POL1AUP Democracies and Dictatorships Assignment Sample

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Why Does Nationalism Persist in Many Parts of The World Despite Rapid Globalization and Growing Interconnectivity?

The term nationalism can be explained as an ideology in which a nation consider it’s own self interests excluding the interests of other nations. It is a movement which aims to protect the nation’s sovereignty, that is, self governance. Nationalists think that this is a best way to stop the oppression from other nations. This is a way of thinking to reduce the influence and interference from other nation (Kan & Xu, 2019). This ideology aims to build its own national identity that should be based on culture, traditions, language, geographic location, politics, and religion. This is to promote national unity. It is also closely related to patriotism and gives pride in national achievement.

On the other hand, globalisation can be defined as an interlinkage and integration among people, businesses, organisations, governments of different countries in the world. The growing advancement in innovative technology and transportation has led to the growth of globalisation. With this increase in the growth of globalisation, there is growth in the international trade, ideas and culture (Windsor, 2020). It can be defined as the spread of people, technology, goods, information and jobs worldwide. In other words, it can also be explained as interdependence of nations globally. On the one hand, it helps to generate job opportunities and lead to economic growth of the nations worldwide, whereas, on the other hand, it also creates international competition from which various small and medium sized industries suffer.

Nationalism, globalisation and their relation have always been an important topic of debate among researchers and scholars. There is importance of both concepts and their position in the contemporary world. Some people may argue that the role and importance of nationalism is reduced. This is due to the rapid increase in the globalisation and inter connectivity between nations across the world. While the others may argue that after globalisation the importance of nationalism is strengthened.

The world today is not same as the world before globalisation. Globalisation has led to the removal of barriers on trade, communication, culture. There has been deterioration with the advances in technology and communication. For many nations, this is a nightmare as the world becomes more singular and unified (Ariely, 2012) Despite rapid globalisation and growing inter connectivity; in some parts of the world nationalism still persists. This is because they think that the culture and heritage of their ethnic groups will be destroyed by this growing linkages worldwide. We can see the influence and cultural dominance of western countries on other countries. For example, eating burgers from McDonald’s, drinking coffee from Starbucks, wearing clothes of Adidas, listening to iPods. This all shows us the dominance of the West on rest of the world. The development of new and innovative technology in the West also influences the rest of the world. The other countries start borrowing the new ideas and values from the West. Thus, the whole world has the same set standards as the West.

As Peter Evans quoted, “Products and ideas developed in rich countries shape the value and ideas of citizens of poor countries”. Globalisation is a concept which means compression of the world such that the world is a single place where every thing is connected in one way or the other. So even if one wants to not get affected will be affected by it. The powerful counties will have a massive effect on the rest of the world.

However, nationalism is a concept in which one has a feeling of attachment towards his nation. Sometimes, it is used by the politicians to promote national unity. It is a sense of pride towards nation’s culture and traditions. It is a way to promote and protect the way of life and culture of the nation. Thus, it can be called as an international ideology. Suppose a person leaves his country and settles in other country, but he still, listens to the local news and keep him updated. Even he cheers his home country’s sports team. This is an example of nationalism which is similar to patriotism. In many parts of the world, people fight for nationalism and seek for self governance.

A statement by Riggs, “People become capable of exercising sovereignty only when they enjoy some sense of solidarity based on shared values and customs. This solidarity is reified into the concept of a nation.” As we know, globalisation has led to interdependence among nation and one nation is linked to the other. Therefore, the fate of one nation is dependent on the fate of other nation. Nationalists focus on their own interests and thus do not want to depend on the fate of other nation.

Some scholars believe that globalisation has made the national barriers irrelevant since there is compression of time and space. The national differences are not seen. With the rapid globalisation, the red line which is drawn between the nations have been disappeared (White, 2020). Thus, it seems that nationalism has lost its power to keep everyone together in a nation. People have started living in mixed cultures rather than the national cultures. Nationalists are concerned about the dilution in the culture due to immigration. Immigration will lead to the movement of people from other nations. They will bring their own culture and thus the social culture and demography of the country will be affected. This creates cultural tensions in some nations.

Moreover, some people define a mixed relationship between nationalism and globalisation. They say, nationalism gave rise to globalisation. If each and every nation does not contribute to the whole (collective action), globalisation was not possible. Thus, the both concepts can coexist at the same time. Since both of them supports each other.

