Contemporary Nationalism: Ethnic Resurgence and the Impact of Globalization

Nationalism was once expected to fade as the world grew more connected. Yet in the twenty-first century it remains one of the most powerful forces shaping politics, from electoral campaigns to violent secessionist struggles. Two contemporary developments make this resilience especially striking: the resurgence of ethnic identities within established states, and the deepening pull of globalization. These forces appear to push in opposite directions-one fragmenting states from within, the other dissolving borders from above-yet both ultimately revolve around the same anxious question of who belongs to the nation and who controls it. Understanding how ethnic resurgence and globalization interact with nationalism reveals why the nation-state, far from disappearing, keeps reasserting itself.

The puzzle of nationalism’s persistence 🔗

For much of the late twentieth century, many scholars assumed that economic integration and global communication would gradually weaken national loyalties. The opposite has happened. The current rise of nationalism worldwide is a reminder that we do not live in a borderless world of virtual connectivity, as historian Eric Storm observes. Political parties win elections by promising to put national interests first, borders are increasingly guarded, and national cultures are repeatedly described as being under threat.

Political scientists now broadly agree that nations are historically contingent and socially constructed rather than timeless natural units. This does not make them weak. Constructed identities can be intensely felt, and they become especially potent when people feel insecure. That insecurity is exactly what both ethnic resurgence and globalization tend to produce.

Ethnic resurgence: the demand for identity and autonomy 🔗

Ethnic resurgence refers to the revival and strengthening of ethnic identities, often accompanied by demands for greater autonomy, recognition, or outright independence by minority groups within an existing state. While nation-states have worked to consolidate central political authority, minority communities have frequently resisted being absorbed into a single dominant national identity.

The roots of this phenomenon are usually historical. Minority groups often feel marginalized or excluded by the dominant culture, language, or political establishment. This sense of exclusion fuels a desire for self-determination and recognition of a distinct identity. Importantly, contemporary ethnic nationalism is frequently a popular movement that rises from below rather than an elite project imposed from above. Scholars describe this new nationalism as primarily cultural or ethnic rather than political, and as a challenge to both the state and the established international order.

Why ethnic identity reasserts itself 🔗

One influential explanation links ethnic resurgence directly to the limits of a globalized economy. The argument runs that while global capitalism is economically efficient, it struggles to give people a sense of meaning or belonging. To escape this abstract universalism, people increasingly seek meaning through particularistic identities based on ethnicity and nationalism. When the state appears unable to provide economic security or a shared sense of purpose, ethnic identity becomes an attractive anchor.

Economic grievance reinforces this. When one ethnic group feels economically disadvantaged compared to others, it may demand greater control over resources, land, or governance to improve its position. Identity and material interest become tightly woven together.

Two faces of ethnic resurgence 🔗

Ethnic resurgence is not inherently destructive. It can produce genuinely positive outcomes. Recognition of distinct identities can expand cultural rights and political representation for groups long ignored, enriching a country’s pluralism rather than threatening it.

The darker face appears when ethnic mobilization hardens into conflict. Competing claims over territory and sovereignty can escalate into violence, displacement, and in extreme cases ethnic cleansing. The same emotional power that gives ethnic identity its dignity can, under different conditions, justify exclusion and brutality against neighbours.

When multi-ethnic states fall apart 🔗

No events demonstrated the fragility of multi-ethnic states more starkly than the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Both were multinational communist federations with comparable histories, and both disintegrated in 1991 after policies designed to counteract centrifugal trends unintentionally reinforced ethnic divisions. Once central authority weakened, suppressed national identities surged to the surface and demanded statehood.

The Yugoslav tragedy 🔗

Yugoslavia’s breakup turned catastrophically violent. As the federation fractured, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic exploited the vacuum left by a weakening central state and deployed ultra-nationalism to gain legitimacy and inflame conflict in other republics. The wars that followed in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and later Kosovo produced mass killing among Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians, and gave the world the grim phrase “ethnic cleansing.”

Why did the Soviet collapse remain comparatively peaceful while Yugoslavia descended into war? Part of the answer lies in the attitudes of the dominant “core” nations. Russia had economic incentives to let the Soviet republics go, whereas Serbia stood to lose from Yugoslavia’s disintegration and therefore fought to hold it together by force.

