essay on nationalism in nation building

Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Nation Building — Nation-building Process

Nation-building Process

Categories: Nation Building National Identity Patriotism

About this sample

Words: 2315 |

12 min read

Published: Mar 28, 2019

Words: 2315 | Pages: 5 | 12 min read

The concept of nation-building, implementation strategy, new approach, imact of national development policy, works cited.

Maintain the basic strategy of NEP is the eradication of poverty and restructuring social and economic imbalances between the races and this contribute to strengthening national unity
To ensure balance development of main economic sectors (mining, service, agricul true, and farming)
Building a society that has social value and appreciate the positive feelings of pride and patriotism
Reduce and eliminate social inequality and to promote the sharing of the national economic in a more fair and equitable benefits
Reduce the inequalities in economic development between urban and rural areas
Concentrate on the development of a community of Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial
Ensure appropriate attention is given to environment of protection and ecology so that in the long term to ensure sustainable development of the country continued
Making science and technology as an integral part of the planning and socio-economic development

Competition in International Markets

Vision 2020, poverty reduction, restructuring society, achivevement of ndp.

women participation in the labour force increases to 53.6 per cent
rural road coverage increases to 51,262 km
rural electricity coverage increases to 98 per cent
rural water supply increases to 94 per cent
5,737 villages connected through the wireless village programme
RM175 billion invested in five regional economic corridors, creating 427,100 jobs
Malaysian life expectancy increases to 74.8 years
102,200 affordable houses completed
unemployment rate decreases to 2.9 per cent
1.8 million new job opportunities created
90.7 per cent pre-school enrolment
36.5 per cent academic staff with PhD qualification in public universities
15 per cent household waste recycling rate
forest cover increases to 61 per cent
23,264 hectares of forest gazetted as Permanent Reserve Forest
93,100 km of new roads built
46 per cent increase in passenger rate at KL International Airport (KLIA)
KLIA2 opened and third runway operationalised at KLIA
urban rail commuters increase 32 per cent
70 per cent households with broadband penetration
14 areas nationwide with access to Digital Terrestrial Television
95 per cent of population receives clean and treated water
services sector contributes RM2,550 billion to GDP
manufacturing sector contributes RM1,111 billion to GDP
agriculture sector contributes RM455 billion to GDP
construction sector contributes RM194 billion to GDP
small and medium enterprises contribute RM1,606 billion to GDP
Malaysia ranked 18th out 189 economies in the 2015 World Bank ‘Doing Business’ Report
Malaysia ranked 33rd on the Global Innovation Index out of 143 countries
Abdul Rahman, A. (2000). From Malayan Union to Singapore Separation. Singapore: Eastern University Press.
Faaland, J., Parkinson, J., & Saniman, R. (1991). Growth and Ethnic Inequality: Malaysia’s New Economic Policy. Oxford University Press.
Hippler, J. (2002). Nation-building: A Key Concept for Peaceful Conflict Transformation? Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation.
Mohamed Noordin, S. (2005). The Malays: Their Problems and Future. Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications.
Najib Tun Abdul Razak. (2008). 1Malaysia: People First, Performance Now. Pelanduk Publications.
Purcell, V. (1965). The Malayan Communist Party and the Indonesian Revolution. London: Oxford University Press.
Ratnam, K. J. (1965). Nation-Building in Malaysia 1946–1964. London: Oxford University Press.
Savunen, J. (2003). Nation-Building and Identity Conflicts: Facilitating the Mediation Process in Southern Philippines. Palgrave Macmillan.
Schwartz, L. (1991). The State of Malaysia: Ethnicity, Equity, and Reform. Routledge.
Tambiah, S. J. (1985). Culture, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Tamil Renaissance and the Hill Country Tamils in Sri Lanka. Cambridge University Press.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

Expert in: Government & Politics Sociology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 819 words

2 pages / 798 words

5 pages / 2247 words

1 pages / 554 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

A nation is more than just a geographical entity with defined borders; it is a complex tapestry of people, culture, history, and values. In this essay, we will explore the multifaceted nature of nations, focusing on the [...]

According to court filings in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, in 2009, the FBI began an investigation into corruption and extortion by senior managers of Tenex, a subsidiary of Rosatom, a Russian [...]

The question of the reform of the UNSC is as old as the UN itself. Member States have consistently voiced concerns over permanent representation on the Council and the power of the veto, especially since the end of the Cold War, [...]

Definition Political Corruption: An act of wrongdoing (abuse of power) or dishonest behavior by a person entrusted with authority for the purpose of personal gain Why it matters Due to Political Corruption government revenue is [...]

The wake of Citizens United, the landmark 2010 Supreme Court case that loosened restrictions In on political expenditures, campaign financing has gone through the roof. Super PACs and the country’s wealthiest of the wealthy [...]

Administrative justification involves the critical consideration where the government has legal authority to occasionally conduct searches in circumstances other than criminal investigations; there exists a standard for [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Bibliography
Publish with Us
Nation-Building
The State of Nationalism
Annotated Bibliography

Harris Mylonas 2021

A new approach to the study of nation-building: onset, process, outcome Nation-building refers to the policies that core group governing elites pursue toward non-core groups in their effort to manage social order within state boundaries in ways that promotes a particular national narrative over any other. Such policies may vary widely ranging from assimilationist to exclusionary ones ( Mylonas 2012 ; Bulutgil 2016 ). Moreover, the content of the national narrative or constitutive story ( Smith 2003 ) varies dramatically from case to case. The systematic study of the process of nation-building intensified following the Second World War primarily in relation to decolonization movements and the associated establishment of postcolonial independent states around the globe ( Emerson 1960 ). However, the field was initially dominated by assumptions and logics developed based on European experiences with nation-building.

We would not be that interested in nation-building were it not for its far-reaching impact on state formation and social order, self-determination movements, war onset, and public goods provision. The desired outcome of nation-building is to achieve social order and national integration ( Wimmer 2018 ). Nation-building, when successful, results in societies where individuals are primarily loyal to the nation. This process of national integration facilitates military recruitment, tax collection, law enforcement, public goods provision and cooperation ( Bendix 1977 ). There are also negative aspects of this process as well including violent policies, at times chauvinistic nationalism, even cultural genocide. When nation-building is either not pursued or is unsuccessful it leads to either state collapse (through civil war and/or secessionists movements) or to weak states ( Darden & Mylonas 2016 ). In fact, many civil wars or national schisms can be understood as national integration crises ( Mavrogordatos 1983 ).

Nation-building has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. For the purposes of this review essay, I focus on an overlooked distinction in the study of nation-building: works that focus on the onset , those studying the process , and finally the ones that try to account for the outcome : success or failure. While there is overlap between these fields, each approach is focusing on a different question. Studies of onset are preoccupied with when , where , and why does nation-building take place to begin with. Works that focus on process are exploring the alternative paths to nation-building that could or have been taken. Finally, studies concentrating on the outcome analyze the societal consequences of the various paths to nation-building. Distinguishing between onset , process and outcome allows us to avoid several methodological pitfalls when testing arguments. For instance, oftentimes a theory focusing on onset is mistakenly tested on outcomes. We should not expect arguments aiming at explaining variation in nation-building policies, i.e., focusing on process , to also explain success or failure, i.e., outcomes . Similarly, once we internalize the importance of this distinction, we can be more careful in articulating our scope conditions. For example, if a place did not ever experience nation-building efforts then it probably should not make it into the universe of cases of studies that are trying to account for outcomes of nation-building policies. This theoretical move will help scholars unearth the linkages between aspects of nation-building and important effects such as military recruitment, civil war onset, or public goods provision.

Onset For scholars like Anthony Smith, nation-building can be traced to the ethnic origins of a particular core group ( 1986a , 259). Nation-states without pre-existing ethnic content face a problematic situation because without it, ‘there is no place from which to start the process of nation-building,’ as Smith put it ( 1986 , 17). In the early 1990s, Barry Posen proposed an alternative argument for the onset of nation-building in his “Nationalism, the Mass Army and Military Power” ( 1993 ). Posen identifies imitation of advantageous military practices as the mechanism that accounts for the spread of nationalism and the adoption of nation-building policies. Given the anarchic condition of the international system, states either adopted this new model to match external threats or perished. This critical juncture accounts for the spread of nationalism through nation-building policies, initially in the army. Eric Hobsbawm ( 1990 ) locates the source of states’ interest in spreading nationalism mainly in the need of new or increasingly centralized states to find new sources of internal legitimacy. Similarly, Michael Hechter ( 2000 ) locates the origins of nation-building in the transition from indirect to direct rule identifying different types of nationalism: State-Building Nationalism, Peripheral Nationalism, Irredentist Nationalism, Unification Nationalism, and Patriotism. In a more recent article, Darden and Mylonas ( 2016 ) suggest that state elites pursue nation-building policies only in parts of the world that face heightened territorial competition, particularly in the form of externally backed fifth columns.

Process Before we dive in the theoretical debates in this category, I should note that the theoretical underpinnings of the theories discussed here have been influenced by some seminal case studies ( Bendix 1977 ; Lipset 1967 ; Weber 1976 ; Harp 1998 ; Magocsi 1978 ; Mavrogordatos 1983 ; Banac 1988 ; Jelavich 1990 ; Livezeanu 1995 ). Three main causal pathways lead to national integration according to scholars who focus on the process of nation-building. The central debate is between those that understand nation-building as an outgrowth of structural processes taking place in modern times—industrialization, urbanization, social mobilization, and so forth—and those that highlight the agency of governing elites that pursue intentional policies aiming at the national integration of a state along the lines of a specific constitutive story. The third causal path emphasizes how bottom-up processes can reshape, reconceptualize, and repurpose nation-building trajectories.

Structural accounts understand nation-building as a by-product of broad socioeconomic or geopolitical changes. Karl Deutsch’s ( 1953 ; 1961 ) classic argument that modernization opens up people for new forms of socialization constitutes the core of this approach. For Deutsch the process of social mobilization led to acculturation in a new urban environment, facilitated social communication, and ultimately caused assimilation and political integration into a new community. Works by Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner could be categorized as being part of this modernization paradigm. Posner’s empirical work ( 2003 ) tracing linguistic homogenization in Zambia serves as an illustration of such structural arguments. But there are several other types of arguments that highlight the importance of other structural aspects of modernity. Adria Lawrence ( 2013 ) suggests that disillusionment with the French empire—in places where the French administration failed to extend equal rights to its colonial subjects—led to the abandonment of mobilization solely for equal rights. Disruptions/triggering factors (in the form invasion, occupation, or France’s decision to decolonize) then offered opportunities for mobilization that account for the variation in the patterns of nationalist mobilization across the empire and within particular colonies. Dominika Koter ( 2020 ) suggests that in the Sub-Saharan African context citizens developed national identities through impersonal comparisons with neighbors during the post-colonial period despite the information-poor setting.

Other scholars see nation-building as a top-down process . Clearly, these accounts that emphasize the top-down aspects of nation-building are developed and tested in cases where nationalism has already been introduced and dominated the political imagination of at least the ruling elites. Moreover, some of the processes discussed by modernization theorists are prerequisites for most of the top-down nation-building arguments to unfold. One of the first scholars to criticize modernist accounts for leaving elites’ agency out of their accounts was Anthony Smith ( 1986 ). According to Rogers Smith ( 2003 ), we should try to explain the social mechanisms of nation-building and identify political goals that motivate elites initiating and directing these mechanisms. Soviet policies of ethnofederalism and affirmative action were particularly consequential instances of state-planned nation-building policies in the 20th century ( Connor 1984 ; Suny 1993 ).

Andreas Wimmer builds on the work of Fredrick Barth, and describes the means of ethnic boundary making such as discourse and symbols, discrimination, political mobilization, coercion and violence ( 2013 , 74–75). McGarry and O’Leary ( 1994 ) have offered an accessible overview of different strategies available to state elites in this pursuit, yet scholars have also sought to explain why policy choices vary across states ( Brubaker 1996 ), across non-core groups within the same state ( Mylonas 2012 ), across different parts of the same country ( McNamee & Zhang 2019 ), and across historical periods ( Marx 2005 ). Some authors have argued that state strategies are strongly shaped by historical legacies ( Brubaker 1992 ; Aktürk 2012 ). Nation-building strategies have also taken violent forms ( Bulutgil 2016 ). In fact, a few authors have noted that in ethnically diverse states, the introduction of democratic mass politics can actually lead to violent national homogenization ( Mann 2005 ; Snyder 2000 ).

Han and Mylonas ( 2014 ) try to account for variation in state-ethnic group relations in multiethnic states, focusing on China. They argue that interstate relations and ethnic group perceptions about the relative strength of competing states are important—yet neglected—factors in accounting for the variation in state-ethnic group relations. In particular, whether an ethnic group is perceived as having an external patron matters a great deal for the host state’s treatment of the group. If the external patron of the ethnic group is an enemy of the host state, then repression is likely. If it is an ally, then accommodation ensues. Given the existence of an external patron, an ethnic group’s response to a host state’s policies depends on the perceptions about the relative strength of the external patron vis-à-vis the host state and whether the support is originating from an enemy or an ally of the host state. They test their theoretical framework on the eighteen largest ethnic groups in China from 1949 to 1965, tracing the Chinese government’s nation-building policies toward these groups and examining how each group responded to these various policies. All in all, these top-down accounts are better calibrated to account for the form that nation-building practices take compared to the modernization scholars that see nation-building as a by-product of other processes.

Another approach to nation-building refocuses our attention on situations in which nationhood emerges as an active force in political life through various forms of bottom-up actions by ordinary people . These bottom-up processes of identification are treated as independent causes, but they are also structured, and are themselves restructuring a particular historical and institutional context ( Suny 1993 ) that gives meaning to social action. Lisa Wedeen ( 2008 ) is interested in how seemingly quotidian social practices create and reproduce a sense of national belonging even in the absence of a strong state, applying her argument to Yemen. Michael Billig’s ( 1995 ) work on banal nationalism—referring to the everyday representations of the nation aiming at reproducing a shared sense of national belonging—is also pertinent here, since pride in victory in sports or prominence in cultural affairs could be the source of a bottom-up nation-building process. In the African context Crawford Young suggested that the arbitrary territorial borders have been internalized over time, thus becoming a primary component of national identity ( 2012 , 309). Authors of this strand implore us to think about the nation not as a thing with fixed relevance and meanings but as one of the possible outcomes of partially contingent social processes of identification ( Brubaker 2004 ). Dominika Koter ( 2019 ) argues that electoral outcomes have consequences for national identification. She finds that the election of one’s co-ethnic increases the sense of belonging to the nation.

Isaacs and Polese have put together a special issue published in Nationalities Papers on nation-building in Central Asia focusing both on the efforts of ‘the political elites to create, develop, and spread/popularize the idea of the nation and the national community’ and ‘the agency of nonstate actors such as the people, civil society, companies, and even civil servants when not acting on behalf of state institutions.’ ( 2015 , 372). Thus, they suggest a more dynamic understanding of the nation-building process, with elites proposing and implementing policies which are, in turn, accepted, renegotiated, or rejected by those targeted by them.

Finally, Darden and Mylonas ( 2012 ), offer a conceptually and theoretically reflective discussion of the challenges and limitations of externally promoted nation-building. They argue that effective third-party state-building requires nation-building through education with national content. Nation-building, however, is an uncertain and long process with a long list of prerequisites, making third-party state-building a risky proposition.

