democracy from territoriality: from ethnic/civic to ethnic/territorial nationalism

The term ‘civic nationalism’ as it is used today in nationalism studies is misleading because it combines territorial collective identity with liberal‐democratic values. As such, for example, it does not provide much insight into the comparison of Azerbaijani and Georgian concepts of national identity. Azerbaijan, arguably an authoritarian country, has used unconditional citizenship by birth on territory (jus soli) and refused to naturalize Azeri co‐ethnics from Georgia. Georgia, seemingly a developed liberal democracy, hasn't practiced any jus soli, has bestowed citizenship on Georgian co‐ethnics abroad and refused it to its ethnic minorities. These two cases testify to the need to revise the term ‘civic nationalism’, inapplicable to many, especially non‐Western, empirical cases of national identity. By establishing distinct historical narratives based on premodernist sources, the article argues that the ethnic/territorial tension is premodern, which explains why civic nationalism has a premodern (territoriality) and a modern (liberal‐democratic values) component. Territorial collective identity, in its contrast to an ethnic one, has deep historical roots and needs to be separated from the overall umbrella of civic nationalism. Such an approach resolves many current theoretical objections to ethnic/civic dichotomy, a ubiquitous, but still insufficiently understood, heuristic tool.     

Existential nationalism: Russia's war against Ukraine

‘If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine’ is the sentiment used by Ukrainian protesters mobilising against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Such a sentiment signifies the stakes of a war where Ukraine is a democratic nation-state fighting for its right to exist against a Russian invasion. Meanwhile, Russia is fighting for a version of Ukraine that is subservient to Russia's idea of what Ukraine should be as a nation-state: under a Russian hegemon geopolitically, where Ukraine's national idea and interpretation of history can be vetted and vetoed by the Russian state. While nationalism scholarship equips us to study Russia's war against Ukraine through the lens of Russian ethnic nationalism and Ukrainian civic nationalism, the ethnic/civic dichotomy falls short of unpacking the more pernicious logics that pervade Russia's intentions and actions towards Ukraine (demilitarisation and de-Nazification). Instead, this article explores the logics of Russia's war and Ukraine's resistance through the concept of existential nationalism where existential nationalism is Russia's motivation to pursue war, whatever the costs, and Ukraine's motivation to fight with everything it has.     

Order and chance,the pattern of Diderot's thought

This article sets out to show that it is more precise to speak of different liberal traditions than it is to speak of liberalism in general. The argument is pursued by showing how contrary to French liberalism, which has a strong republican element, and in contrast with English and Scottish liberalism, which reserve an important place for political economy, there is also a central European liberalism with a marked philosophical dimension. This particular form of liberalism is analysed by examining the writings of Kant, Simmel and Freud. It is stated at the outset that critiques of liberalism often fail to appreciate the richness and diversity of liberal thinking, and that this depth must be borne in mind in any effective critique. It is explained that there are indeed grounds to critique liberal thought and practice, but that these grounds are obscured by lumping distinct and heterogeneous traditions together as if they all suffered from the same defects.     

Democracy,nationalism and (lack of) sovereignty: the complex dynamics of democratisation in unrecognised states†

ABSTRACT. Unrecognised states are among the least likely candidates for democratisation: they tend to be driven by ethno‐nationalism, many are marked by the legacy of war and most are facing international isolation. Nevertheless, the claim to democracy has become a central part of their legitimising narrative. This article examines this apparent paradox and finds that neither ethno‐nationalism nor non‐recognition represents insurmountable barriers to democratisation. However, what we tend to find in these entities is a form of stagnated ‘ethnic democratisation’. These findings throw new light on the relationship between democracy and nationalism; they highlight the importance of (lack of) sovereignty; and they are used to evaluate Sammy Smooha's concept of ‘ethnic democracy’.     

Liberal nationalist versus postnational social integration: on the nation's ethno‐cultural particularity and ‘concreteness’*

Abstract. Liberal nationalists advance two claims: (1) an empirical claim that nationalism is functionally indispensable to the viability of liberal democracy (because it is necessary to social integration) and (2) a normative claim that some forms of nationalism are compatible with liberal democratic norms. The empirical claim is often supported, against postnationalists' view that social integration can bypass ethnicity and nationality, by pointing to the inevitable ethnic and cultural particularities of all political institutions. I argue that (1) the argument that ethno‐cultural particularity demonstrates the need for nationalist integration depends on an implausible reification of national identity at the level of social theory, and that (2) this reification ironically serves to undermine liberal nationalists' normative claim.     

How do western democracies cope with the challenge of societal diversity?

In the modern era, the grand forces of modernism, liberalism and nationalism have opposed and minimized societal diversity in Western states. The Civil Rights Movement in the USA and the flow of millions of unassimilable immigrants, mostly Muslims, to Europe opened Western societies to cultural diversity. But liberal multiculturalism in the West consists mainly of endorsement of subcultures, non‐discrimination and inclusion. It falls short of instituting consociational components like cultural autonomy and power‐sharing. Fear and unease in the West increasingly give priority to majority over minority rights. While all Western democracies object to societal diversity, they differ in the way they handle it: liberal democracies deny it, consociational democracies institutionalize it and ethnic democracies partially allow and partially subordinate it. These three different strategies are evident in the way representative cases of Western democracies, namely the USA, Switzerland and Estonia, respectively, cope with societal diversity.