Abstract: This paper evaluates the prospects of a republican alternative to national liberalism. It draws on Max Weber to provide an account of how national liberalism is meant to work. It examines some of the tensions that emerge from this account, and some of the ways liberals and nationalists have tried to deal with these tensions. Ultimately, I argue that both liberalism and nationalism have struggled to go it alone, but both also struggle to go on together. I suggest that the republican alternative is potentially promising, but still faces stiff competition from nationalism. To beat nationalism, the republicans will need to offer citizens a more compelling relationship with the state than the nationalists offer. This will require a substantial expansion of citizenship rights. Because republicans reject the thick, cathartic, intimate relationship nationalism offers, they must provide a set of rights that citizens consider even more valuable, binding them in a thin way to the republican constitution.