Defending liberal nationalism—at what cost?

This article sets out to theoretically and empirically examine the liberal nationalist argument of promotion of cultural nationalism as a means of securing individual autonomy. The claim that a specific national identity needs to be promoted in the name of cultural nationalism in order to facilitate free and autonomous individuals is analysed. The article uses data from 21 of the countries participating in the International Social Survey Programme and examines whether cultural nationalism can be promoted without us having to pay a price for such promotion. It concludes that cultural nationalism only can be promoted as long as we are willing to pay the price of derogatory values aimed at individuals not considered as belonging to the nation. Thus, the liberal nationalist argument is put into question. Keywords: NationalismLiberalismIdentityXenophobiaAutonomy Notes Mikael Hjerm is a Research Fellow at the National Institute for Working Life Research and in the Department of Sociology at Umeå University. Correspondence to: Department of Sociology, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden. E‐mail: Mikael.hjerm@soc.umu.se This is sometimes referred to as liberal communitarianism when dealing with issues of multiculturalism. For example holidays founded on Christianity in Europe and Ramadan in Muslim countries. The liberal nationalist argument in defence of the justification of statehood does not include ethnic minorities who have more or less voluntarily immigrated from one territory to another (e.g. Kymlicka 1995). The question of which types of organisation are the most efficient, homogenous or heterogeneous is highly debatable. For more information on selection processes etc., see the ISSP official codebook published at http://www.issp.org/. It is possible to avoid this by referring to the idea of political nationalism and simply giving political sovereignty to national minorities. This may be possible in multinational countries, but is nearly always impossible in other countries. Moreover, even if it is possible in multinational countries, there will always be ethnic minorities living within the new sovereign territory. I do not claim to measure all possible forms of xenophobia with this operationalisation. It is clear that we are only measuring a very overt form of xenophobia, but for the purpose of this article it is sufficient. In practice it is also very difficult to separate the two from each other in spite of the theoretical reasons for doing so (see e.g. Billig 1995; Connor 1978; Hammar 1990). I do not believe that it is possible to pinpoint cultural practices that can be claimed to constitute any given nation but, seen as a patchwork of practices, norms and values, and taken together, most people are able to distinguish a myriad of combinations that are perceived as making up a given nation in relation to other nations and people belonging to them. It is argued that there can be multi‐ethnic nations. This is more likely to be a result of the conceptual vagueness in the notion of nation than anything else, since the existence of multi‐ethnic nations results from the way the nation is conceptualised. Results are available from the author. See also Sandel's (1998) critique of Rawls, showing that there exists a misconception that there can be neutrality when it comes to justice but not when it comes to the good life. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMikael Hjerm Footnote Mikael Hjerm is a Research Fellow at the National Institute for Working Life Research and in the Department of Sociology at Umeå University. Correspondence to: Department of Sociology, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden. E‐mail: Mikael.hjerm@soc.umu.se