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This article uses the French Rassemblement National (RN) as a case study to examine how the populist radical right (PRR) prepares for a world after COVID-19 dominated by climate change concerns. Research suggests that certain measures introduced to contain the virus – such as the establishment of strict border and travel restrictions – may legitimize the PRR's protectionist and anti-immigration agendas, yet few have examined whether or how PRR parties have used COVID-19 to promote their environmental agenda. If anything, the expectation has been that the pandemic would hurt the PRR precisely because its effects, unlike climate change, cannot be dismissed as a "hoax." This view overlooks not only the "environmental turn" recently taken by several PRR parties but also the possibility that public awareness of the causal link between climate change and COVID-19 may work to their advantage. The analysis presented in this article highlights this possibility, showing that the RN used COVID-19 not only to capitalize on anti-immigrant sentiment but also to bolster its self-image as a champion of environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the national identity argument in unsettled times by using the COVID-19 pandemic as a test case. It uses a longitudinal survey among Jewish Israelis to examine whether the pandemic influenced levels of national identity and solidarity and whether it altered their relationship. The findings indicate a clear reduction in levels of solidarity, national attachment, and national chauvinism over time. They also show that the positive connection between national attachment and solidarity grew stronger, while the connection between national chauvinism and solidarity became weaker and insignificant. These findings provide complex evidence for the national identity argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will examine the response of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) to the COVID-19 pandemic from an ontological security approach to illustrate how critical junctures may help de facto states in their quest for status and internal legitimacy. Stressing the pandemic's role in the reconstruction of political narratives and self-legitimating practices among Turkish Cypriot elites, it sheds light on the effects of this global crisis on domestic power struggles in Northern Cyprus as well as its quasi-foreign relations with its patron state (Turkey), parent state (Republic of Cyprus), and the European Union. The study shows that both nationalist and federalist elites of the de facto entity instrumentalized the pandemic in their legitimation strategies and engaged in opportunistic behavior amid the outbreak. It also reveals how the pandemic enhanced the ontological security of Northern Cyprus while advancing its nationalist leadership's claims for legitimate authority by enabling state-specific forms of agency and unilateral acts concerning the Cyprus dispute that may jeopardize the resumption of peace talks with Greek Cypriots. Thus, it can be assumed that advanced ontological security of the TRNC is highly volatile given the prospects of further isolation and de-engagement in the post-pandemic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For three European states in particular, the Covid-19 pandemic has served to catalyze pre-existing territorial disputes. While the United Kingdom, Spain, and Belgium have all had very different responses to the pandemic, in all three cases the actions of central and regional government have put existing structures of regional autonomy under strain. In Spain, the pandemic response has become intertwined with the Catalan independence debate (especially in disputes between pro-independence parties), and elsewhere in the country it has cemented co-operative relationships between moderate nationalists and the statewide left. In Belgium, the pandemic has accentuated territorial disputes and further complicated government formation. And in the UK diverging responses to the pandemic have helped boost nationalist movements in the devolved nations; particularly the cause of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and their ambitions to create an independent Scottish state. While the year has been highly significant for secessionist movements in all three states, only in the UK does a decisive shift towards state-breakup seem to have occurred. The article argues that whether or not a secessionist movement benefits from the pandemic is highly contingent on contextual factors, including the performance of state-level governments in responding to the pandemic and the relative autonomy of regional governments during the response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the lead article of this symposium, Florian Bieber predicted that the Covid-19 pandemic would have limited long-term effects on the global rise in the level of nationalism because most governments were likely to revert to their prior nationalist trajectories following the pandemic. Nonetheless, I argue that we can learn something about the role of nationalism in the management of public health crises by looking at the variable state responses to the arrival of the virus within their borders. In the modern international system, state governments are tasked with safeguarding the health and well-being of their national populations. During national emergencies, sovereigntist movements form around competing images of the nation that deserves protection. This article uses political artwork to show how different images of the idealized sovereign community were employed to justify divergent pandemic policies of US President Donald