Summary Of Is Nationalism Good For You

There are a lot of definitions and understandings about nationalism. In the article "Is Nationalism Good For You" Gustavo de las Casas argued against the assumption of many scolars that nationalism is the root of different political violences. The author's claim was that nationalism have positive impact on welfare of countries. To be more precise, the author relied to three main arguments that supports his claim: the greater the level of nationalism in a country the wealthier, less corrupted and more law-abided the society is.

To begin with, many people accustomed to consider nationalism as policy which lead to violence, evil and hatred to nearby countries. Political scientists consider that civil wars caused by nationalism. Economists blame

it for increasing corruption and retarded economic growth in countries. Even Albert Einstein said nationalism is "an intantile disease, the measles of mankind".

But on the other hand, nationalism can be defined as political principle that based on loyalty of citizens to their nation, state, desire to protect their rights and interests, culture and features.

These characteristics are unlikely to cause disasters. However, there can be some exceptional cases when nationalism can cause violence and just these exclusive cases serves as the basis of bad reputation of nationalism. This hasty conclusion is also due to scientists' considerstion that only coolheaded person can make logical, optimal decisions, when nationalists are absolutely not coolheaded. Nationalists are altruists, selfless people who can sacrifice himselves for other compatriots if it is needed. And this can lead to trouble in economics and politics according to scholars(Is Nationalism Good For You). Scholars consider nationalism as uninteligent and primal policy that cannot manufacture wealthy country. But Gustavo de las Casas argue that it

can.
The author compares nationalism with family, members of which always concerns about each other's well-being, and this absolutely does not mean that this members will hate neighboring families. This means nationalism makes people more loyal to their own nation, without negative attitude to nearby countries. This loyalty, according to the author, contributes to better economic, business growth. Because there are millions of transactions every day in all markets, and most of them can be easily cheated by someone in expense of another. The author provided an example of cheating in restaurants and cafes where waiters can provide bill with some error not in favor of the client, and in most cases nobody notices this, but if so, the servant will just say that it was a mistake. Thus there occurs distrust among people which in turn will lead to slow business growth, because people will waste time to recheck their bills, arrangements, look for some cheatings. Whilst loyal nationalism lower the appearance of such fraudnesses.
The author compares distrust and cheating trials among citizens with swarm of flies, where nobody cares of each other which lead to degenerative economy. As to nationalism, the author compared it with "a colony of bees, with members minfdul of the group's well-being" (CITATION) .
There is a data from International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) which supports the consideration of the author that the higher the level of nationalism the wealthier is a country.

This data was defined as a result of a survey, which was carried out among 34 countries in 2003, ranging from developed countries such as Australia and Canada to younger countries like Czech Republic and Slovakia. After this survey it become immediately apparent that people from wealthier countries are more nationalists than people from less wealthier countries. The lowest level of nationalism was in Latvia and Slovenia and the highest was in Australia, USA and Canada. Thus it is argued that nationalists makes country more wealthier, but, in my opinion, it is also possible that there is another sequence: people from wealthy countries are proud of their developed country, so they become nationalists, and citizens of developing countries are not satisfied fully with the level of their lives, so they are tended not to be so loyal to their

state.
Corruption
According to World Bank surveys, the second positive outcome of nationalism is lower level of corruption in more nationalistic countries. The reason for that is public servants being nationalists, that means they do care about well-being of their nation. They understands possible injury consequences for nation of corruption and due to this possibility, they will try to decrease the level of corruption.
Law-abiding
Due to similar reason, as was mentioned above, nationalistic citizens are unlikely to break the rules: to do violence, fraudness, to violate the rights and harm other people. This statement also based on survey, conducted by World Bank.
As to the roots of bad reputation of nationalism, firstly there are just few of them, secondly, they occur very rarely, but they exist. For example, one of the reasons is the possibility of occuring civil war as a consequense of contestation of some territory by several nations.