ABSTRACT
The relationship between state nationalism and democratic practices is contested. Some experts argue that nationalism can serve as a state-building exercise that allows a country to become a viable candidate for membership in a democratic community, such as the European Union. In this scenario, state nationalism can produce a democratic outcome, as the case of the Baltic States illustrates. In contrast, those academics skeptical about nationalism’s consequences contend that state nationalism may justify non-and even anti-democratic practices. Raison d’état – for reasons of state – is a principle that makes clear how a state can under certain conditions assume the prerogative to suspend democratic processes where the interests of the state so warrant. Many of the weak, fragmented, or collapsed states in the developing world appeal to the power of state nationalism and the principle of raison d’état to prop up authoritarian regimes. This chapter examines whether state nationalism – more specifically, an etatized nationalism – can itself be the product of undemocratic values. The causal chain leads from the rise of undemocratic illiberal values in a society to a nationalist exclusionary discourse appropriated by the state. In this way the undemocratic illiberal orientations of a section of society become the nationalism of the state itself. Political parties are central to this process. When parties with xenophobic agendas influence a country’s parliament or perhaps even form part of a governing coalition, they have the potential to construct a state nationalism that is exclusionary and discriminatory – in these ways leading to anti-democratic practices. Within the EU, nationalist and/or anti-immigrant movements have grown in importance since EU enlargement: Austria, Belgium, and Denmark in the West, and Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Estonia in the East are examples. The chapter focuses on two cases of etatized nationalism – one in Western European (France), the other in Eastern Europe (Poland). Over the past two decades politics in these countries have become shaped by hostility to particular types of “foreigners.” Such attitudes have been embodied in right-wing political parties, in particular, Front National in France and the Law and Justice party in Poland. The importance of Islamophobia is given special attention. This chapter concludes that the EU faces a new and different democratic deficit. Even as it
attempts – by way of the prospective Lisbon Treaty – to incorporate democratic practices into its governance, more exclusionary-driven nationalisms in individual member states may undermine any new EU-initiated democratic gains.
