Nationalism as Liberation and Exclusion
Nationalism as Liberation and Exclusion
Nationalism has been one of the most influential political forces of the modern era. It has inspired struggles against colonial domination, united fragmented societies, and helped establish independent states across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. At the same time, nationalism has also justified discrimination, exclusion, ethnic conflict, authoritarian rule, and violence against minority populations. The articles collected here examine nationalism from multiple scholarly perspectives, exploring both its emancipatory potential and its capacity to divide societies.
Nationalism as a Force for Liberation
Many historians describe nationalism as a driving force behind anti-colonial movements that challenged European imperial rule throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nationalist movements often provided a common political identity that united diverse linguistic, religious, and ethnic communities in pursuit of independence and self-government.
The collection includes research on African, Asian, and global decolonization movements, showing how national identity became closely connected with political sovereignty, dignity, and resistance to foreign domination. Several authors also examine alternatives proposed by anti-colonial thinkers, including regional federations, Pan-Africanism, and international cooperation beyond the traditional nation-state.
Nationalism and Democratic Self-Government
National identity has frequently strengthened democratic participation by encouraging citizens to view themselves as members of a shared political community. Civic nationalism emphasizes common political values, constitutional principles, equal citizenship, and democratic institutions rather than ethnicity or religion.
Several works examine how inclusive forms of nationalism can promote political stability, democratic legitimacy, and public cooperation while creating a shared sense of national purpose across diverse populations.
Ethnonationalism and Exclusion
Many scholars distinguish civic nationalism from ethnonationalism, which defines national membership primarily through ancestry, ethnicity, race, language, or religion. Ethnonationalist movements often portray minorities as outsiders regardless of citizenship or long-standing residence.
The collected research examines how ethnonationalism has contributed to unequal citizenship, discrimination, exclusionary immigration policies, forced assimilation, and political marginalization in numerous countries and historical periods.
Majoritarianism, Populism, and Democratic Backsliding
Recent scholarship explores how nationalist rhetoric is frequently employed by populist movements that claim to represent an "authentic" national majority. Such movements often argue that political opponents, immigrants, religious minorities, or international institutions threaten national identity.
Several articles investigate how majoritarian politics can weaken democratic institutions, reduce protections for minority rights, and redefine democracy primarily as majority rule rather than constitutional government and equal citizenship.
Nationalism, Religion, and Identity
Religion has historically been intertwined with many nationalist movements. Some governments and political organizations have fused religious identity with national identity, while others have promoted secular nationalism that attempts to separate citizenship from religious affiliation.
The collection examines Hindu nationalism, Buddhist nationalism, Islamic identity, Christian political traditions, and broader debates over how religious beliefs shape concepts of national belonging.
Nationalism, Immigration, and Citizenship
Questions of immigration, citizenship, and national membership remain central to contemporary debates about nationalism. Scholars analyze competing arguments concerning border control, multiculturalism, minority integration, refugee policy, and the rights of immigrants and former colonial populations.
Several studies also investigate how legal definitions of citizenship can include or exclude ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural minorities.
Nationalism and Minority Rights
International organizations and human-rights scholars emphasize that protecting minority rights is essential for democratic stability and conflict prevention. The articles examine language rights, political representation, religious freedom, cultural recognition, and equal citizenship as important safeguards against nationalist exclusion.
Research also explores how states have attempted to integrate diverse populations while balancing national unity with cultural pluralism.
Colonialism, Decolonization, and Historical Memory
Nationalism cannot be understood apart from colonial history. Many articles investigate how colonial administrations shaped ethnic identities, territorial boundaries, and political institutions whose effects continue long after independence.
The collection also examines how historical memory, imperial legacies, and postcolonial state-building continue to influence debates about nationalism, sovereignty, and national identity.
Comparative Perspectives
The collected scholarship covers numerous regions including Africa, India, Europe, Türkiye, China, Korea, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and North America. These comparative studies illustrate that nationalism is neither inherently democratic nor inherently authoritarian. Its consequences depend heavily upon political institutions, leadership, historical circumstances, and how national identity is defined.
