Nationalism and Human Rights

Abstract

Do nationalist political parties violate human rights more than others or are they the protectors of their people’s rights when they are in power? I argue that nationalist political actors have the duty of protecting national unity at any cost and prioritizing national interests over any other concerns. These goals jeopardize certain types of human rights. In contrast to the view that civic nationalism can be more benign compared with ethnic nationalism, I argue that they both have similar effects on human rights. However, democratic institutions can tame nationalism and limit its effects on human rights. I test my theory by using a large-N sample including forty-nine countries between 1981 and 2011, and supplement my findings with a short case study. The findings show that nationalism has negative effects on certain types of human rights only in partial democracies. This article contributes to the literature by presenting a causal mechanism relating the core elements of nationalism to human rights practices and providing the first large-N empirical test of this relationship. The findings of this article can help scholars, politicians, and citizens better understand a potentially dangerous consequence of the rise of nationalism around the world.