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11Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 11 (2013 6) 1656-1672
УДК 323.1
Value of (Expla)nation:
Testing Modernist Theories of Nationalism
Marharyta S. Fabrykant*
Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, National Research University -Higher School of Economics 47а, Rimsky-Korsakov, St. Petersburg, 190068 Russia
Received 10.07.2013, received in revised form 24.07.2013, accepted 31.07.2013
The aim of the research is empirical testing of the most prominent modernist theories of nationalism. These theories view nation-building and national identities as an outcome of transfer from traditional to modern societies and differ with regard to what spheres of modernity are considered the most relevant to nationalism. The study uses the integrated database of the third, fourth andfifth waves of the World Values Survey to test hypotheses derived from major modernist theories of nationalism. Results of country-level regression analysis show that nationalism is closer related to general value sets, such as tolerance of deviant behaviour than political attitudes. Regionally specific theories of nationalism are revealed to have the highest predictive power for a country average level of nationalism. Theories posing nationalism as challenged by local and cosmopolitan identities are rejected by empirical evidence of their positive interrelation. The results imply that contemporary nationalism is different from that of the early modernity reflected in modernist theories and suggests less strict choices and more hybridization of multiple identities.
Keywords: nationalism, modernist theories of nationalism, modernity, modernization, national commitment, multiculturalism.
Introduction
The debate between modernists and primordialists remains a pertinent issue in the studies of nationalism. Modernist theorists share the view of nationalism as at temporary phenomenon that appeared with the transition from traditional to modern societies and is likely to end with modernity as such, or even its current stage (Anderson, 1983, Billig, 1995). Primordialists, on the contrary, claim nationalism to reflect essential features of relatively stable communities from prehistoric times to the present (e.g. Connor,
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* Corresponding author E-mail address: mfabrikant@bk.ru
1984, Smith, 2010). This debate still remains in the limelight of the studies of nationalism. On the other hand, much less attention is given to inner diversity within each theoretical approach. For modernist theories of nationalism, their multiplicity is an asset in many ways, such as encouraging interdisciplinarity and choosing the most suitable theory for interpretation of a case study (Brubaker, 2009; Ozkirimli, 2010; Smith, 2010; Malesevic, 2011). However, the proliferation of modernist theories over the last few decades may also be regarded as a drawback, because
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even convinced methodological anarchists would agree that both planning and interpretation of results of a large-scale cross-national quantitative research of nationalism requires an integrated approach. Moreover, this approach itself should have empirical support. So far, however, neither primordialist nor odernist theories have been empirically tested, The former rely on metaphors and metaphysical terms and therefore are hardly amenable to testing, but the latter not only allow, but also require empirical evidence.
The aim of this research is to submit major modernist theories of nationalism to empirical testing. To prepare the framework for the empirical research, I will dedicate the first part of the article to the comparative analysis of modernist theories of nationalism. This comparison will result in establishing the main points of each theory in the form of testable hypotheses. Then I suggest the way nationalism as a dependent variable(s) and theoretically relevant independent variables can be operationalised using the integrated database of the thirds (1995), fourth (2000) and fifth (2005) waves of the World Values Survey. This operationalisation subsequently serves as a base for empirical testing a number of theory-driven hypotheses describing possible impact of different values and attitudes on individual and country-level differences in nationalism. Finally, theoretical and methodological implications of the actually obtained empirical results are discussed to establish possibilities and limitations of the modernist approach to nationalism.
2. Theoretical Framework
The intensity of development in the interdisciplinary area of nationalism studies, especially during the last decades, and the resulting multiplicity of approaches so far have not been backed by a shared general idea of the nature of nationalism, let alone a universally accepted definition (Smith, 1998; Smith, 2010).
However tempting it may seem, metatheoretical reflection on the nature of nationalism is, after all the previous theorizing in the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies, unlikely to produce an original solution to the currently debated issues and reconcile already existing concepts of nationality, rather than merely complementing them with another version (Hearn, 2007). On the other hand, the rise of in-depth empirical case studies of a certain country or region in a given period of time in the past or not so clearly defined present offer new insights into heuristic potential of acknowledged theories, but show little advantage to a researcher trying to compare the explanatory and predictive power of rival theories by testing alternative hypotheses. The research that could shed some light on the key subjects of contemporary academic debate on nationalism has, in one of the multiple possible ways, directly address and, moreover, operationalize not country specific, but universal issues, which, in our opinion, can be identified by referring to the three main points of controversy.
