Between civic and ethnic nationalism

Abstract

The article examines the emergence and use of the idea of dichotomy between civil and ethnic nationalism. Based on the following analysis, the suggestion is made that civilian nationalism also has an ethnic character. This leads to the conclusion that civilian nationalism should be considered as a subcategory of ethnic nationalism. This somewhat reduces the effectiveness of using dichotomy as aheuristic analysis tool, but one must take into account the inherent limitations. The rooted nature of civil dichotomy against ethnic nationalism is so strong today that it does not allow us to see the obvious. Under “obvious” it is meant the normative nature of both concepts. The fact that most researchers still consider ethnic nationalism “bad” and civilian “good” leads to a neglect of critical thinking, as the result of which, at best, we get a biased analysis. Quite often civilian nationalism is perceived as an indicator of democracy and stability, and ethnic nationalism is of conflict and chaos.