The wider lesson of Balkanization 🔗

The term Balkanization now describes the fragmentation of a region into hostile units. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the collapse of the Soviet Union produced several new states, many of them unstable and ethnically mixed, which then fell into violence with one another. Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed over enclaves; Russia and Serbia used force against independence movements in Chechnya and Kosovo. The lesson is sobering: where a single ethnic group cannot, or will not, accommodate the identities of others, the multi-ethnic state becomes deeply vulnerable once its central authority falters.

Ethnic resurgence in the Indian context 🔗

This is not a distant European story. As a vast and diverse polity, India has long managed competing ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities, and it has experienced significant sub-national movements. Various groups in the Northeast, the long conflict in Kashmir, and the Khalistan movement in Punjab during the 1980s all reflect, in different ways, the assertion of distinct identities against a centralizing state.

The Northeast offers a particularly rich illustration. Movements among communities such as the Nagas, Mizos, Bodos, and others have repeatedly demanded autonomy, separate states, or independence. Yet the trajectory has not been uniformly violent. The Mizo movement, which began as an armed insurgency under the Mizo National Front, was transformed into negotiated peace through the 1986 Mizo Accord, which institutionalized statehood within the Union. This shows that ethnic identity, when channelled into democratic frameworks, can strengthen integration while preserving distinctiveness rather than destroying it.

Constitutional accommodation 🔗

India’s response to ethnic diversity has relied heavily on constitutional design. Mechanisms such as the Sixth Schedule, which provides autonomous district councils for certain tribal areas, and special provisions under Article 371 for several states, attempt to grant self-governance without breaking the Union. The Sixth Schedule establishes autonomous district and regional councils empowered to make laws on land, forests, and social customs for designated tribal areas. The success of these arrangements varies-some communities find them sufficient while others continue to press for more-but they represent a genuinely different model from the homogenizing approach that proved so destructive elsewhere.

Globalization: opportunity and threat to the nation 🔗

The second great force shaping contemporary nationalism is globalization-the deepening interdependence of countries through trade, finance, technology, migration, and culture. Globalization pulls states into a dense web of relationships that simultaneously offers opportunities and challenges the very idea of an autonomous nation.

The pressure on sovereignty 🔗

Globalization affects state sovereignty across several dimensions at once. Economically, integration through multinational corporations and global trade agreements often limits a state’s ability to make independent decisions. Politically, the growing role of international organizations transfers some authority to bodies above the state. Culturally, the global flow of information and norms can erode distinctive national identities and push societies toward common international standards.

This loss of control is real but uneven. States retain the nation as the basic unit for welfare and citizenship, yet they have lost much control over national economic policy through the growing web of economic interdependence, and can no longer pursue policies that ignore the pressures of global markets. India’s economic liberalization in the 1990s, which opened the country to foreign investment and reduced trade barriers, is a clear example of a state choosing global integration while accepting new constraints on its policy autonomy.

Globalization need not mean surrender 🔗

It would be a mistake to treat globalization as pure loss. Many scholars argue that sovereignty is being transformed rather than simply eroded. Globalization fosters economic growth, strengthens diplomatic relations, and spreads ideas, even as it heightens inequalities and fuels movements that resist global integration. States can leverage global connections to increase their influence, improve governance, and project their culture outward. The same processes that threaten national identity can also provide new platforms to promote it.

Two forces, one outcome: the nation reasserts itself 🔗

The crucial insight is that ethnic resurgence and globalization are connected. The weakening of the state under global pressures-its declining ability to guarantee economic and social security-is precisely what opens space for ethnic and nationalist movements to flourish. Contemporary nationalism therefore often appears as a reactive, popular phenomenon expressing social discontent in the context of globalization.

This produces an apparent paradox visible across the world, from Europe to South Asia. The forces of integration, such as the European Union, operate alongside the forces of fragmentation, such as the breakup of Yugoslavia. Both trends ultimately challenge state sovereignty, yet fragmentation strikes directly at the territorial integrity of the nation-state. Globalization erodes the state from above; ethnic resurgence pulls at it from below.

Caught between these pressures, the nation-state does not vanish. It pushes back. States work to protect their borders, defend their sovereignty, and reinforce a shared national identity precisely because both global integration and internal fragmentation make that identity feel fragile. Far from being a relic, nationalism remains a powerful and adaptive force-capable of expressing genuine cultural pride and democratic accommodation, but also of fuelling exclusion and conflict when identity hardens into hostility.

What do you think? If globalization and ethnic resurgence both expose the fragility of the nation-state, should multi-ethnic countries respond by accommodating distinct identities through autonomy and federalism, or by strengthening a single shared national identity? And can a state remain genuinely sovereign while embracing the economic integration that globalization demands?

References

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