Ethnic and Regionalist Parties in Western Europe: A Party Family?

By Andreas Fagerholm

Volume 16, Issue 2, pages 304-339

Abstract

Parties that defend the interest of one or a few ethnic groups and/or regions are, despite their differences, recurrently grouped together into a single party family. This article systematically applies the multidimensional framework offered by Mair and Mudde in order to provide an up‐to‐date inventory of the universe of ethnic and regionalist parties in Western Europe and assess whether they form a family. The evidence indicates that although the ethnic and regionalist family appears to be somewhat less coherent than more established families, there are clear similarities between the proposed (core) member parties. More specifically, the common denominators that distinguish the members of the ethnic and regionalist party family are their rather similar origins, sociologies, and policy orientations.

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Ethno‐Religious Identity and Sectarian Civil Society: A Case from India

By Sarbeswar Sahoo

Volume 8, Issue 3, pages 453-480

Abstract

This paper analyses the role of Rajasthan Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP), an ethnic Hindu(tva) organisation, among the tribal populations in south Rajasthan. It argues that the RVKP has been able to enhance its legitimacy and expand its socio‐political support base among the tribals through a well‐articulated and planned process of ‘ethnification’. This process has been carried out in four basic ways: (1) utilising development projects as means to spread the ideology of Hindutva, (2) bringing religious awakening and organising mass re‐conversion programmes, (3) redefining indigenous identity and characterising certain communities as ‘the other’, and (4) with the support of the various state institutions. The paper concludes that by ethnicising indigenous identity, the RVKP has not just created a ‘culture of fear and violence’ in the tribal regions but also threatened the secular democratic ethos of Indian society.

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Nationalism in the Classroom: Narratives of the War in Bosnia‐Herzegovina (1992–1995) in the History Textbooks of the Republic of Srpska

By Alenka Bartulovic

Volume 6, Issue 3, pages 51-72

Abstract

The article considers the problem of the representation of the last war in Bosnia‐Herzegovina (1992–1995) in the history textbooks of the Republic of Srpska (Serb Republic)‐one of the entities in the country. The analysed textbooks are deliberately used as one of the most important instruments for the formation of national identity. Scholars generally agree that history lessons are in fact lessons in patriotism and that nation‐states use history to form the national identity of students and guarantee loyalty to the nation and state. While contemporary Bosnia‐Herzegovina supports this view, it must simultaneously be seen as a slightly peculiar case. The textbooks used in Bosnia‐Herzegovina promote separate, exclusive national identities: the Bosniac, Croatian and Serbian. This to a large extent explains why we are not witnessing the formation of a unified nation‐state, but its slow disintegration. The existence of Bosnia‐Herzegovinian culture and identity is intentionally neglected and denied. Serbian narratives about the war clearly show that strong aspiration for unification with the neighbouring Serbia still exists. This idea has proved to be dangerous in the past and might lead to a new tragic episode in Bosnia‐Herzegovinian history.

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Nationalism Reconsidered: The Local/Trans‐local Nexus of Globalisation

By Sandra Halperin

Volume 9, Issue 3, pages 465-480

Abstract

The emergence and generalisation of the nation‐state model was a product of an earlier phase of capitalist globalisation and the resulting dualistic process of expansion that, throughout the world, worked to increase the cultural distance between cities and their surrounding hinterlands. This dualism had a simultaneous globalising and localising dynamic: it linked together the upper strata of communities around the world in a trans‐local system of trade and inter‐cultural exchange; but, by restricting access to the material and cultural products generated by this system, it simultaneously reinforced a separate set of conditions of life for the wider local population. It was in the context of both the mobilisation of labour forces and the increasingly different systems for trans‐local and local interests and actors that dominant groups began to assert the national idea as a means of providing a new basis and cultural framework for social cohesion and order.

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**For the 29th annual ASEN conference taking place on 24-25 April, this week we have two featured articles related to the conference theme of nationalism and self-determination.**

Nationalism, Ethnicity and Self‐determination: A Paradigm Shift?

By Ephraim Nimni

Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 319-332

Abstract

An ongoing paradigm shift is giving birth to a more multidimensional understanding of the relationship between nationalism, sovereignty, self‐determination and democratic governance. A common element among the various versions of the new paradigm is the dispersal of democratic governance across multiple and overlapping jurisdictions. Governmental processes are no longer seen as discrete, centralised and homogenous (as in the old nation‐state model) but as asymmetrical, multilayered, multicultural and devolved into multiple jurisdictions. These changes have hardly affected the two main conceptual frameworks that dominate the study of nationalism: modernism and ethnosymbolism. As a result, these frameworks risk becoming irrelevant to the new forms of national self‐determination, asymmetrical governance and shared sovereignty. Modernism and ethnosymbolism insist that nationalism seeks to equate the nation with a sovereign state, while in reality the overwhelming majority of nations are stateless and unable to build nation states because they often inhabit territories shared with other nations. The paradigm shift occurs through the realisation that nation‐state sovereignty is no longer a feasible solution to the demands of stateless nations. Ethnosymbolism is in a much better position to adapt to the paradigm shift provided it abandons the claim that the nation state is the best shell for the nation.

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The Relation between Imperialism and Nationalism in the German Empire and its Aftermath: A Bourdieusian Field Theoretical Perspective

By Juho Korhonen

Volume 18, Issue 2, pages 167-187

Abstract

In this article I explore the relation between empire and nationalism in the late German Empire and its aftermath. I argue, from the perspective of Bourdieusian field theory and the political field, that the transformation of the relation between empire and nationalism was connected to colonial expansion that prompted political actors to formulate ‘imperial policies’ aimed at subverting dominant power. The rise of national self‐determination following the First World War (WWI) thwarted this development by confining the political field into a national framework and separating nationalism from empire. This was the emergence of what Bourdieu called national metacapital that has the capacity to regulate and define other forms of capital and their exchange in an ideal‐type nation‐state, in contrast to imperial symbolic capital that mediates and connects other forms of capital.

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