What can and cannot be willed: how politicians talk about national identity and immigrants

The ethnic‐civic framework remains widely used in nationalism research. However, in the context of European immigrant integration politics, where almost all ‘nation talk’ is occurring in civic and liberal registers, the framework has a hard time identifying how conceptions of national identity brought forth in political debate differ in their exclusionary potential. This leads some to the conclusion that national identity is losing explanatory power. Building on the insights of Oliver Zimmer, I argue that we may find a different picture if we treat cultural content and logic of boundary construction – two parameters conflated in the ethnic‐civic framework – as two distinct analytical levels. The framework I propose focuses on an individual and collective dimension of logic of boundary construction that together constitute the inclusionary/exclusionary core of national identity. The framework is tested on the political debate on immigrant integration in Denmark and Norway in selected years. Indeed, the framework enables us to move beyond the widespread idea that Danish politicians subscribe to an ethnic conception of the nation, while Norwegian political thought is somewhere in between an ethnic and civic conception. The true difference is that Danish politicians, unlike their Norwegian counterparts, do not acknowledge the collective self‐understanding as an object of political action.     

National reproduction: Norway's new national library

ABSTRACT. This article elaborates on the concept of national reproduction as a means of analysing how national categories were redefined and adjusted in the political process that led to the establishment of the National Library of Norway. Three different forms of national reproduction may be distinguished in this process: the adjustment of cultural and territorial hierarchies within the nation‐state in the 1980s; the consolidation of the national community by defining it in contrast to the “foreign” in the 1990s; and the definition by the political elite of a “new national we” that includes the “foreign” after the turn of the millennium.     

The politics of recognition: symbols,nation building and rival nationalisms

ABSTRACT. Ceremonial initiatives linked to nation‐building projects are highly visible in multiethnic states, where governments seem to have adopted a Durkheimian approach in which ceremonies contribute to the strengthening of communities. However, national ceremonies are not invented or exported to other nations easily, as seen when outlining the pattern of a successful national day. A unifying narrative (sometimes the historical genesis) is significant in the establishment of successful national days, as is the nature of the national day design. The celebrations of the constitution in Norway – and the 77 year struggle to get the Norwegian flag officially recognised – became part of resisting the enforced union with Sweden (1814–1905). Therefore, the growth of Norwegian nationalism must be understood in the context of rival nationalisms in Scandinavia. However, Constitution Day (17 May) has remained a powerful component of Norwegian nationalism long since the constitution ceased to be threatened because of its incorporation in primary and secondary school curricula and, more recently, within the debate on multiculturalism.     

CONTESTED GROWTH: THE DEVELOPMENT OF NORWAY'S TEMPORARY STAFFING INDUSTRY

In this article we mobilize a variegated capitalism approach to understand the development of the Norwegian temporary staffing industry. From this perspective, national temporary staffing industries are understood as contested multi‐actor and multi‐scalar institutional fields. The analysis explores the key actors and regulatory conditions that have interactively produced this field in the Norwegian context since initial deregulation in 2000, paying particular attention to the active role played by agencies and their collective organizations. In our account, the tight regulatory conditions for temporary staffing in Norway emerge as the main mobilizing issue for the agencies, as well as other political actors such as trade unions. It is argued that the nature of national labour laws, and struggles thereon, are defining characteristics which set the Norwegian market apart from the neighbouring Swedish staffing market. The Norwegian case enables us to contribute to the wider economic geography literature on temporary staffing markets by demonstrating the fundamental importance of national regulatory processes and the contested political processes that underlie regulatory change. It also demonstrates how national distinctiveness is actively produced in relation to extra‐national dynamics in terms of both regulatory imperatives (e.g. via the EU's Temporary Workers Directive) and processes of migration. Overall, we demonstrate how national staffing markets are highly dynamic, multi‐scalar institutional configurations whose particularities and complexities defy attempts to generalize across groups of seemingly “similar” national economies.     

The politics of decentralizing national parks management in the Philippines

International donors and state bureaucrats in the developing world have promoted decentralization reform as the primary means to achieve equitable, efficient and sustainable natural resource management. Relatively few studies, however, consider the power interests at stake. Why do state agencies decentralize power, what political patterns unfold, and how do outcomes affect the responses of resource users? This paper explores decentralization reform by investigating the political processes behind the Philippine state's decisions to transfer authority over national parks management to local government units. Drawing on a case of devolved management at Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, Palawan Island, we examine how political motives situated at different institutional scales affect the broader process of decentralization, the structure of management institutions, and overall livelihood security. We demonstrate how power struggles between the Philippine state and City Government of Palawan over the right to manage the national park have impacted the livelihood support offered by community-based conservation. We conclude that decentralization may offer empowering results when upper-level policies and political networks tie into sufficiently organized institutions at the local level.     

Reconfiguring the French nation: Public debates on the Left and national identity

Since the 1980s, neoliberal globalisation has shaped the fate of local and national cultural productions, from movies to music, from entertainment to food. How did French intellectual and political elites respond to this unprecedented challenge? What were the implications for the politics of nationalism and national identity? Two books respond to these questions, although in very different ways – the first directly and the second indirectly. Vincent Martigny's Dire la France explains how a new way of narrating French national identity emerged in the 1980s within an internationally oriented French Left, attentive of the coming challenges of cultural pluralism. Patrick Boucheron's (ed.) Histoire mondiale de la France advances into a more challenging direction by skilfully unsettling the ‘our ancestors the Gauls’ clichéd narrative. French history is thus redefined by moving away from the Frankish/Gallic myth of descent, thereby reconfiguring national identity along new lines. This article identifies how crucial debates on the cultural nation and cultural identity emerged in the wake of the May 1968 uprising, asking how much they contributed to the current shape and meaning of French national identity. It thus reviews what can be described as a new historiographical turn in French history.     

Introduction: The state and historic buildings: preserving ‘the national past’

Historic buildings are important in nationalism through their roles in building and reinforcing national identity. As part of the expanding ‘heritage industry’, they are also of growing economic and political importance. Despite their physical existence, historic buildings are ‘created’ – they must be constructed as ‘historic’ through processes of choice and the attachment of significance. The state can perform these functions through policies that define and select buildings for protection, by ownership and funding, and by its uses of buildings for nationalistic purposes. Yet state actors can have good reasons – nationalistic and economic – to destroy or fail to preserve historic buildings. The paper examines why, when and how state actors pursue policies to protect historic buildings. It offers arguments about patterns of state action that part of state strategies to promote national identity and cultural nationalism.     

And if they don't dance,they are no friends of mine: Exploring boundaries of national identity

National identity is widely used to explain anti-immigrant attitudes and thus the appeal for right-wing (populist) parties. Yet, consensus on how to capture national identity is lacking. This article identifies ideal-typical patterns of national boundary making across 42 countries and more than 25 years beyond the ethnic–civic dichotomy and addresses the multidimensionality of national identity. Using latent class analysis and cluster analysis, four ideal-typical conceptions of nationhood are identified and shown to be differently related to national attachment, national pride, and national chauvinism. Overall, the results close the methodological–empirical gap between classical approaches and recent inductive approaches to national identity and demonstrate that national identity is a cross-cultural phenomenon with distinct types.     

The Riksdag,the state bureaucracy and the administration of hospitals in eighteenth‐century Sweden

Traditionally, the Norwegian modernization process has been presented as a success story that focuses on how social movements and democratized political institutions in the 19th and 20th centuries laid the foundations for a society and culture with an emphasis on social equality. The paper offers an alternative analysis of this process, based not on the issue of material equality and inequality, but on the concepts of normality and deviance. A comparison of the development of the Norwegian national education policy since the middle of the 19th century with the Danish and Swedish experiences involves the exclusion of the dissimilar as a distinct feature of the Norwegian policy. ‘Disability’ was constructed as a category of deviance by public policies and administrative and professional practice. The professions – particularly teachers and doctors – were important actors who offered alternative conceptions of normality and disability. However, the constructions that they selected were those that were in closest dialogue with the particular challenges confronted by the Norwegian modernisation process: first the liberal, then the social democratic construction. Because the national conditions confronting the Scandinavian modernization processes differed from each other, so did the related constructions of disability.     

Planning Analysis and Political Steering with New Public Management

Interviews with members of the Norwegian national assembly's Standing Committee for Transport and Communications were conducted in 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2004. The politicians were asked about the usefulness of analytic input that planners contribute to national plans, first the Norwegian Road and Road Traffic Plan and later the National Transport Plan. Questions related to steering, coordination, delegation and the inclusiveness of the planning process were also posed. Changes in the politicians' attitudes to types of analytic planning input are outlined. Furthermore, the last round of interviews sheds light on the apparent paradox that parliamentarians accept delegation of highway investment decisions despite their profound scepticism regarding the cost–benefit analyses and impact calculations that are essential to management by objectives and results (MBOR), which was to give them continued political control despite delegation. Another conundrum is the parliamentarians' willingness to renounce the right to decide over most highway projects, even if these were seen as politically important, in order to obtain a strategic overview which they have been unable to use for changing the priorities set by the Government. The political concentration on strategic steering, the concomitant delegation, and MBOR are central components of New Public Management.     

