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S ARAJEVO , O CTOBER 7, 2014

J O IN T M A S T E R S P R O G R A M M E

IN

S O U T H E A S T E U R O P E A N S T U D IE S

K A R L -F R A N Z E N S U N IV E R S IT Y G R A Z

C IVIC AND E THNIC N ATIONALISM

A critical reassessment of theories and typologies

Seminar paper for the course Human Rights: Minority Protection and Conflict Management
under supervision of Mag.iur. BENEDIKT HARZL

BY

H ARM K ERN
1212374
harm.kern@gmail.com
Ulica Hasana Suia 17
71000 Sarajevo
Bosnia and Herzegovina

TABLE OF CONTENTS
!

INTRODUCTION

2!

1. NATIONALISM AND THE NATION

3!

2. THE CIVIC-ETHNIC DICHOTOMY

11!

3. BEYOND THE CIVIC-ETHNIC DICHOTOMY

18!

CONCLUSION

24!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

25!

INTRODUCTION
The last two decades of the twentieth century have witnessed a spectacular resurgence of
nationalism in Europe. The single most important process in this respect has been the thorough
reorganization of the political landscape in Eastern Europe along national lines after the fall of
communism. Nationalism has functioned as the main ideological source of mobilization and
legitimization in the struggles for political succession in the postcommunist world. About twenty
new nation-states have emerged as the outcome of the troublesome disintegrations of the
multinational Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Postcommunist nationalism was
characterized by a strong emphasis on ethnicity and produced in some instances the horrific logic
for ethnic cleansing and other policies of homogenization in the multiethnic societies of Eastern
Europe.1 The aggressive nature of these postcommunist developments associated Eastern Europe
with primitive ethnonationalist violence. The classification of Eastern European nationalism as
ethnic and aggressive as opposed to the civic and democratic nationalism of Western Europe
made its reappearance in academic literature on nationalism.2
Such correlation of the classical dichotomy of ethnic and civic nationalism with a parallel
opposition between Eastern and Western Europe is, however, subject to recent debate among the
scholars of nationalism. The single dichotomous distinction between the ethnic East and the civic
West seems to provide a far too simplistic and even moralist framework of understanding for the
complex historical reality of nationalism in Europe. The civic-ethnic dichotomy fails to explain
contemporary nationalist resistance to the European Union in Western Europe and disregards
racist rightwing responses to immigrants in Western European countries. The ethnic claims of
Irish, Scot, Basque and Flemish autonomist movements furthermore discredit the conceptual
distinction between East and West. Serious academic research of Eastern and Southeastern
Europe should resist the essentialism of a rigid dichotomy that defines exclusive and aggressive
nationalism as a primitive evil, endemic to the irrational East at delusionary distance of a
superior Western society.3 This study attempts to explore nationalism beyond the civic-ethnic
dichotomy through a critical reassessment of theories and typologies.
1

Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe (1996) 1-10.

Michael Ignatieff, Blood and belonging: Journeys into new nationalism (1993); Peter Alter, Nationalism (1994).

Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (1997) 3-20.

1. NATIONALISM AND THE NATION

Nationalism is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of different practices and beliefs. Sense
of national consciousness, expression of national identity and feeling of loyalty to the nation are
all forms of nationalism that merge individual sentiments with collective identity. Nationalism
involves the strong identification of a group of individuals with the collectivity of the nation on
the basis of distinctive characteristics that compose their shared national identity. National
sentiments and identity are evoked and expressed through a nationalist culture of folklore, flags,
anthems, customs, ceremonies, memorials and other symbolic attributes of nations. Nationalism
therefore resembles a specific form of culture.4 Beyond identity and culture, nationalism includes
certain aspirations that distinguish it as a political ideology. The realization of the national will
and the achievement of national goals serve as core idioms of nationalism. Nationalist ideology
considers the nation the sole legitimate source of all political power. Nationalism in other words
proclaims the sovereignty of the nation as determinant of political organization. This political
principle at the heart of nationalism demands the right of self-determination for the nation in a
given territory.5 Nationalism thus designates a political doctrine as much as a specific form of
culture that both evokes sentiments and expresses identity. A sophisticated observation of
nationalism should take in account all these different spheres in which nationalism operates.
Scholars of nationalism face a tremendous task in formulating a definition of nationalism that
is comprehensive enough to cover all manifestations of nationalism. Nationalism designates a
whole world of different things and the heterogeneous features of nationalist idioms, practices
and beliefs make nationalism an elusive concept. Assessment of nationalism necessarily invokes
intertwined concepts as nationhood, ethnicity, nation and state. The problematic interrelation of
these concepts creates an ambiguous discourse that tempts any objective scholar of nationalism
to rely on the exact subjective terms by which nationalists themselves define their ideology. The
American sociologist Rogers Brubaker has addressed this problem in detail and argues that the
study of nationalism should be decoupled from the understanding of nations as substantial
collectivities and communities.6 Brubaker considers the nation as a category of practice rather
4

Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (1991) 71-79 and 91.

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (2006 [1983]) 1-7 and 38-51.

Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups (2004) 31-33; Brubaker, Nationalism reframed, 13-22.

than a category of analysis. Nationhood provides a subjective cognitive discourse that informs
thought and structures perception. Scholars of nationalism should avoid taking these subjective
perceptions for granted. According to Brubaker it is the main exercise of the study of nationalism
to explain how the very perception of nationhood as a cultural and political form has been
institutionalized within and among states.7 Understanding the institutionalization of the nation in
other words signifies understanding the relation between the nation and the state. That
relation between nationalism as a form of culture and nationalism as a political doctrine is the
most fundamental and most discussed concern within the study of nationalism.8
The great differences among academic evaluations of nationalism are more often than not the
results of minor variations in the conceptions of the nation and the state as well as different
understandings of the relationship between those two core concepts. The deep ambivalence and
ambiguity that run through the study of nationalism thus reflect alternative uses of the same
terms. There is no academic agreement on the exact meanings and dimensions of the core
concepts of nationalism. The body of contemporary research on nationalism features a circular
logic of discordant definitions that are rooted in different theories while these different theories
vice versa rely on their respective definitions. The study of nationalism seems to a great extent a
war over vocabulary rather than a discussion of empirical facts.9 This study considers it therefore
useful to deconstruct the ambiguous theoretic interpretations of nationalism to their most basic,
undifferentiated and uncontested core in order to reveal the essence of nationalism.
The most ambitious and complete theory of nationalism as a whole has been formulated by
Ernest Gellner in his Nations and Nationalism. Even though this work has been fiercely
criticized ever since its publication in 1983, Gellners theory still remains a significant point of
departure for the understanding of nationalism. In essence, Nations and Nationalism insists that
nationalism is a cultural and political function of modernity and a crucial vehicle in the transition
from traditional to industrial society.10 Ernest Gellner thus linked nationalism to industrialization
on the basis of a functionalist interpretation of the role of nationalism in modern society. The
correlation between nationalism and industrialization is subject to debate but no other theorist of
7

Brubaker, Nationalism reframed, 7-22.

David McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism (1998) 3-16.

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Ivan Krastev ed., Nationalism after Communism: Lessons Learned (2004) 13-35.

10

Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 38-51 and 131-136.

nationalism has ever formulated an alternative understanding of nationalism that can match the
universal historical explanatory framework provided by Gellner. The deconstruction of this
authoritative theory reveals a precisely defined conceptualization of nationalism:
Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and
the national unit should be congruent.
Nationalism as a sentiment, or as a movement, can best be defined in terms of
this principle. Nationalist sentiment is the feeling of anger aroused by the
violation of the principle, or the feeling of satisfaction aroused by its fulfillment.
A nationalist movement is one actuated by a sentiment of this kind.11

Ernest Gellner defines the essence of nationalism first and foremost as a political doctrine of
congruence between the nation and the state. Nationalism constitutes a universalistic principle
of political legitimacy that requires each nation to have its own state. The violation of the
principle is, however, inherent to its definition since not all potential nations are concentrated in
compact territorial units but in fact live intermixed with each other in complex patterns. The
political boundaries of a state can in many ways fail to include all members of the appropriate
nation. In these cases nationalism as an ideology of conflict arouses nationalist sentiment and
mobilizes a nationalist movement demanding statehood.12
Gellners definition contains the implicit assumption that nationalism consists of three
inseparable aspects: principle, sentiment and movement. Historical manifestations of nationalism
in the shape of a nationalist movement without widespread nationalist sentiment or widespread
sentiment without a nationalist movement reveal empirical tension within this assumption.
Especially nationalisms in nineteenth century Southeast Europe featured limited national
movements of intellectuals long before a wider national sentiment was aroused.13 The work of
Anthony Smith on national identity observed that even the universal principle of congruence
between nation and statehood does not apply for each instance of nationalism. The notion that
each nation requires its own state is a common but not a necessary deduction from the ideology
of nationalism. Smith argues therefore that nationalism is primarily a cultural doctrine, or more

11

Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 1.

12

McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism, 72-76; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 2-7 and 42-51.

13

Miroslav Hroch, Social preconditions of national revival in Europe: a comparative analysis of the social

composition of patriotic groups among the smaller European nations (1985) 11-17 and 22-30.

accurately, a political ideology with a cultural doctrine at its centre.14 Although the dimension of
nationalism as a form of culture plays a key role in Gellners argument that industrial society
requires a standardized culture achieved through nationalism, culture does not feature in his
definition of nationalism. Anthony Smith therefore incorporates the term identity into his
understanding of nationalism. National identity constitutes the consciousness of belonging to a
national culture.15 Since some national movements and sentiments fall short of demanding
independent statehood, the political dimension of nationalism is reduced to the separate goals of
autonomy and unity in Smiths definition of nationalism:
[Nationalism is] an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining
autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its
members to constitute an actual or potential nation.16

The concept of autonomy refers to the idea of national self-determination that defines the
nationalist interpretation of political legitimacy. The concept of unity refers to the unification
of the nation in a state at its simplest level but may just as well signify a less material aspiration
of social cohesion or brotherhood of all nationals regardless of statehood. In its most uncontested
essence, nationalism constitutes a principle of political legitimacy although it does not prescribe
statehood as its sole political expression. Nationalism is therefore not a theory of statehood.
Nationalism is above all else the ideology of the nation.17
The conceptualization of nationalism is embedded in a broader debate about the origins and
nature of the nation itself. The academic positions in this debate conventionally employ the
nonacademic theory of primordialism as frame of reference. Primordialism holds that the nation
is an ancient entity that is embedded in human nature and history. This view tends to be taken by
nationalists themselves but no serious scholar of nationalism considers the nation to be
primordial. Primordialism functions as a straw man against which academics have positioned the
argument of modernism.18 Modernist theorists consider the nation to be a modern phenomenon
invented at the end of the eighteenth century. Ernest Gellner refuted the primordial existence of

14

Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (1991) 74.

15

Anthony D. Smith, The cultural foundations of nations: hierarchy, covenant and republic (2008) 19 and 39-42.

16

Smith, National Identity, 73.

17

Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 23-37 and 132-136; Smith, National Identity, 71-79.

18

Brubaker, Nationalism reframed, 14-15.

nations with the statement that nationalism invented nations where they did not exist before. His
theory explains the invention of the nation as a crucial function of modernity since modern
industrial society required a homogenous culture based on mass literacy in a standard vernacular
language. The dynamic division of labor in a modern industrial society demands mobility and
communication between individuals, at a level that can only be achieved if those individuals
have been socialized into a single nation with a standard culture and language.19 Gellner
therewith established the essence of the modernist argument that the nation is a social construct
that was invented to function as a distinctive form of social organization in modern society.
Other modernists differ from Gellner and each other with regard to the emphasis they give to
the different factors that explain the origins of the nation. Benedict Anderson focuses on the
importance of print capitalism in generating nationalism. The diffusion of a standard vernacular
language through modern mass printing technology created the possibility for the nation to be
constructed as an imagined community. Anderson emphasizes that a nation is necessarily
imagined because its community is based on a bond beyond personal acquaintance.20 Marxist
historian Eric Hobsbawm has placed original emphasis on the societal roots of nationalism and
national identity. His work confirmed that nations are essentially constructed from above but
argued that this modernist finding should be complemented with a better understanding of the
bottom-up identification of the masses with the nation. Social historical investigation of the
ideas, opinions and feelings of the masses, revealed that national identity is mutable and
constitutes one of multiple identities for ordinary people. Hobsbawm claims that the nation is a
dual phenomenon composed of constructed elements from above and a societal character from
below.21 Hobsbawms attention for the societal experience of nationalism did not make him
conclude that nations are more genuine than other modernists suggest. Hobsbawm considers
nationalism to be a political tool of elites to obtain and preserve power in mass politics.22 The
general modernist perspective on nationalism is thus hostile and the work of modernist scholars
is directed at debunking the invented and constructed character of the nation.23
19

Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 19-37, 54-55 and 133-136.

