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CHAPTER FOUR: State and Identity

Study

Since the end of the Cold War there has been a rise in conflictual political behavior based on nationalist, ethnic, and religious identity. Comparative politics asks questions about the origins of these conflicts and what can be done to contain them. This chapter looks at the most politically important categories of identity in the modern world-nation, ethnicity, race, and religion.

Social scientists have developed several different approaches to understanding how identities are formed and why they become politically salient, most importantly primordialism, instrumentalism, and constructivism. Whether identity groups are politically important, and whether people act politically based on group membership, depends on a variety of factors, such as whether a group has a pre-existing sense of itself: it must be an "imagined community" with both historic ties and a forward-looking agenda. It must have some felt grievance, and it seems to need political leadership. The political importance of even strongly felt identities can be rather fleeting.

Globalization can have an impact on local identity groups: local groups may pick up the dominant global discourses and be influenced by them as they begin to mobilize. The leaders of governments typically want to mobilize a national identity tied to the state while demobilizing other identities. Sometimes, the effort to create a unifying national identity triggers challenges from ethnic, religious, or other groups.