Alternative identity,alternative religion? Neo‐paganism and the Aryan myth in contemporary Russia

ABSTRACT. As in all post‐Soviet states, the Russian intelligentsia has been preoccupied with the construction of a new national identity since the beginning of the 1990s. Although the place of Orthodox religion in Russia is well documented, the subject of neo‐paganism and its consequent assertion of an Aryan identity for Russians remains little known. Yet specialists observing the political and intellectual life of contemporary Russia have begun to notice that the development of references to ‘Slavic paganism’ and to Russia's ‘Aryan’ origin can be found in the public speeches of some politicians and intellectual figures. This article will attempt, in its first section, to depict the historical depth of these movements by examining the existence of neo‐pagan and/or Aryan referents in Soviet culture, and focusing on how these discourses developed in different spheres of post‐Soviet Russian society, such as those of religion, historiography, and politics.     

What's in a name? Possible names for a legislative body and the birth of national sovereignty during the French Revolution, 15-16 June 1789

Historians disagree over the meaning of the declaration on 17June 1789 by Third Estate deputies, along with a few clergy,that they constituted a ‘National Assembly’, onethat could act in place of the Estates General and despite theabsence of most Noble and Clerical deputies. This article reconstructsthe debates of 15–16 June 1789 leading up to this declaration,finding in deputy memoirs, letters and newspaper accounts fifty-eightspeeches given by thirty-eight deputies supporting several alternativeproposals. Careful analysis of the speeches demonstrates thatselection of the title National Assembly was a result of contingentevents and political compromise, primarily chosen as a meansto end the stalemate between the Orders over verification ofdeputy credentials and over whether voting in the Estates Generalwould be by head or by Order. It thus calls into question argumentsthat the declaration was the necessary outcome of a pre-revolutionaryprocess.     

Organizing for British national strategy

In December 1968 Ernest May asked how the US government could gain access to ‘long‐headed’ staffers to provide greater strategic depth to foreign policy. The challenge of long‐term strategy persists: how should government be organized to support it, how can the right people be found to staff it and how can political leaders make time for longer‐term policy‐making given the challenge of the immediate? The policy planning staff in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have traditionally had the task of supporting longer‐range, broader foreign policy. A small group of diplomats—later leavened by externals from the media, non‐profit and private sectors—was meant to generate an improved approach to British interests and policy. As Robert Wade‐Gery recalls of its role in the 1960s, there was a push to forge fresh links with outside thinking. Did it work? Former policy planners can be circumspect about its achievements. One former British planner said he felt like ‘a spare part rattling around in a tin’, while former American planners have written about the challenge of injecting fresh thinking when detached from decision‐making. Other planners were dragged into operational work or speechwriting. Many planners nonetheless enjoyed the opportunity to think more broadly. Policy planning can be intellectually rich without being the source of actionable strategic thinking about the long‐term national interest. This article suggests that a greater focus on people rather than systems might help to foster more strategic, anticipatory and innovative thinking about the national interest.     

Contextual effects on subjective national identity

Does the interaction between context and individual‐level features affect political attitudes? By using the case of Catalonia, a receiver region of international and national immigration since the fifties, this paper intersects a classic acculturation model and a newly reemerging literature in political science on contextual determinants of political behaviour to analyze how context affects subjective national identity. Results reveal that environment matters. The Percentage of Spain‐born population in the municipality is statistically significant to account for variance in the subjective national identity, even after controlling for age, sex, origin, language and left–right orientation and other contextual factors. This conclusion suggests that researchers should not underestimate the direct effect of the environment on feelings of belonging in contexts of rival identities.     

The Shaping of John Lambert's Allegiance and the Outbreak of the Civil War

Abstract

'Sir Philip Musgrave and the Re-Establishment of the "Old Regime" in Cumberland and Westmorland c. 1660–1664: Local Loyalty and National Influence'. This paper examines the career of Sir Philip Musgrave in Cumberland and Westmorland during the period 1660–64, and illuminates the continuing integration of outlying English regions and their gentry families into a national polity, wherein gentry horizons frequently stretched beyond the boundaries of their native counties, and in which their local and national political 'worlds' were often inextricably linked. Musgrave was eager to consolidate the newly restored authority of the monarchy and Church of England, as well as his own influence within the returning 'old regime'. In cooperating with central government against Protestant Nonconformity, Quakerism and political insurrection in the Lake Counties, Musgrave and other local government officials highlight how local and central interests could dovetail. On one level, Sir Philip had little difficulty in perceiving himself as a straightforward servant of the State, declaring himself a 'State physician' during the application of the Corporation Act in Cumberland and Westmorland. Yet, as this paper will demonstrate, Sir Philip Musgrave was more than a mere compliant Royalist yes-man. As servants of central government, Musgrave and a number of his local associates were extremely important as agents of political innovation. In interpreting, applying and calling for changes in policy, they demonstrate that the exercise of political power in the developing British State was not simply a top-down process.     

