Ethno-national versus Other Forms of Group Identity: The Problem of Terminology

Abstract

Events of the past decade have by now impressed upon even the more casual observer of world politics that ethno-nationalism constitutes a major and growing threat to the political stability of most states. Rather than witnessing an evolution of stable state- or suprastatecommunities, the observer of global politics has viewed a succession of situations involving competing allegiances in which people have illustrated that an intuitive bond felt toward an informal and unstructured subdivision of mankind is far more profound and potent than are the ties that bind them to the formal and legalistic state structure in which they find themselves. Present or recent large-scale violence within such Third World states as Burma, Burundi, Chad, Ethiopia, Guyana, India, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, and Uganda (to mention but a few of the afflicted states) amply testifies to the widespread failure of governments to induce a substantial segment of their citizenry to transfer their primary loyalty from a human grouping to the state.¹ Nor have the older, more technologically integrated states of the First World proved to be immune. Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom have all experienced ethnically motivated unrest.²