Conclusion
The articles in this collection present nationalism as a complex and evolving political phenomenon rather than a single ideology with uniform outcomes. Nationalism has inspired liberation movements, democratic participation, and resistance to colonial rule while also contributing to exclusion, discrimination, ethnic conflict, and authoritarian politics. Together, these sources encourage a balanced understanding of how national identity can both strengthen democratic communities and undermine equal citizenship when it becomes exclusive or intolerant.
Foundations, Theories, and Comparative Perspectives
Nationalism
| Renaud-Philippe Garner | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | May 18, 2022
Surveys major theories of nationalism and explains how shared memories, languages, territory, and political institutions can create solidarity while simultaneously establishing borders between national insiders and outsiders.
The Disruptive Power of Ethnic Nationalism
| Michael Clarke | The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute | 2018
Discusses the resurgence of ethnic nationalism amid terrorism, migration, and globalization, emphasizing its capacity to destabilize democratic institutions and relations among ethnic and religious communities.
A New Look at Ethnicity and Democratization
| Mark R. Beissinger | Journal of Democracy | 2008
Argues that ethnic nationalism can sometimes support democratic liberation from external domination, while warning that projects seeking ethnically pure states often produce displacement, violence, and authoritarianism.
Anticolonial Nationalism, Decolonization, and Self-Determination
Colonialism and Decolonization on a World Scale—Three Perspectives
| Umut Özsu | American Journal of International Law | 2026
Compares influential theories of colonialism and liberation, including Frantz Fanon’s understanding of national emancipation as a struggle involving race, class, political consciousness, and human dignity.
Regional Rights Projects and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century
| Anne-Isabelle Richard and Stella Krepp | Cambridge University Press | January 31, 2026
Examines regional human-rights projects in Africa, Europe, and Latin America, showing how anticolonial leaders sought international arrangements that could protect newly liberated nations without isolating them inside rigid sovereign borders.
Decolonizing Decolonization
| Frederick Cooper | Comparative Studies in Society and History | 2025
Warns against treating decolonization as a single process culminating inevitably in nation-states and recovers the competing federal, regional, socialist, imperial-reform, and national possibilities considered by anticolonial activists.
Nationalism and Decolonization in Nigeria
| Toyin Falola | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History | September 17, 2025
Traces the growth of Nigerian nationalism from elite constitutional activism to mass anticolonial resistance, while examining how regional, ethnic, and religious divisions complicated efforts to create an inclusive postcolonial nation.
Decolonising the History of Internationalism: Transnational Activism Across the South
| Su Lin Lewis | Transactions of the Royal Historical Society | 2024
Reconstructs the international networks of Asian and African activists who connected national liberation with feminism, socialism, cultural exchange, and South–South solidarity rather than viewing independence as an exclusively national project.
Another World? East Africa, Decolonisation, and the Global History of the Mid-Twentieth Century
| Ismay Milford | Journal of African History | 2021
Places East African nationalism within international networks of Pan-Africanism, anticolonial activism, labor organizing, religious movements, development debates, and Cold War politics.
Nationalism and Decolonization in the Gold Coast
| Roger Gocking | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History | August 31, 2021
Explores the development of nationalism in the Gold Coast before Ghanaian independence, emphasizing disputes over sovereignty, traditional authority, colonial constitutional reform, territorial identity, and the meaning of national membership.
Rhetorical Contexts of Colonization and Decolonization
| Josue David Cisneros | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication | July 30, 2020
Examines how political language, representation, sovereignty, territory, Indigenous identity, and national self-determination shape the rhetoric of colonial domination and movements seeking decolonization.
Against Self-Determination
| Adom Getachew | Humanity Journal | 2018
Reconsiders the belief that anticolonial liberation was simply a campaign to create independent nation-states, showing that many anticolonial thinkers envisioned regional federations and international alternatives to sovereign nationalism.
The Postcolonial Cold War
| Sergey Radchenko | Foreign Affairs | 2017
Reviews the international politics of decolonization and explains how newly independent states used nationalism and anti-imperial solidarity to pursue liberation while becoming entangled in Cold War rivalries.
Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Colonialism
Explains how colonial governments constructed and hardened ethnic identities and how decolonization granted sovereignty to territorial states while denying many internal ethnonational communities separate statehood.
Revolutionary Self-Determination? Third-Worldism, Anti-Colonialism, and Ethno-Nationalism in Western Europe, 1955–1980
| Xosé M. Núñez Seixas | Nationalities Papers | 2016
Explores how Basque, Breton, Irish, and other European nationalist movements adopted the language of Third World liberation, internal colonialism, socialism, and revolutionary self-determination.
Anticolonialism and Nationalism
| Michel Cahen | Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism | 2012
Explores the complicated relationship between anticolonialism and nationalism, explaining how movements for liberation adopted national sovereignty while also confronting borders and identities inherited from colonial rule.
A Wind of Change That Transformed the Continent
| Ernest Harsch | United Nations Africa Renewal | August 2010
Reviews the long African struggle against colonialism and apartheid, emphasizing how nationalist organizations, liberation movements, international solidarity, sanctions, and United Nations diplomacy helped end white-minority rule.
The Rise, the Fall and the Insurrection of Nationalism in Africa
| Issa G. Shivji | Pambazuka News | 2004
Reviews African nationalism as a force that defeated colonial domination but later weakened as postcolonial governments abandoned popular participation, social transformation, and broader Pan-African liberation.
Indigenous Peoples and Self-Determination
| Maivân Clech Lâm | United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues | 2004
Explains Indigenous self-determination as a means of recovering control over lands, institutions, cultures, and development while distinguishing Indigenous autonomy from conventional separatist nationalism.
What Kind of Radicalism for Africa?
| Colin Legum | Foreign Affairs | 1965
Portrays African anticolonial nationalism as both a rejection of foreign domination and a positive assertion of political dignity, cultural autonomy, modernization, and collective self-government.
Communism and Nationalism in Tropical Africa
| Thomas Hodgkin | Foreign Affairs | 1961
Examines alliances and tensions between African nationalism and communist movements during decolonization, when national liberation united groups with very different visions of the postcolonial state.
The British Problem in Africa
| Thomas Hodgkin | Foreign Affairs | 1951
Discusses the growth of African nationalism under British colonial rule and the increasing demand for representative government, independence, and an end to imperial political domination.
Citizenship, Minorities, Migration, and Exclusion
Problematizing and Reappraising Critiques of “Ethnonationalism”
| Noam Schimmel | World Affairs | 2025
Examines debates over ethnonationalism, acknowledging that exclusionary and chauvinistic nationalism threatens minority rights while questioning whether every appeal to national identity should be treated as inherently oppressive.
A Moderate Methodological Nationalist Critique of Multicultural Nationalism
| Emine Baycan-Herzog | Democratic Theory | 2025
Evaluates proposals for multicultural nationalism while emphasizing the continuing disadvantages faced by minorities whom national majorities consider less deserving of recognition, representation, or equal social rights.
Indispensable Nations
| Maya Jasanoff | Foreign Affairs | February 25, 2025
Reviews a global history of nationalism that presents it as one of the modern world’s most powerful forces for popular sovereignty, cultural solidarity, imperial expansion, political exclusion, and mass violence.
Majoritarianism Without Majorities
| Kanchan Chandra | Journal of Democracy | 2024
Explains how nationalist leaders construct imagined majority communities and use them to weaken pluralism, marginalize minorities, and redefine democracy as the unchecked rule of a supposedly authentic national group.
The Rise of Multicultural Nationalism
| Tariq Modood | Journal of Democracy | 2024
Argues that national identity does not have to be ethnically exclusive and can instead provide a shared political framework in which religious, cultural, and ethnic minorities receive public recognition.
Unveiling Discrimination: Minorities in Türkiye
| Nurcan Kaya | Minority Rights Group Europe | April 2024
Documents structural discrimination experienced by ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities in Türkiye and links many of these inequalities to a state-building tradition centered on a narrowly defined Turkish national identity.
Explicit Exclusions; or, The Ethnicization of Democracy
| Mahmood Mamdani | Critical Times | 2021
Examines political systems that divide citizens into ethnic majorities and minorities, creating unequal forms of citizenship in which the dominant national community receives greater power and protection.