The first key conceptual problem, characteristic for nationalism, but not formost other subjects in social sciences, is the generic term belonging to the definition of nationalism. It is still a subject of debate to which type or types of social phenomena nationalism belongs, e.g. is it an ideology (Nakano, 2004), an attitude (Hutchinson, 2004), a state formation (Breuilly, 1985; Giddens, 1985), a style of actions, or actions themselves, a cultural symbolic code (Smith, 1998), a discourse (Billig, 1995), a mode of narration (Bhabha, 1990), a psychological phenomenon (Sluga, 2005), or even a social institute of its own (Anderson, 1991). This issue, despite its apparent abstractness, has important methodological implication, because a choice in favor of one of these conceptual positions suggests, prior to any theoretical statements, the form adopted by manifestations of nationalism,
which leads to a specific research design. Therefore the initial generic choice is pivotal and has to be made prior to further methodological decisions.
The plausible solution of this issue may be derived from the underlying assumption of most existing theories that nationalism belongs to the set of values (Hechter, 2000; Calhoun, 1997). This offers a wide field of debate regarding the issues to what extent and in which way nationalism is a value in itself, or a specific set of values, or a value-generating central idea or principle, also taking into account the interplay between individual and collective levels of presence of this value. This does not necessarily mean that nationalism is limited exclusively by the field of values without taking into consideration nationalist social practices, collective actions etc. What it implies is that, first that the value component of nationalism is a transtheoretical and, probably, transcultural universal, therefore its acceptance as a generic term does not force on us a premature acceptance of a particular theoretical position without providing the necessary empirical evidence., but offer specific ways of conducting a research which would eventually lead to grounded theoretical conclusions. Therefore, our first statement and the starting point of the empirical research is the simple statement that nationalism is a value, which is directly represented in the title of this paper.
The second widely debated issue regarding nationalism is its relation to other social phenomena, or, following our initial choice, to other types of values. The two key questions here are, first which fields of values - political, religious, ethical etc - are the most significant for nationalism and, second, which specific value orientations within these fields coincide with a high or low level of nationalism. Considering the fact that most key concepts of nationalism were developed prior to beginning of any systematic
and methodologically rigorous empirical research, it is not surprising that most theories address the second question with tacit acceptance of the certain position on the first one by excluding all possible fields of values except one, rather than testing their explanatory power in comparative perspective. This feature is reflected in the multitude of reductionist theories rephrasing the start of a definition ' nationalism is...' into 'nationalism as.' The richness and diversity of such theories lie in the fact than even similar continuations of this rephrased definition may lead to different conclusions when restated in the form of empirically verifiable hypotheses.
One of such reductionist theories of nationalism proposes a view on nationalism as a religion. Here we find theories of historical development of nationalism as a secular substitute of religion as a resource of social integration and power legitimization in place of diminishing support for traditional religious beliefs. If religion and nationalism are viewed as contesting sets of values, then high level of religiosity would make nationalism redundant (Hayes, 1960). However, other theories place both religiosity and national pride within the realm of traditional values, which makes them not contesting, but complementary, which means a high probability of a highly religious person being also highly nationalistic (Grosby, 2002).
Another important theoretical framework regards nationalism as a derivate of a certain political value orientation. The main issues raised within this framework are, whether nationalism is usually left-wing or right-wing and how it is related to democracy. The currently prevailing opinion claims nationalism to be immensely flexible and in various ways compatible with any other political ideology, depending on the specific circumstances. According to the broad historical perspective taken by Hobsbawm, nationalism has undergone its major transformation in the
mid-nineteenth century, when it has turned from an ideology of the liberation movement and international solidarity into the source of legitimizations for old regimes no longer able to rely solely on dynastic rights (Hobsbawm, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1990). Although it has been stated that in certain circumstances the liberating and prodemocratic potential of nationalism may be reawakened, e.g. in the Central Europe of 1980s, in the modern world nationalism is considered mostly right-wing, nearing the extreme right, and opposed to liberal democracy. If viewed in the context of values, this opinion is supported by the fact that nationalism is by definition exclusive and particularistic, while democratic values are inclusive and universalist (Habermas, 1998). In addition, pervasiveness of nationalism as an organization principle, in explicit, but also in implicit, 'banal' forms, results in society as a whole being conceptualized as defined by a nation-state, which might add a nationalist values as a background to all sorts of political engagement, ranging from activism to mere interest.
Yet another type of reductionist theories regards nationalism as a more or less theoretically coherent worldview based on some sort of subjectively recognized deprivation. This feeling of deprivation may be located on the individual, regional or global level, Thus Kedourie claimed nationalism to be an invention of highly educated, but permanently unemployed intellectuals in the early nineteenth century Germany (Kedourie, 1993), Gellner studies emerging nationalism as a protest of the economically backward periphery towards an industrially powerful center (Gellner, 1983), and Greenfeld disclosed the ressentiment as a core of nationalism in the less prosperous and culturally advanced states directed against the world leaders (Greenfeld, 1992). The common trait of these theories is their portrayal of nationalism as caused by changing and subjective factors
as opposed to primordial entities like allegedly unique shared traditions, language and, eventually, the so-called mentality. However, the common feature of nationalism as deprivation theories and the ethnonationalist mystique they criticize is the positioning of nationalism as irrational (Smith, 2003). The inexplicable Volksgeist and its more modernized synonyms are no less rational than nationalist feelings, according to the nationalism-as-deprivation theories, agreeing that nationalism gains some degree of temporary psychological compensation at the cost of possibilities of recognizing and solving the initial problems (Hubner, 1996). This view of nationalism as a manifestation of irrationality is widespread and has even led some scientists to accept irrationality of nationalism as a reason for its inexplicability and inpredictability, which does not logically follow and, more importantly is effectively challenged by Laitin, demonstrating a number of ways nationalism can serve as a rational strategy aimed at pragmatically understood adaptation (Laitin, 2007).
