Think of "nationalism," and you might think of a country brainwashed to hate its neighbors. You might imagine thousands of people sacrificing themselves for a power-hungry dictator. You wouldn’t be alone. Albert Einstein himself called nationalism "an infantile disease, the measles of mankind."

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Political scientists blame it for civil wars and territorial ambitions, from Rwanda and Yugoslavia to Nazi Germany and Napoleonic France. Many economists view it as an irrational distraction from free-market principles, impeding growth and promoting corruption across the developing world. When war broke out in the past, nationalism was often automatically assumed to be a party to the crime, either as a tool that would allow leaders to seduce the masses into fighting, or as fuel that stoked popular outrage. There is no denying it: nationalism has got a bad name.

But this negative publicity confuses what is more often than not an innocuous sentiment. Nationalism is a feeling of unity with a group beyond one's immediate family and friends. In and of itself, it is not conducive to disastrous wars. The bad rap on nationalism relies almost exclusively on cherry-picked exceptions. These conclusions were drawn without considering the far-more-common cases in which nationalism was not the root of some evil. Moreover, many previous studies on the causes of war lacked one key component: an adequate measure of nationalism. Absent this measure, it is impossible to tell if the brand of nationalism of, say, the Axis powers was more intense than others in the years leading up to 1939. Yet, scholars are quick to blame nationalism for a host of ills.

Why this haste? Part of the reason lies in the scholarly reverence to homo economicus, the cool-headed and self-interested person thought to make optimal decisions at all times. This assumed rational egoist stands in direct opposition to the stereotypical nationalist. After all, the nationalist is often anything but coolheaded. And, being willing to die for his compatriots if need be, he isn't selfish either. Thus, many scholars conclude, if nationalism does exist, it would only disturb the God-given rationality of humanity, and that meant trouble in politics and economics.

But the deeper roots of antinationalism seem to lie in the value system of scholars. Success in academia is often gauged by how coldly logical one can be. Intense emotional content is frowned upon. So your run-of-the-mill academic, devoted to library stays, will naturally view nationalism as unintelligent and primal. And being so, nationalism could not possibly produce better countries. Or could it?

MY NATION, MYSELF

Modern political science generally holds that nationalism predisposes a nation's members to see outsiders as potentially inferior and evil. This perception is supposed to make it easier for nationalists to, say, curtail trade with others and even wage war. But there is a problem with this logic. If nothing else, nationalism is a sense of collective unity that turns large groups into extended families. In itself, this says nothing about how one nation should treat another. In everyday life, we usually love and identify with our own family. That certainly does not make us believe that neighboring families pose a threat. The same goes for nationalism. It does not manufacture hatred for others, just concern for one's fellow citizens. By believing that everyone is in a national endeavor together, citizens value each other’s welfare as well as their own. In other words, nationalism makes people less selfish. Granted, the altruism that nationalism provides is not the cosmopolitan sort that philosophers dream about. Members of a nation may not care about all the people in the world, but they do exhibit a selective altruism in caring about their fellow compatriots. And this selective altruism, when shared by all citizens, makes for a better country than one populated by purely selfish individuals.

Consider economic life, where self-interest is assumed to reign supreme. Any economy comprises millions of everyday transactions. In many of these transactions, a citizen can easily shortchange another and get away with it. Yes, cheaters are somewhat deterred by the law and the fear of gaining a bad reputation. But there are many ways to skim off the top without getting caught. A simple case: Your favorite restaurant can charge you higher prices -- say, from a few cents to a dollar -- than those printed on the menu. If caught, your waiter can say it was a mistake. But how many people ever bother to remember the exact menu prices when the bill lands on the table? Very few, if any. This window of opportunity for cheating exists in thousands of activities in every conceivable industry. And if citizens actually exploited it, interpersonal trust would disintegrate. Business activity would slow to an inefficient crawl as people spent additional time and effort deterring cheaters.

On the other hand, when citizens are nationalistic, those who might cheat will face an unpleasant trade-off: to help themselves at the expense of their brethren. Surely, nationalism will never stop all cheating. But in countries with a mature sense of nationalism, this trade-off will significantly discourage cheating and promote economic growth. Meanwhile, without nationalism, citizens do not hesitate to abuse each other, and the threat of underhanded cheating destroys the trust necessary for economic development. One need only recall the fall of the Soviet Union and how the crisis of national identity suffered by its citizens presaged endemic corruption and economic underdevelopment across the post-Soviet states. In cases such as these, the economy degenerates into a swarm of flies, with each citizen relatively oblivious to others' welfare. By contrast, the nationalist economy resembles a colony of bees, with members mindful of the group’s well-being.

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