20

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1991) 31-46.

21

Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: programme, myth, reality (1992) 5-13.

22

Eric J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger ed., The invention of tradition (1983) 1-14.

23

McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism, 10-16.

The modernist approach to nationalism is not without shortcomings. Reduction of the many
elements of nationalism and nationhood to a single functionalist interpretation of modernity is
bound to produce conceptual tensions. Modernist theories of nationalism seem to overemphasize
the importance of industry and capitalism and fail to fully explain the passions that nationalism
generates among the masses. The abstract interests of elites and industry do not account for the
popular and emotional dimensions of nationalist sentiments and movements.24 Anthony D. Smith
has attributed these inconsistencies to the tendency of modernist theorists to overdraw the
historic distinction between traditional society and modernity. Modernists consider the transition
to modernity as a complete rupture with earlier social orders in order to strengthen their
argument that nations are completely novel inventions of modern society. According to Smith,
such a focus on discontinuity has led to the ignorance of crucial continuities between modern
national identity and pre-existing ethnic ties and sentiments.25 A modern nation derives its
cohesive and emotional strength first and foremost from a sense of common identity and shared
history that claims to predate the modern appearance of the nation. Smith observes that nations
appeal to a heritage of memories, myths, symbols and values that survived across centuries as
attributes of pre-modern ethnic communities. 26 In The Ethnic Origins of the Nation Smith
therefore insists that modern nations have been founded on pre-modern ethnic origins.27
Smiths critique of modernism therewith provided the basis for the ethno-symbolist approach
to nationalism that studies the relationship of pre-modern ethnic communities to modern nations.
The term ethno-symbolism refers to a methodology with a strong focus on culture and symbols
as crucial elements of national identity. The main exercise of ethno-symbolists is to retrace these
elements of national identity over a time span of many centuries in order to reveal the origins of
modern nationhood. 28 Both John Armstrong and Anthony D. Smith argue that ethnic
consciousness existed long before national identity and that its persistence across the centuries
provided modern nationalism with a distinctive repository of ethnic culture that was essential to
making the modern nation into a solidary political community. Antecedent ethnic communities
24

Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (2010) 120-137.

25

Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1986) 7-13; 129-152 and 201.

26

Smith, National Identity, 40-42 and 71-72; Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 212-217 and 224.

27

Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 144-149, 207 and 212-217.

28

Anthony D. Smith, Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism: A cultural approach (2009) 23-40 and 133-136.

supposedly provided modern nations with collective names, myths of common ancestry, shared
historical memories, elements of common culture and measures of ethnic solidarity.29 These
attributes of ethnic communities had a distinctive cultural and historical content that determined
the nature, limits and particularities of each nation according to Smith. The central argument of
ethno-symbolism holds that pre-modern ethnic ties shape and condition the formation of modern
nations and that the emergence of contemporary nations therefore cannot be understood properly
without taking their ethnic antecedents into account. 30 The central debate in the study of
nationalism thus comes down to ascribing the origins of nations to either ethnicity, as do the
ethno-symbolists, or to political and economic interest, as is the modernist position.
These opposite positions in the debate about the origins of nations reveal furthermore a
considerable disagreement among scholars about the real or perceived nature of the components
of national identity. Modernists view national identity as false collective consciousness, whereas
ethno-symbolists claim that the modern nation requires a shared past that is historically
retractable in the past endeavors of a pre-modern population.31 The ethno-symbolist argument
thereby resembles the views of the subjects of its study since it confirms the nationalist claim to
the continuous existence of the nation through time. Criticisms of ethno-symbolism have accused
this analysis of retrospective nationalism, which is the tendency to project features peculiar to
modern nationalism back onto earlier social collectivities. 32 In this respect the study of
medievalist Patrick J. Geary on nationalist claims to historical continuity with ancient and
medieval ethnic communities offers interesting insights. Geary proves that the claim that modern
European nations can be retraced to distinct ancient or medieval peoples is a myth based on
misinterpretation of medieval history. Europes people in the early medieval period were far too
fluid, complex and dynamic to map distinct ethnic groups on separated territories. 33 Both
historians and modernist scholars of nationalism have emphasized that nationalism invents for
itself a reinterpretation of history that serves contemporary interests. Identification of the nation
with a narrative of national history that predates modernity into antiquity is an essential element
29

John Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (1982) 3-9; Smith, National Identity, 20-42.

30

Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 11-18; Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (1999) 46-49.

31

Sinia Maleevi, Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism (2006) 110 and 118.

32

Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, 157-165.

33

Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (2002) 9, 11, 15-40 and 173.

of national identity. Each national movement creates such a narrative of a glorious or martyred
national history through careful selection and ignorance of historical facts in order to evoke the
cohesive sense of common ancestry.34 Since these narratives of historical endeavors by the ethnic
ancestors of the nation are in fact modern constructions of nationalism, they can never be the
cause of nations and nationalism. The most fundamental critique of ethno-symbolism therefore
accuses its epistemological roots of teleological determinism since it assumes history has a
predetermined path in which ethnic communities where destined to become nations.35
The various theories of nationalism each have a different focus and reveal different elements
of nationalism and the nation. Through its focus on modernity, the modernist theory is able to
show the role of nationalism in processes of social and economic change. The ethno-symbolist
theory adds to this knowledge with its ability to trace the cultural dimensions of nationalism with
its focus on ethnicity and symbols. The work of Anthony D. Smith enriched the field of
nationalism studies with the introduction of the concept of ethnicity, although scholars do not
agree on the real or perceived nature of ethnic elements in national identity. The engagement of
ethno-symbolist and modernist scholars on these issues transformed the debate on nationalism
from modernist debunking of the artificial character of the nation towards a more refined study
of what components constitute national identity. Evaluation and synthesis of that engagement has
produced this deconstructed and uncontested definition of the nation:
A nation is a group of people identified as sharing any number of real or
perceived characteristics such as common ancestry, language, religion, culture,
historical traditions and shared territory the members of which can identify
themselves and others as belonging to the group, and who have the will or desire
to remain as a group, united through some form of organization, most often
political.36

The side-by-side assessment and deconstruction of the ambiguous theories of nationalism in this
chapter revealed nationalism as a principle of political legitimacy that is first and foremost the
ideology of the nation; whereas the nation is a form of social collectivity identifiable by real or
perceived but in any case shared characteristics.
34

Magaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (2008) 81-90; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 54-57;

Hobsbawm and Ranger, The invention of tradition, 2 and 12-14.