Methods, Data and Measurements
The integrated database of the World Values Survey was selected as a source of primary data for this research, because at present it is the most comprehensive of its kind and allows empirically testing the complementarity between modernist and modernisation theories of nationalism on 85 countries. Besides, WVS is related to the modernisation theory that focuses on values and therefore is the closest to nationalism studies.
Dependent Variables
The World Values Survey contains several variables related to different aspects of nationality, among which we identified those that were present in all the three questionnaires
used in each of the waves. The output was the following five variables:
1. "Immigrants/foreign workers are undesirable neighbors" (answer: yes or no).
2. "How proud are you of your nation" (answer: "very proud", "quite proud", "not very proud", "not at all proud").
3. "Of course, we all hope that there will not be another war, but if it were to come to that, would you be willing to fight for your country?" (answer: "yes", "depends", "no").
4. "When jobs are scarce, preference should be given to natives over immigrants" (answer: yes or no).
5. "How about people from other countries coming here to work. Which one of the following do you think the government should do?" ("let anyone come", "let anyone come as long as jobs are available", "set strict limits to coming to country", "prohibit people from coming").
It would be possible to do regression analysis on each of these five variables independently (as in Ariely, 2012) or construct formative indices (Welzel, 2011). However, the first option is too closely tied to available data and specific phrasing of survey questions, and the second requires
strong theoretical background and does not allow a flexible approach to existing theories, which is presiupposed by the im of this research. The third option is to use factor analysis for empiricall grouping the initially given variables c for some meaningful patterns.
Unrotated factor analysis yielded two factors with very little correlation. Subsequent factor analysis with varimax rotation resulted in empirically distinguishing two relatively independent dimensions of nationalism (see Table 1).
The first factor was positively related to the extent of professed national pride and readiness to fight for one's nation. It was named National Commitment.
The second factor was positively related to positive attitude towards immigrants/foreign workers as potential neighbors and permissive immigrant policy and negatively, to support for ethnic preferences at the job market. This factor was named Multiculturalism.
The two factors reflect, respectively, sets of attitudes towards one's own nation and members of other nations, that is, the inner and outer sides of nationalism and thus seem to cover all the relevant field of meanings. The mean scores of National Commitment and Multiculturalism for each country are presented in the Appendix.
Table 1. Operationalisation of Nationalism
Variables Factors
National Commitment Multuculturalism
Willingness to fight in war for your country 0,012 0,769
How proud of your nationality -0,064 0,758
Immigrants mentioned as undesirable neighbours 0,607 0,043
Immigrant policy 0,700 0,025
When jobs are scarse, priority to natives over immigrants 0,630 -0,156
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
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Results and Discussion
Theoperationalization ofnationalismallowed to fulfil the main objective of the research - to examine the predictive power of modernist theories of nationalism, which were originally developed for individual-level explanation, at the country level. Twelve items from the World Values Survey relevant to some of the key theories were separately employed as independent variables in a country level regression analysis with National Commitment and Multiculturalism as dependent variables. The results are presented in Table 2.
The first set of theories suggest that nationalism is primarily a political ideology, rather than a more general phenomenon, and therefore the search of the possible causes of variations and changes in nationalism must be narrowed to the political sphere (Giddens, 1985). Certain political theorists interested in nationalism emphasize the significance of nation-state as the new occurrence of modernity, which could provide the rational world order necessary for the new era, with precisely delineated interstate
borders and inner homogeneity necessary for rational coordination of effort. They conclude that nationalism was the most successful of all political ideologies of modernity to such an extent that the global order came to be the world of nation-states (Tily, 1998). The main stance of this line of theorizing is that nationalism was a most influential political ideology of the first modernity, so political engagement would lead to more National Commitment. In addition, with the transition to the second modernity, the issue of multiculturalism becomes equally important and its ideology generally accepted, so that at this period political involvement would also have positive impact on Multiculturalism.
