Is Civic Nationalism Necessarily Inclusive? Conceptions of Nationhood and Anti-Muslim Attitudes in Europe

• In Event: 3558 - Political Culture, Trust and Civic Engagement

Abstract

Despite the importance of national identity in the exclusionary political discourse of the European radical right, scholars have not investigated how popular understandings of nationhood are connected to anti-Muslim attitudes. Moreover, survey-based studies tend to conflate anti-Muslim attitudes with general anti-immigrant sentiments. This article contributes to research on nationalism and out-group attitudes by demonstrating that varieties of national self-understanding are predictive of anti-Muslim attitudes, above and beyond dispositions toward immigrants. Using latent class analysis and multilevel models of survey data from 41 European countries, we demonstrate that conceptions of nationhood are heterogeneous within countries and that their relationship with anti-Muslim attitudes is contextually variable. Specifically, the expected association between civic nationalism and inclusive attitudes toward Muslims holds only outside of Northwestern Europe. Contrary to existing theories, in most Northwestern European countries, civic nationalism is associated with greater antipathy toward Muslims. In these countries, elective criteria of belonging appear to have become fused with exclusionary notions of national culture that portray Islam as incompatible with European liberal values (as suggested by recent work on civilizational themes in contemporary Western European nationalist populism). This may serve to legitimate anti-Muslim sentiments not only on the radical right, but also among mainstream segments of the Northwestern European public, with important implications for social exclusion and political behavior. We explain the cross-national variation in the exclusionary aspects of civic nationalism with reference to divergent trajectories of church-state relations across Western European countries: countries where religion is explicitly relegate to the private sphere are more likely to view Muslims as culturally incompatible with liberal democracy.

Authors

• Kristina Bakkaer Simonsen, Aarhus University

• Bart Bonikowski, Harvard University