Ethnonationalism and the Foreign Policy of Nation-States

The study of the impact of the nation-state on foreign policy has been inadequate, partly because of the evolution of international relations theory and partly because of the origins of both the modern state and the nation. As a departure point for the study of the foreign policy of nation-states an integration of ethnic nationalism into foreign policy is suggested and a pre-theoretical framework was spelled out in this essay. The proposed framework includes two main elements: (1) the interplay between the national and the statist definitions composing the modern polity, and (2) the compound impact of these determinants on foreign policy accompanied by identification of processes of change that transform the internal distribution between the statist and the national settings. Since the ‘reason of state’ and ‘reason of nation’ are not identical, the discipline is urged to re-examine some of its basic concepts like national interest, national security, and national territory, as well as the basic postulates of realism.