A conceptual clarification is in order here. Journalists, policy commentators, as well as several scholars have recently used the term ‘nation-building’ in place of what the U.S. Department of Defense calls ‘stability operations.’ In other words, they often use the term ‘nation-building’ to signify ‘third party state-building,’ efforts to build roads and railways, enforce the rule of law, and improve the infrastructure of a state. This literature grew following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and the US attempts at state-building in Afghanistan and Iraq ( Dobbins et al. 2007 ; Dodge 2006 ; Rubin 2006 ). But, state-building and nation-building although related they are analytically distinct concepts. Nation-building refers to the development of a cultural identity through constitutive stories, symbols, shared histories, and meanings. To be sure, state-building can and often does influence the national integration process over the long term, just as the existing patterns of national loyalties may facilitate or hinder state-building projects.

Outcome Important works also exist that try to account for the success or failure of nation-building projects. For instance, Keith Darden’s stand-alone work ( forthcoming ), points to mass schooling as a mechanism that explains both the initial fluidity and the consequent fixity of national identities. Darden’s argument is that in countries where mass schooling with national content is introduced to a largely illiterate population for the first time and it is implemented on more than 50% of the population, then the national identity propagated in this round of schooling will become dominant. He proposes a few mechanisms for this effect, including western style formal schooling, status reversal within the family, and consequent gatekeeping to keep their children aligned with their initial national identity. Darden and Grzymala-Busse ( 2006 ) have shown that mass schooling with national content is a particularly effective strategy of inculcating the population with national loyalties that can endure long periods of foreign-sponsored authoritarian rule. Balcells ( 2013 ) finds supports for Darden’s argument in the Catalan case. Despite similar initial conditions, Catalan national identity is not salient in French Catalonia today because the first round of mass schooling with national content took place under French rule. In contrast, mass schooling in Spain was introduced in Spanish Catalonia during a period of Catalan nationalist upheaval.

Sambanis et al. ( 2015 ) argue that favorable outcomes in interstate wars significantly increase a state’s international status and induce individuals to identify nationally, thereby reducing internal conflict. Thus, leaders have incentives to invest in state capacity in order to solve their internal nation-building problems. The key assumption here is that strength depends to a great extent on nationalist sentiment. An important implication of their model is that the ‘higher anticipated payoffs to national unification makes leaders fight international wars that they would otherwise choose not to fight.’ The authors illustrate their argument and test its plausibility through a thorough case study of German unification after the Franco Prussian war.

Vasiliki Fouka ( 2019 ) has recently argued that discrimination against German immigrants in the US led these immigrants to pursue assimilation efforts, i.e. change their names and seek naturalization. However, in another article ( Fouka 2020 ) she finds that forced assimilation policies, such as language restrictions in elementary schools, had counterproductive effects. In particular, those individuals that were not allowed to study German in several U.S. states following WWI, were less likely to volunteer in World War II, more likely to practice endogamy, and to give German names to their children. These articles are part of a broader project ( forthcoming ) where Fouka tries to identify the types of initiatives that contribute to or hinder immigrant incorporation. She tests her intuitions studying the integration programs during the Americanization movement. Overall, she finds that nation-building policies that increase the benefits of integration are successful in promoting citizenship acquisition, linguistic homogeneity, and mixed marriages with the native-born. Conversely, prescription-based policies—where a reward is tied to a specific level of effort—are either ineffective or counterproductive. However, this is an approach that may not travel in contexts where assimilation cannot be assumed as the government’s intended outcome for all non-core groups in a country ( Mylonas 2012 ; Wimmer 2013 ).

Andreas Wimmer’s latest book asks: Why does nation-building succeed in some cases but not in others? For Wimmer successful nation-building manifests itself in having forged ‘political ties between citizens and the state that reach across ethnic divides and integrate ethnic majorities and minorities into an inclusive power arrangement.’ ( 2018 , 1). He operationalizes successful nation-building through the degree of ethnopolitical inclusion in a country’s power structures and citizens’ identification with their nation-state. The crux of the argument is that state centralization in the 19th century—in turn a product of warfighting, in Europe, topography facilitating state control ‘where peasants could not escape’ (16), elsewhere, combined with population density high enough to sustain a nonproductive political elite at the end of the Middle Ages—facilitated the conditions for the linguistic homogenization of populations and the construction of central governments able to provide public goods. These two factors, along with the presence of civic society that spans ancestral/ethnic divisions, lead both to successful nation-building. The most exogenous part of Wimmer’s argument is that variation in topography and population density explain the success of initial state building efforts. But could there be an alternative argument that accounts for variation in initial state- or nation-building efforts? Darden and Mylonas ( 2016 ) argue that a threatening international environment leads to state capacity and public goods provision in the form of nation-building policies (in particular public mass schooling) that in turn, when successful, account for variation in linguistic homogeneity and national cohesion. Comparing cases with similar levels of initial linguistic heterogeneity, state capacity, and development, but in different international environments, they find that states that did not face external threats to their territorial integrity were more likely to outsource education and other tools for constructing identity to missionaries or other groups, or to not invest in assimilation at all, leading to higher ethnic heterogeneity. Conversely, states developing in higher threat environments were more likely to invest in nation-building strategies to homogenize their populations.

Amanda Robinson ( 2014 ) focuses on Africa and attempts to evaluate the impact of modernization and colonial legacies on group identification utilizing survey data from sixteen African countries. She is focusing in particular on national vs. ethnic group identification. Robinson’s findings are consistent with the classic modernization theory. Living in urban areas, having more education, and being formally employed in the modern sector are all positively correlated with identifying with the nation above one’s ethnic group. Further, greater economic development at the state level is also associated with greater national identification, once Tanzania is excluded as an outlier.

Depetris-Chauvin, Durante, and Campante ( 2020 ) focus on sub-Saharan Africa and find that national football teams’ victories in sub-Saharan Africa make national identification more likely, they boost trust for other ethnicities in the country, and also reduce violence. Blouin and Mukand ( 2019 ) examine the impact of propaganda broadcast over radio on interethnic attitudes in postgenocide Rwanda. They exploit the variation in government’s radio propaganda reception due to Rwanda’s mountainous terrain. They find that individuals exposed to government propaganda decreases the salience of ethnicity, increases interethnic trust, and willingness to interact face-to-face with non-co-ethnics.

Dominika Koter ( 2020 ) puzzles over the existence of national identification in the absence of traditional nation-building projects and asks: what is driving national attachment in Africa? For Koter ‘the process that results in individuals identifying with their nation is nation-building.’ Which places her squarely in the ‘outcome’ group of scholars. However, Koter points out that Robinson’s ( 2014 ) finding that wealthier countries report higher levels of national identification worked on the third round of the Afrobarometer survey data but the correlation vanishes in subsequent four rounds of the surveys (rounds 4 through 7). In fact, the relationship appears to be skewing in the opposite direction as more countries were surveyed. Koter zooms in on Ghana and proposes an alternative pathway to understanding national identification, suggesting that national integration is an accidental byproduct of shared experiences and distinct country-level trajectories which allow contrast with other national communities. In particular, Ghanaian national identity is most consistent with the role of socio-political developments in the country, rather than cultural factors or state-led nation-building.

Conclusion The field of nation-building has developed tremendously in the past two decades, but more empirical interdisciplinary work, involving economists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and political scientists, remains to be done. In particular, work that involves cross-regional comparisons and perspectives will push our theories in a direction that can account for global patterns rather than rehashing the European experience and assumptions. Moreover, a more conscious effort thinking of onset, process, and outcomes as distinct stages when theorizing nation-building will move the field forward by improving our causal identification strategies.

[Sections of this essay build on Mylonas 2017 ]

Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers . His work contributes to our understanding of states’ management of diversity that may originate from national minorities, immigrants, diasporas, or refugees. His first book The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013) won the 2014 European Studies Book Award by the Council for European Studies and the Peter Katzenstein Book Prize in 2013. Mylonas’ work on the processes of nation- and state-building, diaspora policies, and political development has also been published in the American Review of Political Science , Perspectives on Politics , Comparative Political Studies , Security Studies , European Journal of Political Research , Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , Territory, Politics, Governance , Nations and Nationalism , Social Science Quarterly , Nationalities Papers , Ethnopolitics , as well as various edited volumes.

Recently Published

Nationalism and religion: making sense of a complex relationship gülay türkmen 2024, nationalism and international conflict jiyoung ko, kathleen e. powers 2024, nationalism and capitalism karlo basta 2024, revisiting the nationalism and social policy nexus silvana gomes, daniel béland, ally hays-alberstat, andré lecours 2023, nationalism and climate change daniele conversi 2023.

All material published with SoN is written by experts, peer-reviewed, and open-source. To submit an article, please contact Mr Stefan Poland at [email protected] .

A-Z Publications

Annual Review of Political Science

Volume 24, 2021, review article, open access, nationalism: what we know and what we still need to know.

Harris Mylonas 1 , and Maya Tudor 2
View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: 1 Elliott School of International Affairs and Department of Political Science, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA; email: [email protected] 2 Blavatnik School of Government, St. Hilda's College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 6GG, United Kingdom; email: [email protected]
Vol. 24:109-132 (Volume publication date May 2021) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041719-101841
Copyright © 2021 by Annual Reviews. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information

Amid the global resurgence of nationalist governments, what do we know about nationalism? This review takes stock of political science debates on nationalism to critically assess what we already know and what we still need to know. We begin by synthesizing classic debates and tracing the origins of the current consensus that nations are historically contingent and socially constructed. We then highlight three trends in contemporary nationalism scholarship: ( a ) comparative historical research that treats nationalism as a macropolitical force and excavates the relationships between nations, states, constitutive stories, and political conflict; ( b ) behavioral research that uses survey data and experiments to gauge the causes and effects of attachment to nations; and ( c ) ethnographic scholarship that illuminates the everyday processes and practices that perpetuate national belonging. The penultimate section briefly summarizes relevant insights from philosophy, history, and social psychology and identifies knowledge gaps that political scientists are well-positioned to address. A final section calls for more comparative, cross-disciplinary, cross-regional research on nationalism.

Article metrics loading...

Full text loading...

