ABSTRACT
Identity is not constitutive of illiberalism. This chapter argues that some form of collective identity is necessary to produce the level of social cohesion and community that makes a democratic and liberal form of political organization possible. Identity is constitutive of belonging on multiple levels. Laws and institutions define identity categories. Nation states are the modern repository of political identities – the political form where emotion and law, culture, and contract intersect. Identity becomes the basis of illiberal politics when the cultural dimension of national belonging merges with the contractual dimensions of national organization. The fusion of culture and contract more typically occurs on a continuum. There is a threshold at which pragmatic nationalism, at one end of the continuum, slides into the identitarianism and nativism of the other end. This chapter first takes up the concept of identity and its meaning; second, it explores the relation between identity and illiberalism; and third, it dissects benign and less benign nationalism as the major contemporary political identity, including a discussion of identitarianism and nativism as toxic forms of nationalism.