Georgia’s Minorities: Breaking Down Barriers to Integration
| Thomas de Waal | Carnegie Europe | June 9, 2021
Examines the barriers separating Georgia’s ethnic and religious minorities from national institutions, including language policies, weak political representation, economic isolation, and historical mistrust.
Ethno-Nationalism and the Ideology of the Postcolonial State
| Mohammad Shahabuddin | Cambridge University Press | May 21, 2021
Examines how international law encouraged postcolonial governments to present territorially defined populations as unified nations, often suppressing minority claims that complicated state sovereignty and national homogeneity.
Human Rights Council Holds Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues
| United Nations Human Rights Office | OHCHR | March 11, 2020
Reviews disputes over which populations qualify as minorities and warns that narrow legal definitions can exclude linguistic, religious, migrant, and noncitizen communities from human-rights protection.
From Nation-State to State-Nation
| Pratap Bhanu Mehta | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | December 18, 2019
Criticizes attempts to transform India from a diverse state containing many communities into a nation defined by a dominant religious identity and an exclusionary citizenship regime.
Report of the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues
| Fernand de Varennes | United Nations General Assembly | July 15, 2019
Explains how inconsistent definitions of minorities exclude some communities from international protection because they are migrants, noncitizens, recently established populations, or groups not recognized by national governments.
Development and the Crisis of Global Nationalism
| Homi Kharas | Brookings Institution | 2018
Connects contemporary nationalism to economic inequality and uneven development, warning that political movements may respond to insecurity by excluding immigrants, foreigners, and international institutions.
The Mobilization of Conservative Civil Society
| Richard Youngs | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | October 4, 2018
Explores the growth of conservative civic organizations, distinguishing inclusive efforts to recover community and national belonging from aggressive movements that treat migrants, minorities, and liberal values as threats.
Ethno-Nationalism Denies Millions Their Citizenship Rights
| United Nations Human Rights Office | OHCHR | July 5, 2018
Warns that governments use nationality, citizenship, and immigration laws to discriminate against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities and to portray them as foreigners within their own countries.
States Illegally Use Citizenship, Nationality and Immigration Laws to Justify Discrimination
| United Nations Human Rights Office | OHCHR | July 2, 2018
Documents how exclusionary nationalism can produce statelessness, deportation, disenfranchisement, and unequal access to public services by restricting which ethnic or religious communities qualify for citizenship.
Rediscovering the Cosmopolitan Moral Purpose of Education
| Fernando M. Reimers | Brookings Institution | February 17, 2017
Argues that nationalist education can divide humanity into citizens and outsiders, placing migrants and cultural minorities at particular risk of exclusion from rights, curricula, and public recognition.
A Nation’s Right to Exclude and the Colonies
| Sara Amighetti and Alasia Nuti | Political Theory | 2016
Challenges nationalist arguments for immigration restriction by contending that people from former colonies possess special claims to enter countries that previously ruled, exploited, and reshaped their societies.
The Globalization of Rage
| Pankaj Mishra | Foreign Affairs | October 17, 2016
Connects contemporary nationalist anger to economic disruption, political humiliation, inequality, and resentment, explaining why immigrants, refugees, cosmopolitan elites, and minorities become convenient targets.
The Turkish Constitution and the Kurdish Question
| Yigal Schleifer | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | August 1, 2011
Considers constitutional reforms that could replace an assimilationist understanding of Turkish nationalism with equal citizenship that recognizes Kurdish language, identity, culture, and political participation.
Minorities in Southeast Europe: Inclusion and Exclusion
| Hugh Poulton | Minority Rights Group International | 1998
Provides a historical overview of majority-minority relations in Southeastern Europe and examines how nationalism, state borders, language policies, displacement, and political discrimination shaped minority exclusion.
The Dynamics of Democratic Exclusion
| Charles Taylor | Journal of Democracy | October 1998
Examines the tendency of democratic nations to create boundaries between full members and outsiders and considers how demands for collective identity can conflict with equal citizenship and minority recognition.
