Understanding the new nationalism

While undoubtedly yielding large benefits, the post-cold war project of globalisation also created the conditions for resurgent nationalism around the world. With their international credibility at low ebb, Western policymakers will need to rethink how they engage economically and politically with countries that have embraced it.

The euphoria after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was not just about what Francis Fukuyama called an “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.” It was also about the decline of nationalism. With the world economy rapidly becoming more integrated, it was assumed that people would leave their national identities behind. The project of European integration – embraced enthusiastically by well-educated, upwardly mobile young people – was not just supranational, but post-national.

But nationalism is back, and it is playing a central role in global politics. The trend is not confined to the United States or France, where former President Donald Trump and the far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, respectively, lead new nationalist coalitions. Nationalism is also driving populist movements in Hungary, India, Turkey, and many other countries. China has embraced a new nationalist authoritarianism, and Russia has launched a nationalist war aimed at eradicating the Ukrainian nation.

Old wounds

There are at least three factors fuelling the new nationalism. First, many of the affected countries have historical grievances. India was systematically exploited by the British under colonialism, and the Chinese empire was weakened, humiliated, and subjugated during the nineteenth-century opium wars. Modern Turkish nationalism is animated by memories of Western occupation of large parts of the country after World War I.

Second, globalisation increased pre-existing tensions. Not only did it deepen inequalities in many countries (often in unfair ways, by enriching those with political connections); it also eroded longstanding traditions and social norms.

And, third, political leaders have become increasingly skilled and unscrupulous in exploiting nationalism to serve their own agendas. For example, under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule, nationalist sentiment is being cultivated through new high-school curricula and propaganda campaigns.

Similarly, under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist Hindutva regime, the world’s largest democracy has succumbed to majoritarian illiberalism. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initially eschewed nationalism, even spearheading a peace process with the Kurds in the early 2010s. But he has since embraced nationalism wholeheartedly and cracked down on independent media, opposition leaders, and dissidents.

*Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is co-author (with James A. Robinson) of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty.