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

Sammanfattning: 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.