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What should political actors and state institutions be permitted, encouraged, required, or forbidden to do in the attempt to shape people’s national identities? This is the central question in the ethics of nation-building, and has been vastly understudied in recent normative political theories of nationalism. This chapter answers this question by discussing more than a dozen components of an individual’s national identity. It considers the many legitimate and illegitimate ways in which political actors and the state can shape or alter these components, and the content of the identity itself. It also considers the soundness and relevance of the seemly age-old distinction between so-called ethnic and civic national identities.

This chapter introduces the book’s central questions, themes, and theoretical concepts, and elaborates on the moral-political premises of the study. It starts with a discussion of the contemporary dual crisis of the welfare state and the nation. This complex crisis presents the European Union with a dilemma centered on changing frameworks of citizenship, social exclusion, and the racialization of social relations. It has important historical similarities with the American dilemma of race, class, and democracy described by the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal. This emerging ‘European dilemma’ can no longer be dealt with through the defensive strategies through which European governments and EU institutions have endeavored to appease anti-immigrant populist parties in the past: by adopting restrictive immigration and asylum regimes, shifting from multiculturalism towards revamped assimilationist policies, or devising new ‘guest worker’ systems designed to keep the ‘problem’ away from the core institutions of society altogether. On the one hand, the very future of the European project of integration is dependent on the successful framing of new inclusive modes of citizenship and broad forms of social solidarity. On the other hand, taking this task seriously means confronting powerful political and economic interests. Thus, a central question of the book is whether current national and EU-level anti-discrimination and equal opportunities policies can succeed in the absence of some form of broad social compact on citizenship and social welfare in terms of normative political consensus, and strong institutions beyond and complementary to the market.

This chapter defines ‘nationalism’ and its related terms, and examines various accounts of the origin and persistence of national identities, and their relevance to developing an ethics of nationalism. It distinguishes between three types of constructivist arguments, and argues that only one type seems adequate in explaining how national identities originate and maintain themselves.

This chapter is concerned with moral arguments about membership in a national community, focusing on David Miller's On Nationality and Tom Hurka's article ‘The Justification of National Partiality’. It examines the bonds of attachment that co‐nationals feel towards those who share the same national identity, and the moral importance that should be placed on that.

The principle of nationality defended in this book is contrasted with conservative nationalism on one side and radical multiculturalism on the other. Conservative nationalists treat national identities as rigid and authoritative, and therefore resist the changes in identity that immigration, for example, requires. Radical multiculturalists support the political expression of group identity, but fail to see how a secure sense of national identity can benefit minority groups. It is a defensible aim of public policy to integrate groups into such an identity, in particular, through the education system. Cultural minorities can legitimately demand equal treatment, but special rights for such groups are in general unjustified.

It is often claimed that national identities are weakening as a result of changes at global level in culture and politics. In fact, public cultures still differ significantly cross‐nationally, and national identities continue to matter to most people. Popular attachment to Europe, for example, is largely instrumental in character. The evolution of British national identity shows how historical beliefs in national superiority and uniqueness have had to be abandoned, and how nation‐building projects today must recognize the religious and ethnic pluralism of contemporary societies.

This chapter examines arguments that link national community with a particular type of culture, and then links culture with something that is valued (autonomy, well‐being). Versions of this argument have been put forward by Tamir, Miller, Kymlicka, MacCormick, Margalit, and Raz. This chapter argues that it is important to distinguish between a culture and national identity.

This chapter examines arguments that link national identity with other goods (democracy, social justice). This analysis of this chapter does not reject the instrumental arguments of Rousseau, Mill, Gellner, O’Leary, Galston, and Miller, but it examines the limits of this type of argument and the empirical evidence.