Literature Cited

Abizadeh A. 2012 . On the demos and its kin: nationalism, democracy, and the boundary problem. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 106 : 4 867– 82 [Google Scholar]
Acharya A , Lee A. 2018 . Economic foundations of the territorial state system. Am. J. Political Sci. 62 : 4 954– 66 [Google Scholar]
Ahram AI. 2019 . Break All the Borders: Separatism and the Reshaping of the Middle East Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Ahram AI , Köllner P , Sil R 2018 . Comparative Area Studies: Methodological Rationales and Cross-Regional Applications New York/Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Aktürk Ş 2012 . Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Anderson B. 1983 . Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism London: Verso [Google Scholar]
Appiah KA. 2018 . The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. Creed, Country, Colour, Class, Culture London: Profile Books [Google Scholar]
Appiah KA. 2019 . The importance of elsewhere: in defense of cosmopolitanism. Foreign Aff 28 : 2 20– 26 [Google Scholar]
Arendt H. 1945 . Imperialism, nationalism, chauvinism. Rev. Politics 7 : 4 441– 63 [Google Scholar]
Balcells L. 2013 . Mass schooling and Catalan nationalism. Nationalism Ethn. Politics 19 : 4 467– 86 [Google Scholar]
Bar-Tal D. 1993 . Patriotism as fundamental beliefs of group members. Politics Indiv 3 : 45– 62 [Google Scholar]
Bar-Tal D , Staub E 1997 . Patriotism in the Lives of Individuals and Nations Chicago: Nelson-Hall [Google Scholar]
Beissinger MR. 2002 . Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Bendix R 1964 . Nation-Building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing . Social Order New York/London/Sydney: Wiley [Google Scholar]
Bertoli AD. 2017 . Nationalism and conflict: lessons from international sports. Int. Stud. Q. 61 : 4 835– 49 [Google Scholar]
Besley T , Reynal-Querol M. 2014 . The legacy of historical conflict: evidence from Africa. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 108 : 2 319– 36 [Google Scholar]
Bieber F. 2020 . Global nationalism in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nationalities Pap https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2020.35 [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
Billig M. 1995 . Banal Nationalism London: Sage [Google Scholar]
Bloemraad I. 2006 . Becoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press [Google Scholar]
Blouin A , Mukand SW. 2019 . Erasing ethnicity? Propaganda, nation building, and identity in Rwanda. J. Political Econ. 127 : 3 1008– 62 [Google Scholar]
Bonikowski B. 2016 . Nationalism in settled times. Annu. Rev. Sociol. 42 : 427– 49 [Google Scholar]
Bonikowski B , Zhang Y. 2020 . Populism as dog-whistle politics: anti-elite discourse and sentiments toward out-groups. SocArXiv June 30. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/m29kf [Crossref]
Brancati D. 2006 . Decentralization: fueling the fire or dampening the flames of ethnic conflict and secessionism. ? Int. Organ. 60 : 3 651– 85 [Google Scholar]
Brand LA. 2014 . Official Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Breuilly J 2013 . The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Brewer MB. 1991 . The social self: on being the same and different at the same time. Person. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 1 : 5 475– 82 [Google Scholar]
Brewer MB. 1999 . The psychology of prejudice: ingroup love or outgroup hate. ? J. Soc. Iss. 55 : 429– 44 [Google Scholar]
Brubaker R. 1992 . Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Brubaker R. 1996 . Nationalism Refrained: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Brubaker R. 2004 . Ethnicity without Groups Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Brubaker R , Feischmidt M , Fox J , Grancea L 2006 . Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Brubaker R , Kim J. 2011 . Transborder membership politics in Germany and Korea. Eur. J. Sociol. 52 : 1 21– 75 [Google Scholar]
Buhaug H , Cederman LE , Rød JK 2008 . Disaggregating ethno-nationalist civil wars: a dyadic test of exclusion theory. Int. Organ. 62 : 3 531– 51 [Google Scholar]
Bulutgil Z. 2016 . The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Bunce V. 2001 . The postsocialist experience and comparative politics. PS: Political Sci. Politics 34 : 4 793– 95 [Google Scholar]
Bunce V. 2005 . The national idea: imperial legacies and post-communist pathways in Eastern Europe. East Eur. Politics Soc. 19 : 3 406– 42 [Google Scholar]
Canovan M. 1996 . Nationhood and Political Theory Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar [Google Scholar]
Carter D , Goemans HE. 2011 . The making of the territorial order: new borders and the emergence of interstate conflict. Int. Organ. 65 : 2 275– 309 [Google Scholar]
Cederman LE , Warren TC , Sornette D 2011 . Testing Clausewitz: nationalism, mass mobilization, and the severity of war. Int. Organ. 65 : 4 605– 38 [Google Scholar]
Centeno M. 2002 . Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America University Park: Pa. State Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Chandra K 2012 . Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Chapman T , Roeder PG. 2007 . Partition as a solution to wars of nationalism: the importance of institutions. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 101 : 4 677– 91 [Google Scholar]
Charnysh V , Lucas C , Singh P 2014 . The ties that bind: national identity salience and pro-social behavior toward the ethnic other. Comp. Political Stud. 48 : 3 267– 300 [Google Scholar]
Coggins B. 2011 . Friends in high places: international politics and the emergence of states from secessionism. Int. Organ. 65 : 3 433– 67 [Google Scholar]
Colantone I , Stanig P. 2018 . The trade origins of economic nationalism: import competition and voting behavior in Western Europe. Am. J. Political Sci. 62 : 4 936– 53 [Google Scholar]
Coleman JS. 1954 . Nationalism in tropical Africa. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 48 : 2 404– 26 [Google Scholar]
Connor W. 1972 . Nation-building or nation-destroying. ? World Politics 24 : 3 319– 55 [Google Scholar]
Cooper F. 2014 . Africa in the World: Capitalism, Empire, Nation-State Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Csergő Z , Goldgeier JM. 2004 . Nationalist strategies and European integration. Perspect. Politics 2 : 1 21– 37 [Google Scholar]
Dach‐Gruschow K , Hong YY. 2006 . The racial divide in response to the aftermath of Katrina: a boundary condition for common ingroup identity model. Anal. Soc. Issues Public Policy 6 : 1 125– 41 [Google Scholar]
Dahl R. 1989 . Democracy and Its Critics New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Dalton J. 2018 . Emmanuel Macron warns of “dangers” of nationalism in Armistice speech aimed at Trump and Putin. Independent Nov. 11. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/remembrance-day-emmanuel-macron-speech-nationalism-patriotism-trump-putin-war-arc-de-triomphe-armistice-a8628856.html [Google Scholar]
Darden K. 2022 . Resisting Occupation in Eurasia: Mass Schooling and the Creation of Durable National Loyalties New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Darden K , Grzymała-Busse A. 2006 . The great divide: literacy, nationalism, and the communist collapse. World Politics 59 : 1 83– 115 [Google Scholar]
Darden K , Mylonas H. 2016 . Threats to territorial integrity, national mass schooling, and linguistic commonality. Comp. Political Stud. 49 : 11 1446– 79 [Google Scholar]
De Cremer D , van Dijk E 2002 . Reactions to group success and failure as a function of identification level: a test of the goal-transformation hypothesis in social dilemmas. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 38 : 5 435– 42 [Google Scholar]
De Cremer D , Van Vugt M 1999 . Social identification effects in social dilemmas: a transformation of motives. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 29 : 871– 93 [Google Scholar]
de Figueiredo R , Elkins Z 2003 . Are patriots bigots? An inquiry into the vices of ingroup pride. Am. J. Political Sci. 47 : 171– 88 [Google Scholar]
de Tocqueville A 2000 (1835) . Democracy in America transl. HC Mansfield, D Winthrop Chicago, IL: Univ. Chicago Press [Google Scholar]
Depetris-Chauvin E , Durante R , Campante F 2020 . Building nations through shared experiences: evidence from African football. Am. Econ. Rev. 110 : 5 1572– 602 [Google Scholar]
Deutsch K. 1953 . Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [Google Scholar]
Deutsch K. 1961 . Social mobilization and political development. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 55 : 3 493– 514 [Google Scholar]
Deutsch K. 1969 . Nationalism and Its Alternatives New York: Alfred A. Knopf [Google Scholar]
Druckman D. 1994 . Nationalism, patriotism, and group loyalty: a social psychological perspective. Mershon Int. Stud. Rev. 38 : 43– 68 [Google Scholar]
Elkins Z , Sides J. 2007 . Can institutions build unity in multiethnic states. ? Am. Political Sci. Rev. 101 : 4 693– 708 [Google Scholar]
Emerson R. 1960 . From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion of Asian and African Peoples Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Farage N. 2020 . Coronavirus has shown we are all nationalists now: Does Boris Johnson realise that. ? Daily Telegraph Mar. 12. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/12/coronavirus-has-shown-nationalists-now-does-boris-johnson-realise/ [Google Scholar]
Fouka V. 2019 . How do immigrants respond to discrimination? The case of Germans in the US during World War I. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 113 : 2 405– 22 [Google Scholar]
Fouka V. 2020 . Backlash: the unintended effects of language prohibition in U.S. schools after World War I. Rev. Econ. Stud. 87 : 1 204– 39 [Google Scholar]
Fukuyama F. 1989 . The end of history. ? Natl. Interest 16 : 3– 18 [Google Scholar]
Fukuyama F. 2018 . Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux [Google Scholar]
Gagnon VP. 1994 . Ethnic nationalism and international conflict: the case of Serbia. Int. Secur. 19 : 3 130– 66 [Google Scholar]
Gandhi R. 1997 . The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi Delhi: Penguin [Google Scholar]
Gat A. 2013 . Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Geertz C. 1963 . Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa London: Free Press of Glencoe [Google Scholar]
Gellner E. 1996 . Do nations have navels. ? Nations Nationalism 2 : 3 366– 70 [Google Scholar]
Gellner E. 2006 (1983) . Nations and Nationalism Oxford, UK: Blackwell. , 2nd. ed. [Google Scholar]
Gidron N , Hall PA. 2017 . The politics of social status: economic and cultural roots of the populist right. Br. J. Sociol. 68 : S57– S84 [Google Scholar]
Goode JP. 2020 . Guest editor's introduction: “everyday nationalism in world politics: agents, contexts, and scale. Nationalities Pap 48 : 6 974– 82 [Google Scholar]
Gorski PS. 2000 . The mosaic moment: an early modernist critique of modernist theories of nationalism. Am. J. Sociol. 105 : 5 1428– 68 [Google Scholar]
Gorski PS. 2003 . The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press [Google Scholar]
Green E. 2020 . Ethnicity, national identity and the state: evidence from SSA. Br. J. Political Sci. 50 : 2 757– 79 [Google Scholar]
Greenfeld L. 1992 . Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Griffiths R. 2015 . Between dissolution and blood: how administrative lines and categories shape secessionist outcomes. Int. Organ. 69 : 3 731– 51 [Google Scholar]
Gruffydd-Jones J. 2017 . Dangerous days: the impact of nationalism on interstate conflict. Secur. Stud. 26 : 4 698– 728 [Google Scholar]
Grzymała-Busse A. 2015 . Nations Under God: How Churches Use Moral Authority to Influence Policy Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Haas EB. 1997 . Nationalism, Liberalism and Progress . Vol. 1: The Rise and Decline of Nationalism Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Haas EB. 2000 . Nationalism, Liberalism and Progress .Vol. 2: The Dismal Fate of New Nations Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Habermas J. 1996 . Between Facts and Norms: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy Cambridge, UK: Polity [Google Scholar]
Haidt J. 2016 . When and why nationalism beats globalism. Policy J. Public Policy Ideas 32 : 3 46– 53 [Google Scholar]
Hale HE. 2008 . The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Harari YN. 2014 . Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind New York: Random House [Google Scholar]
Hastings A. 1997 . The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Hechter M. 2000 . Containing Nationalism Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Hechter M , Levi M. 1979 . The comparative analysis of ethnoregional movements. Ethn. Racial Stud. 2 : 3 260– 74 [Google Scholar]
Hobsbawm E. 1990 . Echoes of the Marseillaise London: Verso [Google Scholar]
Hobsbawm E. 1996 . The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 London: Vintage Books [Google Scholar]
Hobsbawm E , Ranger T 1983 . The Invention of Tradition Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Horowitz D. 1985 . Ethnic Groups in Conflict Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press [Google Scholar]
Hroch M. 2000 (1968) . Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations New York: Columbia Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Huddy L , Khatib N. 2007 . American patriotism, national identity, and political involvement. Am. J. Political Sci. 51 : 1 63– 77 [Google Scholar]
Huntington SP. 2004 . Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity New York: Simon & Schuster [Google Scholar]
Isaacs R , Polese A. 2015 . Between “imagined” and “real” nation-building: identities and nationhood in post-Soviet Central Asia. Nationalities Pap 43 : 3 371– 82 [Google Scholar]
Isaacson W. 2007 . Einstein: His Life and Universe New York: Simon & Schuster [Google Scholar]
Jenne EK. 2007 . Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Kaufman E. 2018 . Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities London: Allen Lane [Google Scholar]
Kedourie E. 1960 . Nationalism London: Hutchinson [Google Scholar]
King ML Jr 1953 . False god of nationalism . Unpublished sermon, Jul. 12, Atlanta, GA. Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA
Knott E. 2016 . Everyday nationalism. State Nationalism https://stateofnationalism.eu/article/everyday-nationalism/ [Google Scholar]
Kohn H. 1944 . The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background New York: Macmillan [Google Scholar]
Koopmans R , Michalowski I. 2016 . Why do states extend rights to immigrants? Institutional settings and historical legacies across 44 countries worldwide. Comp. Political Stud. 50 : 1 41– 47 [Google Scholar]
Kopstein SJ , Wittenberg J. 2010 . Beyond dictatorship and democracy: rethinking national minority inclusion and regime type in interwar Eastern Europe. Comp. Political Stud. 43 : 8–9 1089– 118 [Google Scholar]
Kosterman R , Feshbach S. 1989 . Toward a measure of patriotic and nationalistic attitudes. Political Psychol 10 : 257– 74 [Google Scholar]
Koter D. 2019 . Presidents’ ethnic identity and citizens’ national attachment in Africa. Natl. Ethn. Politics 25 : 2 133– 51 [Google Scholar]
Koter D. 2020 . Accidental nation-building Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association Aug. 29–Sep. 1 Washington, DC: [Google Scholar]
Krastev I. 2017 . After Europe Philadelphia: Penn Press [Google Scholar]
Kuo K , Mylonas H. 2019 . Nation-building and the role of identity in civil wars. Ethnopolitics https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2019.1684095 [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
Kyriazi A , vom Hau M 2020 . Textbooks, postcards, and the public consolidation of nationalism in Latin America. Qual. Sociol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-020-09467-8 [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
Laitin D. 1998 . Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Laitin D. 2007 . Nations, States, and Violence Oxford/New York: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Lawrence A. 2013 . Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Lepore J. 2018 . These Truths: A History of the United States New York: W.W. Norton [Google Scholar]
Li Q , Brewer MB. 2004 . What does it mean to be an American? Patriotism, nationalism, and American identity after 9/11. Political Psychol 25 : 5 727– 39 [Google Scholar]
Lieberman ES. 2003 . Race and Regionalism in the Politics of Taxation in Brazil and South Africa Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Lieberman ES , Singh P. 2017 . Census enumeration and group conflict: a global analysis of the consequences of counting. World Politics 69 : 1 1– 53 [Google Scholar]
Lipset SM. 1967 . The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction [Google Scholar]
Liu A. 2015 . Standardizing Diversity: The Political Economy of Language Regimes Philadelphia: Penn Press [Google Scholar]
Levin S , Sidanius J. 1999 . Social dominance and social identity in the United States and Israel: ingroup favoritism or outgroup derogation. ? Political Psychol 20 : 1 99– 126 [Google Scholar]
Machiavelli N. 1996 (c. 1517) . Discourses on Livy Transl. HC Mansfield, N Tarcov Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press From Italian [Google Scholar]
Malešević S. 2013 . Nation-States and Nationalisms: Organization, Ideology and Solidarity Cambridge, UK: Polity [Google Scholar]
Mandela N. 2018 . The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela New York: Liveright [Google Scholar]
Marinthe G , Falomir-Pichastor JM , Testé B , Kamiejski R 2020 . Flags on fire: consequences of a national symbol's desecration for intergroup relations. Group Process. Intergroup Relat. 23 : 5 744– 60 [Google Scholar]
Markell P. 2000 . Making affect safe for democracy? On “constitutional patriotism. .” Political Theory 28 : 1 38– 63 [Google Scholar]
Martin C. 2018 . Imagine all the people: literature, society, and cross-national variation in education systems. World Politics 70 : 3 398– 442 [Google Scholar]
Marx A. 2005 . Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism New York: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Mason A. 1999 . Political community, liberal-nationalism, and the ethics of assimilation. Ethics 109 : 2 261– 86 [Google Scholar]
Mazucca S 2021 . Latecomer State Formation: Political Geography and Capacity Failure in Latin America . New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Mearsheimer JJ. 2018 . The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities New Haven/London: Yale Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Miguel T. 2004 . Tribe or nation? Nation building and public goods in Kenya v. Tanzania. World Politics 56 : 3 327– 62 [Google Scholar]
Mill JS. 1861 . Of nationality, as connected with representative government. Considerations on Representative Government 287– 97 London: Parker, Son, and Bourn [Google Scholar]
Miller D. 1995 . On Nationality Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Miller D. 2000 . Citizenship and National Identity Cambridge, UK: Polity [Google Scholar]
Miller-Idriss C. 2018 . The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Miscevic N. 2018 . Nationalism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/nationalism/ [Google Scholar]
Monbiot G. 2005 . The new chauvinism. Guardian Aug. 9. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/aug/09/july7.britishidentity [Google Scholar]
Mylonas H. 2012 . The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Mylonas H. 2020 . Nation-building. Oxford Bibliographies https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0217.xml [Google Scholar]
Mylonas H , Kuo K. 2018 . Nationalism and foreign policy. Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign Policy Analysis CG Thies pp. 223– 42 New York: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Mylonas H , Shelef N. 2014 . Which land is our land? Domestic politics and change in the territorial claims of stateless nationalist movements. Secur. Stud. 23 : 4 754– 86 [Google Scholar]
Mylonas H , Shelef N. 2017 . Methodological challenges in the study of stateless nationalist territorial claims. Territ. Politics Gov. 5 : 2 145– 57 [Google Scholar]
Myrdal G , Sterner R , Rose A 1944 . An American Dilemma 2 vols New York: Harper [Google Scholar]
Nodia G. 2017 . The end of the postnational illusion. J. Democr. 28 : 2 5– 19 [Google Scholar]
Norris P , Inglehart R. 2019 . Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Orbán V. 2018 . Ceremonial speech on the 170th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Mar. 15. http://abouthungary.hu/speeches-and-remarks/orban-viktors-ceremonial-speech-on-the-170th-anniversary-of-the-hungarian-revolution-of-1848/
Pickus N. 2005 . True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Posen B. 1993 . Nationalism, the mass army and military power. Int. Secur. 18 : 2 80– 124 [Google Scholar]
Posner D. 2003 . The colonial origins of ethnic cleavages: the case of linguistic divisions in Zambia. Comp. Politics 35 : 2 127– 46 [Google Scholar]
Posner D. 2005 . Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Reeskens T , Wright M. 2010 . Beyond the civic-ethnic dichotomy: investigating the structure of citizenship concepts across thirty-three countries. Nations Nationalism 16 : 4 579– 97 [Google Scholar]
Reeskens T , Wright M. 2012 . Nationalism and the cohesive society: a multilevel analysis of the interplay among diversity, national identity, and social capital across 27 European societies. Comp. Political Stud. 46 : 2 153– 81 [Google Scholar]
Renan E. 1995 (1882) . What is a nation?. The Nationalism Reader O Dahbour, MR Ishay 143– 55 Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities [Google Scholar]
Richerson P , Baldini R , Bell AV , Demps K , Frost K et al. 2016 . Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: a sketch of the evidence. Behav. Brain Sci. 39 : e30 . https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X1400106X [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
Robinson A. 2014 . National versus ethnic identification: modernization, colonial legacy, and the origins of territorial nationalism. World Politics 66 : 4 709– 46 [Google Scholar]
Rokkan S. 1971 . Nation-building: a review of models and approaches. Curr. Sociol. 19 : 3 7– 38 [Google Scholar]
Rosenblatt PC. 1964 . Origins and effects of group ethnocentrism and nationalism. J. Confl. Resolut. 8 : 2 131– 46 [Google Scholar]
Roshwald A 2006 . The Endurance of Nationalism: Ancient Roots and Modern Dilemmas . New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Ross L , Nisbett R. 2011 . The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology New York: McGraw Hill [Google Scholar]
Rotberg RI. 1962 . The rise of African nationalism: the case of East and Central Africa. World Politics 15 : 1 75– 90 [Google Scholar]
Roy A 2006 . An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire New Delhi: Penguin [Google Scholar]
Rustow D 1970 . Transitions to democracy. towards a dynamic model. Comp. Politics 2 : 3 337– 63 [Google Scholar]
Saideman S , Ayres WR. 2008 . For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism, and War New York: Columbia Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Sambanis N , Schulhofer-Wohl J. 2009 . What's in a line? Is partition a solution to civil war. ? Int. Secur. 34 : 2 82– 118 [Google Scholar]
Sambanis N , Shayo M. 2013 . Social identification and ethnic conflict. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 107 : 2 294– 325 [Google Scholar]
Sambanis N , Skaperdas S , Wohlforth W 2015 . Nation-building through war. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 109 : 2 279– 96 [Google Scholar]
Sapiie MA. 2018 . Jokowi wants Pancasila to be nation's “way of life. .” Jakarta Post June 1. https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/06/01/jokowi-wants-pancasila-to-be-nations-way-of-life.html [Google Scholar]
Schildkraut D. 2011 . Americanism in the Twenty-First Century: Public Opinion in the Age of Immigration New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Sealey KF. 2020 . Creolizing the Nation Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Sewell W. 1996 . Historical events as transformations of structures: inventing revolution at the Bastille. Theory Soc. 25 : 6 841– 81 [Google Scholar]
Shelef N. 2016 . Unequal ground: homelands and conflict. Int. Organ. 70 : 1 33– 63 [Google Scholar]
Shevel O. 2010 . The post-communist diaspora laws: beyond the “good civic versus bad ethnic” nationalism dichotomy. East. Eur. Politics Soc. 24 : 1 159– 87 [Google Scholar]
Shils E. 1957 . Primordial, personal, sacred and civil ties: some particular observations on the relationships of sociological research and theory. Br. J. Sociol. 8 : 2 130– 45 [Google Scholar]
Shoup P. 1962 . Communism, nationalism and the growth of the communist community of nations after World War II. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 56 : 4 886– 98 [Google Scholar]
Shulman S. 2002 . Challenging the civic/ethnic and west/east dichotomies in the study of nationalism. Comp. Political Stud. 35 : 5 554– 85 [Google Scholar]
Singh P , vom Hau M 2016 . Ethnic diversity and public goods provision. Comp. Political Stud. 49 : 10–11) Spec. Iss 1303– 40 [Google Scholar]
Siroky D , Hale CW. 2017 . Inside irredentism: a global empirical analysis. Am. J. Political Sci. 61 : 1 117– 28 [Google Scholar]
Smith AD. 1986 . The Ethnic Origins of Nations Oxford, UK: Blackwell [Google Scholar]
Smith AD. 1991 . National Identity . Vol. 11 Reno: Univ. Nevada Press [Google Scholar]
Smith AD. 1995 . Gastronomy or geology? The role of nationalism in the reconstruction of nations. Nations Nationalism 1 : 1 3– 23 [Google Scholar]
Smith R. 1997 . Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Smith R. 2003 . Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Memberships Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Smith R. 2015 . Political Peoplehood: The Roles of Values, Interests, and Identities Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press [Google Scholar]
Sniderman P , Hagendoorn L , Prior M 2004 . Predisposing factors and situational triggers: exclusionary reactions to immigrant minorities. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 98 : 1 35– 49 [Google Scholar]
Snyder J. 2000 . From Voting to Violence New York: W.W. Norton [Google Scholar]
Spruyt H. 1994 . The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Stepan A , Linz J , Yadav Y 2011 . Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Straus S. 2015 . Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Suny R. 1993 . The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Tagore R. 2020 . Nationalism: Political and Philosophical Essays New Delhi: General Press [Google Scholar]
Tajfel H , Turner JC. 1979 . An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations WG Austin, S Worchel 33– 47 Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole [Google Scholar]
Tamir Y. 1993 . Liberal Nationalism Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Tamir Y. 2019 . Not so civic: Is there a difference between ethnic and civic nationalism. ? Annu. Rev. Political Sci. 22 : 419– 34 [Google Scholar]
Theiss-Morse E. 2009 . Who Counts as an American? The Boundaries of National Identity New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Thies CG. 2009 . National design and state building in sub-Saharan Africa. World Politics 61 : 4 623– 69 [Google Scholar]
Tilly C. 1990 . Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1992 Oxford, UK: Blackwell [Google Scholar]
Tilly C 1975 . The Formation of National States in Western Europe Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Toft MD. 2006 . Issue indivisibility and time horizons as rationalist explanations for war. Secur. Stud. 15 : 1 34– 69 [Google Scholar]
Transue J. 2007 . Identity salience, identity acceptance, and racial policy attitudes: American national identity as a uniting force. Am. J. Political Sci. 51 : 1 78– 91 [Google Scholar]
Trivedi L. 2003 . Visually mapping the “nation”: Swadeshi politics in Nationalist India, 1920–1930. J. Asian Stud. 62 : 1 11– 41 [Google Scholar]
Trudeau J. 2017 . Common Ground: A Political Life Toronto: Oneworld [Google Scholar]
Tudor M. 2013 . The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Tudor M. 2018 . India's nationalism in historical perspective: the democratic dangers of ascendant nativism. Indian Politics Policy 1 : 108– 32 [Google Scholar]
Tudor M , Slater D. 2020 . Nationalism, authoritarianism, and democracy: historical lessons from South and Southeast Asia. Perspect. Politics. In press. https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272000078X [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
Valls A. 2010 . A liberal defense of black nationalism. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 104 : 3 467– 81 [Google Scholar]
Viroli M. 1995 . For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism Oxford, UK: Clarendon [Google Scholar]
vom Hau M. 2009 . Unpacking the school: textbooks, teachers, and the construction of nationhood in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. Latin Am. Res. Rev. 44 : 3 127– 54 [Google Scholar]
vom Hau M. 2019 . The developmental state and the rise of popular nationalism: cause, coincidence, or elective affinity?. State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain . Vol. II: Rise and Fall of the Developmental State M Centeno, A Ferraro 317– 45 New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Wallerstein I , Hechter M. 1970 . Social rank and nationalism: some African data. Public Opin. Q. 34 : 3 360– 70 [Google Scholar]
Walter B. 2006 . Building reputation: why governments fight some separatists but not others. Am. J. Political Sci. 50 : 2 313– 30 [Google Scholar]
Weber E. 1976 . Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Wedeen L. 2008 . Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press [Google Scholar]
Weldon S. 2006 . The institutional context of tolerance for ethnic minorities: a comparative, multilevel analysis of Western Europe. Am. J. Political Sci. 50 : 2 331– 49 [Google Scholar]
Wimmer A. 2002 . Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Wimmer A. 2012 . Waves of War: Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Wimmer A. 2013 . Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks New York: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Wimmer A. 2017 . Power and pride. World Politics 69 : 4 605– 39 [Google Scholar]
Wimmer A. 2018 . Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Wimmer A , Glick Schiller N 2002 . Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Glob. Netw. 2 : 4 301– 34 [Google Scholar]
Wimmer A , Min B. 2006 . From empire to nation-state: explaining wars in the modern world, 1816–2001. Am. Sociol. Rev. 71 : 6 867– 97 [Google Scholar]
Wise N. 2014 . Socially constructing contexts and imaginations through filmic simulacra—the case of Invictus . Glob. Media J.–Afr. Ed 8 : 1 146– 55 [Google Scholar]
Wright M , Citrin J , Wand J 2012 . Alternative measures of American national identity: implications for the civic‐ethnic distinction. Political Psychol 33 : 4 469– 82 [Google Scholar]
Yashar DJ. 1998 . Contesting citizenship: indigenous movements and democracy in Latin America. Comp. Politics 31 : 1 23– 42 [Google Scholar]
Young C. 1976 . The Politics of Cultural Pluralism Madison: Univ. Wisc. Press [Google Scholar]
Young C. 2012 . The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960–2010 Madison: Univ. Wisc. Press [Google Scholar]
Zaslove A. 2008 . Exclusion, community and a populist political economy: the radical right as an anti-globalization movement. Comp. Eur. Politics 6 : 2 169– 89 [Google Scholar]
Zhao S. 2004 . Nation State by Construction Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
Article Type: Review Article

