This article considers whether appeals to ‘national values' in public

discourse and political debate might be a form of nationalism. This theoretical

question about the applicability of the category of nationalism faces the objections

that political values cannot constitute nationality, and that this is even more so the case

when the values in question are liberal, as they often are. Against these objections, it is

argued that ‘the nationalisation of liberal values' may, and in some contexts of

immigration and Europeanisation probably do, exhibit ‘boundary mechanisms' that

are among the central features of nationalism. This feature of the nationalisation of

liberal values carries both normative and explanatory implications, which relate to the

concerns of ‘liberal nationalism'.