Civic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives political legitimacy from the active participation of its citizenry, the "will of the people"; "political representation". An invididual in such a nation must believe that the state's actions somehow reflect his will, even when specific actions go against his will. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who first developed this theory, devised the concept of the General Will to explain how that could work. Rousseau put down his theory in various writings, particularly On the Social Contract. Civic nationalism is the theory behind constitutional democracies such as the United States.
Ethnic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives political legitimacy as an inherent consequence of race; the underlying presumption is that historical cultural or hereditary groupings should be politically distinct. This was developed by Johann Gottfried von Herder, who introduced the concept of the Volk (Ger: Folk).
Religious nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives political legitimacy as a consequence of shared religion. Zionism is an example, though many, if not most, forms of ethnic nationalism are in some ways religious nationalism as well. For example, Irish nationalism is associated with Catholicism; Palestinian nationalism is associated with Islam. In general, religious nationalism is viewed as a form of ethnic nationalism.
Sometimes however religion is more of a marker of a group than the motivation for their nationalism. For example although most Irish nationalist leaders of the last 100 years are Catholic, in the 19th Century and expecially in the 18th Century many nationalistic leaders were Protestant. Irish nationalists are not fighting for theological distinctions like transubstanciation, the status of the Virgin Mary, or the primacy of the Pope. Rather they are fighting for an ideology that identifies the geographical island of Ireland with a particular view of Irish culture, which for some nationalists does include Catholicism but has as a more dominant element other elements of culture.
Some political theorists make the case that any discrimination of forms of nationalism is false. All forms of nationalism rely on the population being a nation; that is, that all the members of the population believe that they share some kind of common culture, and culture can't be wholly separated from ethnicity. Even the supposedly ethnically neutral "civic culture" of the United States, for example, relies on English as the one national language, has "God" on its coinage and in its Pledge of Allegiance, and designates official holidays, which promote cultural biases.
The modern vernacular use of nationalism refers to the political (and military) exercise of ethnic and religious nationalism.
Fascism is usually marked by virulent ethnic nationalism, the most extreme example being National Socialism in Nazi Germany.
In some cases there has been a reaction against nationalism. An example was the perception in pre-World War I European socialist movements that nationalism was being used to prevent workers uniting against capitalism. Another example is in present day Germany and Ireland where there are people who are not comfortable with nationalistic, patriotic, or even cultural symbols that have become associated with violent nationalism.
Historical events in which nationalism played an essential role included the unification of Italy under the rule of Sardinia and the unification of Germany under the rule of Prussia.
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