Max Weber,charisma and nationalist leadership1

ABSTRACT. One of Max Weber's most well‐known achievements was the formulation of three concepts of legitimate authority: traditional, legal‐rational and charismatic. However, there are particular problems with the last of these, which is not historically grounded in the manner of the other two concepts. The charisma concept originated with Weber's sociology of religion, was pressed into service in pre‐war writing on the sociology of domination, shifted focus in his wartime political writings and changed meaning again in his post‐war writing on basic sociological concepts. To use the concept in historical‐political analysis, I argue, one must distinguish between a pre‐modern and modern form of charismatic domination. I argue that doing this enables us to understand features of the leadership of colonial nationalist and fascist movements.     

The poverty of anti‐nationalist modernism

Abstract. In this reply to Dr Özkirimli's article, after considering the relationship between modernist and ethnosymbolic approaches, I propose some arguments for, and explanations of ethnosymbolic accounts. I concentrate here on the four main points raised by Dr Özkirimli: (1) the restrictions on the role of elites, (2) the limitations of presentism, (3) the importance of collective passion and attachment and (4) the plurality of ethnic heritages. I conclude with an explanation of my normative stance in relation to the question of ‘romantic nationalism’.     

The politics of contemporary ethno‐nationalist conflicts

That the 1990s began and ended with wars in the Balkans, often evoking reference to ‘ancient hatreds’, might suggest little has been learned since the fall of the Wall on how to address the recrudescence of violent ethno‐nationalist conflict – and indeed some fatalism as to whether this can be done at all. Yet the rethinking of notions of national sovereignty, the increasing minority‐rights jurisprudence and the development of anti‐essentialist concepts of identity in recent times have begun to indicate new policy instruments which might better allow such conflicts to be managed in the twenty‐first century. As ever, however, policy lags behind intellectual innovations, and the predominant approach of the international community remains for the moment significantly more conservative in character.     

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.     

Myth and mobilisation: the triadic structure of nationalist rhetoric

Drawing on the theory of collective action frames, this essay analyses the use of images of a primordial ‘golden age’ in the rhetoric of national mobilisation. Such idealised images of the past, juxtaposed with exaggerated depictions of a degraded present and a utopian future condition, constitute a rhetorical triad that is an effective instrument for motivating mass political movements. The model developed here emphasises the links between identity formation and political mobilisation, analysing how narratives of communal decline and redemption play a central role in defining the agendas of nationalist movements.     

Politics and the nation: nationalist mobilisation of ethnic differences

Abstract. Based on a critique of the exogenous and expressive views of politics underlying many studies of nationalism, this article analyses the political factors that affect nation‐building processes in a direct manner. First, ethnicity should be considered not so much as an historical and objective starting point but as the outcome of nationalist intellectuals' efforts at filtering and selecting political and cultural elements. It is important to examine the structure and genealogy of nationalist ideological capital using myth/symbol analysis or frame analysis. Second, one of the key concepts in the study of nationalist movements is the Political Opportunity Structure, as it refers to the developmental context, both institutional (democratisation, decentralisation, etc.) and strategic (potential allies, electoral dealignments, etc.). In this sense, ethnic regulation policies should not be taken as mere effects or responses, but as decisive intervening causes in the very process of national identity‐building. Finally, this article argues that rational choice analysis and collective action logic can be found useful in explaining the successes or failures of nationalist movements that attempt to mobilise and organise politically as mass phenomena.     

Social eugenics and nationalist race hygiene in early twentieth century Spain

In the twentieth century, the UN Declaration of 1948 is considered to be the international standard for universal human rights. In 1791, Olympe de Gouges critically analysed the French Declaration of Human Rights of 1789, and found that women were excluded from it.¹ This paper is a critical examination of the 1948 UN Declaration, with equally troubling findings.     

Radicalizing electoral system effects on support for nationalist hardliners in Serbia

This paper investigates electoral outcomes produced by the two‐round majority system in ethnically divided societies. Earlier studies, focused mainly on the Southern American states, have revealed that in ethnically mixed environments, competitors with radical positions on ethnic issues perform particularly well. This paper extends this idea to municipal elections in Serbia, showing how radical majority nationalist parties exhibit particularly strong performances in ethnically mixed municipalities. While this effect is also apparent under proportional representation, we argue that it is much stronger when a two‐round majority vote system is employed.     

Reconstructing the history of nationalist cognition and everyday nationhood from personal accounts

New approaches to nationalism have focused on the role of human agency within nation‐building structures (nationhood from below, everyday nationalism, experiences of nation, personal nationalism, etc.). However, the development of specific methodologies is still scarce. This paper proposes the use of personal accounts (mostly journals and autobiographies, but not only) as sources for qualitative historical research in nations and nationalism. Departing from the concepts of ‘identity’, ‘experience’ and ‘memory’, it is argued that, although very problematic, these sources are a valid path to the study of nations as they are: social phenomena of discursive nature and political frame, whose real agents are individuals. When these agents narrate their lives employing the nation as a meaningful category, they are not producing mere second‐hand reflections of superior and prior realms, but are performing microhistorical acts of nation‐making that are significant for understanding any case of nation‐building. The paper includes an empirical example using British personal accounts from the Age of Revolutions (c.1780–1840).     

Small state imperialism: the place of empire in contemporary nationalist discourse

Many modern European nations can trace their heritage back to one of the large multinational empires that once encompassed much of the European landscape, and nationalising elites often refer back to their place in these empires for the materials upon which their nation was purportedly built. In this article we examine some Belarusian nationalising elites and their references to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in order to demonstrate a recent trend in East European small‐state national identity construction, which we refer to as ‘small state imperialism.’ Small state imperialism exhibits realist characteristics and paints the small nation's place in empires of the past as privileged and aggressive, and in this way deviates from the oppressed but morally superior image one typically expects of a small nation. This interpretation is not limited to Belarus; in a number of East European states a similar imperialist turn has taken root in nationalist discourses.     

Sanitizing Szigetvár: On the post-imperial fashioning of nationalist memory

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I examine an early modern battle between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, the Siege of Szigetvár, and its protagonists, Nikola ?ubi? Zrinski and Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, as sites of memory in Hungary, Croatia, and Turkey. In relation to recent commemorations of the Siege, I focus on how sanctioned memories of Szigetvár have been sanitized for national(ist) ends, evacuating fraught historical and political questions related to the enmity between the two empires. Concomitantly, I pursue the silences and erasures that hegemonic memories of the battle and its protagonists have produced, both in relation to specific landscapes of memory in Szigetvár and through an analysis of three narratives of the Siege: a Hungarian-language epic poem, a Croatian opera, and a Turkish television serial.     

Anti‐nationalist nationalism: the paradox of Dutch national identity

Academic research on contemporary Dutch nationalism has mainly focused on its overt, xenophobic and chauvinist manifestations, which have become normalised since the early 2000s. As a result, less radical, more nuanced versions of Dutch nationalism have been overlooked. This article attempts to fill this gap by drawing attention to a peculiar self‐image among Dutch progressive intellectuals we call anti‐nationalist nationalism. Whereas this self‐image has had a long history as banal nationalism, it has come to be employed more explicitly for political positioning in an intensified nationalist climate. By dissecting it into its three constitutive dimensions – constructivism, lightness and essentialism – we show how this image of Dutchness is evoked precisely through the simultaneous rejection of ‘bad’ and enactment of ‘good’ nationalism. More generally, this article provides a nuanced understanding of contemporary Dutch nationalism. It also challenges prevalent assumptions in nationalism studies by showing that post‐modern anti‐nationalism does not exclude but rather constitutes essentialist nationalism.     

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.