Application

David Brown

Senior Lecturer
Murdoch University School of Politics and International Studies
National Identity Strategies: An Analysis of the Impact of Governments' National Identity Strategies on Ethnic Conflict
Australia

Associate Professor David Brown is a member of the School of Politics and International Studies at Murdoch University, Western Australia, and has been Head of School for the last two years. He previously has taught at the National University of Singapore, Birmingham University UK, and Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.

His research has focused on the politics of ethnicity and nationalism, first with reference to West Africa, then on Southeast Asia, and more recently on comparative and conceptual issues.

Selected Publications:

"Democracy and Nationalism: Civic, Ethnocultural and Multicultural Politics under Patrimonial Rule." In Susan Henders, ed. Democratization and Identity Conflicts: Political Transitions and Cultural Difference in East and Southeast Asia. (Accepted for publication by Rowman and Littlefield/ Lexington Books)
"Why Might Constructed Nationalist and Ethnic Ideologies Come into Confrontation with Each Other?" Pacific Review 15, 4, 2002.
The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia. London/New York, Routledge, 1994 and 1996.
Contemporary Nationalism: Civic, Ethnocultural and Multicultural Politics, London/New York, Routledge, 2000.

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National Identity Strategies: An Analysis of the Impact of Governments' National
Identity Strategies on Ethnic Conflict, with an Initial Case Study

(i) Significance: The research addresses the core goal of the NCS theme, to isolate factors that influence ethnic conflict. It combines innovative theoretical and conceptual work with an empirical study that provides the basis for comparative analysis.

(ii) The research question examines the impact of government's national identity strategies upon ethnic conflict.

(iii) The research proposition is that ethnic conflict arises when ethnocultural visions of the nation come into confrontation with multicultural visions, without any substantive civic buffer. Ethnic conflict is thus promoted, both across and within nation-state boundaries, when the national identity strategies of governments serve to weaken, rather than to strengthen, the political salience of the civic idea of national community.

(iv) The research approach is to develop a theoretical understanding of relationships between ethnocultural, multicultural and civic ideas of national identity. The purpose is to examine the ways in which their relative political salience can be influenced by governments' national identity strategies in the context of the processes of globalisation and democratisation. The conceptual analysis will be specified and contextualised by applying it to a case study of contemporary Indonesia. The NCS research forms part of a larger elaboration of the conceptual model employing comparative case studies of Malaysia and Singapore, as well as Indonesia.

(v) Practical implications: In that the project focuses on the impact of government policies on ethnic conflict, it has the potential to imply strategies for ameliorating such conflict through policies aimed at the strengthening of civic nationalism.

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