Draft of: Realists, Nationalism, & inter-state violence: gaps in explaining conflict initiation

Realists, Nationalism, & inter-state violence: gaps in explaining conflict initiation

An enduring debate within Nationalism studies is centred between Primordialists, who maintain that nations are distinct natural historical political units (Smith 1986), and Modernists, who argue that nations are “imagined communities” created by group relations between individuals (Anderson 1983, pp.6). Though most contemporary Nationalism scholars are firmly Modernists, IR Realists are distinct in that their theoretical canon takes premises from aspects of both traditions. They tacitly accept the Primordialist ontological position that nations/states (through an affiliation to nation-states) are independent natural entities in the world – that creates a ‘Nationalism’ as a tool of self-preservation (Waltz 1959). But, simultaneously they accept the Modernist view that Nationalism, through an aggregation of individual’s actions, engenders the “motion” of inter-state dynamics – through public opinion affecting geopolitical realities (Measrsheimer 2014). Thus, IR Nationalism’s roots as a conceptual object is represented twice in Realist theory – once from the primordialists at the purely macro level and once from the modernist at the micro level. This tension is most apparent in Realist theory’s ommision of explaining how Nationalism as a ‘Modernist’ causal force, leads to inter-state violence that takes place in the ontologically ‘Primodialist’ inter-state arena (Van Evera 1994; Cederman 2002). More simply, here I ask if Realists can form a unified theory of Nationalism that can coherently explain the relationship, if any, between Nationalism and the initiation of interstate conflict?

Here I examine four approaches to fill this explanatory gap: a “Traditional view” that Nationalism has an inherent propensity towards inter-state violence; a top-down “Structural approach” associated with Structural Realists; a bottom-up “Individualist approach” from Human-Nature Realism; and the nacent “Social Psychology” empirical approach. I find that no current approach adequately bridges the explanatory gap between the Modernist and Primodialist interpretations of the effects of Nationalism on initation of the interstate conflict; however, developments within Social Psychology and Individualist approaches appear most promising to bridge this gap.

Nationalism, first being studied as a method of state-formation, has always been associated with violence through the sentiment that “states make war and war makes states” (Tilly 1990, pp.32). Indeed, historically this link goes back atleast to Tolstoy’s arguement that “to destroy war, [we must first] destroy patriotism” (Tolstoy 1896). This link between war and nationalism enshirines the “Traditional view” of nationalist inter-state violence initiation where Nationalism is defined merely as a state’s propensity to engage in inter-state conflict (Kosterman & Feshbach 1989) and research continues to defend this definitional relationship (Woodwell 2007; Pavković 2000; Lieven 2004; Gagnon 1994). However, this is unhelpful in answering our question as it forces us to ‘beg the question’ when explaining the causal relationship between interstate-violence and Nationalism by appealing to the definition of Nationalism as a propensity towards violence when explaining why instances of violence occur. Thus, assuming the conclusion and so, beyond establishing a correlation, these cannot provide adequate theoretical explanations of conflict intiation.

In contrast, the “Structural approach” attributes the primary cause of inter-state violence to the structure of the international system. Structuralists maintain that Nationalism contributes to violence by creating instability in the international system. Nationalism, they maintain, causes breakdowns of stable security dilemma, by either ‘capturing’ states to follow through on their Militaristic rhetoric that had been needed to fuel defence spending (Snyder 1991), or by giving actors overconfidence in their own state’s power leading to miscalculations of their peer-competitors’ relative strength (Johnson 2009; Debs 2020). However, there is reluctance to overcomplicate the structural model by making Nationalism an endogenous factor[1]. Instead, Structural Realists approximate accurate explanations of Nationalism by making event-driven alterations to their models[2]. Consequently, their models become a reflection of the events they considered (Legro and Moravcsik 1999). Contemporary Structural Realists primarily focus on Nationalism in the Chinese context, motivated by politically salient fears of changing world polarity and rising-power conflicts (Feng & He 2020). For example, Mearsheimer’s (2014) focuses on an aggressive ‘hyper-nationalism’ outcompeting patriotism in China and Shirk’s (2008) warnings of jingoism in the Chinese public and military being left unchecked by the political leadership. As a result the Structural approach is somewhat narrow: it provides a good explanation of Nationalism and inter-state violence in the Chinese context, but does not give more universally applicable explanations. However, this approach will likely improve from new event-driven considerations of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict – necessitating Nationalism specific theoretical extenstion that increase the explanatory power of structural realist approaches[3].

A related Nationalism-specific “Structural approach” attempts to re-define Nationalism to fit as an endogenous variable within Structural Realist models. These theorists take a Bismarckian view of Nationalism as a tool mobilised by self-interested political elites who engender nationalistic seniments within a state’s population (Hearn 2006)[4]. This perspective originates within historical thinkers like Mandeville (1724) or Rousseau’s (1762) ‘State Religion’. Contemporary IR theorists such as Snyder (2000) and Schrock-Jacobson (2012) have adopted the Bismarkian top-down view and, through empirical studies, confirm that Nationalism plays a role in the initiation of inter-state violence. Under this treatment, however, Nationalism is not an independent causal factor of interstate-violence but only a predictive symptom of violence, which instead originates from elites who mobilise popular support in preparation for war. Instead, causality falls to state elites, which – in so far as state elite’s interest corresponds with ‘state’ interests from the Structural Realist perspective – create a complete model that explains the correlation between Nationalism and inter-state violence.

