The Identity Basis of Majority Nationalist Movements

• In Event: Minority Politics in the Comparative Context

Abstract

Majority nationalists who promote the dominance of a specific nation are resurgent across the world, including in India, China, and the US. However, how do they delimit the nation in the first place? Drawing on social psychology and framing theory, I argue that majority nationalists face two key challenges: First, they need to select identity categories that are at least potentially salient among the population. Second, they need to justify the so-defined nation's entitlement to political dominance. Based on this framework, I highlight a series of structural and ideological factors that constrain majority nationalist claim-making. These include plausible claims to indigeneity, links to a glorious imperial past, and involvement in struggles against former alien rulers. Combining new data on the identity basis of majority nationalist movements in 91 countries in Eurasia and Africa with information on all linguistic, religious, and racial markers in these countries, I test my framework. Thereby, I provide, to my knowledge, the first quantitative, cross-national analysis of how nationalists "construct" the nation, adding to a literature that has predominantly been characterized by single case studies or abstract formal models.

Author

• Andreas Juon, ETH Zurich