Nationalism, Ethnicity and Democracy
| Peri Pamir | Contemporary Politics | 1997
Investigates tensions among ethnic identity, nationalism, and democratic government, emphasizing how political mobilization around ethnic divisions can encourage conflict and undermine equal citizenship.
The Case Against Nationalism
| Alex Nowrasteh and Ilya Somin | Cato Institute and National Affairs | Winter 2024
Presents a classical-liberal critique of nationalism, arguing that collective national loyalty can undermine individual rights, immigration freedom, constitutional limitations, economic openness, and equal treatment in diverse societies.
Religious Nationalism, Majoritarianism, and Populism
India’s New Minority Politics
| Feyaad Allie | Journal of Democracy | January 2025
Examines how both India’s governing Hindu-nationalist party and sections of the political opposition have marginalized Muslim representation, leaving a major religious minority increasingly excluded from national political life.
Is Dialogue Possible Between Right-Wing Populists and Muslim Communities?
| Shadi Hamid and Rashad Ali | Brookings Institution | 2023
Considers whether nationalist populists and Muslim minority communities can engage constructively despite profound disagreements about immigration, religion, citizenship, pluralism, and the boundaries of national belonging.
Nationalism and Religion in Comparative Perspective: A New Typology of National-Religious Configurations
| Şener Aktürk | Nationalities Papers | 2022
Develops a comparative framework for understanding relationships between nationalism and religion, including religiously exclusive nation-building, national myths of sacred destiny, secular nationalism, and transnational religious identities.
Religion, Citizenship, and Belonging in India
| Niraja Gopal Jayal | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | June 2, 2022
Explains how Hindu nationalism emerged through democratic politics while progressively redefining Indian citizenship and belonging around the religious and cultural claims of the Hindu majority.
Hindu Nationalism and the New Jim Crow
| Ashutosh Varshney and Connor Staggs | Journal of Democracy | 2020
Compares the marginalization of Muslims under Hindu-majoritarian politics in India with racial oppression in the Jim Crow South, emphasizing exclusionary laws, segregation, intimidation, and unequal citizenship.
Is Civic Nationalism Necessarily Inclusive? Conceptions of Nationhood and Anti-Muslim Attitudes in Europe
| Kristina Bakkær Simonsen | European Journal of Political Research | 2020
Challenges the assumption that civic nationalism is automatically tolerant, finding that national identities based on supposedly universal political values can still be used to stigmatize Muslims as culturally incompatible.
The Rise of Sweden Democrats and the End of Swedish Exceptionalism
| Mabel Berezin | Brookings Institution | 2020
Analyzes how anxiety about immigration, Islam, crime, welfare, and cultural change helped an exclusionary nationalist party gain influence in a country long associated with humanitarianism and social inclusion.
Muslims and the Secular City: How Right-Wing Populists Shape the French Debate Over Islam
| Jonathan Laurence | Brookings Institution | 2020
Explores how French nationalism, secular republicanism, colonial history, and right-wing populism interact in debates over whether Muslims can be fully accepted as members of the French nation.
India’s Government Is Prioritizing Nationalism Over Economic Renewal
| Milan Vaishnav | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | January 30, 2020
Argues that India’s citizenship disputes and Hindu-nationalist mobilization intensified minority exclusion, political polarization, and instability while diverting government attention from economic reform.
Right-Wing Populism in Germany: Muslims and Minorities After the 2015 Refugee Crisis
| Daniel Ziblatt, Hélène Miard-Delacroix and others | Brookings Institution | 2019
Examines how the refugee crisis intensified disputes over German identity and enabled nationalist movements to portray Muslims, migrants, and multiculturalism as threats to national cohesion.
Anti-Muslim Populism in Hungary: From the Margins to the Mainstream
| Péter Krekó and Zsolt Enyedi | Brookings Institution | 2019
Describes how Hungary’s government transformed anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim nationalism into a central political strategy, normalizing hostility toward refugees and other minority communities.
The New Right: Austria’s Freedom Party and Changing Perceptions of Islam
| Farid Hafez and Reinhard Heinisch | Brookings Institution | 2019
Traces the development of anti-Muslim rhetoric within Austria’s Freedom Party and explains how Islam became a symbolic enemy through which the party defined an exclusionary national identity.
