The mobilisation of identities: a study on the relationship between elite rhetoric and public opinion on national identity in developed democracies

Over the last decade, the topic of national‐identity has gained considerable importance after various heads of states have made it an important political issue in the context of ongoing globalisation and European integration processes. There is also a large, mainly historical literature that has emphasised the role of the political elite in the formation of national‐identities. While this argument is widely discussed in both public and academic debates, there is, surprisingly, hardly any empirical research on this issue. We do not know whether elite positions resonate with how the masses think about these issues. We therefore set out to test this relationship by combining the 2003 wave of the International Social Survey Programme and content analysis of elite mobilisation rhetoric from the Comparative Manifesto Project. Results indicate that an overlap exists between politicians' articulation of exclusive notions about the contours of national‐identity and heightened expressions of civic and ethnic national‐identity within public opinion. By contrast, elite mobilisation along more inclusive lines appears ineffective. From this, it appears that exclusionary arguments play a more important role, at least in terms of attitudes about national‐identity, than inclusionary ones.     

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.     

THE CONTEST OVER CONTEXT IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Recent articles critical of the use of context in contextual intellectual history have identified contextual method with the post‐1960s work of the “Cambridge School,” which is regarded as being grounded in a flawed theory of textual interpretation. Focusing on German cultural and political history, this article shows that a contextual historiography was already fully developed in seventeenth‐century ecclesiastical history, and a parallel version of this approach had developed in the field of constitutional history. The modern critique of context emerged only with the appearance of dialectical philosophical history in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The article argues that rather than representing a scholarly engagement with contextual historiography, the central plank of the dialectical critique of contextualism—the notion that contextual explication of thought is insufficient because context itself has transcendental conditions—is actually a cultural‐political attack on it launched on behalf of a hostile and incommensurable academic culture.     

Reconciling custom,citizenship and colonial legacies: Ni‐Vanuatu tertiary student attitudes to national identity

Nation‐building remains a key challenge in Vanuatu. From the origins of this new nation in 1980, it was clear that creating a unifying sense of national identity and political community from multiple languages and diverse traditional cultures would be difficult. This paper presents new survey and focus group data on attitudes to national identity among tertiary students in Vanuatu. The survey identifies areas of common attitudes towards nationalism and national identity, shared by both Anglophone and Francophone Ni‐Vanuatu. However, despite the weakening ties between language of education and political affiliation over recent years, the findings suggest that there remain some key areas of strong association between socio‐linguistic background, and attitudes to the nation, and national identity. These findings cast new light on the attitudes of likely future elites towards regional, ethnic, intergenerational and linguistic fault lines in Vanuatu and the challenges of building a cohesive sense of political community and national identity.     

Singing the new Nepal

Nepal's adoption of a new national anthem in 2007 reflected a decision to establish a new social and political order that was republican, federal and inclusive of the country's many minority communities. It came after a ten‐year internal conflict, and was followed by the abolition of the Shah monarchy that had ruled the country since the late eighteenth century. This article describes the historical and political context of the decision to replace the old anthem, the selection of the new anthem, and the debates that arose in the Nepali media and public sphere after its lyrics and the identity of its author were made known. The discussion refers to arguments made by Karen Cerulo about the relationship between the syntactic structure of national anthems and the stage reached in the process of political modernisation of the nation‐state in question, and provides some comparative perspectives on the Nepali case.     

Children's projected political preference: transcending local politics

Traditionally, research on political preference has primarily focused on adults within their local political context. This research attempts to show that the perceived political preference of children is part of their national identity, and encompasses not only local politics but also the global and regional discourse. The present study surveyed 1187 Palestinian adolescents attending school, grades 5–7, in the West Bank to examine whether children's future political party preference is grounded in local/global discourse. The findings revealed a discrepancy between participants' perceptions of the local dominant political party and their projected political party preferences. This research argues that political party preference is facilitated through the transcendence of national identity embedded in children's geopolitical agency. The significance of the findings emphasizes that territorial boundaries are artificial; therefore, children's geopolitical agency is impacted by extraterritorial discourse and is able to transcend the local and regional context into a global politics.     

Making time for national identity: theoretical concept and empirical glance on the temporal performance of national identity

Despite global, economic, technological and social transformations, nationality has remained an influential identity category. It still forms the basis for collective self‐determination, political sovereignty and sense of belonging. This article puts forward the concept of ‘Chrono‐Work’ to offer a critical approach to national identity. Employing temporal and performative perspectives, the concept addresses the conditions for establishing and constructing national identity. Drawing on Judith Butler's performance theory, it is suggested that performance of national acts loads national identity with meaning through the construction of a chronological narrative. To complete the theoretical picture, a case study of ‘Chrono‐Work’ among the Jewish settlers on the Golan Heights in Israel is offered. It is shown that national identity is constantly performed through temporal strategies that aim at achieving a chronological order. Therefore, it is suggested that national identity is not given, but rather is the result of continuous ‘Chrono‐Work’.     

