There is an urgent need for global responses to a host of shared challenges, from climate change and technological disruption to financial imbalances. And yet, perversely, atavistic politics that seek to divide people are returning to the fore in democracies and autocracies alike. What is going on?
The rise and fall and rise of nationalism
All the world’s nations and nation states are organized around myths. In 1983, the Irish historian Benedict Anderson described how political leaders beginning in the 18th century created “imagined communities” in order to build modern, industrialized European states; more recently, Israeli historian Yuval Harari has explained how humanity used “lies” and “stories” to transition from small hunter‑gatherer tribes to large, complex political entities.
The curation of common religious beliefs, the evolution of common norms and behaviour, and the construction of common narratives enabled the emergence of strong polities, united by shared cultures. With the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the international community has recognized highly diverse political entities (former empires, small feudal autocracies or kingdoms, newly‑created and long‑standing democratically constituted nations) as nation states – granting nations the legal status of states under international law and thus offering a further level of legitimacy to national myths.
However, the near simultaneous adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the founding of the Bretton Woods institutions created a powerful counterforce: because both were forged at a moment of US‑led Western hegemony, the sense in the West was that the world would witness the expansion of nation states governed by increasingly homogenous political systems with a shared commitment to democracy and open markets.
The process of globalization demanded that all states adapt to being part of a shared project and subject themselves to its norms and laws. Globalization thus implied the end of the identity‑led politics that had led to the creation of nation states in the first place, as well as to the national chauvinism that had fuelled the world wars of the 20th century.
The United States and its allies provided the security umbrella under which many nations designed their routes to this modern statehood. As importantly, the fact that the global superpower was a melting pot of former nationalities challenged the idea of concentrating statehood around ethnic identity. America’s civil rights movement in the 1960s showed how a country could progress towards the ideal of a state based on a common set of values rather than ethnicity.
Under US protection, the European Union became the vanguard of this process of post‑nationalism. With the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community followed by the European Economic Community during the 1950s, and then the establishment of the European Union in 1993, member states pooled their sovereign interests into a supranational organization that would help deliver economic and other policy outcomes they could not deliver alone. To the extent that there was an emerging European identity, it was anti‑nationalist.
But the period since 2016 has brutally exposed the exceptional nature of this moment in human history. And it has illustrated the continuing power of myths and of a distinct sense of national identity to mobilize groups of people towards shared goals.
The failure of globalization to deliver its gains equitably across Western societies over the last 30 years has created an upswell of resentment against those politicians and political parties who championed globalization. President Donald Trump was elected to office on the back of his rejection of “globalism” and by championing “Americans first”. Supporters of Brexit pine for a return to Britain’s identity as a “sceptred isle”, separate from the European continent – a “great trading nation” plying the waves to the distant shores of the former British Empire.
America and Britain are not the only countries where the nostalgia for national identity is ascendant. In Russia and Hungary, the threat of global integration has intensified a historical rejection of outsiders and sense of national grievance. Their leaders have turned to national culture and identity as the basis for resistance.
China has carefully curated its period of historical exploitation by Western powers to strengthen popular support for its return as a great power. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party have reawakened Hindu resentment against the country’s minority Muslim community and have used myths about Hindu India’s glorious past to try to galvanize Indians towards its potential great future.
Because of the insecurity it arouses in others, the rise of nationalism begets the rise of more nationalism. South Korea and Japan, which both fear China’s growing power, have allowed historical disputes to fuel their national resentment of the other. Nationalism can also serve more utilitarian purposes. President Jair Bolsonaro claims that he wants to decolonize Brazil from the foreign environmental NGOs that prevent it from exploiting the Amazon.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is demanding reparations for Mexico from the Spanish government for the predations of the “conquistadores”. This swirl of historical facts, myths, slights and grievances are now turbocharged by social media in ways that can prevent political leaders from retaking control of the narrative, and policy, later.
Managing and leveraging the new nationalism
States around the world are at different stages of political evolution and their governments have different levels of political legitimacy. But two approaches would help manage the politics of this multinational as well as multiconceptual world so that states can continue to work together towards addressing shared challenges.
The first is to adapt international institutions to take better into account this global reawakening of national identities. The era of permissiveness to Western leadership is ending, while the desire within Western countries to carry the burdens of leadership is waning. Investing over the coming years in the legitimacy of major international institutions such as the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund is essential. Without greater legitimacy, these institutions will find they are increasingly ineffective.
One immediate step should be to begin a process of balancing more equitably the voting weights, exceptions and structures that favour the winners of the 20th century. But international institutions are only as effective as their constituent members. Weak or unstable governments can lead to weak or unstable institutions. It is equally important for national governments and other political actors to focus on their own domestic legitimacy.
Unfortunately, politics in the West may be regrouping around a new duopoly of those who are open to globalization and its attendant rules and are willing to abandon the national myths of the past, and those whose belief in national distinctiveness demands greater protection and scope for autarky. A new polarization of this sort will not lead to a new era of political stability. If the myths are purely nostalgic, they will betray their followers. If, on the other hand, the sense of national identity is eroded, it may prove impossible to retain the democratic legitimacy to engage multilaterally.
Political leaderships among the autocracies face an equally complex problem. National myths are essential to legitimize their non‑democratic systems. If autocratic governments can organize to deliver economic and social progress and security to most of their citizens, then the myths can generally play a supportive role, as China and Singapore have demonstrated.
If they fail to deliver, however, as is now the case in Russia, the temptation for governments to fall back on the notion of “the other” and blame external forces can become not only irresistible but entrenched, given the lack of a democratic pathway to an alternative. The result can be overt or covert conflict.
There is a logical response to both these sets of dynamics. National identities cannot and should not be done away with. Rather than tamping them down in favour of a global, supranational identity, governments need to channel them within models of inclusive domestic governance.
In the first place, even with the need for greater international interdependence, nation states should retain and invest in those instruments of fundamental sovereign power that can protect citizens from external threats, whether military, cyber or criminal. People who have confidence in their governments’ capacity to provide for their immediate security are less likely to retreat into an aggressive nationalism.
Conversely, national governments should devolve the maximum amount of political power over social policies, local development and infrastructure to regional authorities, cities or local communities, with corresponding decentralization of some powers of taxation. At a time of technological disruption and rapid economic change, a strong sense of local identity and solidarity can be a more positive force for adaptation than centrally‑driven policies and narratives.
Governments should then pool regulatory decision‑making over global public goods (protecting biodiversity, controlling greenhouse gas emissions or preventing pandemics) as much as possible at the regional and supranational levels, retaining appropriate levels of national supervision.
The risks of letting national mythologies rise again today without inclusive forms of national and international governance are severe. A large autocracy like China may one day face a structural economic slowdown at the same time as a large democracy like the United States undergoes a fundamental restructuring of its domestic politics, while Europe and others turn inwards. At that moment, the temptation for all sides to use nationalism to mobilize their people and political power will be strong, and the results unpredictably dangerous.
Source: Chatham House
