“Civilization” is surely among those concepts that are the most widely used in world political discourse but taken least seriously by contemporary social science. We argue for jettisoning this concept’s Huntingtonian baggage, which has led scholarship into a dead end, and developing a new body of theory on a different foundation, one grounded strongly in recent nonprimordial theories of identity and micro-level research into how ordinary people actually understand the civilizational appeals made by their elites. In what we believe to be the first systematic survey-based study of individual-level civilizational identification, we establish proof-of-concept by asking a question: What influences individuals’ primary identification of their own country with particular civilizational alternatives offered up by their elites? Pooling survey data gathered in Russia from 2013–2014, we confirm that civilizational identity reflects the influence of situational considerations and social construction processes. Whether individuals see Russia as part of purported “European,” “Eurasian,” or “Asian” civilizations depends heavily on gendered and nongendered socialization during the USSR period and factors as contingent as perceived economic performance. Results also confirm our expectation that Huntingtonian concepts fit poorly with real-world patterns of civilizational identification.

Borders and boundaries can represent old narratives, which often, however, cannot deal with new realities. Borders are inflexible, but reality is flexible and fluid. This is augmented in crisis situations. Multi-ethnicity and history run in parallel, as shared cultures often precede and transcend Westphalia and institutionally imposed borders. For cultures with roots in antiquity, top-down established borders appear to lack legitimacy, as these cultures place more emphasis on historical similarities and traditions of peoples. Thus, what is more important: cultural and historical commonalities or institutional top-down constructions? This article examines the impact of the prioritization of top-down ethno-religious homogeneity over lasting conflict resolution. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the article draws a number of hypotheses from the fields of conflict resolution, territoriality, and nation building and tests these hypotheses on the specific case of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange (CPE) between Greece and Turkey and the dual role of the Mediterranean as a security bridge or barrier. This article highlights a “how-not-to” scenario in conflict resolution and argues that efforts to form apparent homogeneous nation-states led to short-term, incomplete conflict termination with a lasting impact, while conflict resolution remained elusive.

This article analyzes the international consensus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that there should be a two state solution and finds it unworkable on several counts. The conflict has no territorial solution: high population density makes partition impossible without leaving unwanted pockets of one people in the territory of the other; it is not possible for any Israeli government to dismantle settlements in the West Bank without causing a civil war; and in such a small and overcrowded territory, it is not feasible to have monocultural nation-states when the population is now evenly divided between the two conflicting national communities that reside in overlapping areas. Demographic forecasts show in the short term, a decrease in the proportion of Israeli Jews and an increase in the proportion of Palestinians. In the face of this stalemate, the article recalls the 90-year-old proposal by enlightened Jewish personalities to create a binational state under the modality of national-cultural autonomy. Furthermore, and paradoxically, in a reversal of the situation 90 years ago, Palestinian Israeli citizens are slowly creating a bottom-up series of autonomous communal organizations that provide self-government without territorial control, a model for nonterritorial autonomy in a manner that reminds of the earlier proposals of the Jewish personalities. The article concludes that this could potentially be a way out of this stalled and protracted conflict. A plurinational state in Israel-Palestine based on the model of National Cultural Autonomy with shared sovereignty and collective rights for all communities.

Nationalism has been one of the domestic constraints to progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, especially in the Balkans that are dealing with multiple postwar transition realities. Ethno-nationalist challenges, often influenced by religion, have been significant in Bosnia-Herzegovina given weak state identity and democracy, competing institutionalized ethno-national identities, and slow Europeanization. Through the lenses of gendered nationalism, the societal security dilemma, and political homophobia, this article analyzes how the politics and discourse of LGBT rights during the past decade in Bosnia reveal tensions between competing and multiple identities and narratives—European, multiethnic, ethno-nationalist, and religious—using the violent response to the 2008 Queer Sarajevo Festival as a key illustration. However, in the past decade, LGBT rights have progressed and antigay backlash to LGBT visibility (in addition to stronger external leverage and other factors) has resulted in stronger activism and change. The public discourse and response to the announcement of Bosnia’s first Pride Parade represents another turning point in LGBT visibility that seems to reveal that ethno-nationalist challenges may be lessening as LGBT rights norms gain strength.