Most Read This Month

Most cited most cited rss feed, framing theory, discursive institutionalism: the explanatory power of ideas and discourse, historical institutionalism in comparative politics, the origins and consequences of affective polarization in the united states, political trust and trustworthiness, public attitudes toward immigration, what have we learned about the causes of corruption from ten years of cross-national empirical research, what do we know about democratization after twenty years, economic determinants of electoral outcomes, public deliberation, discursive participation, and citizen engagement: a review of the empirical literature.

Subject List
Take a Tour
For Authors
Subscriber Services
Publications
African American Studies
African Studies
American Literature
Anthropology
Architecture Planning and Preservation
Art History
Atlantic History
Biblical Studies
British and Irish Literature
Childhood Studies
Chinese Studies
Cinema and Media Studies
Communication
Criminology
Environmental Science
Evolutionary Biology
International Law

International Relations

Islamic Studies
Jewish Studies
Latin American Studies
Latino Studies
Linguistics
Literary and Critical Theory
Medieval Studies
Military History
Political Science
Public Health
Renaissance and Reformation
Social Work
Urban Studies
Victorian Literature
Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Nation-Building

Introduction, reference works: concepts and definitions.

Structural Explanations
State-Planned Policies
Third-Party Nation-Building
Contingency, Events, and Demonstration Effects
Seminal Case Studies
State Formation and Social Order
Self-Determination Movements
Public Goods Provision

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

Crisis Bargaining
History of Brazilian Foreign Policy (1808 to 1945)
Indian Foreign Policy
Find more forthcoming articles...
Export Citations
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Nation-Building by Harris Mylonas LAST REVIEWED: 24 September 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 24 September 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0217

Nation-building may be defined as the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent. The desired outcome is to achieve national integration ( Reference Works: Concepts and Definitions ). The major divide in the literature centers on the causal path that leads to national integration. Thus, nation-building has been theorized as a structural process intertwined with industrialization, urbanization, social mobilization, etc. ( Structural Explanations ); as the result of deliberate state policies that aim at the homogenization of a state along the lines of a specific constitutive story—that can and often does change over time and under certain conditions ( State-Planned Policies ); as the product of top-bottom processes that could originate from forces outside of the boundaries of the relevant state; and as the product of bottom-up processes that do not require any state intervention to come about ( Contingency, Events, and Demonstration Effects ). Since the emergence of nationalism as the dominant ideology to legitimate authority and the template of the nation-state as an organizational principle of the international system, state elites have pursued different policies toward the various unassimilated groups within their territorial boundaries ( Seminal Case Studies ) with variable consequences ( Nation-Building and Its Consequences ). Thus, scholars have suggested that the nation-building experience of each state—or lack thereof—has had an impact on patterns of State Formation and Social Order , Self-Determination Movements , War Onset , and Public Goods Provision .

The concept of nation-building cannot be understood without the help of certain key concepts such as the nation, national identity, nation-state, and nationalism. The term “nation” has been defined by multiple philosophers, scholars, and practitioners. These definitions range from essentialist ones that reify certain characteristics as purely national ones ( Herder 2004 , Fichte 2008 ) to more constructivist ones highlighting collective ascription as a key element for the existence of a nation ( Renan 1995 , Anderson 1983 ). Tension exists between scholars who see the emergence of modern nations as a natural outgrowth from centuries of development and those who understand national identity as a modern social construct. Naturally, most nationalists themselves adopt a primordialist understanding of nationhood but prominent scholars also highlight the ethnic origins of modern nations ( Smith 1986 ). Modernization scholars ( Gellner 2006 , Anderson 1983 ) and, later on, various strands of constructivists ( Laitin 2007 , Brubaker 1996 ) have pointed out the limitations of the primordialist view. The view of nations being the natural outgrowth of premodern ethnies often assumes phenotypical commonalities that do not correspond to realities on the ground. Moreover, constructivists echo Renan’s critique that shared ethnic attributes do not necessarily mean a shared national identity or imply anything about loyalty to a nation. Finally, a primordialist perspective that essentializes attributes cannot help us explain identity change ( Laitin 2007 ) or the timing of “national awakenings.” Regardless of the definition of the nation and debates about the origins of nationalism, most scholars agree that nationalism—the “political principle which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” ( Gellner 2006 , see p. 1)—is one of the most potent ideologies in modern times. In fact, what differentiates an ethnic group from a stateless national group is the fact that the former is not motivated by a nationalist ideology, namely the belief that the world is divided into national units (“nation-states”), that the primary loyalty should be to the nation and not to the family, the kinship group, or some other local or supranational unit, accompanied by a claim to sovereignty over a territorially bounded homeland. Nationalism takes different forms depending on the position that the group making the claim to sovereignty currently occupies in relation to other groups ( Hechter 2000 ).

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism . London: Verso, 1983.

Anderson introduces an influential definition of nationalism that focuses on the constructed nature of nations, calling them “imagined communities.” He defines the nation as an imagined impersonal community, defined by its common history and perceived distinctiveness, that is believed to exercise the collective right to sovereign control over a given territory.

Brubaker, Rogers. Nationalism Refrained: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511558764

Brubaker’s theme is the nationalization of the political sphere. He highlights the dynamic interaction in the triadic nexus involving national minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands. The three entities are far from fixed according to Brubaker, who invites us to stop treating the “nation” as an entity and approach it as “an institutionalized form.”

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Addresses to the German Nation . Edited and translated by Gregory Moore. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Fichte (1808) defined the nation by objective criteria such as shared attributes. For Fichte, language is a natural phenomenon. Indeed, the possession of a shared language defines the natural boundaries of a Volk or a Nation. Fichte’s writings developed in reaction to the occupation of German territories by Napoleon’s forces.

Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism . 2d ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

This pathbreaking book was originally published in 1983. Gellner famously defined nationalism as “primarily a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” (p. 1). He emphasized the role of industrialization in the emergence and spread of nationalism through the introduction of mass schooling and assimilation into a high culture.

Hechter, Michael. Containing Nationalism . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Hechter defines nations as “territorially concentrated ethnic groups” (p. 14). He focuses on the transition from indirect to direct rule and identifies different types of nationalism: State-Building Nationalism, Peripheral Nationalism, Irredentist Nationalism, Unification Nationalism, and Patriotism. Hechter, echoing Gellner, defines nationalism as “a collective action designed to render the boundaries of the nation congruent with those of its governance unit” (p. 15).

Herder, Johann Gottfried. Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings . Edited and translated by Ioannis Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004.

This is a reliable English translation of Herder’s writings from the second half of the 18th century. Herder argued that “Nature raises families; the most natural state is therefore also one people, with one national character. Through the millennia, this national character is maintained within a people and can be developed most naturally if its native prince so desires, for a people is as much a plant of nature as a family, only with more branches” (p. 128). He is considered as one of the fathers of romantic nationalism.

