FROM MUDBLOOD TO PUREBLOOD: EVALUATING THE VALIDITY OF NATIONALISM’S GEOGRAPHIC TYPOLOGIES AND HANS KOHN’S DICHOTOMY

A generally unchallenged contemporary view of nationalism contends that the countries found in eastern and central Europe are defined along brutal, exclusive, ethnic lines. Conversely, western states and governments are expected to incorporate on liberal, inclusive, and positive terms. These typologies demand that countries be considered either ethnic or civic in nature based on geography, as a result, countries located in Eastern Europe maybe miscatergorized. Recent scholars of nationalism have conceptually and normatively challenged assumptions of liberal-western inclusiveness and ethnic-eastern violent exclusion most often attributed to historian Hans Kohn primaily using evaluations of public opinion data. In light of the lack of empirical evidence to support this Kohn’s hypotheses, this research intends to execute a more systematic approach using an elite level analysis with European political party documents. Analyzing six geographically delineated eastern and western European states, this project develops a thematic coding system for the primary investigatory tool. Second, this research will analyze European public opinion data to provide a mass- level analysis. The data collected from these two endeavors will be evaluated to see if eastern countries express themselves in ethnic-exclusive terms and western countries according to a civic-inclusive approach as Kohn’s dichotomy would suggest. In the end, the significance of this research is found in the opportunity to extend the conceptual critiques of recent authors to a systematic level that contributes to the larger discussion of nationalism typologies