ÖZP 2010/2  S.187-204

Rebekka Fleiner, Claudia Ritzi, Gary S. Schaal

Passion XOR Rationality. Three Models of Patriotism in Theory and Practice

Keywords: patriotism, emotions, integration, rationality, political theory

Emotions as well as cognitive processes play a crucial role in the theoretical debate on patriotism. Unfortunately, empirical research on this topic has hardly focused on the interplay between emotional ties and rational beliefs. Regarding the writings on "Verfassungspatriotismus" - a normative concept of patriotism that was described first by the German political scientist Dolf Sternberger, and which tries to integrate emotional and coginitive moments - this deficit becomes clearly visible. In our article we first theoretically develop, describe and discuss three modes of patriotism, one of which is "Verfassungspatriotismus? (constitutional patriotism). Secondly, we show with the help of data from survey research that all three types of patriots (emotional patriots, rational patriots and constitutional patriots) do exist in Germany. This shows, that emotions are important in real politics - so they cannot be ignored in political theory building.