Dr Fox and the Philosopher's Stone: the alchemy of national defence in the age of austerity

The history of British defence reviews has been one of repeated disappointment: a cycle in which policy failure is followed by a period of inertia, giving way to an attempt at a new policy framework which is then misimplemented by the defence leadership. Each failed defence review therefore sows the seeds of its successor. With this in mind, in 2010 the new coalition government embarked upon an altogether more ambitious exercise: a strategy review comprising a National Security Strategy and a Strategic Defence and Security Review. This article suggests, nevertheless, not only that the 2010 strategy review looks likely to follow past performance, but also that it is coming unstuck at an unprecedented rate. This is a pity since the 2010 review had much to commend it, not least the adoption of a risk‐based approach to security and defence policy‐making. What is the explanation for this outcome? Is it that the British have, as some have suggested, lost the ability to ‘do strategy’, if ever they had it? The authors offer a more nuanced understanding of the policy process and argue that the coalition government in fact has a very clear and deliberate strategy—that of national economic recovery. Yet the coalition government cannot allow national defence and security to fail. The authors conclude with an assessment of the options open to the defence leadership as they seek to address the failing 2010 strategy review and suggest a variety of indicators which will demonstrate the intent and seriousness of the political, official and military leadership of the Ministry of Defence.     

Heretic or Traitor? Spinoza’s Excommunication and the Challenge That Judaism Poses to the Study of Religious Diversity

ABSTRACT

When political theorists talk about “religious diversity,” they usually intend the multiplicity of “religions” in a given society. Yet we now know that the secular, liberal framing of the problematic presupposes a controversial definition of “religion.” My primary goal, in this paper, is to reorient scholarly discussion around what we might call “the critical religion conception of diversity” – not the multiplicity of “religions,” but the myriad ways that the sacred intersects with national and political identity, some of which resist assimilation to the “religious” paradigm. Toward this end, I relate a story about Spinoza’s Hebrew reception in the interwar period. For Zionist intellectuals, Spinoza symbolized the deformations that “religion” imposed on Judaism’s self-understanding and the constraints that it placed on Jewish intellectual horizons. Studying the Zionist critique of “religion” exposes the limitations of received theoretical frameworks, which cannot address the kinds of diversity that were politically consequential for twentieth-century Jews.     

Sports,Politics and Ethnicity in the North. Workers’ Sport in Western Finnmark in the Late 1930s

Abstract

Internationally, ethnicity in sports has become an independent field of research amongst sports historians focusing on phenomena such as colonialism, immigration and indigenous populations. Studies demonstrate that sports have simultaneously been able to assimilate different groups, promoting majority concepts of identity and majority values, and enable groups to fashion their own singular ethnic identities in contrast to those of majority societies. In Norwegian historical research, sport and ethnicity has been given only scarce attention. Norwegian sports historians have mainly seen Norway as an ethnically homogenous society where sport has played an essential part in creating a unifying national identity. A major concern for Norwegian sports history research has been the political split in Norwegian sports in the 1930s. Research on this event has mainly been occupied with the relationship between the Workers’ Sports Association (AIF) and the “bourgeois” National Sports Federation (NLI), and by AIF's significance as a political movement. Less attention, however, has been given to its cultural impact. This article investigates the establishment and function of AIF in the multi-ethnic area of West Finnmark, a geographically and politically peripheral region of Northern Norway, at the end of the 1930s. The town of Alta, the main focus of attention, was in the 1930s a small fiord community with an ethnically mixed population of indigenous Sámi, Kvens and Norwegians, sharp political divisions and a vibrant sporting milieu. Although the political division of Alta's sports establishment displays many of the traits that characterize similar events in the country at large, the ethnic factor brought another, important, dimension to it. This highly politicized period in Finnmark sports underlines the importance of sports as an arena for the construction and reinforcement of not only political identity, but also for the production of ethnic and local identities.     

Faith in China: religious belief and national narratives amongst young,urban Chinese Protestants

This paper investigates the national narratives of young, urban Protestants in contemporary China. Based on 100 interviews conducted in Beijing and Shenzhen, it argues that in constructing their national narratives, Chinese Protestants display critical selectivity in adopting the values of official party‐state nationalism. They display affection towards China, a sense of responsibility for improving the country and a concern for society's morality, all of which echo official nationalist priorities. However, they are critical of China's political arrangements, dispute the primacy of economic growth and are less hawkish on international and territorial issues. They see no contradiction between their Protestant and Chinese identities, but generally prioritise the former. This selectivity is explained by the fact that Protestantism generally attracts those less satisfied by the social and political status quo, and because of, in Carlson's terms, the ‘boundary‐spanning’ nature of the Protestant identity and morality to which these converts then subscribe.