Laitin, David. Nations, States, and Violence . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Laitin defines the nation as a population with a coordinated set of beliefs about their cultural identities whose representatives claim ownership of a state for them by dint of that coordination either through separation, amalgamation, or return. Benefits of coordination explain the stickiness of these national identities.

Renan, Ernest. “What Is a Nation?” In The Nationalism Reader . Edited by Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay, 143–155. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995.

This is an English translation of a lecture that Renan gave in 1882 at Sorbonne University. It presents one of the first coherent and thorough critiques of the romantic nationalist view. Renan reviews the most common markers used to define nations in Europe, such as race, dynasty, language, religion, and geography, and discusses their limitations. For Renan, “the existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite” (p. 154).

Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations . Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

Smith has famously engaged Gellner’s claim that “any old shred and patch would do” for the purposes of constructing a nation. Smith, instead, highlights the importance of ethnic roots in the formation of nations. He takes issue with the emphasis on the exclusively modern quality of nations and argues that most nations have premodern origins in the form of long-standing cultural symbols that are building blocks for modern nation-building.

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

About International Relations »
Meet the Editorial Board »
Academic Theories of International Relations Since 1945
Africa, The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
Arab-Israeli Wars
Arab-Israeli Wars, 1967-1973, The
Armed Conflicts/Violence against Civilians Data Sets
Arms Control
Asylum Policies
Audience Costs and the Credibility of Commitments
Authoritarian Regimes
Balance of Power Theory
Bargaining Theory of War
Brazilian Foreign Policy, The Politics of
Canadian Foreign Policy
Case Study Methods in International Relations
Casualties and Politics
Causation in International Relations
Central Europe
Challenge of Communism, The
China and Japan
China's Defense Policy
China’s Foreign Policy
Chinese Approaches to Strategy
Cities and International Relations
Civil Resistance
Civil Society in the European Union
Cold War, The
Colonialism
Comparative Foreign Policy Security Interests
Comparative Regionalism
Complex Systems Approaches to Global Politics
Conflict Behavior and the Prevention of War
Conflict Management
Conflict Management in the Middle East
Constructivism
Contemporary Shia–Sunni Sectarian Violence
Counterinsurgency
Countermeasures in International Law
Coups and Mutinies
Criminal Law, International
Critical Theory of International Relations
Cuban Missile Crisis, The
Cultural Diplomacy
Cyber Security
Cyber Warfare
Decision-Making, Poliheuristic Theory of
Demobilization, Post World War I
Democracies and World Order
Democracy and Conflict
Democracy in World Politics
Deterrence Theory
Development
Digital Diplomacy
Diplomacy, Gender and
Diplomacy, History of
Diplomacy in the ASEAN
Diplomacy, Public
Disaster Diplomacy
Diversionary Theory of War
Drone Warfare
Eastern Front (World War I)
Economic Coercion and Sanctions
Economics, International
Embedded Liberalism
Emerging Powers and BRICS
Empirical Testing of Formal Models
Energy and International Security
Environmental Peacebuilding
Epidemic Diseases and their Effects on History
Ethics and Morality in International Relations
Ethnicity in International Relations
European Migration Policy
European Security and Defense Policy, The
European Union as an International Actor
European Union, International Relations of the
Experiments
Face-to-Face Diplomacy
Fascism, The Challenge of
Feminist Methodologies in International Relations
Feminist Security Studies
Food Security
Forecasting in International Relations
Foreign Aid and Assistance
Foreign Direct Investment
Foreign Policy Decision-Making
Foreign Policy of Non-democratic Regimes
Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia
Foreign Policy, Theories of
French Empire, 20th-Century
From Club to Network Diplomacy
Future of NATO
Game Theory and Interstate Conflict
Gender and Terrorism
Genocide, Politicide, and Mass Atrocities Against Civilian...
Genocides, 20th Century
Geopolitics and Geostrategy
Germany in World War II
Global Citizenship
Global Civil Society
Global Constitutionalism
Global Environmental Politics
Global Ethic of Care
Global Governance
Global Justice, Western Perspectives
Globalization
Governance of the Arctic
Grand Strategy
Greater Middle East, The
Greek Crisis
Hague Conferences (1899, 1907)
Hierarchies in International Relations
History and International Relations
Human Nature in International Relations
Human Rights
Human Rights and Humanitarian Diplomacy
Human Rights, Feminism and
Human Rights Law
Human Security
Hybrid Warfare
Ideal Diplomat, The
Identity and Foreign Policy
Ideology, Values, and Foreign Policy
Illicit Trade and Smuggling
Imperialism
Indian Perspectives on International Relations, War, and C...
Indigenous Rights
Industrialization
Intelligence
Intelligence Oversight
Internal Displacement
International Conflict Settlements, The Durability of
International Criminal Court, The
International Economic Organizations (IMF and World Bank)
International Health Governance
International Justice, Theories of
International Law, Feminist Perspectives on
International Monetary Relations, History of
International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
International Nongovernmental Organizations
International Norms for Cultural Preservation and Cooperat...
International Organizations
International Relations, Aesthetic Turn in
International Relations as a Social Science
International Relations, Practice Turn in
International Relations, Research Ethics in
International Relations Theory
International Security
International Society
International Society, Theorizing
International Support For Nonstate Armed Groups
Internet Law
Interstate Cooperation Theory and International Institutio...
Intervention and Use of Force
Interviews and Focus Groups
Iran, Politics and Foreign Policy
Iraq: Past and Present
Japanese Foreign Policy
Just War Theory
Kurdistan and Kurdish Politics
Law of the Sea
Laws of War
Leadership in International Affairs
Leadership Personality Characteristics and Foreign Policy
League of Nations
Lean Forward and Pull Back Options for US Grand Strategy
Mediation and Civil Wars
Mediation in International Conflicts
Mediation via International Organizations
Memory and World Politics
Mercantilism
Middle East, The Contemporary
Middle Powers and Regional Powers
Military Science
Minorities in the Middle East
Minority Rights
Morality in Foreign Policy
Multilateralism (1992–), Return to
National Liberation, International Law and Wars of
National Security Act of 1947, The
Nation-Building
NATO, Europe, and Russia: Security Issues and the Border R...
Natural Resources, Energy Politics, and Environmental Cons...
New Multilateralism in the Early 21st Century
Nonproliferation and Counterproliferation
Nonviolent Resistance Datasets
Normative Aspects of International Peacekeeping
Normative Power Beyond the Eurocentric Frame
Nuclear Proliferation
Peace Education in Post-Conflict Zones
Peace of Utrecht
Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict
Peacekeeping
Political Demography
Political Economy of National Security
Political Extremism in Sub-Saharan Africa
Political Learning and Socialization
Political Psychology
Politics and Islam in Turkey
Politics and Nationalism in Cyprus
Politics of Extraction: Theories and New Concepts for Crit...
Politics of Resilience
Popuism and Global Politics
Popular Culture and International Relations
Post-Civil War State
Post-Conflict and Transitional Justice
Post-Conflict Reconciliation in the Middle East and North ...
Power Transition Theory
Preventive War and Preemption
Prisoners, Treatment of
Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs)
Process Tracing Methods
Pro-Government Militias
Proliferation
Prospect Theory in International Relations
Psychoanalysis in Global Politics and International Relati...
Psychology and Foreign Policy
Public Opinion and Foreign Policy
Public Opinion and the European Union
Quantum Social Science
Race and International Relations
Rebel Governance
Reconciliation
Reflexivity and International Relations
Religion and International Relations
Religiously Motivated Violence
Reputation in International Relations
Responsibility to Protect
Rising Powers in World Politics
Role Theory in International Relations
Russian Foreign Policy
Russian Revolutions and Civil War, 1917–1921
Sanctions in International Law
Science Diplomacy
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), The
Secrecy and Diplomacy
Securitization
Self-Determination
Shining Path
Sinophone and Japanese International Relations Theory
Small State Diplomacy
Social Scientific Theories of Imperialism
Sovereignty
Soviet Union in World War II
Space Strategy, Policy, and Power
Spatial Dependencies and International Mediation
Status in International Relations
Strategic Air Power
Strategic and Net Assessments
Sub-Saharan Africa, Conflict Formations in
Sustainable Development
Systems Theory
Teaching International Relations
Territorial Disputes
Terrorism and Poverty
Terrorism, Geography of
Terrorist Financing
Terrorist Group Strategies
The Changing Nature of Diplomacy
The Politics and Diplomacy of Neutrality
The Politics and Diplomacy of the First World War
The Queer in/of International Relations
the Twenty-First Century, Alliance Commitments in
The Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relation...
Theories of International Relations, Feminist
Theory, Chinese International Relations
Time Series Approaches to International Affairs
Transnational Actors
Transnational Law
Transnational Social Movements
Tribunals, War Crimes and
Trust and International Relations
UN Security Council
United Nations, The
United States and Asia, The
Uppsala Conflict Data Program
US and Africa
US–UK Special Relationship
Voluntary International Migration
War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714)
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Western Balkans
Western Front (World War I)
Westphalia, Peace of (1648)
Women and Peacemaking Peacekeeping
World Economy 1919-1939
World Polity School
World War II Diplomacy and Political Relations
World-System Theory
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Legal Notice
Accessibility

[195.190.12.77]
195.190.12.77

Understanding the Constructive and Destructive Natures of Nationalism

Nationalism can unify diverse societies. But when taken to extremes, it can also fuel violence, division, and global disorder.

A man rides his bicycle past volunteers of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) taking part in the "Path-Sanchalan", or Route March, during celebrations to mark the Vijaya Dashmi or Dussehra in Mumbai, India, on October 11, 2016.

Source: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters

Countries are the building blocks of the modern world. Nearly two hundred make up the globe today. They vary in population and size: China and India are home to more than one billion people. Meanwhile, Vatican City and Monaco are smaller than a single square mile.

The world also comprises a large number of nations.

While the terms country and nation are often used interchangeably, they have subtle, but important, differences. Nations are groups of people united by ethnic, linguistic, geographic, or other common characteristics. Countries, on the other hand, refer to places with governments that are internationally recognized and have the power to oversee what happens within their borders.

Like countries, nations come in different shapes and sizes. But unlike countries, nations are not always reflected in borders on a map. Some nations span multiple countries, such as the Kurdish nation , whose approximately thirty million people live in Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurds, importantly, do not have a country of their own and are a minority in all the countries that they inhabit.

Map showing the main areas of Kurdish populations in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. For more info contact us at cfr_education@cfr.org.

Source: GeoEPR dataset.

Other nations exist primarily within one country. Belgium, for example, is largely made up of two different groups of people—the Flemings and Walloons—which have distinct languages and cultural identities. Few members of these two nations live outside Belgium. Sometimes, a nation neatly overlaps with the borders of a country. For example, in Japan, 98 percent of citizens are of the same ethnicity and nearly all speak Japanese and share national traditions.

Groups of people working to advance the interests of their nation, country, or would-be country is known as nationalism . Often, nationalism is invoked by groups pushing for independence, especially when they are ruled by perceived outsiders. But nationalism doesn’t always mean being pro-independence. It can also entail people promoting their culture, asserting their religious beliefs, or organizing for greater political power.

In certain contexts, nationalism can serve as a basis for unity, inclusion, and social cohesion for a country. But when taken to extremes, nationalism can fuel violence, division, and global disorder.

When is nationalism positive?

Rarely do all people in a country look, speak, and pray the same way. Even in Japan—one of the world’s most homogeneous societies—more than two million citizens are ethnic minorities.

In reality, most countries comprise a diverse tapestry of unique identities. When that’s the case, how do countries create a common national identity amid so many internal differences? Let’s take a look at Indonesia.

The sprawling southeast Asian archipelago has around six thousand inhabited islands. It’s the world’s fourth most populous country. Indonesia has more than 260 million citizens who speak over seven hundred languages and practice a half dozen official religions. Its existence today as one country is the result of three centuries of colonization, during which mostly European empires drew borders. These colonial boundaries had little regard for any national, economic, or internal political criteria.

So how has Indonesia stuck together since gaining independence, and what does it now mean to be Indonesian?

Rather than build a national identity based on geography, language, religion, or ethnicity, Indonesia’s founding father, Sukarno, forged one through ideas. In 1945, just weeks before his country achieved independence, Sukarno laid out a vision known as Pancasila —meaning Five Principles—for an Indonesian identity. This philosophy was intended to unite the diverse and soon-to-be independent country. An iteration of Sukarno’s Pancasila would ultimately appear in the preamble of the country’s constitution. To be Indonesian meant adhering to the following:

belief in the One and Only God
just and civilized humanity
the unity of Indonesia
democratic rule that is guided by the strength of wisdom resulting from deliberation/representation
social justice for all the people of Indonesia

An Indonesian government poster showcasing “Pancasila,” the political philosophy on which Indonesia was founded. The five principles of pancasila are a belief in God, a just and civilized humanity, unity of Indonesia, democracy led by collective wisdom, and social justice for all Indonesians.

Source: Government of Indonesia

Pancasila is an example of how a belief in shared ideas and values can unify diverse groups of people. It encourages social cohesion and contributes to pride in one’s country, often referred to as patriotism. Moreover, national identities built solely around characteristics like ethnicity, language, or religion exclude those who do not meet these narrow criteria. As a result, a national identity based on ideas (as well as shared history and common experience) is more accepting.

Throughout the world, liberal countries build unity around common ideas such as freedom and equality. Like Pancasila, liberal principles are often enshrined in countries’ laws and constitutions.

But just because a country lays out a vision for one, all-inclusive national identity doesn’t mean that its citizens are always treated equally. In Indonesia, people have been imprisoned for not adhering to one of the country’s six official religions. And in the United States—a country that prides itself on its diversity—discrimination is still a major issue. This issue was especially evident during the countrywide protests for social justice and against police violence targeting Black Americans following the death of George Floyd .

When is nationalism negative?

Like ideologies or technology, nationalism can be a positive or a negative force. Narrow or aggressive forms of nationalism can be highly divisive. Such nationalism calls for advancing the interests of one group above all else—even at the expense of others. Extreme nationalism is illiberal and intolerant. It doesn’t accept those outside the narrowly defined nation as equal. This “us versus them” mentality, often rooted in ideas of racial and national superiority, can lead to dangerous and violent ends.

What are some instances in which nationalism fuels conflict and global disorder?

Extreme nationalism (hyper-patriotism) : Aggressively advancing one country’s or nation’s interests can have consequences that reverberate around the world.

Such strident nationalism precipitated World War I. Shortly thereafter, the world witnessed perhaps the most dramatic example of extreme nationalism fueling global disorder: Nazi Germany. There, a belief in Aryan (essentially white Germanic) racial superiority—a manifestation of what is known as ethnocentric nationalism—led to World War II. Extreme Nationalism unleashed the deadliest conflict in human history, which included horrific campaigns of identity-based violence. Particularly, the Nazi government perpetrated the Holocaust, a systematic killing of over six million Jews.

A propaganda image depicting an idealized “Aryan” family, from the Nazi Party’s Racial Policy Office calendar during the Holocaust, circa 1938.

Source: Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Since the end of World War II, European leaders have sought to promote regional security and prosperity over solely national interests by binding countries together through political and economic institutions like the European Union (EU). But recently, a rising tide of nationalism has led countries to once again question such partnerships. Most notably, nationalism fueled the United Kingdom’s decision in 2016, known as Brexit , to leave the EU.

