http://dx.doi.org/10.17176/20160224-100536 https://verfassungsblog.de/cultural-majorities-constitutional-essentials-and-cosmopolitan-citizenship/ Cultural majorities, constitutional essentials, and cosmopolitan citizenship Blokker, Paul eng 2016-02-24 electronic resource text/html ddc:342 Cultural Rights Liberal Theory Majority Multicultural Verfassungsblog Verfassungsblog--2366-7044 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Liav Orgad’s idea of a two-stage process of the regulation of immigration and access to citizenship in The Cultural Defense of Nations appears sensible and on first sight largely agreeable. But a more careful positioning of the argument regarding democratic theory and sociological understandings of nationalism brings out aspects that problematize some of its key assumptions and that reveal a risk of counter-productivity. In this, the argument might be less original than claimed and the specific version of a liberal theory of cultural defense less fit for socio-culturally complex democratic societies, in particular within the European context. I will briefly touch upon three dimensions that seem to me problematic: the notions of majority culture and cultural defense; the notion of constitutional identity as used in the book; and the problem of constitutional populism.