The two variables in the World Values Survey that allow operationalization of these theories are "importance of politics" and "interest in politics". The corresponding questions in the questionnaire are. "How important is politics in your life?" (answers: 'very important', 'rather important', 'not very important', 'not at all important'), and "How interested are you in politics?" (answers:
Table 2. Country-level Regression Analysis
Independent Variable Dependent Variable
National Commitment Multiculturalism
Importance of politics 0.185 0.036
Interest in politics -0.130 0.172
Importance of democracy -0.067 0.284*
importance of religion 0.622*** -0.408***
permissiveness -0.520*** 0.460***
happiness 0.263* 0.155
Individualism 0.127 0.054
Subnationalism 0 557*** -0.434**
Cosmopolitanism 0.467*** -0.540
Western countries -0.430 ** 0.391***
Muslim countries 0.381*** -0.301**
Post-Socialist countries -0.122 0.440
* significant at the 0.05 level ** significant at the 0.01 level *** significant at the 0.001 level
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'very interested', 'somewhat interested', 'not very interested', 'not at all interested'). The hypotheses that can be formulated on these theories of nationalism are that both importance of politics and interest in politics are positively related to National Commitment and, to a smaller extent, to Multiculturalism.
The results of country-level regression analysis with interest in politics and importance of politics as independent variables and National Commitment and Multiculturalism as dependent variables are presented in the Table 1. None of the four predictions generated by these political theories of nationalism were either confirmed or disproven by the empirical data. It appears that neither importance of politics nor interest in politics at the aggregated country level have statistically significant impact on nationalism. This may be probably due to the fact that contemporary political sphere offers richer set of options than was the case in the early modernity, when nations first appeared, and that different countries may vary considerably on the role of nationalism in their political agendas. The results of multilevel analysis, which are presented in the last section of the main body of this paper, give actual evidence in support of this statement.
Another important aspect of nationalism as a political ideology was outlined in Hobsbawm and Ranger's seminal introduction to the book " Invention of Tradition", and also in Hobsbawm's other influential work "Nations and Nationalism since 1780" (Hobsbawm&Ranger, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1990). The point made in these books is the major change in the role of nationalism in European and later world politics. Since the French revolution of 1789 and until the "spring of nations" in 1848 nationalism, according to Hobsbawm, was a progressive and emancipative ideology opposed to old semi-feudal political order. However, starting from the second half of the 19th century nationalism was embraced
exactly by the forced it was initially fighting as a new source of legitimization of political power to replace old dynastic principle, which was rapidly losing popular support. This plan was successful because of certain inherent illiberal features of nationalism, such as collectivism, supreme importance of the past and inclination toward irrationality in the form of nationalism mystique. Accordingly, Hobsbawm and Ranger conclude that from the late nineteenth century to the present nationalism is an antidemocratic political ideology.
The World Values Survey contains a variable that enables operationalization of this statement, namely, "importance of democracy". The corresponding question in the WVS questionnaire is "How important is democracy for you?" (answers: 'very important', 'rather important', 'not very important', 'not at all important').
The hypothesis based on this theory of nationalism can be formulated as follows: "Importance of democracy is negatively related to National Commitment and positively related to Multiculturalism"
The results of the regression analysis with importance of democracy as an independent variable partly confirm this hypothesis. More importance attributed to democracy is in fact related to more support of Multiculturalism and vice versa. However, the data give no confirmation of the more pronounced part of the theory and show no statistically significant relation between importance of democracy and National Commitment. This means that, contrary to the theory, contemporary nationalism is not an antidemocratic ideology, which necessitates the search for alternative explanation of the positive relation between importance of democracy and Multiculturalism. The most simple explanation is twofold. In Western countries, the ongoing political debate is on the way a modernized society can retain its identity from those who do
not accept values of modernization, and if it is possible to retain democracy as an crucial part of this identity without multiculturalism, which might threaten it. The very formulation of this issue suggests that initially multiculturalism, in the form of equal rights for ethnic minorities, is considered to be a logical conclusion from democracy in general, guaranteeing equal rights of every subject (only individual or collective as well remaining questionable). On the other hand, in most non-Western countries democracy and multiculturalism are often viewed indiscriminately as part of the set of values associated with modernization or, for its opponents, with Westernization. In both cases the two values go together, and this result of the research is more accurately explained by the concept of modernization than by the theory of nationalism as an antidemocratic ideology, which is not empirically supported in its main part.
The next set of theories of nationalism stems from the notion of nationalism as general value orientation, which cannot be wholly placed within political or any other specific sphere of society. Thus, according to Anderson, nationalism is more akin to kinship or religion as worldviews than to more explicit political ideologies, such as liberalism or conservatism (Anderson, 1983). In line with this statement, Billig offered a concept of "banal nationalism" which is omnipresent, unrecognized and implicitly organizes seemingly neutral experience (Billig, 1995). A number of reductionist theories relate nationalism to other phenomena of the same high level of abstraction.