This study in comparative global history sheds light on a largely ignored forum for the politics of transition from monarchical empire to nation-state in the Middle East and Central Europe—religious festivals at sacred shrines. It compares the role of key pilgrimage festivals at politically important sacred shrines: (1) the Islamic Nabi Musa (Prophet Moses) pilgrimage to the Haram esh-Sharif and Nabi Musa Tomb near the Dead Sea in Mandatory Palestine and (2) various Catholic pilgrimages to Jasna Góra in Częstochowa in interwar Poland. The author demonstrates how these events served as sacred forums for secular politics, where various political factions contested their partisan ideas of the nation, which included the elite nationalism of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini and the Catholic-Endecja nationalism of Polish clerical leaders. Moreover, I examine the role of these pilgrimage festivals in some of the major conflicts afflicting their respective areas, such as Arab–Jewish violence and hostility in Palestine and wars for borders as well as anti-minority sentiment, especially anti-Semitism, in Poland.

This article examines historical positions regarding the question of the small nation-(state) of Albania remaining “in” the larger Ottoman supranational entity and “out” as independent nation-state during the late 19th and early 20th century. It does so mainly, but not only, through the language of political economy (wealth creation and redistribution) as articulated in the thoughts and deeds of three founding intellectual and political figures of the Albanian nation-(state): Ismail Qemali, Fan Noli, and Luigj Gurakuqi. While lacking a clear political-economic perspective for this emerging nation in the late Ottoman period, all the three figures maintained that as an independent, small nation-state, Albania could survive and perhaps thrive if its wealth and national economic development remained anchored within a larger political and economic space. More than Qemali, Gurakuqi, and Noli envisaged a greater state role in the country’s “national economy-building” process. But while Gurakuqi was more of a “nationalist” on wealth creation, Noli sought to pursue a more “radical,” redistributive path to national development.

In late 2010, Azerbaijan tried to introduce a ban on hijab in all secondary schools, referring to an article of the new Law of Education that mandated school uniforms. The supporters of the ban argued that the hijab was inimical to Azerbaijani culture and law because it violated the separation of religion and state, was a propaganda tool of Islamist fundamentalists funded from abroad, and was a foreign form of clothing that did not exist in Azerbaijani culture. This article examines why hijab is the focus of controversy in Azerbaijan. The supporters of the ban offered simple oppositions, such as secularism versus theocracy, modernity versus backwardness, and national versus foreign, to explain and justify the ban. However, these dichotomies do not capture the complexities of Islam in Azerbaijan. Rather, they are polemics that blur more than they reveal. In this article, I argue that the debates around the hijab controversy in Azerbaijan are a political discourse aimed at building a nation. The key contribution of this article is to examine the wider historical trajectory of the political discourse that constructed hijab as fundamentalist, backward, threatening, and alien, through discussing the topics of secularism, Islamist politics, modernity, and nationalism.

The contested nature of de facto states and their acceptance of dual citizenship results in the overlap of multiple citizenship regimes, leading to individuals living in de facto states possessing multiple citizenship statuses. Using the Most Similar Systems Design, this article explores the factors that influence the (divergent) citizenship regimes of Abkhazia and Transnistria; the former allows dual citizenship only with Russia, while the latter places no restrictions. The primary reason for the adoption of dual citizenship is for pragmatic reasons, as the secondary citizenship can compensate for the lack of benefits (such as international travel, diplomatic protection) afforded by the de facto state’s citizenship. This said, having an ethnicized national identity, in contrast to a civic (state-centered) national identity, can produce (dual) citizenship laws that give preferential treatment to the titular group and its diaspora. Additionally, the influence exerted by the patron state (Russia) and the severity of the conflict with the parent state (Georgia/Moldova) influences dual citizenship in becoming conditional and thus more exclusive.

In this article, I focus on the context in which levees were constructed on the Lower Danube, along the Bulgarian–Romanian border. I argue that after World War II, while the two states shared the management of the river in this region, Romania pursued a techno-nationalist hydraulic policy, which led to the complete damming of the left bank of the Danube with levees. Bulgaria also succeeded in building levees on its side of the Danube, that is the right bank of the common border; however, Bulgaria used different technologies and its building works proceeded at a different pace. Techno-nationalism as delineated in this article considers nation-states as basic units in the analysis of technologies. Technological development is not a flowing process, as it becomes entangled with the interests of nation-states seeking legitimation. Hydraulic technology may strengthen nation-states, and in some circumstances leads to the emergence of nationalistic ideologies.