Accordingly, nativist populists capitalize on public grievances and intensify the blame game by circulating misinformation and instigating scapegoating, even targeting those who do not deserve to have the fingers pointed at them, such as innocent immigrants and refugees. The handling of the pandemic crisis has led to the unprecedented expansion of state authority. Some populist leaders in power took steps to advance their authority domestically and resorted to illiberal means to further consolidate their authoritarian power.
In Poland, the populist incumbent president Andrzej Duda was just reelected into the government on July 13, with the prospect of intensified EU-Poland tensions. Consequently, populism, nativism, protectionism, Euroscepticism, and authoritarianism are mutually reinforcing each other in these countries, and jointly contribute to the resurgence of neo-nationalism.
In handling the global crisis, pro-EU politicians and parties can gain more leverage in their home countries and, at the same time, also enhance regionalization and consolidate solidarity at the European level. Additionally, there are three plausible mechanisms through which the pandemic crisis generates an anti-nationalism pushback.
First, the crisis may enhance European solidarity Koos The scale of devastation has been so vast amid the pandemic that it becomes increasingly obvious to people that only inter-dependency and cooperation can provide the most promising solution in combating the virus over the long term, even though they may have benefited from short-term isolation.
This can therefore lead to a greater sense of solidarity. Although there is a clear retreat from globalization as citizens turned back to national governments for protection in the early months of the outbreak, the suffering caused by the disjointed cross-national efforts, fragmented supply chains, and widespread travel bans also reiterated the importance of regional cooperation.
This provides the EU a rare chance to reestablish its reputation, legitimacy, and solidarity by bringing member states together in fighting a common crisis.
All of these expose the limits of far-right populism which has long been committed to promulgating anti-establishment movements, spreading misinformation, and downplaying science.
Therefore, in many of the European countries, the percent of people who think the government is handling the issue of coronavirus very and somewhat well remains high. Opinion polls conducted by the Europe Elects reveal that far-right parties in Italy, Spain, and Germany have lost ground since the outbreak.
Not only will this make the immigration issue less salient as a political concern for years to come, but it may also highlight the increased need for a European-wide single market and free movement. Additionally, there are signs that pro-EU national leaders will be able to use their growing support and trust at home to further promote long-awaited EU policy initiatives to reduce future vulnerabilities.
The public health crisis has revealed the urgency of deepening reforms in various issue areas, including healthcare, industrial policy, labor markets, welfare redistribution, and economic relief. The EU can perform as the driver of collective changes in these fields by creating a more integrated and cohesive regionalization.
Overall, based on the above observations, many researchers insist that the COVID crisis has fomented an unprecedented political opportunity for the EU to expand solidarity see Fig. The expression of solidarity among the EU member states and the EU during the coronavirus pandemic. As seen from above, the COVID crisis presents both European nationalists and liberalists an opportunity to appeal to the vast number of their nationals.
On one hand, it gives a clear advantage to nativist populism and leads to a larger role of nation state. On the other hand, it makes the shift towards established mainstream politics and pushes for supranational solidarity in the globalized, unpredictable world. Therefore, the causal relation from crisis to nationalism is not a linear, one-way process in which it is impossible to change course or reverse trend.
As illustrated in Fig. More recently, the European Union has undertaken some positive moves to rebuild regional unity and cooperation in combating the spread of the virus and reopening the economy. This will help constrain the potential rise of nationalism. The European Union has demonstrated its political resilience after going through more than a decade of incessant crises, including the financial crisis, the Euro-zone debt crisis, the refugee crisis, Brexit, and now the pandemic crisis.
European countries are still struggling to cope with the political effects of the pandemic crisis. There have been a lot of political differences within Europe, which can be intensified by nationalist sentiments and actions amid the crisis.
Also, the EU could still be trapped in a status quote without decisively resolving a number of institutional and economic challenges, even though the pandemic crisis management urges them to do so. As illustrated by the causal links in Fig. Studies of comparative politics have shown long-lasting interest in exploring the causal linkage between crises a typical form of critical juncture to nationalism.
Such a devastating crisis would likely result in a new wave of neo-nationalism in Europe, something that has already assailed the continent during the past decade of crises such as the Euro-zone debt crisis and immigrant crisis. Not surprisingly, the early days of the global pandemic crisis have witnessed some hybrid of medical nationalism , economic nationalism, and everyday nationalism , as illustrated in this article.
Thus, it appears evident that the pandemic crisis has created new cleavages in the society and pushed nationals to pin blame on outsiders, take self-protectionist actions, adopt nativist narratives, and resort to anti-globalization movements, which provide fertile ground to grow neo-nationalism in the short term. However, in the long run, it remains to be seen whether neo-nationalism will get a boost in Europe because of the coronavirus crisis.
