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This article explores the social mechanisms that facilitate the transformation of micro‐level bonds into coherent nationalist narratives of solidarity. The aim is to explain the paradox: while the armed forces are highly nationalist institutions, most ordinary combatants detest nationalist rhetoric on the battlefield. Drawing on the interviews with the combatants who fought in the 1991–1995 wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina together with the analysis of the mass media reports, I examine how deep bonds of micro‐solidarity forged in the violent experiences are transformed into coherent nationalist discourses. I explore how social ties generated in the protracted face‐to‐face interactions can be enveloped by the specific social organisations and then ‘translated’ into nationalist ideologies that project deep comradeship as ‘national solidarities’. I aim to show that the direct war experience does not automatically generate strong bonds of national solidarity. Instead, nationalism is always a product of protracted coercive‐organisational, ideological and micro‐interactional work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Schertzer and Eric Taylor Woods' book analyses tweets posted by Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and Brexit supporters in 2017 from a historical perspective in order to reveal the deep roots of white ethnic nationalism. This commentary questions the explanatory nature of the analysis, and highlights how the book inadvertently contributes to the ongoing naturalisation of nationalism, particularly in Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism in the Habsburg Empire is traditionally viewed through an ethnic lens. Despite a growing literature on 'national indifference' that studies nationalism in Habsburg central Europe from a constructivist perspective and advances our knowledge concerning variations in national identifications, the nationalism implied in these works remains largely limited to an exclusionary ethnic type. This reductionist view of central European nationalism mirrors the traditional dichotomy of ethnic 'Eastern' versus civic 'Western' nationalism. In order to avoid this reduction, this article approaches nationalism as a thin‐centred ideology and explores varieties of nationalism in Habsburg Austria during the long 19th century. Although certain ideational paths made ethno‐nationalism appear, retrospectively, as a quasi‐natural feature of central Europe, the findings show that there developed rival discursive traditions of nationalism and competing representations of nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper posits the importance of visual representations in cultivating a national consciousness among white Afrikaners in South Africa. It provides a case study of stamps issued to commemorate the centenary of the Great Trek in 1938 that sought to raise awareness of and funds for the Voortrekker Monument project. Although stamps are, ordinarily, symbols of banal nationalism, the Voortrekker stamps resonated strongly with the sentiments the Afrikaner volk (people). They reified an iconography of the Voortrekkers and the narrative of the Great Trek already embedded in a canon of texts, images and rituals. The paper provides a semiotic reading of the designs of the stamps and shows how they shaped the cultural imaginary of Afrikaners. Although the Voortrekker stamps were issued with the approval of the postal authorities, they were actually commissioned by the Sentrale Volksmonumentekomitee [Central People's Monuments Committee (SVK)], which had close ties to the National Party (NP) opposition. Although the project was largely state sponsored, the SVK insisted upon its autonomy. Thus the government sanctioned a project over which it exercised no jurisdiction. The United Party paid a price for accommodating sectional Afrikaner interests when it lost control of the state in 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many nations emerged during the collapse of the empire, the case of China is curious in its failure to divide into separate nation‐states. Resisting disunion, the Republic of China (ROC) adopted a rhetoric of national pluralism and laid claim to the fallen Qing Empire's vast territory. This divergence from other post‐imperial nationalisms engenders questions about the legacy of imperialism in the ROC's approaches to nation‐building. Such questions remain salient after the ROC retreat to Taiwan (1949), as since the end of martial law (1987), the ROC has championed itself as a model of multiculturalism. This paper examines the extent to which today's 'Multicultural Taiwan' paradigm differs from 20th‐century official conceptualisations of pluralism, through discourse analysis of publications from the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC). Investigation finds that despite centring Taiwan in national ideology, certain Chinese imperialist attitudes towards cultural hierarchy remained influential in MTAC representations of pluralism within Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces our themed section on The Left(s) and Nationalism(s), which provides a comparative analysis of the relationship between nationalism and different left‐wing parties in Western Europe. It highlights the innovative comparative perspectives offered by this themed section, which not only concerns a series of different geographical cases studies but also involves the ideological plurality of the Left. The larger research question that our contributors address is how different left‐wing parties have dealt with the inherent ideological tension between the universality claimed by the Left and the particularism inherent in nationalism, as a doctrine and a principle of political legitimacy. The article stresses three main contributions of our themed section: (1) Western European left‐wing parties do engage with the themes of nationalism and nationhood, but they often rely on convenient silence to solve some of the contradictions with their progressive ideology. (2) None of these parties have formulated thick versions of the respective national identities. (3) State‐wide