Islam as a “Floating Signifier”: Right-Wing Populism and Perceptions of Muslims in Denmark
| Johannes Ravn and Torkel Brekke | Brookings Institution | July 24, 2019
Shows how Danish nationalist discourse represents Islam as a cultural, political, gender, and security threat, making Muslims symbolic outsiders even when they possess formal citizenship.
Muslims in the West and the Rise of the New Populists: The Case of Italy
| Pietro Castelli Gattinara | Brookings Institution | July 24, 2019
Examines how Italian populist parties converted economic insecurity, migration, and cultural anxiety into nationalist opposition to Muslims and refugees.
The BJP in Power: Indian Democracy and Religious Nationalism
| Milan Vaishnav | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | April 4, 2019
Brings together analyses of how Hindu nationalism has reshaped Indian democracy, secularism, caste relations, minority rights, economic policymaking, political institutions, and foreign affairs.
Can Buddhist Values Overcome Nationalism in Sri Lanka?
| Ahilan Kadirgamar | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | July 25, 2018
Examines tensions between the universal ethical teachings of Buddhism and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, particularly in relations with Tamil and Muslim minorities.
The European Trust Crisis and the Rise of Populism
Links declining political trust and economic insecurity with support for nationalist and populist parties that frequently promote anti-immigration and anti-minority policies.
Race, Gender, Inequality, and Social Movements
Ethnic Nationalism and Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement Among Black and Asian Americans
| Krystal L. Gaines and Benjamin R. Warner | Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics | 2025
Investigates how ethnic-nationalist beliefs among Black and Asian Americans influence solidarity with Black Lives Matter, showing how nationalism can inspire resistance to oppression while also shaping attitudes toward other groups.
Racism, Nationalism and Exclusion
| Anwen Elias | Emerald Publishing | 2024
Investigates the historical relationship between nationalism and racism, showing how definitions of national belonging can reinforce racial hierarchies and exclude populations considered culturally or biologically foreign.
Nationalism and Inequality Scholarship in the Age of Populism: Bringing Territory Back In
| Guzel Yusupova and Timofey Agarin | Nationalities Papers | 2024
Reviews scholarship connecting nationalism with economic and political inequality and argues that territorial disparities help nationalist leaders distinguish prosperous centers, neglected regions, deserving citizens, and unwanted outsiders.
Racialization, Colonialism, and Imperialism: A Critical Autoethnography on the Experiences of a Racialized Immigrant Academic
| Jing Ma | Social Sciences | 2023
Explores how colonialism, racialization, and national identity shape the experiences of immigrants in Canada, revealing how formally inclusive national narratives can coexist with institutional exclusion.
The Movement for Colonial Freedom
| Daniel Gorman | Cambridge University Press | July 8, 2022
Examines a British organization that linked domestic activists with colonial nationalist movements and international institutions in campaigns against imperial rule, racism, and political repression.
The Migrant Other: Exclusion Without Nationalism?
| Caress Schenk | Nationalities Papers | 2021
Investigates how states and societies construct migrants as outsiders, questioning whether all such exclusion is nationalist while revealing broader structures of racialization, hierarchy, gender, and unequal membership.
Gender and Nationalism
| Jennifer Thomson | Nationalities Papers | 2020
Reviews scholarship showing how nationalist movements assign gendered roles to citizens, portray women as biological and cultural reproducers of the nation, and regulate sexuality, migration, family life, and belonging.
Women in Nationalist Movements in Africa
| Kathleen Sheldon | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History | June 25, 2019
Describes women’s participation in African independence movements as organizers, protesters, propagandists, combatants, caregivers, and political thinkers, while noting that liberation from colonial rule did not necessarily deliver gender equality.
Women, Equality, and Citizenship in Contemporary Africa
| Aili Mari Tripp | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | April 26, 2019
Examines how postcolonial citizenship laws and nationalist institutions have discriminated on the basis of gender, ethnicity, race, and religion, often denying African women the full benefits of national independence.