Domestic troubles,national identity discourse,and China's attitude towards the West, 2003–2012

Prior to its recent, much discussed international ‘assertiveness’, China's attitude to the West had deteriorated, as reflected in official discourse of national identity. Drawing from political science and social psychology literature on identity studies, I argue that the discursive pattern of national identity can shift as a function of an elite strategy to exclude internal others through opposition to foreign others. Internally exclusionary nationalism, often employed by elites during major crises, is instrumental to consolidating control and maintaining order. But when targeting internal opponents alone is politically inconvenient or lacks public resonance, elites will accentuate ethnocentric national identity discourse vis‐a‐vis foreign nations in order to reinforce internal battles and divert popular discontent externally. An interpretive analysis of the official texts of Chinese national identity discourse during the Hu Jintao decade, supplemented by quantitative data, shows a significant correlation between the regime's fear of internal instability and bottom‐up political opposition on the one hand and the timing and intensity of ethnocentric identity discourse regarding the West on the other. The party‐state negatively framed the West in order to shift the blame for domestic troubles onto foreigners and discredit internal resistance.     

Changing the national past: re‐creating the democratic Polish nation after 1989

ABSTRACT. Poland provides a critical example for studying how national identity is transformed to fit new domestic and global circumstances. While Poles must re‐identify themselves as a democratic nation, they have a choice of whether to incorporate aspects of the communist experience or to ignore it and draw solely from other historical sources. A comparison of holiday newspaper articles from before and after 1989 provides an opportunity to observe this process through the lens of national commemoration. This review shows that themes of national identity are influenced by political context and their potential to unify without contestation. In addition, while the communist period remained a salient unifying historical experience for Poles, democratic values did not act as a unifying theme during the first ten years of Polish democracy.     

Devolution and national identity: the rules of English (dis)engagement

ABSTRACT. In this article I consider why the expected English backlash to the asymmetric UK devolution settlement has not yet materialised. Using a corpus of conversational interviews, I discuss the various ways in which people in England currently understand the relationship between national identity and political entitlement. I conclude that English political quiescence, far from constituting an enigma, is comprehensible in the light of the fact that members of the general public do not usually base their assessments of political legitimacy on calculations of English national self‐interest defined in contrast to Scotland. Rather, political issues tend to be judged with reference to principles of equity and procedural justice. English identity is rarely considered legitimate grounds for political voice. Rather, people are inclined to demonstrate a concern to balance the recognition of Scottish rights to national self‐determination, with a display of public reason, civility and civic responsibility understood to be normatively incumbent upon the English majority.     

National identity in Northern Ireland: stability or change?

ABSTRACT. This article addresses a set of fundamental, long‐term factors associated with the Northern Ireland conflict: the pattern of underlying values and attitudes, especially those related to identity, that have helped to shape the nature of intercommunal competition. Using all generally available public opinion data, the article explores in particular the nature of national identity and of related forms of belonging for political behaviour. It notes the mutually reinforcing character of political loyalties within the Protestant community (where national identity, communal affiliation, constitutional preference and party support tend to coincide in a ‘Protestant‐unionist’ package) and the failure of this to be matched within the Catholic community (where the components of the ‘Catholic‐nationalist’ package are less closely interrelated). It concludes by speculating about the implications of these value configurations for political development, suggesting that they are unlikely to contribute to any fundamental political change in Northern Ireland in the short or medium term.     

International treaties and art

International treaties shape the legal context for the arts, provide policy tools for political ends, and reveal roles of the arts in state identity. Culture‐specific instruments, general agreements with cultural provisions, general agreements without culture‐specific provisions, and general statements of principle are all pertinent. Since 1990, treaties have intervened in the global division of labor and the entry of works into the art market, forced transformations of domestic law, and illuminated ways in which differences in legal cultures are valuable for those who would break the law. Treaties highlight complexities of national identity, exacerbate national/regional tensions, support restitution, and draw attention to human rights issues. Conflicts over art have also become an explicit part of the world of foreign policy.     

Anthropological race psychology 1820–1945: a common European system of ethnic identity narratives

ABSTRACT. This article examines ethnic stereotypes in biological race classification of Europeans between the 1830s and 1940s as part of political discourse on national identity. Anthropologists linked physical‐psychological types to nations and national character stereotypes through ‘national races’, achieving an often quite enduring international consensus on each race's mentality. The article argues that race mentality narratives were therefore partly dictated by their place within a dynamic interlocking European system. I focus on two key interacting elements that structured this system: the central role of the Germanic‐Nordic blond and the geographically uneven process of modernisation. I consider the spatiality of socio‐cultural and political factors ‘external’ to the stereotype system, such as geopolitics and modernisation, but also emphasise that discursive relationships between national stereotypes helped structure the international stereotype system. My conclusion argues for greater consideration of the influence of both scientific and international systemic factors in research on national identity.     