A propaganda poster using an image of immigrants and refugees to advocate for the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU (Brexit), shared by Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom Independence Party in 2016, via Twitter.

Source: UK Independence Party via Twitter

Elsewhere in Europe, identity and exclusive nationalism have led to an aggressive foreign policy that threatens world order. For instance, the Russian government has pursued a multi-year campaign to occupy land in the neighboring nation of Ukraine, partially under claims about its support for ethnic Russians living in the country. However, such justifications are undermined by at least one poll showing that the majority of ethnic Russians in Ukraine oppose Russia's land grab.

Map of Ukraine showing the provinces annexed by Russia as part of its 2022 invasion as well as the territory that remains under Russian control as of Feb. 2023. For more info contact us at cfr_education@cfr.org.

Source: Institute for the Study of War; American Enterprise Institute.

Exclusive nationalism : This is the idea that only people who meet certain criteria are citizens and those who are not part of this group can never be equal. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, Islam is the official religion, and non-Muslims cannot become citizens. Even then, not all Saudi Muslims are treated equally. In the majority-Sunni society, adherents of Shia and other minority denominations face prejudice.

Strict definitions of who is and is not part of the nation can lead to economic and political discrimination or even violence as governments attempt to forcibly assimilate minority groups.

In China, the government has forced over one million Uighur Muslims into detention centers , where detainees are made to learn Mandarin, renounce Islam, and pledge loyalty to the Chinese government.

A propaganda mural painted next to a mosque in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, where internment camps for Uighur and other Muslim minorities facing religions persecution are located.

Source: Courtesy of BBC News

In Iran, minorities often face government persecution; for instance, Baha’is—adherents of a small religious group—are barred from attending universities. In India, Hindu nationalists, who have gained power in recent years, reject the country’s founding vision as a secular, multicultural society. They have increasingly advocated for preferential treatment for Hindus. At this times this has come at the expense of the rights of some two hundred million Muslim Indians.

A political advertisement ahead of India’s 2014 elections depicts Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose platform is based on Hindu nationalism, the idea that Hindu faith and culture should shape the diverse country’s politics.

Source: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP via Getty Images

In the most extreme cases, nationalism has led to genocide , the targeted mass killing of a specific group of people. In the predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, Muslim Rohingya have faced decades of persecution . Tensions spiked in 2017 when the government carried out a violent and brutal campaign against the ethnic Muslim minority. This violence forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.

Protesters hold signs objecting to the word "Rohingya" as an aid ship headed for Rohingya refugee camps docks in Myanmar in 2017. The Rohingya are a marginalized Muslim ethnic group, who have been denied citizenship and subjected to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

Source: Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images

Economic nationalism : This form of nationalism promotes domestic control of the economy, usually to protect jobs and minimize imports. Economic nationalists also tend to oppose free international trade. To shore up local industries against foreign competition, governments often implement protectionist policies , including tariffs , subsidies, and import quotas.

On the surface, a policy that purports to put the nation’s economic interests first seems fine. However, such policies can actually hurt that country’s citizens. Tariffs increase the prices of imported goods, and consumers must bear the additional cost if the goods are not produced domestically. When one country imposes tariffs on goods from another, it usually faces retaliatory tariffs. These tariffs make it difficult for industries to sell their products at competitive prices abroad.

In today’s global era, international trade is essential. No country is entirely self-sufficient—it cannot rely solely on what it produces within its borders. Whether it’s importing fuel, food, electronics, or face masks during a pandemic , a country needs international trade to function. Some experts even argue that increased trading makes the world a safer place, as countries that are economically interdependent are less likely to go to war.

Nationalism in a Global Era

At the end of World War II, countries sought ways to ensure the world would never again break down into such horrific conflict. Leaders created new global institutions—including the United Nations, World Bank , and International Monetary Fund . These governing bodies form the backbone of what is called the liberal world order. For decades, this liberal world order has tried to guard against the most violent impulses of nationalism. They create forums for international cooperation designed to promote collective security and economic growth. And while certainly not always successful, it has contributed to a largely peaceful and prosperous era for many.

But around the world, nationalism is on the rise again, often along with populism—the movement when large groups of people believe the ruling elites are not addressing their concerns. This combination of sentiments has led to the emergence of new leaders who claim to represent “the people,” alongside efforts to oust existing elites.

Numerous factors account for these developments, including stagnating wages, rising income inequality, and job losses. While such losses in the labor market are mostly associated with technological innovation, they are often attributed to global factors, such as the 2008 global financial crisis , and the COVID-19 pandemic . This is also happening—somewhat paradoxically—as the world grows increasingly interconnected: globalization has enabled people, ideas, money, goods, data, drugs, weapons, greenhouse gasses , viruses, and more to move around the world at unprecedented speeds.

In a time when so much travels across borders so quickly—including today’s greatest threats—the world requires more cooperation. No country can deal successfully with global challenges on its own; countries fare better when they join forces with like-minded partners.

Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

Browse content in Arts and Humanities
Browse content in Archaeology
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
Archaeology by Region
Archaeology of Religion
Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
Biblical Archaeology
Contemporary and Public Archaeology
Environmental Archaeology
Historical Archaeology
History and Theory of Archaeology
Industrial Archaeology
Landscape Archaeology
Mortuary Archaeology
Prehistoric Archaeology
Underwater Archaeology
Zooarchaeology
Browse content in Architecture
Architectural Structure and Design
History of Architecture
Residential and Domestic Buildings
Theory of Architecture
Browse content in Art
Art Subjects and Themes
History of Art
Industrial and Commercial Art
Theory of Art
Biographical Studies
Byzantine Studies
Browse content in Classical Studies
Classical Numismatics
Classical Literature
Classical Reception
Classical History
Classical Philosophy
Classical Mythology
Classical Art and Architecture
Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
Greek and Roman Papyrology
Greek and Roman Archaeology
Greek and Roman Epigraphy
Greek and Roman Law
Late Antiquity
Religion in the Ancient World
Social History
Digital Humanities
Browse content in History
Colonialism and Imperialism
Diplomatic History
Environmental History
Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Historical Geography
History by Period
History of Emotions
History of Agriculture
History of Education
History of Gender and Sexuality
Industrial History
Intellectual History
International History
Labour History
Legal and Constitutional History
Local and Family History
Maritime History
Military History
National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
Oral History
Political History
Public History
Regional and National History
Revolutions and Rebellions
Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
Social and Cultural History
Theory, Methods, and Historiography
Urban History
World History
Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
Language Learning (Specific Skills)
Language Teaching Theory and Methods
Browse content in Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics
Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
History of English
Language Evolution
Language Reference
Language Variation
Language Families
Language Acquisition
Lexicography
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic Theories
Linguistic Typology
Phonetics and Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Translation and Interpretation
Writing Systems
Browse content in Literature
Bibliography
Children's Literature Studies
Literary Studies (American)
Literary Studies (Romanticism)
Literary Studies (Modernism)
Literary Studies (European)
Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
Literary Studies (Asian)
Literary Studies - World
Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
Literary Studies (19th Century)
Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
Literary Studies (African American Literature)
Literary Studies (British and Irish)
Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
Literary Studies (History of the Book)
Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
Literary Studies (War Literature)
Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
Mythology and Folklore
Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
Browse content in Media Studies
Browse content in Music
Applied Music
Dance and Music
Ethics in Music
Ethnomusicology
Gender and Sexuality in Music
Medicine and Music
Music Cultures
Music and Media
Music and Culture
Music and Religion
Music Education and Pedagogy
Music Theory and Analysis
Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
Musicology and Music History
Performance Practice and Studies
Race and Ethnicity in Music
Sound Studies
Browse content in Performing Arts
Browse content in Philosophy
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
Epistemology
Feminist Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy
Metaphysics
Moral Philosophy
Non-Western Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Perception
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
Practical Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Browse content in Religion
Biblical Studies
Christianity
East Asian Religions
History of Religion
Judaism and Jewish Studies
Qumran Studies
Religion and Education
Religion and Health
Religion and Politics
Religion and Science
Religion and Law
Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
Religious Studies
Browse content in Society and Culture
Cookery, Food, and Drink
Cultural Studies
Customs and Traditions
Ethical Issues and Debates
Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
Sports and Outdoor Recreation
Technology and Society
Travel and Holiday
Visual Culture
Browse content in Law
Arbitration
Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
Commercial Law
Company Law
Browse content in Comparative Law
Systems of Law
Competition Law
Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
Government Powers
Judicial Review
Local Government Law
Military and Defence Law
Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
Construction Law
Contract Law
Browse content in Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Criminal Evidence Law
Sentencing and Punishment
Employment and Labour Law
Environment and Energy Law
Browse content in Financial Law
Banking Law
Insolvency Law
History of Law
Human Rights and Immigration
Intellectual Property Law
Browse content in International Law
Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
Public International Law
IT and Communications Law
Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
Law and Society
Law and Politics
Browse content in Legal System and Practice
Courts and Procedure
Legal Skills and Practice
Legal System - Costs and Funding
Primary Sources of Law
Regulation of Legal Profession
Medical and Healthcare Law
Browse content in Policing
Criminal Investigation and Detection
Police and Security Services
Police Procedure and Law
Police Regional Planning
Browse content in Property Law
Personal Property Law
Restitution
Study and Revision
Terrorism and National Security Law
Browse content in Trusts Law
Wills and Probate or Succession
Browse content in Medicine and Health
Browse content in Allied Health Professions
Arts Therapies
Clinical Science
Dietetics and Nutrition
Occupational Therapy
Operating Department Practice
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Speech and Language Therapy
Browse content in Anaesthetics
General Anaesthesia
Clinical Neuroscience
Browse content in Clinical Medicine
Acute Medicine
Cardiovascular Medicine
Clinical Genetics
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Dermatology
Endocrinology and Diabetes
Gastroenterology
Genito-urinary Medicine
Geriatric Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Medical Toxicology
Medical Oncology
Pain Medicine
Palliative Medicine
Rehabilitation Medicine
Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
Rheumatology
Sleep Medicine
Sports and Exercise Medicine
Community Medical Services
Critical Care
Emergency Medicine
Forensic Medicine
Haematology
History of Medicine
Browse content in Medical Skills
Clinical Skills
Communication Skills
Nursing Skills
Surgical Skills
Medical Ethics
Browse content in Medical Dentistry
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Paediatric Dentistry
Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
Surgical Dentistry
Medical Statistics and Methodology
Browse content in Neurology
Clinical Neurophysiology
Neuropathology
Nursing Studies
Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Gynaecology
Occupational Medicine
Ophthalmology
Otolaryngology (ENT)
Browse content in Paediatrics
Neonatology
Browse content in Pathology
Chemical Pathology
Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
Histopathology
Medical Microbiology and Virology
Patient Education and Information
Browse content in Pharmacology
Psychopharmacology
Browse content in Popular Health
Caring for Others
Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Self-help and Personal Development
Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Reproduction, Growth and Development
Primary Care
Professional Development in Medicine
Browse content in Psychiatry
Addiction Medicine
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Forensic Psychiatry
Learning Disabilities
Old Age Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
Epidemiology
Public Health
Browse content in Radiology
Clinical Radiology
Interventional Radiology
Nuclear Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Reproductive Medicine
Browse content in Surgery
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
General Surgery
Neurosurgery
Paediatric Surgery
Peri-operative Care
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Surgical Oncology
Transplant Surgery
Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
Browse content in Science and Mathematics
Browse content in Biological Sciences
Aquatic Biology
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Developmental Biology
Ecology and Conservation
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Molecular and Cell Biology
Natural History
Plant Sciences and Forestry
Research Methods in Life Sciences
Structural Biology
Systems Biology
Zoology and Animal Sciences
Browse content in Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Computational Chemistry
Crystallography
Environmental Chemistry
Industrial Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Materials Chemistry
Medicinal Chemistry
Mineralogy and Gems
Organic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
Polymer Chemistry
Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
Theoretical Chemistry
Browse content in Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Architecture and Logic Design
Game Studies
Human-Computer Interaction
Mathematical Theory of Computation
Programming Languages
Software Engineering
Systems Analysis and Design
Virtual Reality
Browse content in Computing
Business Applications
Computer Games
Computer Security
Computer Networking and Communications
Digital Lifestyle
Graphical and Digital Media Applications
Operating Systems
Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Geography
Geology and the Lithosphere
Maps and Map-making
Meteorology and Climatology
Oceanography and Hydrology
Palaeontology
Physical Geography and Topography
Regional Geography
Soil Science
Urban Geography
Browse content in Engineering and Technology
Agriculture and Farming
Biological Engineering
Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
Electronics and Communications Engineering
Energy Technology
Engineering (General)
Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
History of Engineering and Technology
Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Technology of Industrial Chemistry
Transport Technology and Trades
Browse content in Environmental Science
Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
Environmental Sustainability
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
History of Science and Technology
Browse content in Materials Science
Ceramics and Glasses
Composite Materials
Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
Nanotechnology
Browse content in Mathematics
Applied Mathematics
Biomathematics and Statistics
History of Mathematics
Mathematical Education
Mathematical Finance
Mathematical Analysis
Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Probability and Statistics
Pure Mathematics
Browse content in Neuroscience
Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
Development of the Nervous System
Disorders of the Nervous System
History of Neuroscience
Invertebrate Neurobiology
Molecular and Cellular Systems
Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
Neuroscientific Techniques
Sensory and Motor Systems
Browse content in Physics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Biological and Medical Physics
Classical Mechanics
Computational Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
History of Physics
Mathematical and Statistical Physics
Measurement Science
Nuclear Physics
Particles and Fields
Plasma Physics
Quantum Physics
Relativity and Gravitation
Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
Browse content in Psychology
Affective Sciences
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Criminal and Forensic Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Educational Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
Health Psychology
History and Systems in Psychology
Music Psychology
Neuropsychology
Organizational Psychology
Psychological Assessment and Testing
Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
Psychology Professional Development and Training
Research Methods in Psychology
Social Psychology
Browse content in Social Sciences
Browse content in Anthropology
Anthropology of Religion
Human Evolution
Medical Anthropology
Physical Anthropology
Regional Anthropology
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Theory and Practice of Anthropology
Browse content in Business and Management
Business Ethics
Business History
Business Strategy
Business and Technology
Business and Government
Business and the Environment
Comparative Management
Corporate Governance
Corporate Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship
Health Management
Human Resource Management
Industrial and Employment Relations
Industry Studies
Information and Communication Technologies
International Business
Knowledge Management
Management and Management Techniques
Operations Management
Organizational Theory and Behaviour
Pensions and Pension Management
Public and Nonprofit Management
Social Issues in Business and Management
Strategic Management
Supply Chain Management
Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Forms of Crime
International and Comparative Criminology
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
Development Studies
Browse content in Economics
Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
Asian Economics
Behavioural Finance
Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
Economic History
Economic Methodology
Economic Systems
Economic Development and Growth
Financial Markets
Financial Institutions and Services
General Economics and Teaching
Health, Education, and Welfare
History of Economic Thought
International Economics
Labour and Demographic Economics
Law and Economics
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
Microeconomics
Public Economics
Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
Welfare Economics
Browse content in Education
Adult Education and Continuous Learning
Care and Counselling of Students
Early Childhood and Elementary Education
Educational Equipment and Technology
Educational Strategies and Policy
Higher and Further Education
Organization and Management of Education
Philosophy and Theory of Education
Schools Studies
Secondary Education
Teaching of a Specific Subject
Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
Teaching Skills and Techniques
Browse content in Environment
Applied Ecology (Social Science)
Climate Change
Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Social Science)
Natural Disasters (Environment)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Social Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
Sustainability
Browse content in Human Geography
Cultural Geography
Economic Geography
Political Geography
Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
Communication Studies
Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
Browse content in Politics
African Politics
Asian Politics
Chinese Politics
Comparative Politics
Conflict Politics
Elections and Electoral Studies
Environmental Politics
Ethnic Politics
European Union
Foreign Policy
Gender and Politics
Human Rights and Politics
Indian Politics
International Relations
International Organization (Politics)
Irish Politics
Latin American Politics
Middle Eastern Politics
Political Behaviour
Political Economy
Political Institutions
Political Theory
Political Methodology
Political Communication
Political Philosophy
Political Sociology
Politics and Law
Politics of Development
Public Policy
Public Administration
Qualitative Political Methodology
Quantitative Political Methodology
Regional Political Studies
Russian Politics
Security Studies
State and Local Government
UK Politics
US Politics
Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
African Studies
Asian Studies
East Asian Studies
Japanese Studies
Latin American Studies
Middle Eastern Studies
Native American Studies
Scottish Studies
Browse content in Research and Information
Research Methods
Browse content in Social Work
Addictions and Substance Misuse
Adoption and Fostering
Care of the Elderly
Child and Adolescent Social Work
Couple and Family Social Work
Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
Emergency Services
Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
International and Global Issues in Social Work
Mental and Behavioural Health
Social Justice and Human Rights
Social Policy and Advocacy
Social Work and Crime and Justice
Social Work Macro Practice
Social Work Practice Settings
Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
Welfare and Benefit Systems
Browse content in Sociology
Childhood Studies
Community Development
Comparative and Historical Sociology
Disability Studies
Economic Sociology
Gender and Sexuality
Gerontology and Ageing
Health, Illness, and Medicine
Marriage and the Family
Migration Studies
Occupations, Professions, and Work
Organizations
Population and Demography
Race and Ethnicity
Social Theory
Social Movements and Social Change
Social Research and Statistics
Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Sociology of Religion
Sociology of Education
Sport and Leisure
Urban and Rural Studies
Browse content in Warfare and Defence
Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
Land Forces and Warfare
Military Administration
Military Life and Institutions
Naval Forces and Warfare
Other Warfare and Defence Issues
Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
Weapons and Equipment

