What political imaginaries have existed beyond the nation-state? What might the misfitting (queer?) materials of the past—those unamenable to inclusion in narratives of national resistance—teach us about colonial and apartheid pasts? What alternatives to the colony and its contemporary forms might we imagine now? To respond to these questions, this essay assembles an archive of twentieth-century Capetonian queenliness, placing the historical Queen Elizabeth in proximity with textual renderings of the queer queens of apartheid Cape Town. A fictional, tongue-in-cheek, book review, published in Drum magazine in 1977, figures as a paradigmatic text of a mid-century popular textual genre that is animated by the sensibility that I call “camp royalist.” The critical impetus that animates camp royalism provokes us to reconsider how we represent colonial and apartheid pasts and invites us to think about possible future, nonnational, political collectivities and critiques.

In a collection of Hatt-ı Hümayuns (Imperial Edicts) at the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, I located the Ottoman translation of the Greek Declaration of Independence. This article examines the terminology that Ottomans used to interpret the language employed by the revolutionary Greeks. The goal of this study is to examine Ottoman attempts to define the rebels and conceptualize the inner motive behind the revolt of their subjects. This article argues that confiscated documents such as the Greek Declaration of Independence contributed to the familiarization of the imperial authorities with the ideological background to the rebellion and the reasons that triggered it.

The secessionist state of Biafra enacted a propaganda campaign that simultaneously built support for its war of independence (the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970) and fostered nationalism. Integral to this effort, although understudied, were the currency, stamps, posters, and cartoons artists produced while working for the government. Putting these materials in dialogue with print and radio propaganda, and the Ahiara Declaration (the culminating treatise of Biafran nationalism), this article demonstrates how visual propaganda actualized a nation, constructed national identity, positioned Biafra as a foil to an irredeemable Nigeria, and defined a citizenry. Through the materials they created, artists shaped Biafra’s national consciousness.

Antitrust policy aims to reduce market concentration and increase competition among firms. Contemporary antitrust is sensitive to both domestic and international considerations. Internationally, the market is dominated by the largest firms, raising questions about the competitiveness of domestic firms and the application of antitrust against foreign firms. Domestically, public support for antitrust is needed for continued enforcement. This paper examines how international markets shape public support for antitrust in the United States. Using media analysis, we find that antitrust is increasingly in the news, and that international competition is referenced in antitrust debates. We theorize that support for antitrust is shaped by concerns for the competitiveness of domestic firms, relative to foreign competition, and that these concerns vary based on individuals’ levels of nationalism. We test our theory using a survey experiment and find that individuals are especially concerned with being placed at a disadvantage relative to foreign competitors. Interestingly, we find that using antitrust laws against foreign firms yields divergent reactions—highly nationalistic Americans increase their support for strong antitrust laws, while those with low levels of nationalism decrease support. The paper highlights the importance of global competition in shaping preferences for domestic regulation.

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.

Anthony D. Smith, in one of his earlier, less debated, works – Nationalism in the 20th Century (1979) – examines phases of nationalism in the modern era, suggesting that nationalism has taken various forms before and during the 20th century. He argues that nationalism’s adaptability is at the core of its persistence, adapting to changing situations such as fascism and communism. As a result of this adaptability, nationalism still flourishes today. This article applies Smith’s theory to explore the interplay between cultural and material factors in the evolution of nationalism in Ireland. It identifies five ideological phases – revolutionary nationalist, protectionist, liberalising, neoliberal, and ecological – to which nationalism has adapted, and within which nationalism has influenced various aspects of Irish society. These phases are situated within a broader ideological and material context, analysing obliquely the Irish language (a core element of Irish nationalism), and related to changing processes of individualization.

Russia's war against Ukraine has had devastating human consequences and destabilizing geopolitical effects. This roundtable takes up three critical debates in connection with the conflict: Ukraine's potential accession to the European Union; the role of Ukrainian nationalism in advancing democratization; and the degree of human rights accountability, not just for Russia, but also for Ukraine. In addition to challenging conventional wisdom on each of these issues, the contributors to this roundtable make a second, critically important intervention. Each essay explores the problem of concealed political and normative commitments within much of the research on Russia's war against Ukraine by unearthing biases intrinsic to particular conceptualizations. The collection also questions the perceived separation between “interests” and “values” that permeates policy analysis. This roundtable further draws attention to the ethical problems that scholars and policymakers bring to policy debates through the occlusion of their preexisting political commitments. It argues for greater transparency around and awareness of the ways in which values, not just evidence, inform research findings and policy positions.

Why could politicians of religious minority backgrounds become national leaders in some countries soon after modern representative institutions were adopted, whereas in some other countries, almost all the national leaders have been from the religious majority background for decades if not centuries? I argue that the most important factor explaining the incidence of national leaders of a religious minority background or lack thereof is whether the main adversary in the constitutive conflict that established the nation-state was of the same religious sectarian background or not. Nations established in a constitutive conflict against an adversary of the same religion are much more likely to have national leaders of a religious minority background. Furthermore, political leaders of religious minority backgrounds have three “secular” paths out of their marginality, which is also determined by the combination and nature of the primary external and internal conflict of the nation. I examine these paths through the cases of Britain (liberalism), France (socialism), and Hungary and Italy (nationalism). Finally, I examine a world-historical example of pattern change, the rise of Catholic-origin national leaders in previously Protestant-led Germany, which was due to a new constitutive conflict (World War II and the Holocaust) that altered the national-religious configuration.

This article reviews the literature on nationalism and ethnic mobilization. I first discuss the different strands of research in the field, highlighting three key sources of division that characterize existing literature: geography, ethnic cleavage type, and strategy of mobilization. Arguing that the lack of dialogue between different niches of research can undermine the accumulation of general knowledge, I propose an integrated perspective on nationalism and ethnic mobilization that serves to assimilate findings from these separate niches. I conclude by discussing how such an integrated perspective can enhance our knowledge of the causes, dynamics, and consequences of ethnic mobilization.

Even after seven decades since it came into force, examinations of the Indian Constitution remain partial and incomplete. It is not widely known that the original ratified copy of the Constitution also makes a visual argument through the opening pages of every part. These elaborately crafted artworks, which are entirely negated in Indian scholarship, are structured in the form of a teleological and linear narrative, encompassing a claim of an unbroken link to an immemorial civilisation. Based on archival research and a hermeneutic that combines imaginal analysis, literary theory, historical scholarship and constitutional jurisprudence, this article will demonstrate that these constitutive images are the aesthetic foundation that imaginally binds the constitutional subject and the collective citizenry, and this article will show how its negation is closely tied to a foundational ambivalence that endures in constitutional law.