The argument that the term ‘nation-state’ is widely misused, that it has a focussed and specific meaning that should be retained, and that it ought not to be blithely employed as a synonym for ‘country’ or ‘state’, has been rejected in some quarters as narrowly pedantic, and in others as an illustration of a static mentality that fails to take into account changing sociopolitical circumstances. The first assertion need not trouble us greatly, especially given the sesquipedalian tendencies of those who prefer ‘nation-state’ to ‘country’. The second is more interesting, because it leads us towards a modern position that holds that there are two basic types of nationalism and that ‘nation-state’ can thus be a perfectly acceptable description, even of countries lacking any significant ethnic homogeneity. Implicit in this distinction, furthermore, is a sense that one type of nationalism is more advanced, more inclusive and less problematic than the other – which is why it is appropriate to discuss the matter under the general rubric of ‘assessment’. I turn here, then, to the concept of ‘civic nationalism’.

CIVIC NATIONALISM

Whereas ‘ethnic nationalism’ (or ‘ethnonationalism’) stresses the idea of a unity based upon ethnic attachments and a desire for the coincidence of national-group and political-group boundaries, ‘civic nationalism’ suggests another possibility. Anthony Smith (2007: 325) refers to a ‘cosmopolitan vision’, a perspective that some have come to see as superseding older and darker arrangements. Civic nations are, Smith notes: