Nationalism paired with democracy makes for a difficult marriage, but any prospect of divorce is wishful thinking, according to a leading scholar.
Like religion, nationalism was supposed to wither away in the face of relentless modernization, but globalization appears to have only intensified the need for robust national identity, said Dr. Ghia Nodia, professor of politics and director of the International School of Caucasus Studies at Ilia Chavchavadze State University in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Autocrats and populists have been more successful than democrats in addressing popular concerns such as anxiety and insecurity, he said delivering the Thirteenth Annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World, “The Crisis of Postnationalism” at the Embassy of Canada in Washington, DC.
Nodia He also serves as the chairman of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD), an independent public policy think tank that he founded in 1992. He is currently a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.
