This essay argues that Russia's war on Ukraine and the post-Soviet experience, more generally, reveal ethical, empirical, and theoretical problems in the study of nationalism in the region; namely, the tendency to designate anti-colonial, non-Russian nationalism as a “bad” ethnic type and the related tendency to see opposition to it as a “good” civic, nationalist agenda while in reality, the latter agenda can be imperial. Conflation of imperialism with civic nationalism and underappreciation of the democratic potential of non-Russian nationalism are problematic. The essay argues that these problems stem from theorizing about ethnic and civic nationalism that is rooted in abstract principles and does not take into account the empirical realities in which specific policies originate. I suggest that a more ethically and theoretically accurate characterization of types of nationalism as good or bad can be achieved by applying a methodology that takes into account not only formal markers of “ethnic” and “civic” policies but also the realities proponents and opponents of a given policy seek to establish and undo, the methods by which these realities come into being, and the constraints on employing illiberal methods that political actors face.

Turkish nationalism has long presented a study in contrasts. The nationalist movement that created the Republic of Turkey sought to define the nation in explicitly civic and inclusive terms, promoting a variety of integrationist reforms. Those same nationalist politicians, however, endorsed other policies that were far more exclusionary, expelling many religious and ethnic minorities from the new nation and imposing harsh restrictions on those who remained. The seemingly contradictory nature of Turkish nationalist policies has been mirrored by much of the scholarship on Turkish nationalism, which has often viewed Turkish nationality through the lens of the “civic/ethnic divide,” with various scholars arguing that the Turkish nation is exclusively civic or ethnic. This article seeks to transcend this dichotomous way of looking at Turkish nationalism. I argue that the policies previously seen as being exclusively civic or ethnic are in fact both examples of boundary-making processes, designed to forge a cohesive nationalist community. Seen through a boundary-making perspective, the seemingly contradictory nature of Turkish nationalist policies in its early years is not paradoxical at all, but represents a multidimensional effort to construct a cohesive national community that could replace the defunct Ottoman state.

This article assesses the analytical value of the “Kohn dichotomy” – the notion that there are two types of nationalism, resting on civic values in the West and on ethnic values outside the West. It begins by outlining the intellectual history of this dichotomy since its origin in the 1860s and by analyzing its main features. It contrasts the state traditions of Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe in three areas: the geopolitical evolution of the state, the state's perspective on its own population as reflected in efforts to measure “ethnic nationality” through such instruments as the population census, and divergences in citizenship law. It shows that data from recent programs of comparative survey research, and analysis of nationalist ideology, highlight the variety of forms that nationalism may take in the two parts of Europe. The article concludes that the “ethnic–civic” dichotomy is valuable as an ideal type with the capacity to shed light on the nature of ethnic affiliation, not as a categorical classification system. Different ethnonational groups comprise mixtures of people who use a combination of “ethnic” and “civic” reference points; they do not coincide with global territorial zones that may be identified with any level of clarity.

While it was traditionally accepted that Hongkongers shared a form of pan-Chinese cultural identification that did not contradict their local distinctiveness, over the last decade Hong Kong has seen the rise of new types of local identity discourses. Most recently, “localists” have been a vocal presence. Hong Kong has – quite unexpectedly – developed a strong claim for self-determination. But how new is “localism” with respect to the more traditional “Hong Kong identity” that appeared in the 1970s? The present study takes a two-dimensional approach to study these discourses, examining not only their framework of identification (local versus pan-Chinese) but also their mode of identification (ethno-cultural versus civic). Using three case studies, the June Fourth vigil, the 2012 anti-National Education protest and the 2014 Umbrella movement, it distinguishes between groups advocating civic identification with the local community (Scholarism, HKFS) and others highlighting ethnic identification (Chin Wan). It argues that while local and national identification were traditionally not incompatible, the civic-based identification with a local democratic community, as advocated by most participants in recent movements, is becoming increasingly incompatible with the ethnic and cultural definition of the Chinese nation that is now being promoted by the Beijing government.