Negotiating Nationalism: Nation-Building, Federalism, and Secession in the Multinational State

< Previous chapter
Next chapter >

2 2 Forging Identities: The Politics and Ethics of Nation‐building

Author Webpage

Published: May 2006
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

What should political actors and state institutions be permitted, encouraged, required, or forbidden to do in the attempt to shape people’s national identities? This is the central question in the ethics of nation-building, and has been vastly understudied in recent normative political theories of nationalism. This chapter answers this question by discussing more than a dozen components of an individual’s national identity. It considers the many legitimate and illegitimate ways in which political actors and the state can shape or alter these components, and the content of the identity itself. It also considers the soundness and relevance of the seemly age-old distinction between so-called ethnic and civic national identities.

Personal account

Sign in with email/username & password
Get email alerts
Save searches
Purchase content
Activate your purchase/trial code
Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with username/password
Recommend to your librarian
Institutional account management
Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institutionâ€™s website and Oxford Academic.

Click Sign in through your institution.
Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institutionâ€™s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see â€˜Sign in through society siteâ€™ in the sign in pane within a journal:

Click Sign in through society site.
When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

Month:	Total Views:
October 2022	19
November 2022	12
December 2022	5
January 2023	13
February 2023	17
March 2023	9
April 2023	5
May 2023	3
June 2023	2
July 2023	2
August 2023	4
October 2023	4
November 2023	7
December 2023	4
January 2024	10
February 2024	9
March 2024	3
April 2024	7
May 2024	5
June 2024	14
July 2024	6
August 2024	7

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Rights and permissions
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Nation-Building

Nation-building may be defined as the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent.The desired outcome is to achieve national integration (Reference Works: Concepts and Definitions). The major divide in the literature centers on the causal path that leads to national integration. Thus, nation-building has been theorized as a structural process intertwined with industrialization, urbanization, social mobilization, etc. (Structural Explanations); as the result of deliberate state policies that aim at the homogenization of a state along the lines of a specific constitutive story—that can and often does change over time and under certain conditions (State-Planned Policies); as the product of top-bottom processes that could originate from forces outside of the boundaries of the relevant state; and as the product of bottom-up processes that do not require any state intervention to come about (Contingency, Events, and Demonstration Effects). Since the emergence of nationalism as the dominant ideology to legitimate authority and the template of the nation-state as an organizational principle of the international system, state elites have pursued different policies toward the various unassimilated groups within their territorial boundaries (Seminal Case Studies) with variable consequences (Nation-Building and Its Consequences). Thus, scholars have suggested that the nation-building experience of each state—or lack thereof—has had an impact on patterns of State Formation and Social Order, Self-Determination Movements, War Onset, and Public Goods Provision .

Related Papers

Studies on National Movements

Harris Mylonas

Nation-building refers to the policies that core group governing elites pursue toward non-core groups in their effort to manage social order within state boundaries in ways that promotes a particular national narrative over any other. Such policies may vary widely ranging from assimilationist to exclusionary ones (Mylonas 2012; Bulutgil 2016). Moreover, the content of the national narrative or constitutive story (Smith 2003) varies dramatically from case to case. The systematic study of the process of nation-building intensified following the Second World War primarily in relation to decolonization movements and the associated establishment of postcolonial independent states around the globe (Emerson 1960). However, the field was initially dominated by assumptions and logics developed based on European experiences with nation-building. We would not be that interested in nation-building were it not for its far-reaching impact on state formation and social order, self-determination movements, war onset, and public goods provision. The desired outcome of nation-building is to achieve social order and national integration (Wimmer 2018). Nation-building, when successful, results in societies where individuals are primarily loyal to the nation. This process of national integration facilitates military recruitment, tax collection, law enforcement, public goods provision and cooperation (Bendix 1977). There are also negative aspects of this process as well including violent policies, at times chauvinistic nationalism, even cultural genocide. When nation-building is either not pursued or is unsuccessful it leads to either state collapse (through civil war and/or secessionists movements) or to weak states (Darden & Mylonas 2016). In fact, many civil wars or national schisms can be understood as national integration crises (Mavrogordatos 1983). Nation-building has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. For the purposes of this review essay, I focus on an overlooked distinction in the study of nation-building: works that focus on the onset, those studying the process, and finally the ones that try to account for the outcome: success or failure. While there is overlap between these fields, each approach is focusing on a different question. Studies of onset are preoccupied with when, where, and why does nation-building take place to begin with. Works that focus on process are exploring the alternative paths to nation-building that could or have been taken. Finally, studies concentrating on the outcome analyze the societal consequences of the various paths to nation-building. Distinguishing between onset, process and outcome allows us to avoid several methodological pitfalls when testing arguments. For instance, oftentimes a theory focusing on onset is mistakenly tested on outcomes. We should not expect arguments aiming at explaining variation in nation-building policies, i.e., focusing on process, to also explain success or failure, i.e., outcomes. Similarly, once we internalize the importance of this distinction, we can be more careful in articulating our scope conditions. For example, if a place did not ever experience nation-building efforts then it probably should not make it into the universe of cases of studies that are trying to account for outcomes of nation-building policies. This theoretical move will help scholars unearth the linkages between aspects of nation-building and important effects such as military recruitment, civil war onset, or public goods provision.

Journal of Humanities and Social Policy

Ikeh Chinyere

The concept of nationbuilding probably possesses the weirdest trajectories of interpretation in the social sciences and the associated disciplines and endevours. Purposeful research undertakings in the affected fields entail properly reconciling the associated contradictions. But it appears as if scholars have given up on arriving at a modicum of relatedness in their different perceptions of nationbuilding. Hence, extant literature seems to be devoid of researches attempting to achieve the necessary conceptual linkages. There is an embedded pedantic hue in the positions of scholars exceedingly maintaining their viewpoints as what ought to be the correct usage of the concept. Others usually approach the conceptualization of nationbuilding from its mere linguistic dimensions. What truly is the meaning of nationbuilding? This paper aims at taking a position on the constructive definition of nationbuilding. The methodology of the work is qualitative and this possesses bearing with an inevitable approach of reviewing related literature. This article considers the inherent scenarios as academically unbecoming. The paper holds unassumingly that nationbuilding means the process of weaving an indomitable new nation out of a diversity of existing national inclinations. The paper's standpoint is envisaged to provoke further researches in the area of searching for similarities among scholars' perceptions of nationbuilding.

Sociological Forum

John Torpey

Dario Navaro

My dissertation examines the impact of four key independent variables on nation-building, on the evolution of the spread and intensity of nationalism. An ethnic basis (language, culture, identity, etc.) similar to the desired end-product as well as the growth of education facilitate nation-building. In most cases, industrialization hinders nation-building. Sudden shocks (collapses of empires, wars and revolutions) change the intensity of nationalism scores significantly during very short periods.%%%%

Dejan Guzina , Catherine Goetze

Sinisa Malesevic , Tamara Pavasović Trošt

Journal of Globalization Studies

Dmitri Bondarenko

In the form the nation-state has been known until now it formed in Europe and North America in the Early Modern time and flourished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being adequate to realities of the world of industrial capitalism and cultural nationalism. However, nowadays other trends, related to superintensive globalization and post-industrialism, are dominating in the world. At present, the Western states have to depart from the classical concept of the nation and seek solutions to a completely different problem-of supporting their citizens' unity at preservation of cultural diversity brought by migrants from all over the world in recent decades. Under the current circumstances, it should not be ruled out that post-colonial states, most of which are multicultural initially due to their unique history of formation, will find themselves in an advantageous position, if they abandon attempts to build nations according to the outdated classical Western pattern. While irreversible, globalization is associated with Modernity (Modern time) started in the West half a millennium ago, nation-building in contemporary post-colonial countries shows that globalization is by no means equal to Westernization, and that Modernity as a historically-specific type of society and culture, splits into multiple modernities.

Vojin Rakic

Both the modernists and primordialists are confronted with identical manifestations of the ethnic phenomenon. Their explanations of this phenomenon, however, differ substantially and do not seem reconcilable, since a primordial phenomenon cannot have emerged for the first time with the modern human. Nevertheless, one does not have to accept the modernist position if one abandons primordialism. Some nations, namely, may have emerged in pre-modern times, but as a consequence of a particular historical moment and not as a matter of necessity. For instance, the ancient Greeks, Jews and (to a lesser degree) Romans exhibited a type of collective identity which may be called national identity (Kohn 1945) and which does not have to be a natural form of social cohesion. In that respect, modernists can justify their claims only by adopting a restrictive use of the term 'nation.' Those who do not accept such a restrictive use may allow the modernist only the minimalist and tautological statement that 'modern nations are a modern phenomenon.' The fact that similar manifestations of the ethnic phenomenon are explained by cogent, but different (sometimes conflicting) theories, often depending on the selection of cases (as a more detailed insight in the mentioned theories would reveal), might indicate that it is perhaps impossible to develop a universal theory of nation formation. This article will cautiously side with this claim on the basis of an interpretation of a number of cases of nation formation and nation assimilation in two (former) multinational and authoritarian states (the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia), which applied mechanisms of state power to manipulate ethnic processes. The fact that contemporary mechanisms of coercive state power were only in some cases successful in the direction of ethnic processes will serve as the basis for the development of a model of nation formation which seems most appropriate for the regions. This article will concentrate on Caucasia, Macedonia and Montenegro. This model, however, will not claim its universal validity. On the contrary, it is supposed to serve as an illustration of the assertion that nation formation and nationalism may be explained by different theoretical models, frequently depending on the cases they address.

Journal of Democracy

Yogendra Yadav

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Mangal Research Journal

dilip nepal

Journal of Human Sciences

Ezgi Tanrıverdi

Blen Mamo Diriba

Nirmalya Das

Ioannis Moraitis

Nation, State, Nation-State, ed. by V. Hösle, M. Sánchez Sorondo, S. Zamagni, Vatican City

Vittorio G Hosle

Juan J. Linz (1926-2013)

Betül Sinantorunu Ay

Nationalism Handbook

Current History

Aviel Roshwald

Russian Law Journal

Vladislav Tolstykh

Gabriella Elgenius

Colin Clark

Nehaluddin Ahmad

Nationalities Papers

Katie Stewart

Melisa İloğlu (Sarıçiçek)

Kliment Paskalev

Shaun Ramdas

Stokke, K. (2017). Nation-state. In N. Castree, W. Liu, M. Goodchild, R. Marston and A. Kobayashi (eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology. London and Washington D.C.: Wiley and the Association of American Geographers.

Kristian Stokke

Deepika Dhand

Ashutosh Varshney

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding

Nicolas Lemay-Hébert

UGC e-Pathshala

Chandan K U M A R Sharma

European & Balkan Perspectives (2545-4854)

Blagoj Conev

Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field We invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter .

Hyper-Polarization, COVID, Racism, and the Constructive Conflict Initiative Read about (and contribute to) the Constructive Conflict Initiative and its associated Blog —our effort to assemble what we collectively know about how to move beyond our hyperpolarized politics and start solving society's problems.

By Carolyn Stephenson

January 2005

Introduction

Nation-building is a normative concept that means different things to different people. The latest conceptualization is essentially that nation-building programs are those in which dysfunctional or unstable or "failed states" or economies are given assistance in the development of governmental infrastructure, civil society, dispute resolution mechanisms, as well as economic assistance, in order to increase stability. Nation-building generally assumes that someone or something is doing the building intentionally.

But it is important to look at the evolution of theories of nation-building and at the other concepts which it has both supplanted and included. Many people believe that nation-building is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, that is takes a long time and is a social process that cannot be jump-started from outside. The evolution of the Italian city-states into a nation, the German city-states into the Zollverein customs union and later a nation, the multiple languages and cultural groups in France into the nation of France, the development of China from the warring kingdoms, took a very long time, and were the result, not only of political leadership, but of changes in technology and economic processes (the agricultural and then industrial revolutions), as well as communication, culture and civil society, and many other factors.

In what Seymour Martin Lipset has called The First New Nation , the United States, at first 13 colonies with diverse origins, came together to form a new nation and state.[1] That state, like so many in contemporary times, faced the prospect of secession and disintegration in 1865, and it took another 100 years for the integration of black and white, North and South, East and West. This was a new type of nation-state, because its people were not all of the same ethnicity, culture, and language, as had been thought to be the case in the early defining of the concept of nation-state.

But nation-building by one nation may destroy others. In the building of the US nation and others, aboriginal nations were erased or marginalized. The Six-Nations Confederacy of the Iriquois had existed before the US nation (and was thought by some to be a model for it). Today many "First Nations" are in the process of nation re-building, re-building the social, cultural, economic and political foundations for what is left of self-governance. First nations seek to re-build cultural identities as nations in order to challenge their disintegration by others in the creation of their own states.