left‐wing parties have used instrumental conceptions of nationhood to address the challenge of separatist parties, but only with mixed results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social‐democratic parties face a dilemma between the universalist ethos of their socialist tradition and the nationalism that they share with the other political actors of the state where they act. In this paper, we examine comparatively the position of the Spanish party Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and the Catalan party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) on three political debates that pertains to the link between welfare and identity in Spain. We show how these parties experience opposite tensions between nationalism and the universalism of their left‐wing ideology. Whereas ERC calls for a withdrawal from the Spanish system of social security, the PSOE advocates imposing on Catalonia a symmetric form of solidarity with the rest of Spain, despite recognising the region's different identity. Above all, both parties take identity for granted as a pre‐political factor that 'naturally' justifies differential treatment, according to ERC, or equalising federalism, in the case of the PSOE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their distrust of big and centralised political units, their stance in favour of minorities and diversity, Greens do not skip the national issue but reimagine it with a bottom‐up and plural perspective under the form of regionalism. This article first study how ecologist theoreticians have defined different regionalist approaches, notably bioregionalism, ecoregionalism and econationalism, which became the basis of the Green approach on the national issue in Western Europe as early as the 1970s. Then, the paper comparatively focusses on Europe Ecology – The Greens Brittany and on the Scottish Green Party, assessing their analysis on their territory: whereas the first defend the project of an autonomous Brittany, the second is actively involved in favour of the independence of Scotland. In analysing the regionalism of the Greens, the article demonstrates that the green stance on the nation is not "identitarian" or "patriotic" but "cognitive": it is devoid of nostalgia but on the contrary a tool for a multicultural and democratic Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at six months of the author's repeated attempts to obtain the approval of three Helsinki Committees (HCs, Israeli hospitals' research ethics committees) to conduct ethnographic research with Palestinian physicians in Israeli hospitals. While the research was eventually approved and carried out in two of these institutions, correspondence with HC representatives, as well as evidence of their informal moves with institutions' management, reflect their perceptions of the risks the study posed. In the Israeli hospital, acknowledging Palestinian political subjectivity challenges the definition of Israeli nationhood as exclusively Jewish and contaminates the allegedly politically neutral medical sphere. These committees exerted their power to serve their institutions and state ideology. This, I argue, should not be understood as anomalous instances of negligence. I show how the committees' censorship was attuned to the Declaration of Helsinki as their guiding text and Zionism as their underlying ideology. Embedded in the powerful regimes of ethics, bureaucracy, science, and health, ethics committees employ "unarmed power" that is beyond critique. They are well‐oiled "anti‐politics machines," rearticulating political concerns into a depoliticized moral discourse. As such, they not only limit academic inquiry but also redefine, in political terms, the realm of the moral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main thesis of this article is that nationalist political discourses emerged in Hungary more suddenly, radically, and earlier than previously thought. An underlying assumption is that nationalism may be best understood through an analysis of political discourses. The sudden appeal of these kinds of political discourses demands explanation. How did the discourses of nation overwrite earlier discourses? How did they gain social, political and cultural legitimacy? How were they related to the Enlightenment? In answering these questions, we first point to the ambiguity and fluidity of new concepts and terms, such as nation, language, fatherland, patriot, and foreigner. These key concepts of nationalist discourses provided innovative and independent sources of political legitimation. They enabled the frameworks of political life and thought to be re‐established. They made for an easy entry into politics because they were rooted in familiar, earlier political discourses. However, for the success of nationalism as a political paradigm, the new discourses of nation also had to make attractive ideological offers and project positive visions of the future. These offers, as we will show, were built on an appeal to "public happiness." They bound together Magyarisation and nationalism and grew from an ideology into a political programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although nationalism has been identified as the dominant ideology of the modern era, and environmentalism is the 21st century rising star, few studies address the relationship between them. The consensus seems to be that they are hardly compatible, considering that nationalism is a boundary‐building phenomenon while environmentalism advocates for the safeguarding of the environment beyond national borders. Drawing on evidence from fieldwork in the region of Freiburg‐im‐Breisgau, near the French‐German border, our study challenges this assumption. Not long ago this was a heavily militarised territory and a place of historical national friction between France and Germany, yet now it has been converted to, and rebranded as, a model of a successful, environmentally friendly region. Rather than wearing down nationalist sentiments, national pride has been reinvigorated as the vestiges of German nationalism have been buried under a thick layer of environmental paint; this time national pride is grounded not in the