How can the challenge of nationalism be controlled in contemporary world politics? In Nations Before the Nation-State: Between City-State and Empire from Antiquity to the Present, Anna Marisa Schön argues that the solution is to move beyond the modern nation-state paradigm and return to an older conception in which nations were simply cultural and linguistic communities, and not the basis for political units.

Schön positions her argument between two competing views for how nationalist sentiment can be managed. The first is liberal multiculturalism, most associated with Will Kymlicka, which holds that liberal democracies should adopt policies that accommodate the distinctive needs and desires of each minority nation within a state. The second view is constitutional patriotism, best articulated by Jurgen Habermas, which argues for a non-national society in which citizens are organized and motivated by constitutional beliefs. Schön contends that both views are flawed. The problem with liberal multiculturalism is that by maintaining the link between nations and political rights, political instability will recur as minority nations continuously seek increased forms of accommodation. Meanwhile, the problem with constitutional patriotism is that by ignoring the cultural elements of nations and replacing them with constitutional values, an impor