There appear to be divergent mechanisms through which both nationalists and liberalists can capitalize on the political opportunities in the pandemic. The causation from crisis to nationalism is not a linear, one-way process.
The development of neo-nationalism in Europe will be largely contingent on the long-term agenda that the EU and the member states adopt in handling the complexity of domestic and regional challenges in the post-pandemic era.
The crisis can also be well managed to strengthen solidarity, increase interdependence, and enhance the authority, adaptability, and resilience of the supranational union Koos ; Barbier-Gauchard et al. He received his doctoral degree at Leiden University and had ever worked as a lecturer in the Program of International Studies at Leiden University. His research interests include comparative political institutions, election studies, political representation, local politics and governance, and governmental big data.
In this article, it mainly refers to the pathway or process by which a causal effect is produced in a given context. For methodological discussions on causal mechanism, see Tilly , McAdam et al. Nye Stephen M. Europe has a long history of food nationalism, with some European countries suffering what can be called food peripheral nationalism e.
For related studies, see DeSoucey and Ichijo and Ranta During the pandemic, many European governments seized on the crisis to pressure citizens to eat local products with patriotism.
Lancet published online March PDF Accessed on July 3, See Kitschelt I thank the ECFR for generously sharing the original dataset. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Chin Polit Sci Rev. Zhongyuan Wang. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer.
Zhongyuan Wang, Email: nc. Corresponding author. Received Jul 25; Accepted Nov This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source.
Abstract Will nationalism thrive in times of crisis? Introduction Will nationalism thrive in times of crisis? The Fourth Wave of Neo-nationalism? Medical Nationalism As the global pandemic spreads, the demand for life-saving medical supplies to fight the pandemic is unprecedented. Economic Nationalism The crisis of the COVID pandemic and the lockdown policies taken to curb the virus spread present an unprecedented challenge to the world economy.
Everyday Nationalism The crisis of the COVID pandemic has also led to an increase in acts and displays of everyday nationalism in European countries. Michelet, , Contemporary sociologists and philosophers express similar thoughts in a different rhetorical garb. They stress the advantages of nation-forming along ethno-national lines. By offering people a culture in language s they actually speak, by encouragement of the formation of more local elites, directly in contact with their electorate, and by promoting the capitalist mode of production, they enable mass democratization.
As many sociologists, prominently Anderson and Gellner, have pointed out, democracy and nationalism go together. Let me paint in more detail the advantages offered by ethnic ties, such as the ties of an actually spoken common language.
Some of the ties can simply serve as convenient signs helping to find the right partner for interaction for example, if you are an immigrant worker in a far-away country, the cheapest and best thing to do is to look for your compatriots. More importantly, there are substantial advantages offered by national ties, which are nowadays discussed in the literature on the rationality of nationalism. The community of language offers obvious opportunities for communication, and the community of culture and tradition opens routes for exchange see Coleman, ; Hardin, Even at this very general level one can see that such opportunities are not offered by, say, ties of age, gender, or profession.
Most importantly, no matter how great a number of persons is linked to us with such ties, the community based upon them cannot become a political community since it is not capable of autonomy and of reproductive sufficiency obviously, a community of teenagers founded upon the solidarity of age does not survive more than a few years, a community of philosophy teachers is not economically self-sufficient, and so on.
In contrast, the ethnic network is often endowed with a size and variety which allow the constitution of a durable political community, self-sufficient and capable of reproducing itself. The importance of such links has been noted by the likes of Gellner and Anderson. You might retort that nationalism has also produced a lot of evil. But nationalism should not be judged by the excesses of some nationalists.
This does not mean that the national principle as such is responsible for outbursts of conflict. Of course, she does not mean ethno-nation, but we can extend her point to ethno-nations as well. Indeed, very often, nationalism is innocent and its excesses are a natural reaction to the utmost oppression. Also, as Gellner has pointed out, once a community achieves the status of a nation-state, the initial excesses tend to disappear; they are just ugly excrescences, not essential to nationalism.
The overall track record of nationalism is very successful and promising. Nationalist policies cannot be generalized and used in the long run because there is a natural limit to their viability. Remember, our even-handed nationalist is proposing his principles as generally valid and obligatory; if a proposal is impossible to actualize, it cannot be morally binding.