There is other argument which says that the sense of nationalism is increased with the help of globalisation. There is a belief that if more interactions and communications are there then the people will be more aware of their traditions, culture and national differences. They will be more alert and will avoid the changes and this will lead to rise in conflicts (Alalou, 2020). Thus, the sense of nationalism is strengthened with globalisation. The growing challenge of globalization leads to intensifying nationalism. Therefore, it does not destroy the local cultures, in fact, it encourage the responses through the rise of localities.

There are uneven effects on all the parts of the world, in the case of globalisation. Therefore, nationalism is stronger concept and is not diminished with globalisation (Bari & Ahmed, 2019). Smith 1998 said that, “Nations have deep roots and they are based on pre-political, cultural, and ethnic identities and their social and moral significance sustain their power and explain their resistance’’ (Genov, 2008). Thus, nationalism is evolved as a cultural doctrine that tends to protect the identity, culture and autonomy of a nation.

Under this argument, there comes the concept of fundamentalism. This refers to the group of people who does not like globalisation and the structure of globe, as a whole. “Resistance to contemporary globalization, for example the radical side of the general Islamic movement would be regarded as opposition not only to the homogenized system but to the conception of the world as a series of culturally equal”, said by Robertson (Kannan, 2019). Thus, this can be explained as the pulling of all the groups of people from their different levels of isolation, and pushing them to the global structure. Here, globalisation is leading to the rise if fundamentalism by forcing different people to integrate together. This rise of fundamentalism is due to the rise in the necessities of societies, civilisations, regions to show their identities for both internal and external purposes due to the time and space compression (Kim, 2019). There are different views of fundamentalism also. Some thinks that they make the benefits of globalisation negligible and hence, the globe worse. Others think, this is a way of thinking in which values of national and cultural self-determination is felt.

There are few examples of extreme nationalists who supports that the nationalism has risen due to globalisation. For example, the Bulgarian national alliance state is in the support of building a united nationalist front against globalisation (Genov, 2010). The other example is of the New Right activists who uses the phrase, “Globalisation is genocide”. This shows that the nationalists are fighting against globalisation and tells us how they feel about it. Thus, these movements are becoming famous. The nationalists are fighting for the protection of their identity and against the destructive idea of globalisation.

In conclusion, it can be said that globalisation has worked as a double edged sword. There is rise of nationalism under globalisation (Bairner, 2008) Also, the homogenizing nature of globalisation had led to more awareness among people. There is a threat that the globalisation can lead to changes in the localities, societies and the world as a whole. Thus, this led to an increase sense of nationalism among people to defend their culture, traditions, and regions from changing to the new structure of the world.

References for Democracies and Dictatorships 

Alalou, A. (2020). Twenty-First-Century North Africa: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Struggle for Tamazight Language. In African Languages and Literatures in the 21st Century (pp. 13-41). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Ariely, G. (2012). Globalisation and the decline of national identity? An exploration across sixty‐three countries. Nations and nationalism, 18(3), 461-482.

Bairner, A. (2008). Sport, nationalism and globalization: Relevance, impact, consequences. Hitotsubashi journal of arts and sciences, 49(1), 43-53.

Bari, S., & Ahmed, S. (2019). Cultural Globalization in A Contest with The State and Nationalism. Pakistan Journal of International Affairs, 2(1).

Genov, N. (2010). Radical nationalism in contemporary Bulgaria. Rev. Eur. Stud., 2, 35.

Kan, Y., & Xu, B. (2019). The Third Road Beyond Nationalism and Globalization? China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Its Implications for Higher Education. In Contesting Globalization and Internationalization of Higher Education (pp. 49-64). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Kannan, K. P. (2019). Not by Growth Alone: the Challenge of Development in a Globalized World. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 1-13.

Kim, J. (2019). Why We Cheer for Viktor Ahn: Changing Characteristics of Sporting Nationalism and Citizenship in South Korea in the Era of Neoliberal Globalization. Communication & Sport, 7(4), 488-509.

White, C. S. (2020). Wielding Social Media in the Cyber-Arena: Globalism, Nationalism, and Civic Education. Research in Social Sciences and Technology, 5(1), 1-21.

Windsor, D. (2020). Nationalism and patriotism in international business. In Foreign Direct Investments: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1843-1868). IGI Global.

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