Nationalism Lecture 12: Beyond nationalism? The case of European - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Nationalism

Lecture 12: Beyond nationalism? The case of European integration

• Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS) Seilergraben 49, Room G.2 lcederman@ethz.ch http://www.icr.ethz.ch/teaching/nationalism Assistant: Kimberly Sims, CIS, Room E 3, k-sims@northwestern.edu

Nationalism beyond the nation-state: Supranational Integration

• Concepts
• Theory families
• Democracy in the European Union

Tree historical situations

States present? No Yes Territorial States Nation- States “Middle Ages” Toward neo- Medievalism? No Nations present? Yes

Concepts

• Essentialism vs. Constructivism
• Second dimension: viability of political

integration defined in terms of:

– policy – institutions – identity: retention or supersession?

Four theory families

Approach to supra- national integration Retention Supersession Assumption about identity-formation Ethno- nationalism Pan- nationalism Bounded integration Post- nationalism Essentialism Constructivism

Ethno-nationalism

• Essentialist, culture-driven logic
• Rejection of supranationalist

identities as artificial, lacking historical depth

• Not clear what European culture

stands for

• Thus, the nation-state will remain

the main locus of identity

• See A. D. Smith

Post-Nationalism

• Constructivist-instrumentalist principles
• Politics driven by material conditions, and

because of technological development, the scale of political identities grows

• De-coupling of politics and “deep” culture,

toward a “thin” political culture

• Habermas’ “constitutional patriotism”
• Goal: European or cosmopolitan

integration

Jürgen Habermas

Bounded integration

• Constructivist-institutionalist

principles

• Identities “sticky”
• Reciprocal link between politics and

culture sustained by institutions

• Nation-state is a stable historical

equilibrium (cf. Gellner, Anderson etc.)

• Thus, supranationalist identity-

formation is difficult

Ernest Gellner Benedict Anderson

Pan-Europeanism

• Romantic movement dating

back to interwar period (Coudenhove-Kalergi, de Rougemont)

• Myth of European culture
• Search for “other”
• Cultural projects of European

Commission

Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi 1894-1972

Democracy beyond the nation-state?

• The democratic deficit of the European

Union

• The “demos” is the popular unit of

people voting in a democracy

• Key assumptions:

– Historical priority of demos and democracy – Nature of demos

Ethno-Nationalism

nation as cultural, bounded demos “primacy of demos” democracy

Post-Nationalism: Civic Voluntarism

“primacy of democratic practice” thin, non-cultural, unbounded demos democratic practice constitution

Bounded Integration

“tandem hypothesis” partly cultural, bounded demos democracy identity- building institutions

Institutional mechanisms of identity-formation

• External

– warfare – other exchanges

• Internal

– Mass media – Education – Language policy