35

Maleevi, Identity as Ideology, 128-130; Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, 157-165.

36

Timothy Baycroft, Nationalism in Europe 1789 1945 (2007) 3.

10

2. THE CIVIC-ETHNIC DICHOTOMY

The reconciliation of contrary theories into single definitions of nationalism and the nation faces
a tremendous challenge in comprehending the wide variety of their manifestations. The impact of
nationalism on modern history has been as unparalleled as diverse. On the one hand, nationalism
could be associated with self-determination, liberalism and democracy. On the other hand,
nationalism has been identified as the root of militarism, chauvinism, war, ethnic cleansing and
even genocide.37 The nature of the nation itself isnt less ambivalent. Although our definition of
the nation indicates ancestry, language, religion, culture, traditions and territory as characteristics
of a nation, not every nation has all these characteristics. Every nation features a different
combination as basis of its identity and none of the characteristics alone is sufficient to define the
nation. Recognition of the enormous diversity of nations and nationalisms made attempts to
classify specific types of nationalism a common practice in the study of nationalism.
Scholars have proposed classifications that categorize nationalism into two or more types on
the basis of various criteria. Notwithstanding the nuances that distinguish each classification,
most are founded on the single dichotomous distinction between a voluntaristic, liberal and
inclusive type defined as civic nationalism versus an ascriptive, illiberal and exclusive type
defined as ethnic nationalism. The dichotomy attributes the qualities of civic nationalism and
vices of ethnic nationalism to different understandings of nationhood. Civic nationhood is based
on citizenship and ethnic nationhood is determined by descent. The civic-ethnic dichotomy
derives its true explanatory potential from the assumption that civic nationalism predominates in
Western Europe whereas ethnic nationalism is inherent to Eastern Europe. 38 This chapter
reassesses whether the parallel between conceptual and geographic distinctions that lies at the
core of the civic-ethnic dichotomy is a satisfactory model for the study of nationalism.
The origins of the civic-ethnic dichotomy can be found in The Idea of Nationalism, which was
published by the Jewish American historian Hans Kohn in 1944. Kohn was born in Prague in
1891 and grew up to witness the rise of Czech nationalism and the fall of the multinational
Austro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War. His commitment to the Zionist movement
later led him to live in Palestine during the 1920s. The tense atmosphere of interwar European
37

Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups, 132-133.

38

Umut Ozkirimli, Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Engagement (2005) 15-28.

11

affairs drew Kohns academic interest towards European nationalism and during the 1940s, in
the heat of the Second World War, Kohn wrote a study of nationalism at Harvard University that
deeply influenced the research that followed it. From this short biographical note it may be clear
that Hans Kohn was particularly qualified to achieve a breakthrough in the understanding of the
varieties of nationalism in Europe and beyond. Kohn developed a distinction between civic and
ethnic types of nationalism based on comparative analysis of Britain, France and Switzerland in
Western Europe and Germany, Italy and Russia in the East.39 Kohns distinction reflected the
contemporary world war of British and American civic nationalism versus the ethnic nationalism
of Germany, Italy and Japan. The dichotomy had arguably already been implicit in Friedrich
Meineckes separation of a French Staatsnation from a German Kulturnation in 1908.40 The Idea
of Nationalism still is the single most influential articulation of the civic-ethnic dichotomy
because it presents an evaluative parallel opposition between Western and Eastern Europe.
Hans Kohns main argument is that the negative implications of eastern ethnic nationalism are
inherently linked to the backward socio-economic and political environment of Eastern Europe
compared to the western lands. Nationalism arose in the West in an effort to build a nation within
the preexisting political reality of statehood. Western nationalism was inspired by Enlightenment
ideas and proclaimed the sovereignty of the nation in opposition to dynastic rule. Membership of
the nation was equated with citizenship and the nation was thus a rational voluntary association
of individuals living in a common territory under the same government and laws. In Eastern
Europe, nationalism was not preceded by state structures and in absence of civic institutions,
eastern nationalist movements were reliant upon intellectuals to derive the nation not from
individual will but from collectivist ties of ethnic kinship. Eastern ethnic nations were not rooted
in political reality but in myths about the past and aspirations to become political reality in the
future. Eastern nationalism arose in conflict with the existing order of multi-national empires and
was thus inherently violent and problematic in its struggle to redraw political boundaries in
conformity with ethnographic demands.41
Other scholars of nationalism have refined the civic-ethnic dichotomy with a middle category
39

Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Background (1944); Andre Liebich, Searching

for the perfect nation the itinerary work of Hans Kohn in: Nations and Nationalism 12/4 (2006) 579-596.
40

Friedrich Meinecke, Weltbrgertum und Nationalstaat (1908).

41

Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, 61-41, 162-165 and 329-331.

12

for Central Europe. The German historian Theodor Schieder was the first to do so in 1956 with
his Die Nationsidee in westlicher und stlicher Sicht. This work pioneered with the empirical
application of the civic-ethnic dichotomy to the study of European national movements. Schieder
argued that the goals of national movements were largely depended upon the territorially defined
conditions in which nations arose. Western nationalism was revolutionary since it arose in
dynastic states with the goal to overthrow the ancien rgime. The French Revolution of 1789, the
American Revolution of 1775 and the British Glorious Revolution of 1688 serve this argument
as profound examples. Schieder established a middle category for Central Europe since its
nationalism had the integrative goal of unification that was considerably different from the
separatist goal in the third category of Eastern nationalism. As examples of Central European
nationalism, Schieder presented the unification movements of Germany and Italy. The typology
emphasized that national movements in Eastern and Southeast Europe often resorted to violence
in order to achieve their goals.42 The Montenegro-born English historian John Plamenatz further
elaborated the distinction between unification nationalisms of Central Europe and separatist
nationalisms of Eastern Europe. Plamenatz viewed Central Europe as an integral part of
European civilization since its national movements provided the basis for liberty and tolerance
similar as in the West. Western nationalism created a culture within an established state, whereas
German and Italian nationalism created a state on the foundations of an established culture.
Plamenatz argued that the backward Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe faced the enormous
problem that they had to fabricate both states and national cultures.43 Schieder and Plamenatz
followed Kohns argument that Eastern European nationalism was more prone to ethnic violence
and intolerance because it was rooted in backward historical circumstances.
The civic-ethnic dichotomy not only grounds the conceptual distinction between civic and
ethnic nationalism on a geographical distinction between West and East. It also fuses these two
distinctions with a parallel normative contrast between a good and a bad form of nationalism.
The fusion of analytical and normative criteria leads the dichotomy to the essentialist argument
that the aggressive and exclusive expressions of nationalism are endemic to the irrational East at
42

Theodor Schieder, Die Nationsidee in westlicher und stlicher Sicht (1956); Theodor Schieder, "Typologie und

Erscheinungsformen des Nationalstaats in Europa," in: Schieder, Nationalisms und Nationalstaat (1991) 65-86.
43

John Plamenatz, Two Types of Nationalism in: Eugene Kamenka ed., Nationalism: the Nature and Evolution of

an Idea (1976) 22-37.