Yet, this latter structuralist group’s contributions remain contested as they seemingly give too great a causal role for state elites in Nationalist mobilisation, which Ko (2022) shows play a statistically insignificant role in mobilizing ‘othering’ nationalist sentiment in China. Indeed, Weiss (2014) and Reilly (2013) argue that more globally elites tend to curtail populist Nationalist mobilisation from fear that Nationalist public pressure could snowball and restrict their policy choices. So, it appears we cannot simplify Nationalism to purely an instrument of statecraft. Consequenly, it is prudent that in absence of vindicating empirical evidence, Nationalism must remain exogenous to Structural Realist models. Nevertheless, Schrock-Jacobson (2012) remains a foundational paper for the later Social Psychology approach for her considerations that Nationalism is not a monolith but has multiple distinct effects that are specific to the method of Nationalist mobilisation.

Contrastingly, the “Individualist approach”, instead derives its methodology from Waltz’s “first-image” Human-Nature Realism and attempts to build up an explanatory theory of Nationalism from assumptions about the nature of Nationalistic individuals (Waltz 1959). These assume that Nationalists favour the state using violent means to achieve its national interests (Bertoli 2017; Gruffydd-Jones 2017) and then explain how individual propensities aggregate to create state preferences. However, because Nationalist pressure is likely to play out differently in insulated authoritarian theocracies than in parliamentary democracies, this approach leads to a form of Realist Institutionalism whereby scholars explain how the architecture of state structures leads to differing outcomes. These create quite sophisticated models of specific state systems, for example, Gries et al (2016) and Weiss & Dafoe (2019) in China or Drezner (2008) in the USA.

However, Human-Nature Realism has been challenged from a growing empirical “Social Psychology” approach, which argues Realist assumptions about Nationalism are too simplistic. Following from Schrock-Jacobson (2012), this approach divides Nationalism into context and method specific effects. Using survey data & controlled experiments they find that revanchism (Lickel 2012) and fear of losing national prestige (Schatz, Staub, & Lavine 1999) play a role in conflict prone behaviours. Recent studies from Chung (2015) and Ko (2022) have developed the role of Nationalism and policy preference in China; Ko determining that Nationalism can affect individuals’ preferences for conflict-prone policies, positively or negatively, dependent on whether Nationalist sentiment is outward-looking (creating resentment against another country) or inward-looking (creating self-assuring feelings of national security).

Yet, Social Psychologists refrain from generalising these findings, due to apparent gaps in their understanding of IR theory. For example, Ko (2022) makes small interpretive faults in her understanding of the security dilemma by appealing to answers on “what do you think likelihood of war will be?” to show that Nationalist Military parades does not change how individuals’ interpretate of their state’s security dilemma, rather than “what do you think likelihood of winning a war will be?” which fits better with Realist security-dilemma theory. This difficulty is compounded by the widespread use of Lambert et al.’s (2010) laboratory test method, which use leading questions to “stimulate” nationalist sensibilities in preparation for experiments, however, these “stimulating” questions are often not vetted for cretaing an adverse biasing effect. Thus, researchers may not be “stimulating” Nationalism in the way we would expect in a real-world setting – giving the study’s conclusions questionable external validity. Consequently, there appears a need for further field experiments. Further, future research should attempt to disentangle Nationalism’s effect from current hostile state-level relationships by studying states that now co-exist within mutual-defence/aid associations (European Union/EEA or NATO), but whose state Nationalism has been traditionally defined against a belligerent national “significant other” (Triandafyllidou 1998, pp. 593) such as in France-Germany, UK-Ireland, or Turkey-Greece.

Finally, it appears that more robust Social Psychology studies into Nationalism’s effect on Individual’s policy preferences, which are then applied to Realist Institutional models, will have the most success in explaining the role of Nationalism on inter-state violence. Considering a wider range of Nationalist contexts in both the Structural and micro-level approaches would give conclusions with greater explanatory power. However, we should not discount growing attention from the Social Psychology approach and the probable response of event-driven Structural Realists to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict as routes to progress Realist theories closer to a satisfactory explanation of Nationalism and inter-state conflict intitation.

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[1] See Waltz (2003) discussing Realist model simplicity.

[2] Similar dynamics exist in sub-state nationalism studies focusing on competing identities from 1980s Northern Ireland (Moxon-Browne 1983; Gallagher 1989), later emphasising state-collapse from 1990s Yugoslavia (Palan 1991).

[3] For example, Edinger (2022).

[4] Other modernists make similar claims but do not exclude considering Nationalism as a bottom-up constructivist/individualist force, Anderson (1983).