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.

Episteme, nation-builders and national identity: the re-construction of Irishness*

“…Liah Greenfeld (1992) contends that those elites who are personally affected by the structural contradictions that modernity creates invent nations in order to overcome the adverse effects of modernisation. Many other authors share this instrumentalist view (Hechter 2000;Piper 2002;Ma´iz 2003;Scho¨pflin 2003;Hroch 2004).…”

Catalonia: Federalism or Secession?

“…The evolutionary interpretation proposed here owes much to new trends of thought in social sciences such as the evolutionist theory of political behaviour (Alford & Hibbing, 2004;Bowles & Gintis, 2011), institutional evolutionism (Steinmo, 2010;Blyth et al, 2011;Lustick, 2011), historical neo-institutionalism (Thelen, 2004;Streeck & Thelen, 2005) and discursive neo-institutionalism (Schmidt, 2011). But it also connects with important research programmes on adaptative federalism (Simeon, 2001;Bednar, 2009Bednar, , 2011Bednar, , 2015) and with constructivist approaches to nationalism and ethnic identities (Shelef, 2010;Chandra, 2012;Máiz, 2003aMáiz, , 2003bMáiz, , 2012.…”

Framing the nation: three rival versions of contemporary nationalist ideology

“…It is therefore necessary to complement an analysis of the social preconditions and rationale of mobilization with both ethno-symbolic examination of the ethnic raw material of nationalism and case-by-case analysis of ideological specifics-the internal organization and transformations of ethnic differentiae and the manner in which their political significance is created by the formation of external relationships with political ideologies and values. 17 For this purpose a very useful concept is that of the frame, a set of elementary, schematic collective beliefs that bestow meaning upon participation in collective action. 18 Sometimes intentionally created, by means of 'framing strategies', sometimes unconsciously as the result of such strategies having created a 'mobilization frame', interpretational frameworks synthesize the fundamental elements of the discourse of nationalist movements: a sense of historical injustice or oppression (grievances), membership of a homogeneous, well-differentiated community, and motivation for political action.…”