Some theorists, both pioneer, e.g. Hayes (Hayes, 1960), and contemporary, like Anderson (Anderson, 1983), envisage nationalism as a secular religion. According to this viewpoint, religion played a prominent role in maintaining the social order in traditional societies, but could not retain it under the conditions of modernization, which included rational nonhierarchical
institutions with progressive secularization and the disenchantment, or Etzauberung, of the world. Religion was no longer in accordance with the social order, but the basic psychological needs for sensemaking and worldview formation remained, and nationalism as a modern phenomenon came in place of religion to fulfill them.
The World Values Survey contains a variable "importance of religion", the corresponding question in the questionnaire being "How important is religion in your life?" (the answers: 'very important', 'rather important', 'not very important', 'not at all important').
The hypothesis derived from Hayes's and Anderson's theories of nationalism is that Importance of religion is negatively related to National Commitment and positively related (or not related) to Multiculturalism.
An opposite view on relation between nationalism and religion is offered by Inglehart's theory of modernization. According to Inglehart, with national pride and religiosity belong to a traditional value set as opposed to secular-rational values (Inglehart&Welzel, 2005). The resulting hypothesis is that Importance of religion is positively related to National Commitment and negatively related (or not related) to Multiculturalism.
The results of regression analysis with importance of religion as an independent variable fully confirm Inglehart's theory and reject the alternative hypothesis based on relevant theories of nationalism. This supports the main hypothesis that modernization theories predict variance in nationalism more accurately than theories of nationalism. In this case it may be due to the fact that often in the course of modernization specific phenomena do not simply diappear to be replaced by others, but change more subtly, acquiring different meanings and different relation to other components of the social order. That is why it is important to monitor ongoing
social changes instead of considering early modernity prototypical for the whole process of modernization, as is often the case in modernist theories if nationalism.
Another theory of nationalism raises an important issue of the possibility of an inclusive nationalism, which would not result in ingroup favouritism and outgroup discrimination. Despite some suggestions in favour of this possibility, often connected to the notion of civic nationalism, the prevailing opinion in this regard is sceptical (Calhoun, 1997), due to regularly occurring historical evidence of perniciousness of nationalism. In his logical analysis, Miscevic deductively constructs a model nationalist line of argument and concludes that nationalism is a manifestation of general intolerance (Miscevic, 2001).
Operationalisation of this notion could be achieved in the following way. The World Values Survey contains 16 similarly constructed questions asking a respondent's degree of approval for certain deviant kinds of behaviour on a 10-point scale ranging from 'always justifiable' to 'never justifiable'. We computed an arithmetic average of scores on all these variables and constructed an index of permissiveness. We consider it a valuable indicator of tolerance, because it is presented in the form of specific and enables to exclude those who claim their general tolerance but for particular behaviours that allegedly cannot be tolerated.
The hypothesis based on the theory of nationalism as a manifestation of intolerance is the following: "Permissiveness (readiness to justify deviant behavior) is negatively related to National Commitment and positively related to Multiculturalism ".
The results of regression analysis confirm this hypothesis with regard to both National Commitment and Multiculturalism. This is in accordance with Inglehart's othervalue dimension,
because approval of alternative lifestyle belongs to a set of self-expression values, which, unlike National Commitment and like Multiculturalism, are characteristic for more modernized societies.
Another important theory of nationalism in this set analyses psychological implications of nationalism. Thus, Kedourie suggested that nationalism has its origins not in the French revolution of 1789, but in the German philosophy of the early nineteenth century, when a lot of university graduates could not find jobs fulfilling their intellectual aspirations and looked for consolation in the idealized national past (Kedourie, 1993). A similar idea was later used by Greenfeld, who suggested that nationalism, at least its most widespread ethnic type, was an attempt of less developed countries to provide psychological compensation in the form of rationalization of their comparatively poor achievements by appealing to the allegedly more significant nationally inherent spirituality or accusing foreign enemies of the country's misfortunes. Both theories are united by the idea that nationalism is a result of some sort of psychological deprivation or, to use Greenfeld's nietzschean term, ressentiment, be it at an individual or inter-country level (Greenfeld, 1992).
The variable in the World Values Survey that corresponds to this theory is subjective happiness, The question in the WVS questionnaire is, "Taking all things together, would you say you are." (the answers: "very happy", "rather happy", "not very happy", "not at all happy".
The hypothesis that can be formulated for Kedourie's and Greenfeld's theories is that happiness is negatively related to National Commitment and positively related to Multiculturalism.
The results of regression analysis with subjectively evaluated happiness as an independent variable do not support the hypothesis regarding Multiculturalism,
where no statistically significant coefficient was discovered, and reject it for National Commitment. According to the research results, there exists a positive relation between happiness and National commitment. This can again be explained by emphasizing the difference between the context in which nationalism originated and the current situation. The contemporary world is, as political theorists of nationalism justly notice, a world of nations, and in more traditional societies a certain extent of happiness may be due simply to conformity and accepting the world as it is. In addition, even in less traditional societies pride of one's nation and readiness to defend it in combat are likely to be a result of general approval of the reality to be proud of and defended, which is more characteristic for happier people. The lack of statistically significant impact of happiness on Multiculturalism may be explained by the fact that Multiculturalism belongs to the set of values associated with modernization, while, according to the World Values Survey, there is no direct link of happiness to the level of modernization.