13

delusionary distance from a superior Western society.44 Although this argument had an obvious
neo-orientalist flavor, prominent scholars of nationalism of both modernist and ethno-symbolist
conviction remained attached to the civic-ethnic dichotomy for its analytical value. The works of
Gellner, Anderson, Hobsbawm and Smith are largely compatible with the civic-ethnic model and
the dichotomy often lies at the heart of their individual arguments. Ernest Gellner combined
geography with chronology in a four-stage sequence of time-zones that assumed nationalism
became more problematic as it was implemented more eastwards and later in history. In the first
and westernmost time-zone there were strong dynastic states with territories that corresponded to
homogenous cultural areas. Under pressure of industrialization from the eighteenth century
onwards these states educated their inhabitants to become a nation. In the second zone the
Italians and Germans were politically fragmented but had long available standard cultures.
Gellner noted that on the foundations of these standard cultures nineteenth-century unificatory
nationalism could be relatively benign and liberal, and could act in alliance with liberalism.45
The next zone to the east presented the greatest problems for the implementation of the
nationalist principle of congruence between nation and state, since both states and nations would
have to be carved out from areas with a complex ethnographic composition. The same is true in
the fourth time-zone but here problems occurred later because of an interlude of Soviet-imposed
communist suppression. The creation of homogeneous nation-states in the ethnically
heterogeneous lands of Eastern Europe was only attainable through ethnic cleansing and so
Gellner concluded that the horror of nationalism to the east is inherent in the situation.46
Anthony D. Smith sustained the civic-ethnic dichotomy as analytical framework throughout
the ethno-symbolist theory. According to Smith, Kohns philosophical distinction between a
more rational and a more organic version of nationalist ideology remains valid and useful
because it helps to compare nationalisms within each category and place nationalisms in broad
comparable contexts.47 Smith used the dichotomy first and foremost to distinguish two different
historical routes of nation-formation that produced a dual distinction in the conceptions of both
nation and nationalism as either civic and territorial or ethnic and vernacular. The route of
44

Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups, 133, 135 and 140; McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism, 9-10.

45

Ernest Gellner, Nationalism, (1997) 53 and 50-58.

46

Gellner, Nationalism, 56; Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Enemies (1994) 115-117.

47

Smith, National Identity, 81.

14

nation-formation in Western Europe started long before the rise of nationalism with the cultural
homogenization of the inhabitants of strong bureaucratic states. In such states, aristocratic ethnic
cores consolidated their hegemony through the establishment of bureaucratic structures that
could control all strata of society. The bureaucratic incorporation of society unintentionally
assimilated ethnic minorities into the dominant ethnic culture and thereby created a culturally
homogeneous population within the states borders as an ideal precondition for nationalism to
succeed. As a result, nationalism in Western Europe featured strong territorial consciousness and
sense of belonging to a community of citizens.48 In Eastern Europe, states had not homogenized
their populations before the rise of nationalism. The Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian empires
covered large territories with various ethnic communities at the time nationalism spread as the
new political principle that demanded states to be congruent with nations. Educators and
intellectuals among the subject ethnic communities of the empires adopted this political principle
and mobilized their communities for the cause of self-determination through an appeal to
vernacular culture and ethnic ties. Nationalism in the East was thus based on ethnicity and
challenged the territorial status quo of the old empires with demands for ethnic autonomy. Smith
observed that after the ethnic secessionist movements in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, new
waves of ethnic nationalism occurred in the twentieth century in Africa and Asia against colonial
empires and again in Eastern Europe with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and
the Soviet Union.49 Smiths analysis, however, explicitly stated that ethnic nationalism also
occurred in the West just as civic nationalism occurred in the East. Anthony D. Smith moved the
civic-ethnic dichotomy away from its normative connotations and geographic determinism with
his observation that every nationalism contains both civic and ethnic elements in varying degrees
and different forms, making the dichotomy a dualism at the heart of every nationalism.50
Normative moralism and geographic determinism made their unfortunate return in the study
of nationalism after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Towards the end of the
twentieth century expectations ran high that increasingly internationalized social, economic and
cultural realities would move the world beyond the nation-state as the organization of political
48

Smith, National Identity, 9-11, 54-61 and 99-122; Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 135-136 and 138-140.

49

Smith, National Identity, 11-13, 61-68 and 123-142; Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 137-138 and 140-144.

50

Eric Kaufmann and Oliver Zimmer, Dominant ethnicity and the ethnic-civic dichotomy in the work of A. D.

Smith in: Nations and Nationalism 10:1 (2004) 63-78; Smith, National Identity, 13

15

space. The project of European integration and the expanding infrastructure of international
relations were seen as movements towards a future in transcendence of nationalism in a
European and global context.51 The revival of nationalism in postcommunist Eastern Europe was
thus perceived as an unexpected backlash by academics as Michael Ignatieff and Peter Alter.
Ignatieff heavily relied on the normative vocabulary of the civic-ethnic dichotomy in his account
of Croatian and Serbian nationalism. His Blood and Belonging described civic nationalism as
necessarily democratic since its vests sovereignty in all of the people whereas ethnic
nationalism tells people only to trust those of your own blood. Ignatieff furthermore stated that
it was a tragedy for the Balkans that the only language available after communism was the
rhetoric of ethnic difference. 52 Peter Alter employed the dichotomy in his overview of
nationalism. In his view, the end of the Cold War reawakened long forgotten national claims and
plunged Eastern and Southeastern Europe back into a traumatic past of ethnic tensions.53 These
and other statements about the resurgence of nationalism in postcommunist Eastern Europe
expressed a derogative discourse on the primitive and aggressive nature of the East, especially in
reference to the violent collapse of Yugoslavia. The civic-ethnic dichotomy became intertwined
with this essentialist discourse on Balkan violence and served as a problematic point of departure
for the study of ethnic relations and nationalism in postcommunist Eastern Europe.54
The ethnic-civic dichotomy mingled with grand explanations that since 1989 replaced the
political bipolarity of the Cold War with a cultural-historical division between advanced Western
civilization and the delayed development of the rest of the world. The Western historical
trajectory of Christianization, Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment and industrialization
became the model path of development. Absence of some of these phases from the history of
Eastern Europe was perceived as backwardness. 55 The dichotomous arguments of Kohn,
Schieder, Plamenatz, Gellner and Smith had all linked the civic-ethnic dichotomy to political and
economic disparity between developed Western Europe and backward Eastern Europe. These

51

Brubaker, Nationalism reframed, 2; Jrgen Habermans, The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays (2001).

52

Ignatieff, Blood and belonging, 6-9 and 12-25.

53

Alter, Nationalism, 9 and 104-110.

54

Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 3-20 and 136-139; V. P. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War (2004) 1-32.

55

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of

Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996).

16

socio-economic explanations of the civic-ethnic dichotomy thus complemented the paradigm of

Western development and Eastern backwardness. New dichotomous studies of postcommunist
nationalism often explicitly referred to the grand theories of development. Hobsbawm termed the
nationalism of the late twentieth century a major vector of historical development functionally
different from the emancipatory nineteenth-century nationalism.56 George Schpflin presented a
more sophisticated assessment of postcommunist nationalism than Ignatieff and Alter but came
to rather similar determinist conclusions. Nationalism was ethnic in Eastern Europe because
communism had destroyed civil society, leaving the postcommunist communities with no civic
alternative to ethnic mobilization. Ethnic disputes could be reawakened since they had only been
swept under the carpet in communist times.57 Schpflin endorsed the civic-ethnic dichotomy and
the development paradigm in his central argument that nationalism in Eastern Europe was in
many respects substantially different than in Western Europe because the civic elements of
nationhood were absent in the traditionally backward societies of Eastern Europe.58
The civic-ethnic dichotomy grounds a substantial distinction between Western European civic
nationalism and Eastern European ethnic nationalism in a dubious series of linked conceptual,
geographic and normative oppositions. The overlapping oppositions between civic and ethnic,
Western and Eastern, developed and backward and peaceful and violent forms of nationalism are
based on a hierarchical understanding of European history. Dichotomous arguments have
interpreted the historical particularities of West and East as substantial differences in order to
justify a theoretical schism in which the different categories of nationalism are to be explained
by different definitions and theories.59 This dichotomous logic relies on double standards and has
limited analytical value because of its separated definitions and theories. The location of entire
national traditions on one or the other side of the dichotomy rather than studying its internal
dynamics does nothing to explain the character of its nationalism. The civic-ethnic dichotomy is
thus not a satisfactory model for the study of nationalism.

56

Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, 163-164 and 191-192.

57

George Schpflin, Nationalism and ethnic minorities in post-communist Europe in: R. Caplan & J. Feffer ed.,

Europes new nationalism (1996) 150-170.

58

George Schpflin, Nationalism and ethnicity in Europe, east and west in: C. A. Kupchan ed., Nationalism and

nationalities in the new Europe (1995) 37-65, there 49-53.

59

Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups, 132-146.

17

3. BEYOND THE CIVIC-ETHNIC DICHOTOMY

The enormous diversity in manifestations of nationalism resists the simple classification of entire
nations, states or world regions as either civic or ethnic. The weaknesses of the civic-ethnic
dichotomy are therefore best revealed by discussion of its numerous empirical contradictions and
conceptual ambiguities. In recent years, several scholars have addressed these shortcomings.
Both Bernard Yack and Will Kymlicka observed that the characterization of the civic nation as a
voluntarily chosen allegiance based on purely political principles is a myth since all nationalisms
have cultural components. 60 Stephen Shulman and Taras Kuzio thereafter stressed that
ambivalence on whether culture belongs to the civic or the ethnic category calls the analytical
potential of the dichotomy into question.61 The mutually exclusive definitions of civic versus
ethnic nationalism simply fail to cover all manifestations of nationalism. Rogers Brubaker
expressed this concern most effectively by demonstrating how the narrow understandings of both
civic and ethnic nationalism define the phenomena out of existence.62 Next to these conceptual
critiques, one empirical re-examination of the civic-ethnic dichotomy stands out by uniting the
theoretical literature on nationalism in general with the separate literature of historical studies of
individual nationalisms. That edited volume by Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson
demonstrates through its unique collection of case studies that the complexity of each case of
nationalism contradicts the simple civic-ethnic dichotomy.63 This chapter builds upon these
earlier critiques in order to present a coherent argument against the civic-ethnic dichotomy.
Since the dichotomy determined civic nationalism to be Western and ethnic nationalism to be
Eastern, its empirical contradictions are best exposed by opposite examples of ethnic nationalism
in the West or civic nationalism in the East. The Irish, Scottish, Flemish, Basque and Catalan
movements come to mind as the most obvious contemporary examples of ethnic nationalism in
Western Europe, but even the classic historical cases on which most dichotomous arguments
60

Bernard Yack, The Myth of the Civic Nation in: R. Beiner ed., Theorizing Nationalism (1999) 103-118; Will

Kymlicka, Misunderstanding Nationalism in: R. Beiner ed., Theorizing Nationalism (1999) 131-140.
61

Stephen Shulman, Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East dichotomies in the study of nationalism in:

Comparative Political Studies 25:5 (2002) 554-585; Taras Kuzio, The myth of the civic state: a critical survey of
Hans Kohns framework for understanding nationalism in: Ethnic and Racial Studies 25:1 (2002) 20-39.
62

Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups, 136-140.

63

Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson ed., What is a nation?: Europe 1789-1914 (2006).

