*Originally published in 2022. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work.

The general approach to the theme of nationalism in International Relations is ambiguous. On the one hand, the discipline assumes and reiterates nationalism as a fundamental variable in the composition of its empirical field – from the consolidation of Nation-States to the two World Wars, this ideology is considered a driving force in contemporary international relations (Barkin Cronin 1994; Bukovansky 1999; Gellner 2008; Hobsbawm 1996; Hobsbawm 2001; Malkki 1995; Mayall 1990; Mayall 1999; Mayall 2013; Mayall 2015; Posen 1990). On the other hand, however, it is not only the hegemonic theories of International Relations but also the efforts of theoretical development and empirical investigation in the field that have essentially: (a) neglected this topic (Cederman 2013; Griffiths and Sullivan 1997; Heiskanen 2019; Mayall 1994), (b) relegated it to historical analyzes (Hobsbawm 1992; Greenfeld 2019; Smith 1991; Kedourie 1961, Calhoun 1993, 1997), (c) to the arena of domestic politics, or (d) the field of Comparative Politics (Anderson 2016; Gellner 2008; Snyder 2000; Solt 2011).

There are, of course, some exceptions. Mansfield and Snyder (2005) analyze how nationalist discourses in favor of domestic unity during processes of democratization can lead to careless foreign policy and the instigation of international conflict. Van Evera (1994) conducts a deductive exercise to explore the effects of nationalism on the risk of war. Posen (1993) concludes that nationalism increases the intensity of war, mainly by increasing the capacity of States to mobilize creative energies and a spirit of self-sacrifice. Schrock-Jacobson (2012: 829-831) identifies five possible effects of nationalism on international relations: (1) nationalism entails the identification and defamation of ‘others,’ which can provoke violent reactions; (2) nationalism promotes the use of biased strategic assumptions; (3) certain domestic interest groups can benefit from belligerent nationalist foreign policies and lobby for their continuation and eventual escalation; (4) elites can more easily marginalize opposition groups by describing them as national threats; (5) nationalism provides a favorable environment for 'bidding nationalist wars' between elites and between elites and the masses. When these processes are at work, nationalism should increase the likelihood of initiating interstate conflict. It is not a coincidence that these studies focus primarily on the relationship between nationalism and the occurrence of international conflicts.

Due to the recent history of International Relations, explorations into the effects of nationalism on the international arena have focused mostly on the field of International Security. A notable deviation from this trend is the work of James Mayall (1990, 1999, 2013, 2015). When analyzing the intersection between the notions of sovereignty, self-determination, and nationalism, Mayall postulates the centrality of this last variable to the construction of the architecture sustaining the contemporary international system or Society of States.

This ambiguity on how the discipline of International Relations deals with the theme of nationalism creates a paradox in how we think and act on the international level. While International Relations scholars recognize the importance of nationalism as a constituting phenomenon of the field, they seldomly engage in research that investigates its effects both on the structure and dynamics of international relations. To a large extent, this is due to theoretical and methodological barriers that continue to haunt the discipline of International Relations. In aspiring to a high level of abstraction, researchers in the field choose to qualify their actors as "units" and "states". This generalizing vocabulary, which seeks to describe international phenomena broadly and comprehensively, often results in an analysis that is profoundly ahistorical and displaced from specific social contexts (Cederman 2013). For Hossay (2001), a desire for simple synchronous causal assertions and the methodological choices accompanying this desire, such as excessive methodological individualism (Goode and Stroup 2015), made social scientists less able to account for the emotional appeal of nationalism, discarding and disregarding its strength and authenticity.

One of the main challenges pointed out in studies of nationalism relates to conceptual issues. This adversity has become a cliché, i.e., the idea of nationalism as a chimerical concept (Anderson 2016; Cederman 2013). Whenever we speak of nationalism, we re-enact Walter Bagehot's (2007: 20) assertion that "we know what it is when you do not ask us, but we cannot explain or define it very quickly."

The concept of nationalism presents a challenge for social scientists because it is an ‘essentially contested concept’(Gallie 1956). It carries a polysemy that often presents itself as a........

© E-International