Nationalist Sources of International Economic Integration

Most scholars of international relations and nationalism presume that nationalist ideology acts uniformly to hinder international economic integration, globalization, and free trade. This article challenges the conventional wisdom by developing an analytical framework of the incentives majority and minority nationalists face in the realm of foreign economic relations. Defining nationalism as the promotion of the autonomy, unity, and identity of the nation, it argues that nationalists have strong possible motivations both for and against close economic ties with foreign nations and states. As a result, oftentimes nationalists must make trade-offs among their goals of autonomy, unity, and identity when developing foreign economic policy preferences. Case studies of nationalist organizations in Quebec, India, and Ukraine that favor a high degree of international economic integration are presented to show the usefulness of the analytical framework.