State, Nation, National Identity, and Citizenship: France as a Test Case

Abstract

Since the Revolution of 1789 membership in the French national community has been based, ideally, on a voluntary commitment to the republic and to political values associated with it. The Jacobin ideal of the "nation state," according to which the nation is a product of the (democratic) state, has not always been adhered to in practice. This paper analyzes the challenges to the Jacobin model posed by the survival of "organic" thinking, the periodic digressions from democratic patterns, the growth of supranation alism, the claims of infranational communities, changes in the elite structure, mass immigration, and other developments. The paper also examines divergent ideological (that is, right and left) approaches to national identity and to the question of accession to French citizenship.