Nationalism in Europe : A quantitative study about the relationship between different kinds of nationalism and liberal democracy

This article sets out to examine how different types of nationalism are correlated with the level of democracy in a country, a relationship that has not received much attention in previous research. I aim to investigate this relationship by examining how five forms of nationalism affect democracy in 23 European countries. Individual-level data about nationalism come from ISSP (2013). I use latent class analysis (LCA), an exploratory method, to reveal the different types of nationalism that exist in Europe. Then I investigate these nationalisms’ relationship to democracy. The dependent variable is an index of democracy developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2016). Results indicate a significant and strong association between nationalism and democracy. Ethnic nationalism is negatively correlated with levels of democracy, while civic nationalism is positively associated with democracy.