military power of the nation but in its defence of the environment. Through this case study, framed within the lens of nationalism theories, we argue that nationalism has the potential power to adapt to harmful heteronomous threats such as environmentalism, leverage on and bond with them and finally re‐emerge even stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main thesis of this article is that nationalist political discourses emerged in Hungary more suddenly, radically and earlier than previously thought. An underlying assumption is that nationalism may be best understood through an analysis of political discourses. The sudden appeal of these kinds of political discourses demands explanation. How did the discourses of nation overwrite earlier discourses? How did they gain social, political and cultural legitimacy? How were they related to the Enlightenment? In answering these questions, we first point to the ambiguity and fluidity of new concepts and terms, such as nation, language, fatherland, patriot and foreigner. These key concepts of nationalist discourses provided innovative and independent sources of political legitimation. They enabled the frameworks of political life and thought to be re‐established. They made for an easy entry into politics because they were rooted in familiar, earlier political discourses. However, for the success of nationalism as a political paradigm, the new discourses of nation also had to make attractive ideological offers and project positive visions of the future. These offers, as we will show, were built on an appeal to 'public happiness'. They bound together Magyarisation and nationalism and grew from an ideology into a political programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical sociologists have questioned the idea that nationalism and imperialism are mutually exclusive phenomena. In contrast to traditional historiography that depicted empires as 'the prison houses of nations' contemporary scholarship emphasises the structural and ideological ambiguities that characterised the 19th century European imperial projects. Hence instead of 'popular longings' for national independence the focus has shifted to the experiences of 'national indifference'. In this paper I aim to go beyond this dichotomy by questioning the role of (nationalist) agency in the collapse of imperial order. Drawing on the primary archival research I zoom in on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Austro‐Hungarian rule (1878–1918). The paper contests the view that the imperial state was severely undermined by the presence of strong nationalisms. I also challenge the notion that the majority of Bosnian population remained 'nationally indifferent' during this period. Instead, I argue that understanding the character of the Austro‐Hungarian rule is a much better predictor of social change that took place in this period. Rather than stifling supposedly vibrant nationalisms or operating amidst widespread national indifference the imperial state played a decisive role in forging the nation‐centric world through its inadvertent homogenisation of discontent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges some widespread theoretical assumptions and practices in the study of populism and proposes a new multidimensional approach to generate and analyse data on this latent construct. Rather than focusing on categorising subjects as populists or not, it recommends reaching a better understanding of what populism is, the salience and relative weight of its attributes and how they interact creating an inner populist logic. Despite the increasing media and academic attention, historical discrepancies in how to conceptualise and operationalise populism have hindered cumulative progress in the literature. Initially most efforts were devoted to the study of specific movements, without a clear comparative angle, and the concept of populism was often conflated with that of nationalism. When the literature started to pay more attention to the analysis of the attributes associated with populism serious disagreements emerged concerning its true essence. Populism has been conceptualised as an ideology, a cynical strategy, a performative style and a discursive logic of articulation. The disputes between these competing interpretations have arguably slowed down the generation of comparative data. Although this article is meant to be a critique of the current state of the field and a call to make it pivot into a slightly different direction, it does not adopt an iconoclast stance and largely tries to reconcile the different existing research traditions – ideational, discursive, performative and strategic. It shows that their efforts are to a great extent complementary but mostly operating on different rungs of the ladder of abstraction. This paper argues that shifting from minimal definitions into a multidimensional approach may stimulate the generation of comparative data on a wider range of attributes and facilitate the identification of degrees and varieties within populism. This paper develops a new analytical framework which deconstructs populism into five dimensions: (1) depiction of the polity, (2) morality, (3) construction of society, (4) sovereignty and (5) leadership. These dimensions, that synthesise the most influential conceptualisations of populism, are empirically and theoretically interconnected and encompass ideational, discursive and performative attributes suggested in the literature. These dimensions are in turn composed of lower order attributes forming a multilayered network structure. This multidimensional framework provides a heuristic template that can be adapted and operationalised in diverse ways depending on the hypotheses, type of data and subjects of the analysis. Some examples of how to turn these dimensions into variables to capture supply‐ and demand‐side populism are introduced. Future empirical research could help map and better understand the network of interactions and intersections among these dimensions and attributes. This could be the key to settle some of the current conceptual debates about populism and its varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]