Resisting Liberal Nationalism

Abstract

In both the political theory and the public policy of multicultural societies, there has been a convergence of the good of social cohesion and, more particularly, of national identity as being one of the most important ties of social cohesion.¹ On the theoretical front, this push has been led by liberal nationalism — the idea that the state should pro-mote and protect an overarching national identity in order to foster public goods, in particular distributive justice — while on the policy level, perhaps the most prominent of several possible examples are the citizenship tests that most Western states now employ, and which were almost unheard of a decade ago. In both cases, concern over integration, or lack thereof, is commonly phrased in terms of its potential to undermine social cohesion.