Normative variants of nationalism tend to involve one or both of the following views: Citizens and governments may, and perhaps should, show more concern for the survival and flourishing of their own state, culture, and compatriots than for the survival and flourishing of foreign states, cultures, and persons (common nationalism). Citizens and governments may, and perhaps should, show more concern for the justice of their own state and for injustice and other wrongs suffered by its members than for the justice of any foreign social systems and for injustice and other wrongs suffered by foreigners (lofty nationalism). The essay argues that both asserted priorities are importantly limited in scope and therefore do not justify actual international inequalities under existing conditions. Supporting the latter of these two conclusions requires debunking a third variant, explanatory nationalism – the view that oppression and poverty in our world are a set of national phenomena to be explained by reference to domestic factors such as bad political and economic institutions, incompetent economic policies, and “oppressive government and corrupt elites” (Rawls) in the so-called less developed countries.