Germany has had the largest immigration of any European country: a mixture of ‘return’ of ethnic Germans and systematic recruitment of ‘temporary guestworkers’. The migrants stayed on and formed new ethnic minorities after recruitment was stopped in 1973. Yet the official line until the 1990s was that Germany was ‘not a country of immigration’. The resulting processes of ethnic segmentation and social exclusion coincided with a crisis of Germany’s strong ‘social state’, based on a regulated labour market, comprehensive social insurance, collective wage bargaining, and full employment. Exposure to global competition caused chronic unemployment, undermining the financial basis for the welfare state. The result has been a simultaneous crisis of national identity and the welfare state, with the pluralistic federal system apparently incapable of making the reforms needed to restart the economy and prevent the growth of inequality.

Nations must be clearly distinguished from states on the one hand and ethnic groups on the other. A nation is a community (1) constituted by shared belief and mutual commitment, (2) extended in history, (3) active in character, (4) connected to a particular territory, and (5) marked off from other communities by its distinct public culture. The modern idea of nationality is distinguished from older beliefs about cultural differences between peoples by its emphasis on collective self‐determination. Although national identities involve elements of myth, this does not show that it is irrational to embrace them. Nor do they prevent individuals making their own choices about how to live.

The five themes presented in Ch. 3 (democracy, American national identity, gender equality, devotional Catholicism, and the Americanization of Catholic doctrine) are further examined here in the context of seeking to show how American culture shaped Catholicism in the period 1960–2001. The chapter starts by examining the role of President Kennedy in enabling Catholics to stand taller, and the changes initiated by Pope John XXIII's election in 1958, which led to the Second Vatican Council reforms (1962–65). It then examines the further emergence of a public Catholicism that sought to influence the shape and values of American society. The chapter also touches on some issues that have generated considerable controversy among Catholics in recent years – the ethical issues of abortion and birth control, the desire for more democracy in the management of parish life, the role of women in the church, the increased ethnic diversity of Catholicism, and the new rituals of prayer and worship that have emerged in the past 40 years.

One important source of national identity lies in hierarchical and segmental cultural divisions of labour. These provide a social base for nationalism among territorially concentrated groups. Some sources of cultural divisions of labour are enumerated. Whereas it was once thought that such divisions would attenuate in the face of industrialization and efficient labour markets, this often does not happen.

The five themes presented in Ch. 3 (American national identity, Americanization of Catholic doctrine, democracy, devotional Catholicism, and gender equality) are further examined here in the context of seeking to show how American culture shaped Catholicism in the era 1920–60 . It is shown that during these years, Catholics were beginning to think in a less parochial manner, and emerge from the neighbourhood/parish ghettos that had formed their life previously, and had been subject to attack by nativist revivals of Anglo‐Saxonism and anti‐Catholicism (in the shape of a revived Ku Klux Klan). Such a reorientation gave rise to the emergence of a public Catholicism that sought to influence the shape and values of American society.

Nationalism is a powerful force in contemporary societies, and poses unavoidable questions about state boundaries, political self‐determination, cultural pluralism, and our duties to people inside and outside the nation. It should not be dismissed as an irrational force outside our control. The book defends ‘the principle of nationality’ which can be summed up in three propositions: that national identities are genuine forms of personal identity, that we have special duties to fellow‐nationals and that nations have a good claim to be politically self‐determining.

Examines the period from 1880–1920, when Catholicism's relationship with American culture intensified. There are five themes: (1) The study of the interaction between Catholicism and American culture is expanded, while continuing to focus on democracy and how this core American value influenced the Catholic community; (2) An examination is also made of the European devotional style of Catholicism that flourished at that time and how it shaped Catholicism; (3) The issue of American national identity is also addressed in relation to Catholicism – this became a major topic of debate in the 1880s and 1890s; (4) The Americanization of Catholic doctrine started as the American cultural traditions of democracy and religious freedom persuaded some Catholics to reexamine Catholic teaching on church and state and religious freedom – as a result, American Catholicism began to take on a distinctiveness that would set it apart from its counterparts in such countries as Italy and France; (5) The final theme examined is that of gender – with the emergence of the American ideal of gender equality, an awakening clearly began to take place among Catholics, which sought to modify the traditional understanding of the role of women in society. These five themes are examined in more detail in the next two chapters.