Trump and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Over the course of the pandemic, both leaders came under fire for failing to protect their constituents, providing space for alternative leaders and models of national protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated at the interplay between ethnic politics, migration, border, and security studies, this contribution analyzes processes of securitization of borders in South Tyrol, an Italian province bordering Austria and Switzerland with a German- and Ladin-speaking population and a past of ethnic tensions. South Tyrol is considered a model for fostering peaceful interethnic relations thanks to a complex power-sharing system. However, the arrival of migrants from foreign countries and the more recent influx of asylum seekers have revitalized debates around the borders between South Tyrol/Italy and Austria and among South Tyrolean linguistic groups. The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought further complexity to the issue. I use the concept of securitization—the process through which an issue is considered as an existential threat requiring exceptional measures—in order to understand why and how borders become exclusionary and restrictive, shaping dynamics of othering. With this framework, the article explores how South Tyrolean borders have been subjected to (de)securitizing and resecuritizing moves in discourses and practices. In this way, I shed new light on debates on the articulation of borders and interethnic relations that are occurring due to recent international migration, consolidation of nationalist agendas, and the current pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pandemics and other crisis situations result in unsettled times, or ontologically insecure moments when social and political institutions are in flux. During such crises, the ordinary and unnoticed routines that structure everyday life are thrust into the spotlight as people struggle to maintain or recreate a sense of normalcy. Drawing on a range of cases including China, Russia, the UK, and USA, we examine three categories of everyday practice during the COVID-19 pandemic that respond to disruptions in daily routines and seek a return to national normality: performing national solidarities and exclusions by wearing face masks; consuming the nation in the form of panic buying and conspiracy theories; and enforcing foreign policies through social media and embodiment. This analysis thus breaks with existing works on everyday nationalism and banal nationalism that typically focus on pervasively unnoticed forms of nationalism during settled times, and it challenges approaches to contentious politics that predict protest mobilization for change rather than restoration of the status quo ante. In highlighting the ways that unsettled times disrupt domestic and international structures, this work also presents a first attempt to link everyday nationalism with growing work on international practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nationalism around the world. Starting from the premise that nationalism is a global and ubiquitous idea in the contemporary world, it explores whether exclusionary tendencies have been reinforced by the pandemic. The pandemic and government responses will not necessarily trigger the increase in exclusionary nationalism that both far-right politicians and observers have noted. However, there are 4 aspects, examined in the article, that might be shaped by the pandemic. These include the recent trajectory of nationalism and its social relevance prior to the pandemic,the rise of authoritarianism as governments suspend or reduce democratic freedoms and civil liberties, the rise of biases against some groups associated with the pandemic, the rise of borders and deglobalization, and the politics of fear. Thus, while the rise of exclusionary nationalism might not be the inevitable consequence of the pandemic, it risks reinforcing preexisting nationalist dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreaks of major pandemics have historically been associated with the proliferation of conspiracy theories. This article explores what role conspiratorial narratives have played in the development of different "imagined communities" in the premodern, modern, and contemporary worlds. I argue that premodern conspiratorial narratives were mostly focused on eschatological and theological images, aiming to blame and delegitimise the religious Other. In these imaginary plots, spread of disease was interpreted as an attack on one's religious beliefs. The prevalence of religious conspiracies helped reinforce religiously based, yet temporary, "imagined communities." With the rise of nation-states and the decline of empires and patrimonial kingdoms, the periodic outbursts of epidemics gradually attained more nationalist interpretations. Hence in the modern era, pandemics often triggered the growth of nationalist conspiracies. In these narratives the threatening Other was usually nationalised, and even traditional religious groups became reinterpreted as a threat to one's national security. In recent times, new technologies and modes of communication have created space for the emergence of global conspiracy theories. The onset of Covid-19 has been associated with the dramatic expansion of such conspiracies. Some scholars have interpreted this as a reliable sign that nation-states and nationalisms have lost their dominance. However, this article shows that many global conspiracies in fact reinforce nationalist ideas and practices and, in this process, foster the perpetuation of national imagined communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]