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This thesis is an attempt to grasp the phenomenon of the national hero behind the facade of national identity. Three smaller nations from the northern quarters of Europe - Scotland, Norway and Lithuania - are examined separately and within a comparative framework. Thus, the study is built on three different layers representing differences rather than common features among the three case studies. The key question underlying the thesis is this: what is the relation if any between the heroic traditions and national identity? Since the latter has been widely seen by scholars as an entity caught up in a perpetual cycle of human evolution, whether monitoring or constructing the world we live in, it was deemed appropriate to investigate the most permanent feature of national identity, that is heroic traditions - the prevailing popular trends in situating the national hero in history. The thesis argues that heroic traditions came about in connection with the emergence of the nation state in early modern history. The common ground for selecting the three otherwise different countries for this study was found in the fact that all had been exposed to unionism for a greater part of their national history, hence national heroes were formulated in the language of separatism and longing for statehood. Yet, as the thesis attempts to demonstrate, both the heroic and the modern state had been conceived with a Neostoic mindset which envisioned a close relationship between the ethical values and political interests of the citizen. The confluence of political theory and Realpolitik gave birth to three types of national identity, namely civitas popularis (democracy), regnum (kingship), and optimatium (aristocracy) as found in Scotland, Norway and Lithuania respectively. The study has shown the persistence of these key models of state-formation in the development of national identity from patriotism to territorial and ethnic nationalism. The abundance of the heroic in the Scottish case is explained as a vestige of the legacy of civic humanism, the traditional emphasis on the king-lines in the Norwegian case is a result of absolutism, while the lack of both in Lithuania is interpreted within an aristocratic model of national identity.

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Democracy, anticipated by American and other Western powers to prevent economic chaos and political conflict within and among states, is not evolving as expected. Since 1991, Western governments have been providing large amounts of democratic assistance to the Former Soviet Union yet few, if any, of the recipient countries have developed into genuine democracies. This research argues that part of the failure resides in United States (US) democracy assistance's inadequate consideration of gender within democracy programming. The lack of effective gender analysis has not only been detrimental to women but has served to obscure comprehensive and vital components of democratic transitions. The field research conducted for this dissertation demonstrates: (I) that gender is more central to women's self- identification than ethnicity; (2) that the meaning, as well as significance, attached to ethnic identity vary between women and men; (3) that there is a greater male identification with ethnicity and with official identities such as citizenship; and (4) that women are more fully involved in the associations that make up civil society than men. Feminist and socio-political science theories are utilised to examine the interrelations of ethnicity and gender within modern Kyrgyzstan-the laboratory of US democratic programming and a country self-promoted as the "island of democracy" within a region prone to ethnic conflict, divided by gender and of geo-political strategic importance. US development practice provides the contextual frame for exploring the relationship of gender and ethnicity. As civil society is a mainstay in US democracy assistance, this so-called independent variable in democratic consolidation is used as a micro framework in this analysis. Gender/feminist theory provides a crosscutting tool intended to expand the theories, data, and analysis of this research to include a gendered perspective. The case study and corresponding field research test the hypothesis that ethnicity is gendered and that it is relevant to democracy assistance. Finally, the conclusion considers the unexplored nexus surrounding these relationships relative to US democratic assistance programming.