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Why Do People Sacrifice For Their Nations by Paul Stern
Why Do People Sacrifice For Their Nations by Paul Stern
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Political Psychology, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1995
cially when several kinds of ties (race, language, religion, custom, proximity)
bind together the same group of people.
Many people, including members of political elites, accept this sort of
simple primordialisttheory of their attachmentsto their own nations and some-
times, by empathy, accept it for other people's attachmentsto their nations.
Adherence to this view is so widespread that it has become encoded in the
internationalnorm of "nationalself-determination,"which grantsevery "nation"
a right to govern itself if it so chooses. This concept presumesthat the members
of a nationcan be easily identifiedeven if they are not the same as the citizens of
any existing state. And it privileges nationhoodover otherkinds of group identi-
fications by giving it special rights.
Despite the commonsense characterof the belief that nationhoodis "natu-
ral," the notion of primordialattachmentto nations does not square with the
evidence. Actual nations rarely have the homogeneity or the long histories this
belief presumes. The vast majorityof actual nation-states,including states that
have acted on strong national feeling, are multiethnic, multireligious, multi-
lingual, and/or multiracial, and many of them are of relatively recent origin.
Beyond nation-statesthat explicitly recognize their multiethniccharacterin their
laws and institutions,such as Belgium, Canada,and until recently,South Africa,
are less obvious cases, including the United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, Iraq,
Vietnam, and many others. Severalof these nation-statesare no more than a few
generationsold. If nation-statesdo not have the characteristicsor histories that
would give people strong, primordialties to them, why do people identify with
them, andwhy do the feelings sometimesget so strongthatpeople give theirlives?
There are three main classes of accountsof nationalismin the recent litera-
ture (Young, 1993). One is a modified primordialistapproachthat emphasizes
the emotional ties of individuals to ethnic groups. Some versions focus on a
presumed primordialneed for shared identity that is fulfilled by culturally de-
fined groupings(e.g., Geertz, 1973); otherstake a sociobiological tack and argue
that ethnicity is an extension of a naturallyselected tendency to favor kin (e.g.,
Shaw & Wong, 1989). A second type of account, sometimescalled instrumental-
ist, emphasizesthe value of nationalityand ethnicityas organizingconstructsfor
collections of individualswho sharecommon interestsand who need to mobilize
for collective action (e.g., Enloe, 1973; Young, 1976). In this perspective,
nationalityis a markerof sharedinterest, a concept that is taken as unproblema-
tic. The thirdapproach,called "constructionist,"emphasizesthe socially created
nature of nationality-and, for that matter, of shared interest. Constructivists
point out that ethnic or national consciousness tends to arise during periods of
crisis, such as rapid modernization,and tends to be "brokered"by intellectual
entrepreneurswho createnationalhistories, traditions,identities, perceived inter-
ests, and even languages (these argumentsare presented by Anderson, 1982;
Hobsbawm, 1964; Ranger, 1983; and Kiss, 1993, among others).
Why do People Sacrifice? 219
People resist changing their national identities, even when they can expect
to benefit. Rationalchoice theoryfails to explain people's unwillingnessto adopt
the favored identities of a conquering power. Consider recent events in the
former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Despite benefits made available to
those who identified with dominant national groups, people passed on their
ancestralidentitiesas Ruthenians,Ossetians, Azeris, and the like for generations
with little hope of collective gain. In some cases, such as those of Turks in
Bulgaria and Hungariansin Romania, people held on to their identities in the
face of active or acute discrimination.Ethnic groups and their languages and
customs do become extinct as a functionof conquest, migration,modernization,
dispersion, and genocide, but they are remarkablyresistantto such threats,as the
histories of Jews and Armeniansattest.
It might be that conquered peoples hold on perversely to a subordinate
national identity as a response to the dynamic of threat, being risk-averseeven
for symbolic losses, when the rationalself-interestedchoice would be to switch
identifications.But nationalidentitiesalso persistwhen somethingcan be gained
by changing and the old nationalityis not underthreat.Afteremigration,national
identities commonly last for generations even though rational choice theory
implies that people who move to another country will change their national
identificationsas readily as people who move to anothercity change their favor-
ite sports teams. Millions of U.S. citizens educate their children in the customs
and sometimes the languagesof their non-Americanancestors, even at consider-
able expense, in the absence of threats. Such communities of hyphenated-
Americans seem to be acting not for tangiblebenefit, but out of identification-
as if their old national identities have intrinsicvalue. The phenomenonhas an
emotional tone that the rationalchoice formulationmisses.