Another set of theories of nationalism connect variation in nationalism with strategies of handling multiple identities. According to Beck, globalization means relocation of power and loyalty from nation-states not only to newly emerging supranational organizations, such as transnational corporations in economics and transnational unions and treaties in politics, but also, in the form of glocalization, recovery of old local subnational affinities, which were formerly suppressed by emerging nation-states with their policy of inner homogenization (Gellner). Some theorists, e.g. Hutchinson, suggest that, contrary to the first modernity, contemporary world is going to consist primarily of persons with mixed origins and accordingly, hybridized identities. This must result in the redistribution of importance between
these identities and increasing tolerance of others, because each person with a hybridized identity possesses a degree of otherness.
The fifth wave of the World Values Survey consists a series of variables estimating various components of possible hybridized identities. In our research, we are particularly interested in three of them, namely, individualism, subnationalism and cosmopolitanism. In the survey the relevant questions are, respectively, "I feel myself an autonomous individual", "I feel myself a member of my local community", and "I feel myself a citizen of the world" (answers separately for each question: "strongly agree', 'agree', 'disagree', 'strongly disagree').
The threefold hypothesis based on the multiple identities theory, specifically on the idea of redistribution of loyalties, is that individualism, subnationalism and cosmopolitanism are each of them negatively related to National Commitment and positively related to Multiculturalism.
The results of regression analysis with individualism, subnationalism and cosmopolitanism as separately included independent variables produced no statistically significant results for half of the cases, and for the other half the actual outcome was contrary to what was predicted. For individualism, no possibility of using it to explain variance in either National Commitment or Multiculturalism was discovered. Subnationalism appears to be positively related to National Commitment and negatively, to Multiculturalism, which makes us reject the hypothesis for both dimensions of nationalism. The most counterintuitive results were obtained for cosmopolitanism, which is positively related to National Commitment and not related to Multiculturalism at a statistically significant level.
The results related to Multiculturalism are more easily explained than those for National Commitment. Importance of local subnational
identity may be important for a person with a self-defensive orientation towards larger, more heterogeneous and less familiar social units. Also, a local "little homeland" might be important for nationalists who seek in it a source of authentic tradition untouched by modern multicultural influences. As for cosmopolitanism, it may mean both a self-expression of tolerance and the universalist idea of humanity or, alternatively, concern with global situation and resulting sensitivity to other nations and susceptibility to cultural shocks.
A positive relation of both subnationalism and cosmopolitanism to National Commitment is much more complicated and suggests a fundamental flaw in the relevant aspect of the multiple identities theory. In our opinion this flaw is rooted in simultaneously analyzed impact of globalization on redistribution of power and loyalties. In the first case, power, including both legal rights and obligations and factual influence, is a fixed sum total, at least in the short term period. Therefore the concept of redistribution of a stable amount of resources in a sort of win-lose game, is legitimate. However, when estimating loyalty and sense of identity, the very notion of its measurement becomes metaphorical, and, as with many sociopsychological phenomena, there is no objective reason to suppose that its extent is the same for all individuals and/or stable over time. Consequently, if there is no fixed amount of loyalty, its decrease with regard to some social unit does not by necessity means a corresponding increase for another unit of the same type.
An alternative view on multiple identities may be suggested by turning to yet another aspect of modernization, namely the constant reorganization of institutions and conventions in response to changing circumstances, as opposed to traditionalism with its disregard to pragmatic considerations. In fact, this changeability, similar to what Bauman called the "liquid modernity",
creates a psychologically problematic situation of conflict between increasing possibilities of various forms of social mobility and diminishing possibilities of satisfying the cognitive need for closure, that is, a stable and coherent worldview, which would not be subjected to constant reassessment and rearrangement. Those who welcome new opportunities for mobility are likely to be more individualist, and also more flexible and unconventional in their attitudes towards traditional values like nationalism. Alternatively, individuals with stronger need for closure than for individual achievements are likely to indiscriminately use all available resources and simultaneously embrace all sorts of identities, once they recognize the ultimate importance of identity as such. This explanation accounts for the counterintuitive results on the relation of subnationalism and cosmopolitanism to National Commitment.
The fourth set of theories of nationalism tested in this research view variation in nationalism as an impact of a specific situation in a certain region. The three types of countries given most attention in nationalism theories are Western, Muslim and Post-Socialist states. For their operationalisation, three dichotomous country-level dummy variables were created and added to the World Values Survey database.