If it is known to be impossible it should not be seriously proposed and advertised by political thinkers. As regards the first—two hundred years of alleged success—it is not clear that the successful formation of national states has been achieved by means that are themselves morally in the clear. Some of the most politically successful nation-states have been formed by the use of military and police force—including massive massacres, ethnic cleansing, decades of severe oppression—that makes the result a moral failure.
In spite of the known facts, nationalist historians have tried to invent explanations designed to preserve the appearance of spontaneous success, as the quotation from Michelet amply shows. It is obvious that such nationalist violence in the service of the creation and preservation of nation-states is not a thing of the past; witness the examples of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It is the burden of the nationalist to show that such massive violent episodes are not endemic to nationalism, given that nationalist outbursts take exactly this shape; no proof of innocence has been offered, and we have grave reasons to doubt that such can be offered.
Let me quote, as a reminder, the beginning of the summary of the results of nationalist conflict in the former Yugoslavia by Timothy Garton Ash, an impartial and knowledgeable observer:. In the last decade of the twentieth century, this European country has been torn apart. At least ,, and perhaps as many as ,, men, women and children have died in the process. And how they have died: with their eyes gouged out or their throats cut with rusty knives, women after deliberate ethnic rape, men with their own severed genitalia stuffed into their mouths.
More than two million former Yugoslavs have been driven from their homes by other former Yugoslavs, many deprived of everything but what they could carry in precipitous flight. Garton Ash, To stay for a while with the threatening realities of actual nationalism-in-the-street as opposed to the sensitive and civilized nationalism of academics , the dream of the homogeneous ethno-national state trumpeted by the usual secessionist propaganda is a tantalizing illusion.
In countries and years where a neo-nationalist party is present, nationalism has a much stronger effect on EU opposition than without such a party. In contrast, patriotism enhances EU support regardless of whether the country has a neo-nationalist party Figure 1. In our analyses, a neo-nationalist party with strong national electoral support had even greater influence on EU opposition than one with a weaker vote share.
Figure 1: Effect of nationalism and patriotism on EU opposition by presence dotted line and absence continuous line of a neo-nationalist party. Second, in countries without a neo-nationalist party, less well-educated nationalists are more opposed to the EU than better-educated nationalists, reflecting the familiar association between lower educational attainment and EU opposition.
In countries with a neo-nationalist party, however, EU opposition is equally strong among the most and the least educated nationalists Figure 2, left and right panels. Even more strikingly, the most educated nationalists are almost four times as likely as poorly educated nationalists to vote for a neo-nationalist party. Figure 2: Effect of nationalism on EU opposition by presence of a neo-nationalist party and level of education.
These findings underscore that nationalist rhetoric is more important for EU opposition than rising levels of public nationalism, which have remained relatively constant in European countries over the past 25 years. Against this backdrop of emergent neo-nationalist parties and intensified nationalistic rhetoric, patriotism continues to shape support for the EU regardless of the presence of a neo-nationalist party within a country.
In our analyses, the positive effects of patriotism on EU support are larger than the negative effects of nationalism. Recent electoral results point to the resilience of pro-Europe parties when faced with increased nationalistic discourse.
The anti-establishment protests over the cost of living have posed probably the biggest challenge to the Macron presidency. Some gilets jaunes protesters include anti-Semitic abuse in their angry campaign.
The party has its roots in neo-Nazism, but it rebranded itself in recent years and first entered parliament in It opposes multiculturalism and wants strict immigration controls. As with many of the countries featured here, though, the picture is complex. Sweden has welcomed more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country and has one of the most positive attitudes towards migrants. The far-right Finns Party were narrowly beaten into second place in the April general election, coming within 0.
Its success was built on two policies: opposition to immigration and a rejection of ambitious policies aimed at combating climate change. It was an extraordinary recovery for a party that had also done well in the previous vote in but had since faded in popularity because of party splits.
It used that power to negotiate a place in government, as it joined fellow runners-up the Centre and Pro Patria parties to stop liberal leader Kaja Kallas from becoming Estonia's first woman prime minister. EKRE campaigned on an anti-immigration platform, and is also critical of same-sex marriage. Its leader, Martin Helme, once said that only white people should be allowed to move to Estonia. The far-right Confederation party got 6.
But the main story of the election was the convincing win for conservative Law and Justice PiS , returning to power with PiS is led by a veteran anti-communist campaigner, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose bedrock support is in rural Poland, with its deep-rooted Catholic traditions.
The party is strong on social welfare, as well as nationalism, making it rather different from many other right-wing parties in Europe. In , Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban secured a third term in office with a landslide victory in an election dominated by immigration. The victory, he said, gave Hungarians "the opportunity to defend themselves and to defend Hungary".
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