Civic Nationalism is a Necessary Component of Democratization: Not Ethnic

Nationalism
When Linz and Stepan wrote about their democratic consolidation idea in 1996, it
started a big discussion in comparative politics about democratization. The contribution
of this article to democratization literature was via their list of conditions that should be
fulfilled for a developing country not only to democratize but also stay democratic: in
other words democratically consolidate. In their famous book they also shared a large
section to discuss why nation state is a precondition for democratic consolidation. They
were defining national unity in ethnic terms, without making a distinction between ethnic
and civic nationalism. This paper argues that even though being a nation state makes it
more convenient to consolidate democracy in a country, what is necessary is not ethnic
but civic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism, on the other hand, is not helpful but rather
harmful for a country, which aims to consolidate its democracy.
Stephan and Linz are right when they insist that democracy requires a state to
begin with. The five requirements of a consolidated democracy make this point even
clearer. For a country to become and stay democratic, it needs to have a working rule of
law, which makes a free civil society to successfully function in its attempts to protect the
citizens from the state, when necessary. There has to be free and competitive elections.
Yet, holding elections is not enough, as seen in many developing countries. These
elections should be proven to be free and fair. There has to be developed rational/legal
bureaucratic norms working with the help of strong state institutions. Finally, there needs
to be a free, well institutionalized market. All these criteria can only exist together under
the rules and institutions of a state mechanism. So far, this essay does not have any

dispute with the Stephan and Linz's argument. The dispute is in their description of this
state as an ethnic nation state.
Stephan and Linz claim that for all these criteria to work properly and
simultaneously, the state needs to involve citizens, who have a lot of characteristics in
common including ethnicity, culture and language. These commonalities are the source of
their loyalty to the nation state. If these people are not homogenous in these terms, it is
not possible for them to protect the democracy. The state under which they live together
should be a legitimate one, say Linz and Stephan. If these people have separate identities,
they will not be able to agree on all these terms of democratic consolidation. Each
ethnically separate group will claim more rights than others and a peaceful social
agreement under these conditions is not possible to reach.
This paper does not agree with this last argument. The point here the authors are
missing is the following: there is not one kind of nationalism but two: ethnic vs. civic.
This means that for a country to become and stay democratic, its people do not have to
share a common ethnic identity. With the right policies, people can develop and embrace
a common identity, which has its roots in equal rights, patriotic attachment and a group of
shared values and practices (Ignatieff). The United States, one of the oldest and strongest
democracies in the world, is a very good example of this kind of nation state. Americans
share 'Americanness' on the bases of these characteristics, even though they come from
all kinds of different ethnic backgrounds. In their work, Linz and Stephan (34) mention
the United States as not a "nation state" but rather a "state nation." They include the
example of India to this group of countries as well. Accordingly, they differentiate these
multicultural states as separate given their struggle with dealing the problems that they

encountered during the state foundation process, which continues for India as of today
(Kohli).
I do not find this distinction convincing at all. The level of democratic
consolidation in India and the United States are very different and only this reason should
be enough to challenge Linz and Stephan. In terms of democratic consolidation levels,
Germany, which is an ethnically homogenous country to a great extend, can stand much
closer to the US than India does. India's level of democracy can be again closer to a
relatively more ethnically homogenous country Turkey than to the US. This simple fact
shows that Linz and Stephan do not have a justification to treat countries like the US
separately. On the other hand, civic nationalism explains better the difference between the
US, which does not have separatist problems despite its multiculturalism, and India's
separatist problems despite its long-term democracy journey.
As civic nationalism is related to common citizenship on the basis of common
rights and practices, ethnic nationalism is about common ethnicity, religion, color and
language. According to Linz and Stephan, these are the factors that bind people together.
However, it is possible to claim the opposite as well: those differences, which come by
birth, are very difficult, if not impossible, to change. As a result, they create the potential
to create distances between people, who are living under the roof of the same state.
Considering the fact that including highly homogenous countries like Germany and
Japan, homogeneity in terms of ethnicity is a disappearing phenomenon in today's
globalizing world. As a result, it is the best for policy makers to not to rely on ethnic
characteristics of citizens in formulating their nation state.

There are some research claiming that civic vs. ethnic nationalism difference is a
problematic one to make (Xenos)(Kuzio)(Brubaker). Their common claim is that both of
these terms are too ambiguous to differentiate from each other by simply referring to how
inclusive vs. exclusive they are. Accordingly, differentiating state characters as
completely civic or completely ethnic is impossible because most of the time both factors
contribute to the national character of the state. They also find civic nationalism too
heterogeneous for a definition to be useful(Brubaker, 60). They also assert that these two
characteristics, over time, get melted into each other. People define themselves as
American by developing an ethnic sense, for example, because they have a strong
patriotic tie to their country. On the other hand, ethnic can mean ethnocultural, making its
meaning closer to civic.
These claims have a point, nevertheless, this point is not challenging enough
given the fact that all the political terms are ambiguous: democracy, nation, even state. It
is possible to find different definitions of all these terms with varying ontological
histories. This fact, however, should not prevent us from using them in our analyses.
Civic vs. ethnic nationalism have enough rigor concept-wise to use in relation to each
other. More importantly, research defines examples of both ethnic and civic nationalism
conducted in practice in different country settings.
Another opposing argument, which closely follows the ambiguous concept
argument discussed above, is that countries cannot choose to have ethnic vs. civic
nationalism: it just exists in a certain way historically and culturally. However, there is
research showing the opposite: it is possible to discuss countries moving from ethnic to
civic nationalism over time via right policies conducted by central governments.

Breton, in his research discusses how English Canada and Quebec are sucessful
examples of changing emphasis from ethnic nationalism to civic nationalism over time as
a consequence of state policies. Consequently, there are four elements of nationalism:
firstly the principles of inclusion and exclusion, which have already been discussed
above. Secondly, the concept of national interest matters: are the interests common to all
different ethnicities in the nation? Thirdly, comparison to other groups is critical: it is
necessary to define the 'Others' as the groups, which are outside of the borders of the
nation state. Finally, what threatens and supports a group should be defined in a way that
defines the common identity of people. All these four characteristics of nation state are
open to be molded. States can use the constitutional rights, rule of law, media and their
own discourse via politicians to make sure that all these four criteria are formulated in a
way that civic rather than ethnic commonalities become relevant for the citizens. As a
result, citizens' mother tongue or color should not be relevant to these four
differentiations that make them members of a nation. Once this ideal is achieved, it is
possible to claim civic nationality as a successful state project.
To sum up, the founders of the idea of democratic consolidation were not right in
their claim that ethnic nationalism is necessary for countries to consolidate. It is
understandable that for the founders of a democratic country, it is more convenient to
deal with a ethnically homogenous country than a country, which is full of different
ethnic groups. However, it is rare to find example of this kind of combination of people
in a country. Luckily, example of multicultural successful democracies show that being a
nation does not require being ethnically homogenous. It is possible to rely on other
factors to give people the feeling of commonness such as equal constitutional rights and

patriotism. In addition, once again, these examples prove that by using right state
policies, it is possible to emphasize civic nationalism by undermining ethnic differences
as in the case of Quebec. Finally, it in age of globalization, where people are much more
mobile and communicate with each other globally, relying on ethnic differences, which
cannot be changed, is not a sustainable idea for nation state builders. Civic nationalism is
a better fit to the ideal of democracy because it is inclusive: it does not discriminate on
the basis of human characteristics, which come by birth without choice. Civic
nationalism, on the other hand, can be constructed and is much more sustainable for the
future of the countries to become and stay democratic.
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