18

were originally based seem to contradict the dichotomy after careful re-examination. Scrutiny of
France as the archetypical model of the civic nation reveals the historical existence of prominent
ethnic visions of the French nation. The official revolutionary tradition of French nationalism did
envision the civic nation as a social contract between all equal citizens, but this was at the same
time opposed by the clerical-monarchist right with a parallel reactionary nationalist tradition that
formulated an ethnic conception of the nation. Throughout the nineteenth century it was the
tension between these civic and ethnic traditions that characterized French nationalism.64 Even
the official republican tradition of French nationalism included ethno-cultural components at
times. In the early nineteenth century, Abb Gregoire carried out violent linguistic policies that
pursued the destruction of local languages and the imposition of a hegemonic French culture.
Such policies did not correspond to civic voluntarism but instead resembled the ethnic model of
the nation. In the late nineteenth century, Jules Ferry continued cultural homogenization through
compulsory education. The history curriculum of his republican schools made reference to the
ethnic myth of the pre-Roman Gallic ancestry of the French and incorporated pre-revolutionary
symbols as Clovis and Joan of Arc. In the tense years before the Great War ethnic expressions
surfaced in both popular opinion and official politics as could be seen in the anti-Semitic outrage
of the Dreyfus affair in 1894 and in the militarist animosity against the German nation. These
examples make clear that the understanding of French nationalism as the archetype of civic
nationalism ignores the tension between civic and ethnic orientations within this nationalism.65
Within other cases of supposedly civic nationalism a similar tension between civic traditions
and ethnic orientations can be detected. The United Kingdom featured an imperial tradition of
British civic nationalism, whereas English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish myths of ethnic descent
remained largely unquestioned. These ethnic identities nested within civic British nationalism
and made its civic tradition multiple and complex.66 The Scandinavian cases of Denmark,
Norway and Sweden demonstrate a similar contradiction between civic nationalism of a clearly
liberal character and the persistence of myths of Viking or Germanic ethnic ancestry. The
64

Smith, National Identity, 13 and 81.

65

Timothy Baycroft, France: Ethnicity and the Revolutionary Tradition in: T. Baycroft and M. Hewitson ed., What

is a nation?: Europe 1789-1914 (2006) 28-41.

66

Chris Williams, The United Kingdom: British Nationalism during the Long Nineteenth Century in: T. Baycroft

and M. Hewitson ed., What is a nation?: Europe 1789-1914 (2006) 272-292.

19

impossibility of characterizing these Scandinavian nationalisms as either civic or ethnic has led
scholars to the formulation of an exceptionalist thesis of a Nordic middle way nationalism that
reconciled Western Enlightenment and Eastern Romanticism.67 The combination of civic and
ethnic conceptions, however, does not seem that distinctive considering its broader occurrence in
at least both French and British nationalisms next to the Scandinavian cases. These cases in fact
challenge the very framework of assumptions that underpins the civic-ethnic dichotomy since
they question its central contradiction between civic principles and ethnic conceptions.
The issue of ethnic elements within supposedly civic nationalisms brings the argument
beyond the plain debunking of the civic-ethnic dichotomy with contrary examples towards a
theoretical reassessment of whether civic attachment and ethnic belonging are rightfully
understood as opposed to each other. Nineteenth-century Europeans themselves most certainly
did not perceive civic and ethnic traditions of nationhood to be dichotomous. Historian Mark
Hewitson has effectively shown how most contemporaries in both Eastern and Western Europe
accepted the validity of ethnic myths of common descent and racial difference. The ubiquity of
ethnicity lay embedded in the predominantly agrarian character of nineteenth-century societies in
which the language of animal breeding and crop cultivation provided common analogies for race
and ethnicity. The centrality of family in these societies made it natural for many Europeans to
perceive the nation in terms of kinship as a community of descent. The modern academic
disciplines of biology, anthropology and ethnography only reinforced such ethnic understanding
of humanity with theories about different human races with distinct characteristics. The
prominent vocabulary of nineteenth-century scientists, thinkers and politicians equated the words
people, nation and race and thereby consolidated the common belief that ethnicity and
nationality were identical, even in countries characterized by civic participation.68
That in nineteenth-century Europe, civic participation did not exclude ethnic orientations of
nationalism nor vice versa may be clear from the case of Serbia. This Southeast European
principality liberated itself from direct Ottoman rule in a revolution between 1804 and 1830.
Emancipatory Serbian nationalism embraced liberal ideology and grounded its national liberation
on the Enlightenment principle of self-determination. The independent Serbian state thereafter
67

Mary Hilson, Denmark, Norway and Sweden: Pan-Scandinavianism and Nationalism in: T. Baycroft and M.

Hewitson ed., What is a nation?: Europe 1789-1914 (2006) 192-209.

68

Baycroft and Hewitson, What is a nation?, 315-327.

20

developed a liberal political culture with constitutional safeguards, representative government

and civic participation, as the extent of its suffrage was the third widest in Europe after France
and Switzerland.69 The Serbian case and other cases of nationalist liberation movements in
Eastern Europe challenge the supposed opposition between civic and ethnic ideas and refute the
geographic determinism that denies the possibility of civic orientations in Eastern Europe.70 The
civic principles of nationalism and the ethnic myths of belonging were both just as prevalent in
Western as in Eastern Europe and most often appeared together within individual nationalisms.71
Scholars that have criticized the civic-ethnic dichotomy on empirical grounds often came to
the conclusion that the dichotomy does not reflect historical reality since pure cases of civic or
ethnic nationalism do not exist. Anthony D. Smith was among the first in this tradition to
recognize that every nationalism contains civic and ethnic elements in varying degrees and
different forms. Sometimes civic and territorial elements predominate; at other times it is the
ethnic and vernacular components that are emphasized.72 Nationalism became understood as a
mixture of civic and ethnic elements in various proportions with different emphases. From this
argument followed a more abstract approach of the dichotomy as a heuristic device used to
characterize elements within nationalisms as civic or ethnic, instead of positioning whole
national traditions on one or the other side of the distinction. This alternative approach turned the
civic and ethnic categories into opposed checklists of analytical elements that should reveal how
these elements are mixed in different proportions within concrete cases.73 The problem with the
analytic distinction between civic and ethnic elements is that it retains these categories as ideal
types and thus continues the understanding of nationalism in bipolar terms. This soft version still
treats civic and ethnic definitions of nationhood as opposite poles between which lay various
combinations. Such appraisal of civic-ethnic dualism within nationalisms does not truly replace
the dichotomy but instead rehabilitates it without addressing its essential conceptual flaw.
The main objection against the civic-ethnic dichotomy concerns its flawed conceptualization
of civic and ethnic as mutually exclusive concepts believed to comprehend all manifestations
69

Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Serbia: The History behind the Name (2002) 26-92.

70

Peter Sugar and Ivo Lederer, Nationalism in Eastern Europe (1969).

71

Mungiu-Pippidi and Krastev, Nationalism after Communism, 29.

72

Smith, National Identity, 13.

73

Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups, 135-136.