Western countries usually come into nationalism studies as a type in the context of typologies contrasting Western and eastern, or, respectively, civic and ethnic versions of nationalism. According to some theorists (Kohn, 1955; Greenfeld, 1993), civic nationalism characteristic for Western countries and, contrary to xenophobic ethnic nationalism, combines high level of National Commitment with high level of Multiculturalism, being inclusive and rational.
The corresponding hypothesis is that Western countries are not different on National Commitment and higher on Multiculturalism.
The results of the regression analysis partly confirm and partly reject this hypothesis. It appears that Western countries are actually higher than other on Multiculturalism. However, contrary to the predicted lack of difference, Western countries are also lower on National Commitment than non-Western. This may be explained by supposing that Western countries do not possess a superb type of nationalism, but are merely less traditionalist and more modernized, therefore less nationalist. Accordingly, it may be that ethnic and civic types of nationalism represent not so much an essentialist geographical differences as stages in the history of nationalism.
The situation which is most different from the West is identified in Muslim countries. According to Moghaddam (2010), these countries are currently experiencing a major identity crisis that affects all sorts of collective identities by increasing ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination. The results of regression analysis in this case wholly confirm this hypothesis, showing that Muslim countries are in fact comparatively higher on National Commitment and lower on Multiculturalism.
Another type of countries deserving special consideration in nationalism studies is Post-Socialist. Following Brubaker's theory of Socialist and Post-Socialist nationalism, it is possible to make a hypothesis that Post-Socialist countries are higher on National Commitment and lower on Multiculturalism (Brubaker, 1996).
The results of regression analysis, nevertheless, neither accept nor reject this hypothesis. It appears that Post-Socialist countries are not different from other countries in either National Commitment or Multiculturalism. Although the effects of the Socialist period are still tangible in many spheres, for nationalism contemporary differences between Post-Socialist countries are therefore already stronger than similarities.
Conclusions
The results of the research shed some light on the scopes and limits of applicability of modernist theories of nationalism by means of testing them against the empirical evidence from the World Values Survey data.
First of all, nationalism revealed itself to be more measured not as a single dimension, but as a combination of the two related, but different dimensions - National Commitment and Multiculturalism, reflecting, respectively, ingroup and outgroup attitudes. This limited dependence implies that with regard to nationalism ingroup favouritism and outgroup discrimination are not necessarily to sides of the same coin. In other words, high salience of national identity does not automatically enhance hostility towards foreigners - and vice versa.
Second, research results suggest that modernist theories differ in their correspondence to the empirical evidence and the extent of their predictive power. Thus, nationalism is closer related to general value sets, such as tolerance of deviant behaviour, importance of religion or self-evaluation of happiness, than to political attitudes, such as importance of politics, interest in politics or importance of democracy. Regionally specific theories of nationalism are revealed to have the highest predictive power for a country average level of nationalism. Theories posing nationalism as challenged by local and cosmopolitan identities are rejected by empirical evidence of their positive interrelation. The results imply that contemporary nationalism is different from that of the early modernity reflected in modernist theories and suggests less strict choices and more hybridization of multiple identities.
The main conclusion that can be drawn from the undertaken empirical testing of the most prominent modernist theories of nationalism is that nationalism not only appeared with modernity,
but also changed following its transformations. For this reason, explanatory models based on historical facts from the early modernity may have less predictive power in the contemporary framework of modernization. Therefore, attention of researches studting nationalism may better be turned from the prolonged debate between modernists and primordialists to the possibility of replacing theories of the emergence of nationalism in the times of early modernity with an approach based on contemporary stage of modernization
and taking into account regional variety of multiple modernities and hybrid identities.
Acknowledgements
The research was conducted at the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research of the National Research University - Higher School of Economics. The author would like to thank Ronald Inglehart, Christian Welzel, Eduard Ponarin, Vladimir Magun, Leon Kosals, and Alexey Zakharov for their valuable comments.