Decolonizing Nationalist Racism? Reflections on Travel Writing from Mid-Twentieth-Century Kerala, India
| J. Devika | Modern Asian Studies | 2018
Studies racial and cultural stereotypes in Indian travel writing and shows how people engaged in anticolonial nationalism could reproduce hierarchical attitudes toward Africans and other populations.
Nationalism, Conflict, and Political Violence
Leader Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, and Terrorist Violence
| Seung-Whan Choi | British Journal of Political Science | 2022
Finds that nationalist rhetoric from political leaders can make disfavored ethnic communities fear for their survival, increasing the likelihood that some members will turn toward violent resistance.
Minorities and Their Rights Matter to Prevent Conflict, Says Expert
| United Nations Human Rights Office | OHCHR | April 22, 2022
Connects violent conflict with the denial of minority rights and argues that meaningful participation, linguistic protection, equal citizenship, and freedom from discrimination are essential to preventing nationalist confrontation.
The “Glocal” Effect: Rethinking Religious Nationalism and Radicalization
| Ahmet T. Kuru | Brookings Institution | 2016
Examines how national, local, and transnational religious identities interact, showing how insecurity and exclusion can make both nationalism and religious solidarity powerful vehicles for political mobilization.
Shia-Centric State Building and Sunni Rejection in Post-2003 Iraq
| Harith Hasan Al-Qarawee | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | January 7, 2016
Explains how rival sectarian visions of Iraqi national identity produced a state perceived by many Sunnis as exclusionary, contributing to alienation, insurgency, violence, and competing claims to national ownership.
Nationalism, Exclusion and Violence: A Territorial Approach
| John Etherington | Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism | 2007
Explains how nationalist claims to territory create boundaries between insiders and outsiders and may legitimize exclusion or violence against groups portrayed as obstacles to national unity.
Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Rationality
| Ashutosh Varshney | Perspectives on Politics | 2003
Argues that nationalist resistance cannot be understood solely through material self-interest because struggles for dignity, recognition, collective self-respect, and protection from humiliation often motivate extraordinary sacrifice.
The South Caucasus: Nationalism, Conflict and Minorities
| Anna Matveeva | Minority Rights Group International | May 2002
Analyzes conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, demonstrating how competing national projects, territorial claims, displacement, and distrust encouraged increasingly monoethnic political communities.
Ethnic Nationalism and Subaltern Political Process: Exploring Autonomous Democratic Action in Kashmir
| John G. Cockell | Nations and Nationalism | July 2000
Studies Kashmiri nationalism as a form of subaltern political mobilization that created alternative spaces for participation and resistance but was increasingly threatened by militarization, state repression, and extremist violence.
Regional and National Case Studies
Before There Is Power, There Is the Country: Civic Nationalism and Political Mobilisation Amongst Kenya’s Opposition Coalitions, 2013–2018
| Peter Lockwood | Journal of Modern African Studies | 2019
Finds that Kenyan opposition supporters sometimes transcend ethnic divisions by appealing to constitutionalism, democracy, equality, justice, and an inclusive civic conception of the nation.
Debating the End of British Colonial Rule in Africa
| Cheikh Anta Babou | Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science | 2010
Examines African struggles for independence in Ghana, Kenya, Central Africa, and elsewhere, highlighting nationalism’s role in mobilizing diverse populations against British colonial authority.
An Uneven Fit? The Turkish Model and the Arab World
| Ömer Taşpınar | Brookings Institution | August 2003
Examines Turkish nation-building and its tensions with Kurdish identity, showing how a formally civic definition of Turkishness could still demand cultural assimilation and suppress alternative national identities.
The Politics of Ethnic Nationalism in Divided Korea
| Gi-Wook Shin | Nations and Nationalism | 1999
Explores how North and South Korea used a shared belief in Korean ethnic unity while constructing mutually exclusive political definitions of the legitimate nation and portraying the opposing state as a betrayer of national authenticity.
Communism and Nationalism in China
| Benjamin Schwartz | Foreign Affairs | 1950
Explains how Chinese communists combined revolutionary social reform with nationalist resistance to imperialism, foreign intervention, and the political weakness of the existing state.