21

of nationalism. Rogers Brubaker demonstrated that the strict understanding of ethnicity involves
emphasis on descent and excludes nationalist rhetoric that emphasizes common culture. This
reduces the domain of ethnic nationalism and creates a category of civic nationalism that is too
large and heterogeneous to be useful.74 Inclusion of cultural emphasis in civic nationalism then
contradicts the strict understanding of the civic concept, for there is no conceptual link between
civic nationalism and culture. A civic nation is united by common citizenship, respect for law
and identification with political principles but has no need for cultural unity. Historical examples
of assimilation and cultural hegemony have therefore been noted as contrary to the civic nation.75
Such a strict interpretation of civic nationalism as voluntarist, rationalist and culturally unmarked
defines the phenomenon out of existence. Yack and Kuzio has exposed the myth of the civic
nation by pointing out that the vast majority of people are born into their nation and do not
acquire their nationality by an act of rational will.76 The combination of the mutually exclusive
strict interpretations of civic and ethnic nationalism thus covers few instances of either one and
collapses in a large middle group that counts as neither since cultural elements have no place in
the civic-ethnic scheme. Both strict civic and strict ethnic nationalism appear to be myths as in
fact all nationalisms appeal to culture. This argument aspires to move beyond the civic-ethnic
dichotomy because dichotomous understanding of nationalism mistakenly treats civic and ethnic
concepts as the only defining features of nationalism and thereby ignores the true importance of
culture as the most universal defining feature of nationalism.77
The argument so far has demonstrated that the dichotomy between the civic West and the
ethnic East is inadequate and that its overemphasis on false differences overlooks essential
similarities that all nationalisms share. Both in Western and in Eastern Europe, nationalism
features internal tension between civic and ethnic tendencies and all nationalisms have cultural
components. Nationalism needs culture because cultural traits provide cohesion to the nation.
Membership in the nation involves participation in a common culture and thus is the social bond
of the nation very much based on cultural belonging. Will Kymlicka regarded the relation
between culture and nation to be so close that indeed these concepts are often defined in terms
74

Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups, 136-137.

75

Shulman, Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East dichotomies, 558-560.

76

Yack, The myth of the civic nation, 103-118; Kuzio, The myth of the civic state 24 and 29-37.

77

Kymlicka, Misunderstanding nationalism, 133-140; Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups, 138-140;

22

of each other.78 It is in the concern with culture, common among all nationalisms, that the
essence of nationalism as an undifferentiated ideology is to be found.
The major theorists of nationalism have all recognized the significance of culture, yet
surprisingly, they rarely included culture in their definitions of nationalism. Anderson noted that
nationality as well as nationalism, are cultural artefacts of a particular kind and suggested
that culture makes nationalism emotionally so attractive.79 Smith claimed that the nation must be
a cultural community and that mass education therefore socializes nationals into a single culture.
In reference to culture, Smith and Gellner thus achieved considerable common ground since they
both asserted that nationalism demands cultural homogeneity. This insight holds that nationalism
is the principle of homogenous cultural units as the foundations of political life. 80 The
uncontested recognition of the significance of culture for nationalism pushes the study of
nationalism beyond the normative moralism, geographic determinism and conceptual ambiguity
of the dichotomy towards a less biased and more adequate interpretation of nationalism. The
essence of nationalism is the ideological conjunction of culture with politics that establishes
similarity of culture as the universal basis of political community in East and West.
The conclusion that cultural homogenization is a defining feature of nationalism allows for an
unbiased interpretive framework that approaches nationalism in East and West with the same
rational criteria in a comparable and undifferentiated ideological context. The new independent
nation-states in postcommunist Eastern Europe thus pursued cultural homogenization in line with
the ideology of nationalism, following the Western examples of homogeneous nations. Western
European states have imposed a single dominant culture on their citizens for most of the past two
centuries whereas Eastern and especially Southeastern Europe preserved their diversity under
imperial rule. The Balkans in fact became the derogative Balkans when nationalist ideology
turned the diversity of the region into a problem rather than a fact of life. Balkan heterogeneity
was incompatible with the idea of nationalism. The violent homogenization of the Balkans in the
twentieth century, wrongly attributed to a Balkan essence, is the ultimate Europeanization of the
Balkans into a Southeastern Europe of homogeneous nation-states.81
78

Will Kymlicka, Multicultural citizenship: a liberal theory of minority rights (1995) 11, 75-80 and 105.

79

Anderson, Imagined Communities, 4-12.

80

Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 120; Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 136 and 156.

81

Andrew Wachtel, The Balkans in World History (2008) 8 and 120-125; Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 13.

23

CONCLUSION
The study of nationalism in general and postcommunist nationalism in particular should resist
the civic-ethnic dichotomy because of its normative moralism, geographic determinism,
conceptual ambiguities and empirical inadequacy. Neither the nationalisms that tore apart
Yugoslavia nor the secessionist Slovak, Moldavian, Baltic and Transcaucasian nationalisms are
explained by their simple classification as Eastern and therefore problematic ethnic nationalisms.
Dichotomous observations of nationalism reserve different theories and definitions for Western
Europe than for Eastern Europe while studying the exact same ideology. Such theoretical
separation does not reflect historical reality and prevents fair comparative study since the civic
and ethnic categories are based on different analytical standards. Through critical reassessment
of theories and typologies this study argued that the understanding of nationalism as one
undifferentiated ideology with identical political principles in East and West offers a superior
interpretive framework for the study of nationalism.
When nationalism is acknowledged as one universal ideology, the particularities of individual
cases of nationalism become the subject of case-by-case evaluation, which does justice to the
complexity of each national tradition. This approach abandons the crude categorization of
nationalisms into different types in favor of the study of the tensions and dynamics within each
nationalism. The internal tension between civic and ethnic orientations within nineteenth-century
French or Serbian nationalism becomes a far more revealing subject of study than the exercise of
labeling these national traditions as either civic or ethnic. The contemporary rise of xenophobic
anti-immigrant parties in Western Europe transforms from an uncomfortable exception into an
analyzable case related to the universal nationalist concern with homogeneous culture.
Immigrants are perceived as a threat to the dominant cultures of European states and seem to be
resisted for that very reason. Perceived threats to the dominance of this or that culture definitely
played a key role in the struggles for political succession in the postcommunist world. The
political landscape of Eastern Europe was transformed in attempts to synchronize the borders of
the nation and the state. Once titular nations established cultural dominance within their borders,
these postcommunist states became increasingly civic-orientated. Future study of nationalism
could come to valuable new insights by understanding nationalism as one undifferentiated
ideology, whose diverse manifestations are best studied in their respective historical contexts.

24

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26