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Appendix
Country National Commitment Multiculturalism
1 2 3
Albania (1995, 2000) 0,81 0,52
Algeria (2000) 0,89 0,48
Andorra (2000) 0,58 0,73
Argentina (1995, 2000) 0,72 0,67
Armenia (1995) 0,77 0,56
Australia (1995, 2000) 0,8 0,75
Azerbaijan (1995) 0,91 0,52
Bangladesh (2000) 0,91 0,34
Belarus (1995) 0,79 0,6
Bosnia Federation (1995, 2000) 0,78 0,71
Brazil (1995,2000) 0,67 0,54
Bulgaria (1995,2005) 0,71 0,51
Burkina Faso (2005) 0,89 0,63
Canada (2000,2005) 0,75 0,64
Chile (1995, 2000, 2005) 0,76 0,52
China (1995,2000, 2005) 0,82 0,54
Croatia (1995) 0,77 0,54
Cyprus (2005) 0,83 0,51
Czech Republic (1995) 0,63 0,39
Dominican Republic (1995) 0,84 0,58
Egypt (2000, 2005) 0,89 0,24
Estonia (1995) 0,68 0,59
Ethiopia (2005) 0,82 0,63
Finland (1995, 2005) 0,81 0,7
France (2005) 0,66 0,58
Country National Commitment Multiculturalism
4 5 6
Macedonia (1995, 2000) 0,82 0,45
Malaysia (2005) 0,84 0,27
Mali (2005) 0,92 0,52
Mexico (1995,2000, 2005) 0,82 0,51
Moldova (1995, 2000, 2005) 0,7 0,55
Montenegro (1995, 2000) 0,71 0,45
Morocco (2000,2005) 0,87 0,5
Netherlands (2005) 0,58 0,72
New Zealand (1995,2005) 0,76 0,61
Nigeria (1995, 2000) 0,81 0,49
Norway (1995,2005) 0,84 0,67
Pakistan (1995, 2000,) 0,93 0,52
Peru (1995,2000, 2005) 0,84 0,54
Philippines (1995, 2000) 0,89 0,46
Poland (1995, 2005) 0,85 0,4
Puerto Rico (1995,2000) 0,85 0,52
Romania (1995, 2005) 0,76 0,51
Russian Federation (1995, 2005) 0,75 0,52
Rwanda (2005) 0,94 0,54
Saudi Arabia (2000) 0,89 0,52
Serbia (1995, 2000,2005) 0,72 0,52
Singapore (2000) 0,84 0,42
Slovakia (1995) 0,68 0,39
Slovenia (1995,2005) 0,82 0,51
South Africa (1995, 2000, 2005) 0,76 0,49
Continuation appendix
1 2 3
Georgia (1995,2005) 0,8 0,47
Germany East (1995, 2005) 0,5 0,54
Germany West (1995,2005) 0,49 0,65
Ghana (2005) 0,93 0,47
Great Britain (1995,2005) 0,72 0,64
Guatemala (2005) 0,82 0,57
Hong Kong (2005) 0,53 0,29
Hungary (1995) 0,81 0,4
India (1995,2000,2005) 0,88 0,39
Indonesia (2000, 2005) 0,83 0,38
Iran (2000, 2005) 0,89 0,36
Italy (2005) 0,6 0,55
Japan (1995, 2000, 2005) 0,43 0,51
Jordan (2000,2005) 0,9 0,29
Kyrgyzstan (2000) 0,8 0,52
Latvia (1995) 0,63 0,6
Lithuania (2000) 0,64 0,39
4 5 6
South Korea (1995,2000, 2005) 0,77 0,5
Spain (1995, 2000, 2005) 0,67 0,59
SrpSka - Serbian Republic of Bosnia (1995, 2000) 0,69 0,65
Sweden (1995,2000, 2005) 0,8 0,78
Switzerland (1995,2005) 0,71 0,74
Taiwan (1995,2005) 0,71 0,41
Tanzania (2000) 0,92 0,5
Thailand (2005) 0,92 0,4
Trinidad and Tobago (2005) 0,82 0,5
Turkey (2000,2005) 0,9 0,46
Uganda (2000) 0,75 0,49
Ukraine (1995, 2005) 0,69 0,58
United States (2000,2005) 0,8 0,58
Uruguay (2000, 2005) 0,72 0,57
Venezuela (1995,2000) 0,91 0,47
Viet Nam (2000, 2005) 0,95 0,51
Zambia (2005) 0,74 0,45
Zimbabwe (2000) 0,72 0,52
Значение нации: тестирование модернистских теорий национализма
М.С. Фабрикант
Лаборатория сравнительных социальных исследований Национального исследовательского университета
Высшая школа экономики Россия 190068, Санкт-Петербург, пр. Римского-Корсакова, 47а
Цель исследования - эмпирическое тестирование самых видных модернистстких теорий национализма. Эти теории рассматривают государствостроительство и национальное самосознание как результат перехода от традиционного к современному обществу и различаются в зависимости от того, какие сферы современности считают наиболее соответствующими национализму. Исследование использует интегрированную базу данных третьей, четвертой и пятой волн World Values Survey, чтобы протестировать гипотезы, полученные на основании основных модернистских теорий национализма. Результаты регрессионного анализа на уровне страны показывают, что национализм теснее связан с общими наборами значений, такими как терпимость к ненормативному поведению, чем политические отношения. Региональная специфика теорий национализма приведена для обретения высочайшей прогнозирующей силы среднего уровня национализма страны. Теории, позиционирующие национализм как вызов локальных и космополитических идентичностей, отклонены эмпирическим доказательством их положительной взаимосвязи. Результаты подразумевают, что современный национализм отличается от раннего, отраженного в модернистских теориях, и предлагает менее строгие варианты и большие гибридизации многократных идентичностей.
Ключевые слова: национализм, модернистские теории национализма, модернизация, мультикультурализм.