Nationality has a stronger influence than other identities even when the
expected benefits of contributingto the nation rather than to another group are
highly uncertain or negative. Conflict between identities arises most clearly
when a nation-statemakes claims on citizens to put nationalgoals aheadof those
of class, ethnicity, race, family, or other identity groups. The paradigmcase is
war mobilization and the most outstandingexample is probablythe willingness
of so many soldiers to fight and die in WorldWarI. Later,duringthe outbreakof
224 Stern
transmittingthem to new members who may not have undergone the group-
formative experiences.
In sum, altruism works in groups that have a strong emotional basis for
cohesion or that have succeeded in establishingbehavioralnorms that prescribe
altruismundercertaincircumstances.It follows thatnationalleadersmay be able
to elicit nationalistaltruismif they are able to mobilize strongemotionalbonds or
altruisticnorms in the nation's name.
As already mentioned, the problem for national leaders is that the groups
they want to mobilize for war are not much like the primarygroups in which
altruism evolved. In a band society, emotional ties are restrictedto one small
group, and sacrificing for the group is likely to be enforced by empathy and
group norms, as well as being adaptivein terms of inclusive fitness. In complex
modem societies, however, people have ties to many groups, each of which at
times provides essential services. Mobilizing modem citizens for war creates a
conflict of altruismsbetween the nation and other groups. When a nation-state
asks people to go to war, it is often demandinga contributionor sacrifice at the
same time that other groups to which citizens belong are demanding that the
contributionor sacrifice not be made. For the nationaleffortto succeed, national
identity must overcome other group identities.
Why do people so often choose the nation as their object of altruism?I
presume that choosing the nation in a contest of altruisms does not always
provide an evolutionaryadvantageover choosing other groups. Even if it did,
evolution provides no mechanismfor choosing nationsover other groups (or, in
the case of conflicts between a nation-stateand a nationalminority,one nation
over another),and rationalcalculations-if people performedthem-would not
be clairvoyantabout the sequelae of war for various groups. People's choices
among altruismsare less likely to be madeon groundsof inclusive fitness thanon
some combinationof emotional reactions and social influences. It becomes the
task of a leadermobilizingpeople for war to find ways to manipulatethose forces
so as to socially constructthe nation as an object of "primordial"attachment.
One way is to develop and then exploit direct emotional ties to the nation
and its symbols. This approachcan requirea long-term investmentin parades,
holidays, and othercollective events thatclassically conditionpositive responses
to national symbols like flags and military uniforms (Johnson, 1986). States
certainlymake such investments;their survivalin the populationof nation-states
may create a selection pressureto do so (Posen, 1993). And individualscertainly
feel empathy for soldiers they have never met, and for their families. But I
questionwhetheroccasional classical conditioningis a strongenough force to get
large numbersof people to sacrifice their lives.
230 Stern
CONCLUSIONS
about enteringa war will tend to focus more on issues such as whetherpotential
allies are appropriatelycharacterizedas family membersand whethera "victim"
nation was or was not "innocent"than on rational considerationssuch as the
probabilityof victory. And it predictsthat mobilizers'rhetoricalappeals to such
nonrationalconsiderationsas family, community,nationalpride, formativeexpe-
riences from national myth, and internationalvictimization will be particularly
insistent when most people's rationalcalculations would not favor war, for in-
stance when publics fail to see nationalinterestsat stake, when the outcome of a
war is uncertain,or when victory is unlikely.
Of course, this account of nationalistloyalty and sacrifice is incomplete. It
does not speak to the question of when state leadersor other interestgroups will
desire to mobilize a nationfor war and it only begins to suggest how variationsin
nationalistideology might affect their choices. It does not specify the historical
or political conditions that make individuals susceptible to believing the meta-
phors of nation as person or family and thus capable of having their emotions
arousedby nationalistrhetoricthat assertsthe same obligationsto the nationthat
people accept to primary groups. And it offers little insight into what makes
people accept metaphoricalequationsof particularnations with particularinter-
personal roles. But it may be enough that it focuses attentionon the specific
processes of social constructionthat generateemotional supportfor war efforts,
suggests some possible mechanisms, and raises questions for furtheranalysis.
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