The dynamics of Orangeism in Scotland: social sources of political influence in a mass-member organization, 1860-2001

Like other voluntary associations, fraternities such as the Orange Order underpin political cleavages. The membership dynamics behind such associations are less clear. Rival theories attribute membership fluctuations alternatively to changes in social capital, economic structure, culture, or events. This article uses a pooled time-series cross-sectional model to evaluate competing hypotheses for the period since 1860. Results suggest that membership was linked to longer-term shifts in ethnic boundaries rather than structural or social capital variables, with events playing an intermediate role. Scottish Protestant mobilization against Catholics was less important than Irish Protestant ethnicity, but both were key. Finally, the order has been numerically weaker than many believe; hence its inability—even during the apex of its influence—to shape Tory policy

Modern formation, ethnic reformation: the social sources of the American nation

The question, 'When is the nation?', ranks second in importance only to the related query, 'Why is the nation?' in the contemporary social science and humanities literature on nationalism. This issue is confronted by this essay, which considers Anthony Smith's important perennialist-modernist dichotomy through the lens of the American experience. Along the way, it will address the related but independent question of whether nations are 'top-down' artefacts constructed by the modern state, or 'bottom-up' social formations generated by ethnic groups within civil society. The importance of this theoretical question lies not merely with the antiquarian interest in how our world system of nations emerged, but with the more pressing question of why it is persistently re-created, and, for idealists, how it may be superseded

The Northern Ireland peace process in an age of austerity

The steady drip of dissident Republican attacks forms the backdrop to this special issue of Political Quarterly. Moreover, this comes at a time of economic austerity, when Northern Ireland faces unprecedented cuts to its public sector-dominated economy. The economic crisis in the South adds an additional layer of uncertainty to the picture. In the past, economic deprivation has been associated with conflict in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. Might the peace dividend and constitutional settlement which have underpinned the Northern Ireland 'miracle' since 1994# be under threat? Or is there now sufficient momentum in both of Northern Ireland's main ethnic communities that such an outcome can be safely averted? This paper summarises the thinking of our symposium and special issue on this topic, updating our picture of the Northern Ireland peace process

American exceptionalism reconsidered: Anglo-Saxon ethnogenesis in the “universal” nation, 1776–1850

The history of nativism in the United States has received considerable scholarly attention, yet the few systematic attempts to explain it have focused predominantly on psychological or economic causes. This article asserts that such explanations fail to address the crucial cultural dimension of the nativism issue, which must be analyzed through the prism of historical sociology. Specifically, this article argues that American nativism cannot be understood without reference to an “American” national ethnic group whose myth–symbol complex had developed prior to the large-scale immigration of the mid-nineteenth century. Without understanding this social construction, it is difficult to explain subsequent attempts to defend it. This article, therefore, does not seek to retrace the history of American nativism. Instead, it focuses on the period prior to 1850, when American nativism was in its infancy. It examines the development of an Anglo-American ethnicity during 1776–1850 and attempts to delineate its structure. This “American” complex of myths and symbols, with its attendant set of life-style images and narratives, is shown to conform to more generally models recently presented by theorists of ethnicity and nationalism. Finally, it is argued that American nativism may have exhibited a very different pattern if an “American” national ethnicity had not taken root

The Orange Order in Scotland since 1860: a social analysis

Book synopsis: Irish immigrants and their descendants have made a vital contribution to the creation of modern Scotland. This book is the first collection of essays on the Irish in Scotland for almost twenty years, and brings together for the first time all the leading authorities on the subject. It provides a major reassessment of the Irish immigrant experience and offers social, cultural and religious development of Scotland over the past 200 years

Nativist cosmopolitans: institutional reflexivity and the decline of “double-consciousness” in American nationalist thought

Debate in the field of historical sociology on the subject of American citizenship and nationality tends to support one of two theories. The exceptionalist argument holds that American nationalist discourse has historically been based on the universal ideals of liberty enshrined in the Constitution, and has been inclusive in character. Critics contend that this was not the case – arguing that the narrative of American national identity has typically been grounded on exclusive ethno-cultural criteria like race, religion or language. This essay attempts to demonstrate that the truth encompasses, yet transcends, both positions. This is not because there were conflicting parties in the nineteenth century nationality debate – indeed, there was a great deal of elite consensus as to the meaning of American nationhood prior to the twentieth century which simultaneously affirmed both the universalist and particularist dimension of Americanism. How to explain this apparent contradiction, which Ralph Waldo Emerson termed "double-consciousness?" This paper suggests that the nineteenth century popularity of dualistic statements of American nationhood, and the eclipse of such conceptions in the twentieth, is a complex sociological phenomenon that can only fully be explained by taking into account the development of institutional reflexivity in the United States

Dominant ethnicity and integration: the Estonian case

From introduction: On October 18-19, 2007, the Tallinn Conference on Conceptualising Integration was held that focused on the Estonian integration policy. While being in the middle of composing the new state programme for the years 2008-2013 at the time of the conference, I’m glad that the conference gave us an opportunity to share our ideas with others and at the same time learn form the experience of other countries

“Naturalizing the nation”: the rise of naturalistic nationalism in the United States and Canada

Perhaps the most vexing problem in philosophy and social theory concerns the relative importance of material and ideal factors for social action. Karl Marx, for instance, with his notion of base and superstructure and his materialistic interpretation of the dialectic process, made a clean break from the idealism of his Hegelian heritage (McLellan 1977:390; Swingewood 1991:62–63). Nevertheless, idealism proved resilient and later came to inform the thinking of both actor-oriented (that is, phenomenologist, ethnomethodologist, symbolic interactionist) and structure-oriented (that is Functionalist, Structuralist) theorists

Liberal ethnicity: beyond liberal nationalism and minority rights

This article tries to make the case for a variant of the good life based on a synthesis of liberalism and ethnicity. Liberal communitarianism's treatment of ethnicity tends to fall under the categories of either liberal culturalism or liberal nationalism. Both, it is argued, fail to come to terms with the reality of ethnic community, preferring instead to define ethnicity in an unrealistic, cosmopolitan manner. By contrast, this essay squarely confronts four practices that are central to ethnic communities: symbolic boundary-maintenance; exclusive and inflexible mythomoteurs ; the use of ancestry and race as boundary markers; and the desire among national groups to maintain their ethnic character. This article argues that none of these practices need contravene the tenets of liberalism as long as they are reconstructed so as to minimize entry criteria and decouple national ethnicity from the state. The notion of liberal ethnicity thereby constitutes an important synthesis of liberal and communitarian ends