For over a century the Conservative Party has been identified as the patriotic party defending the nation state and British identity. Thatcherism sought to rework the Conservative politics of nationhood in the light of changed circumstances, but the Thatcher and Major Governments faced significant problems managing the Union, European integration and a multicultural society. Philip Lynch examines the key developments and statecraft problems in the conservative politics of nationhood during the Thatcher and Major period.

What drives the politics of majority nationalism during crises, stalemates and peace mediations? In his innovative study of majority nationalism, Neophytos Loizides answers this important question by investigating how peacemakers succeed or fail in transforming the language of ethnic nationalism and war. The Politics of Majority Nationalism focuses on the contemporary politics of the 'post-Ottoman neighborhood' to explore conflict management in Greece and Turkey while extending its arguments to Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Drawing on systematic coding of parliamentary debates, new datasets and elite interviews, the book analyses and explains the under-emphasized linkages between institutions, symbols, and framing processes that enable or restrict the choice of peace. Emphasizing the constraints societies face when trapped in antagonistic frames, Loizides argues wisely mediated institutional arrangements can allow peacemaking to progress.

The ghost of the Holocaust is ever present in Israel, in the lives and nightmares of the survivors and in the absence of the victims. In this compelling and disturbing analysis, Idith Zertal, a leading member of the new generation of revisionist historians in Israel, considers the ways Israel has used the memory of the Holocaust to define and legitimize its existence and politics. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the author exposes the pivotal role of the Holocaust in Israel's public sphere, in its project of nation building, its politics of power and its perception of the conflict with the Palestinians. She argues that the centrality of the Holocaust has led to a culture of death and victimhood that permeates Israel's society and self-image. For the updated paperback edition of the book, Tony Judt, the world-renowned historian and political commentator, has contributed a foreword in which he writes of Zertal's courage, the originality of her work, and the 'unforgiving honesty with which she looks at the moral condition of her own country'.

In Nationhood and Political Theory, Margaret Canovan argues that universalist political theories unconsciously rely upon the collective power generated by national solidarity. By focusing on nationhood as a source of power, Dr Canovan's book obliges political theorists to face the dilemmas involved in reconciling particularist power bases with universal principles.

How do people come to think of themselves as part of a nation? Dramas of Nationhood identifies a fantastic cultural form that binds together the Egyptian nation—television serials. These melodramatic programs—like soap operas but more closely tied to political and social issues than their Western counterparts—have been shown on television in Egypt for more than thirty years. In this book, Lila Abu-Lughod examines the shifting politics of these serials and the way their contents both reflect and seek to direct the changing course of Islam, gender relations, and everyday life in this Middle Eastern nation. Representing a decade's worth of research, Dramas of Nationhood makes a case for the importance of studying television to answer larger questions about culture, power, and modern self-fashionings. Abu-Lughod explores the elements of developmentalist ideology and the visions of national progress that once dominated Egyptian television—now experiencing a crisis. She discusses the broadcasts in rich detail, from the generic emotional qualities of TV serials and the depictions of authentic national culture, to the debates inflamed by their deliberate strategies for combating religious extremism.

Provides an overview of the evidence, research, and major arguments relating to the revival of Englishness and its varied political ramifications and dimensions.

What drives a state's choice to assimilate, accommodate or exclude ethnic groups within its territory? In this innovative work on the international politics of nation-building, Harris Mylonas argues that a state's nation-building policies toward non-core groups - individuals perceived as an ethnic group by the ruling elite of a state - are influenced by both its foreign policy goals and its relations with the external patrons of these groups. Through a detailed study of the Balkans, Mylonas shows that how a state treats a non-core group within its own borders is determined largely by whether the state's foreign policy is revisionist or cleaves to the international status quo, and whether it is allied or in rivalry with that group's external patrons. Mylonas injects international politics into the study of nation-building, building a bridge between international relations and the comparative politics of ethnicity and nationalism.