Performing the nation in anti‐colonial protest in interwar Morocco

This article applies a process approach to the study of nationalism, analysing anti‐colonial protest in interwar Morocco to address how and why elite‐constructed national identity resonates for larger audiences. Using Alexander's social performance model to study nationalist contention, it examines how a Muslim prayer ritual was re‐purposed by Moroccan nationalists to galvanise mass protest against a French divide‐and‐rule colonial policy towards Moroccan Berbers that they believed threatened Morocco's ethno‐religious national unity. By looking at how national identity was forged in the context of contentious performances and why certain religious (Islam) and ethnic (Arab) components were drawn on to define the Moroccan nation, this study offers a model for answering why national identity gets defined in specific ways and how the nation gains salience for broader publics as a category of collective identity.     

Global Governmentality and graduated sovereignty: National belonging among poor migrants in ecuador

Questions about the transformation of governance and national identity are being re‐examined in the context of contemporary economic globalisation. Scholars are debating the ways in which globalisation is reworking national identities through the shifting of economic governance away from ‘... the territorially defined boundaries of the nation‐state ... [and into] “unbundled” space for which there is not yet a name’ (Gupta, 1998: 321). Much of the work that has examined these questions of national identity and belonging under globalisation have emphasised questions of mobility, memory and identity in diasporic communities. In this paper, by contrast, I work with economic migrants within Ecuador to emphasise how contemporary globalisation processes reach inside national territories and work to reconstitute and reinvigorate pre‐existing social hierarchies and spatial identities. I develop these arguments in the context of Ecuador's economic crisis of the last two decades, drawing on in‐depth interviews with migrants to Quito.     

Ethno‐religious ‘unmixing’ of ‘Turkey’: 6–7 September riots as a case in Turkish nationalism*

Abstract. This article examines the structural and ideological factors that paved the way for the eruption of violence against non‐Muslims in Turkey on 6 September 1955. I argue that the conventional explanations that treat this instance of collective violence either as spontaneous rioting caused by over‐excited masses or as a government conspiracy that eventually got out of control are insufficient in that they fail to answer how and why so many people participated in these riots when we know that nothing on this scale ever took place in the history of the republic. In order to adequately understand the dynamics behind these riots one first needs to situate them in the broader historical context of the emergence, development and crystallisation of Turkish nationalism and national identity that marked the non‐Muslim citizens of the republic as the ‘others’ and potential enemies of the real Turkish nation. This historical analysis constitutes the first part of the article. Since ethno‐national riots do not always occur whenever there are conflicting identities, one also needs to explain the processes through which ethno‐national identities become radicalized and polarized. Thus, in the second part of the article, I focus on the economic, political and social conditions of the post‐single‐party era (post‐1950) that helped to radicalise the sentiments of the growing urban populace against the non‐Muslim ‘others’. I argue that it was the socio‐economic, ideological and political transformations of the Democrat Party era that made it possible for ethnic entrepreneurs and state provocateurs to mobilise the masses against a fictitious enemy.     

‘Set in the silver sea’: English national identity and European integration

ABSTRACT. Although many short‐term reasons for a specifically English Euro‐scepticism have been proposed, a long‐term perspective is required to provide a fuller and more rounded treatment of this important and topical political issue. It needs to be grasped in terms of cultural, political and religious factors in English history, specifically, the antiquity and political character of a sense of English national identity, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the nature and impact of Protestant covenantalism. Among the factors that have shaped a sense of English national identity are its insular, geopolitical situation, the early development of a centralised English state, and the concomitant growth of a unified English legal system. To the existing sense of national identity under the Tudors was added a strong current of religious separatism, manifested first through Henry VIII's break with Rome and his vindication of monarchical supremacy in a national church, and second through the Puritan return to the idea of election modelled on the Old Testament narrative of the Exodus and Covenant of the Israelites. These currents have lent to the sense of English national identity a strong oppositional character, in contrast to the transterritorialism of Christendom characteristic of the leading Roman Catholic powers. This can be seen both by comparing English with French historical trajectories, and more recently, in terms of the separate, but allied, position of England in relation to European integration.     

Fear and Foreign Bodies: The Bible and "Post-Racial" American Identity

Abstract

The Bible has played a prominent role in US political discourse, shaping ideas of race, ethnicity and identity. Its influence on the political landscape today is most evident within conservative politics—among evangelical Christians and the Tea Party Movement. At least in perception, its influence has been divisive. What role do biblical scholars and academic theologians have to play in contemporary social and political discourse, particularly with respect to race? This article approaches the question first by way of the concept of the political as espoused by Carl Schmitt and the category "race," both as applied to antiquity and to the modern period; second, through a reading of Genesis 20; and third, through attention to contemporary discussions of race among contextual and liberation theologians, focusing on the problem of essentialism in the constitution of identity. The article concludes by drawing together these elements to offer thoughts on a future course of American identity in the context of post-race desires and fears.