Association of First Nations National Chief Matthew Coon cited the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (released in 2001 by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard) proposal of a Nation Building Model of Economic Development. The project defined Nation-building as: "Equipping First Nations with the institutional foundation necessary to increase their capacity to effectively assert self-governing powers on behalf of their own economic, social and cultural objectives." [2] The study identified four core elements of a nation building model: 1) genuine self rule (First Nations making decisions about resource allocations, project funding and development strategy), 2) creating effective governing institutions (non-politicized dispute resolution mechanisms and getting rid of corruption), 3) cultural match (giving first nations institutions legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens), and the need for a strategic orientation (long-term planning).

One of the reasons for the difficulties of what many consider "failed states" is that some peoples who had been integrated were taken apart by European colonialism, while others who were separate peoples were integrated together in new states not based in common identities. Particularly in Africa and the Middle East, new political borders paid little attention to national identities in the creation of new states. Thus the notion of nation-state, a nation which developed the governmental apparatus of a state, was often nonsense. While in Europe nation-building historically preceded state-building, in post-colonial states, state-building preceded nation-building. The aftermath of colonialism led to the need for nation-building.

What IS nation-building?

A 2003 study by James Dobbins and others for the RAND Corporation defines nation-building as "the use of armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin an enduring transition to democracy."[3] Comparing seven historical cases: Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, "in which American military power has been used in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin democratization elsewhere around the world since World War II," they review the lessons learned. This definition of nation-building is substantially different than those which see nation-building as the province of people within a nation. The definition centers around the building of democratic processes, but many argue that the use of the military to bring about democracy may be inherently contradictory. Whether nation-building can be imposed from outside is one of the central questions in this field, and whether that can be done by the military is a further part of the question.

What is a nation?

To understand the concept of nation-building, one needs to have some definition of what a nation is. Early conceptions of nation defined it as a group or race of people who shared history, traditions, and culture, sometimes religion, and usually language. Thus the United Kingdom comprises four nations, the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. The people of a nation generally share a common national identity , and part of nation-building is the building of that common identity. Some distinguish between an ethnic nation, based in (the social construction of) race or ethnicity, and a civic nation, based in common identity and loyalty to a set of political ideas and institutions, and the linkage of citizenship to nationality.

Today the word nation is often used synonymously with state, as in the United Nations. But a state is more properly the governmental apparatus by which a nation rules itself. Max Weber provided the classic definition of the state:

Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that "territory" is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it.[4]

In approaching the question of nation-building, and in particular its relationship to state-building, it is important to keep in mind that this definition specifies the legitimate use of force.

The Evolution of Nation-Building Theory

The term nation-building is often used simultaneously with state-building, democratization , modernization, political development, post-conflict reconstruction , and peacebuilding . But each concept is different, though their evolution is intertwined. The concept of nation-building came to be used especially among American political scientists a decade or so after World War II, to describe the greater integration of state and society, as citizenship brought loyalty to the modern nation-state with it. Reinhard Bendix focused on the expansion of citizenship and of rights to political participation. [5] Karl Deutsch focused on the role of social communication and national integration in nation-building in Western societies.[6] Others began to apply it to non-Western societies as well.

Almond and Coleman argued for the functional approach to understand and compare the political systems of developing countries.[7] They argued for the interdependence and multi-functionality of political structures, and argued especially that the input functions of political systems could help to distinguish stages of political development. They defined input functions as: 1) political socialization and recruitment, 2) interest articulation, 3) interest aggregation, and 4) political communication. Output functions were: 5) rule-making, 6) rule application, and 7) rule adjudication. [8] Most nation-building after the end of the Cold War seems to focus more on the output functions.

Lucian Pye linked modernization with Westernization and "the diffusion of a world culture," what we might today call globalization .[9] He identified political development with:

.A world culture based on advanced technology and the spirit of science, on a rational view of life, a secular approach to social relations, a feeling for justice in public affairs, and, above all else, on the acceptance in the political realm that the prime unit of the polity should be the nation-state.[10]

Pye identified multiple meanings of political development, among them:

as prerequisite to economic development,
as politics typical of industrial societies,
as political modernization,
as administrative and legal development,
as mass mobilization and participation ,
as the building of democracy , and
as stability and orderly change.

He identifies equality as one of the basic themes running through all of these.[11] While nation-building after 9/11 still incorporates many of these meanings of political development, equality does not seem to play a major role in practice.

Dudley Seers, in his presidential address to the Society for International Development in 1969, presaged what has become the concept of human development . He said:

The questions to ask about a country's development are therefore: what has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? What has been happening to inequality? If all these have declined from high levels, then beyond doubt this has been a period of development....[12]

In the 1990s the UN Development Program brought out the Human Development Report and the Human Development Index to focus on those aspects of development other than economic, including in the index both health and education. Many UN programs, as well as NGO efforts, focus on these aspects, and the World Bank has begun to focus on poverty, but to date there seems no effort by the US in either Afghanistan or Iraq to include poverty, unemployment, or inequality in nation-building efforts.

Almond and Verba in 1963 introduced the concept of The Civic Culture to the development literature. The civic culture, which combines tradition and modernity, is one of the processes that sustain democracy. Almond and Verba defined as part of this civic culture the obligation to participate and the sense of civic competence and cooperation. They also noted the importance of the role of education in the development of a civic culture.[13] Alexis de Toqueville had noted the importance of associations in sustaining Democracy in America at its earliest stages.[14] Robert Putnam, in exploring the civil traditions in modern Italy that make democracy work, includes in his notion of the civic community: civic engagement, political equality, and solidarity, trust , and tolerance , in addition to associations.[15] He finds the presence of choral societies in Italy, bowling leagues in the US, and other associations, to be important, but in Bowling Alone , finds such associations to be reducing in the US today.

The importance of civil society also became clear as a factor in the movement from authoritarianism toward democracy in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War. The role of civil society received much support in early nation-building/democratization efforts in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but has drastically declined since then. This notion of the importance of civil society as an underpinning to democratic nation-building seems to be given lip-service in current efforts, but in reality it is not seen as significant by nation-builders if one measures this by any spending measure.

If nation-building in the 20th century is to be successful, it may want to return to look at some of its early theorists. The importance of democratic values, of the civic culture and civil society that develop and sustain them, the importance of increasing social, political, and economic equality, and of human development, rather than just economic development or state-building, are key in any successful strategy for long-term democratic nation-building. Nation-building is more than just state-building. To be a sustainable force for peacebuilding, it must incorporate more than just the Western appendages of democracy. Voting systems and free market development and increasing the GNP per capita are not likely to bring stable peace .

Why does nation-building matter?

Nation-building matters to intractable conflict because of the theory that a strong state is necessary in order to provide security , that the building of an integrated national community is important in the building of a state, and that there may be social and economic prerequisites or co-requisites to the building of an integrated national community.

Further, when nation-building implies democratization, there is the further hypothesis known as the democratic peace hypothesis. Originally explicated by Immanuel Kant in the 17th century, the democratic peace hypothesis says that perpetual peace can be achieved by developing a federation or league of free republican nations. Representative democracies, organized in an international organization, would bring peace. Political scientists who have explored this hypothesis have focused on one of two versions: democracies don't make war against each other, or democracies don't initiate war at all. There is certainly evidence of the former, and some evidence of the latter.

The other side of the coin is that nation-building may sometimes be simply another name for external intervention and the extension of empires. If it can be said that failed states are the cause of national, regional, or world security problems, or that human rights abuses are so extensive that the need to overcome them in turn overcomes the traditional sovereignty rights of states under international law , then intervention in the name of nation-building can be seen to be justified. Sometimes nation-building may simply be used as a justification for the expansion of imperial control. So nation-building matters, but what is meant by nation-building matters even more.

What can be done?

The first major question that needs to be asked is whether nation-building should be done at all. In the context of intractable conflict, is nation-building an appropriate method of providing stable peace and a secure community, which can meet the needs of the people within it? There are mixed conclusions here. The democratic peace hypothesis argues that democratic states do not initiate wars, or alternatively, in its more limited version, do not initiate wars against each other. Immanuel Kant's original statement of the hypothesis in his essay on Perpetual Peace in the 17th century argued both for the necessity of republican (or representative democracy) governments, and for their participation in a league of peace, or federation of free nations.[16] This would mean that the simple creation of democratic nations would not be enough; peace would require also the creation of some sort of international governance and international law.

There is disagreement among current theorists of nation-building as to the relationships between the development of a free market economy and the development of democratic participation, as well as over the necessity of building a civil society as a prerequisite for the development of state institutions for democratic participation. Different theories of nation-building emphasize different parts of the arguments. Different versions of nation-building benefit different groups. Some appear to benefit more the outside countries, and/or the international governmental and nongovernmental organizations which are involved. Some benefit elites in the nation being built or rebuilt. Some spread benefits widely in the society; some do not.

Nation-building that will be likely to contribute to stable international peace will need to emphasize the democratic participation of people within the nation to demand rights . It will need to build the society, economy, and polity which will meet the basic needs of the people, so that they are not driven by poverty, inequality, unemployment, on the one hand, or by a desire to compete for resources and power either internally or in the international system. This does means not only producing the formal institutions of democracy, but the underlying culture which recognizes respect for the identities and needs of others both within and outside. It means development of human rights -- political, civil, economic and social, and the rule of law. But it also means development of sewer systems, and roads, and jobs. Perhaps most important, it means the development of education . Nation-building must allow the participation of civil society , and develop democratic state institutions that promote welfare. Democratic state-building is an important part of that. This is a multi-faceted process that will proceed differently in each local context.

WHO? Military or Civilian?

The second major question in what can be done about nation-building is the question (if it should be done) of who should do it, and who CAN effectively do it. The literature is divided over these issues. Clearly the US leadership of the years 2001-4 believes that nation-building in Iraq is primarily the province of the US military. It has shut out even much of the US State Department in this effort, let alone other countries, let alone Iraqis themselves. But the US military itself remains divided on the issue of whether the military should be involved in peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and nation-building. Some argue that this is not the function of the military; it is to exert force, or as retired Colonel Fred Peck announced in an NPR interview October 22, 2001: "Our job is to kill people and smash things." Some argue that this would weaken the military and make them less capable of doing their primary task of defending US national interests. Some argue that the institution that projects force cannot at the same time build peace or build a nation. The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command's "Mission Statement and Commander's Intent" says that it develops competent and adaptive leaders ..., imbu[ing] the qualities and skills necessary to dominate across the spectrum of conflict."[17] Is it possible to dominate across the spectrum of conflict at the same time as helping to build a nation?[18]

There are others in and out of the US military who argue for a kinder, gentler military, and argue that military training needs to be changed to reflect these new tasks. In a 2003 article in The Atlantic Monthly , Robert Kaplan [19] laid out 10 rules for "Managing the World." The first rule: "Produce More Joppolos," refers to Major Victor Joppolo, from John Hersey's novel, A Bell for Adano .[20] Kaplan argues that Joppolo, a US civil affairs officer who became the post-WWII military mayor of Adano, and worked to settle internal disputes, return fishermen to the sea, and find a replacement for the bell Mussolini had melted down for arms, can be a model for soldiers in military occupations and peacemaking operations. US Army Lt. Colonel Patrick Donohoe argues that the Army must prepare leaders for nation building, by providing training in "culture; basic law and civics; city planning and public administration; economics; and ethics," as well as language, and "how a free, democratic government is supposed to work."[21] He argues that ethics training must include knowledge of the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Armed Conflict. While all of these may be important, one is still left with the question of whether the military is the best institution for nation-building.

WHO? The US? or the UN?

Another question is whether an outside country can build a nation in another country. Is nation-building more effectively done by a single country, by the UN or UN-related organizations, by regional organizations, or by some combination of these? Michael Ignatieff, in a cogent article critiquing "nation-building lite" in Afghanistan, prior to the start of the second Iraq war, argues for "imperial nation-building," for the importance of sufficient US application of force and sufficient and much larger application of dollars in development aid to make a difference in a critical period. He acknowledges this as imperialism, arguing that "nation-building is the kind of imperialism you get in a human rights era, a time when great powers believe simultaneously in the right of small nations to govern themselves and in their own right to rule the world."[22] He argues that Afghans "understand the difficult truth that their best hope of freedom lies in a temporary experience of imperial rule."

The 2003 RAND study by James Dobbins and others reviews the lessons learned in US nation-building efforts. Comparing seven historical cases: Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, "in which American military power has been used in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin democratization elsewhere around the world since World War II,"[23]

Dobbins and colleagues come to the following conclusions:

and time-consuming than a unilateral approach. But the multilateral approach is considerably less expensive for individual participants.
and greater regional than can unilateral efforts.

Source: , by James Dobbins, et al., RAND, 2003.

Dobbins and colleagues recognize the advantages of a multilateral approach, arguing that while it is more complex and time-consuming, it is less expensive for any one participant and, more important, is better at producing both transformation and regional reconciliation. They also recognize the important role of neighboring countries. They make no mention of the US attempt to win hearts and minds in Vietnam.

The United Nations has participated in nation-building efforts both through the Security Council's authorization of peacekeeping missions involving primarily military, but also civilian and police participants as well. Among these have been Cambodia, Angola, and Bosnia in the early 1990s, and Kosovo and East Timor. Some have been more, some less, successful. It has also participated in development and human rights efforts completely aside from peacekeeping. Efforts range from those of UNICEF in fostering children's rights, to the UN Development Program in providing human development aid , to the Ad Hoc Criminal Tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, to the World Food Program, to UNESCO's Education for All program. These are also an important component of nation-building. Economic, social, and political development, and institutions which protect human rights and provide for the rule of law, are important not only to post-conflict peacebuilding , but to nation-building at any stage of development or any stage of conflict . And it may well be that the international legitimacy that can be provided by a global institution may be better for nation-building than efforts by any single country, or a regional organization, or a "coalition of the willing." Accusations of "imperial nation-building" are reduced when there is greater international consensus.

But Donini, Niland and Wermester question whether Western approaches, military and technological, can foster just outcomes, whether through individual countries efforts or through UN agencies. They raise questions of how UN agencies and international NGOs interact with national and local communities in the process of providing aid for political reconstruction and human rights development. Can nation-building really come from outside at all? It may be necessary to go back to the debates over the definition and purposes of nation-building to answer that question.

WHO? IGOs , States or NGOs ?

NGOs and state development agencies have also played important roles in nation-building projects. Mary Anderson has argued that foreign development aid has often fostered the propensity for greater conflict rather than reducing it. She urges that state development agencies first be certain to "do no harm."[24] As states began both to realize the costs of development aid, both financial and otherwise, NGOs became increasingly involved. Supposedly NGOs, with smaller budgets and staffs, could have a greater likelihood of actually reaching the needs of people. But both IGOs and NGOs have now become big business, and many now have the same disadvantages of states.

The issue is not so much which agency, but how the agency functions. Does it simply throw money at the problem? Does it exacerbate tensions by providing money or projects unevenly across ethnic groups or regions in such a way as to generate competition or, worse, security fears? Is its presence so big that it overwhelms the local or national governing structures it is trying to nurture? Is it culturally knowledgeable and sensitive? If one of the components of nation-building is to nurture the further development of civil society, how does an outside organization interact with civil society? This brings us to our final question: can nation-building be done by external actors, or is it only effective when done by those whose nation is being built?

WHO? Indigenous or exogenous actors?

Nation-building is an evolutionary process. It takes a long time. One of the problems with outside actors is that they come and they go. While it may be considered useful for an outside military occupation or peacekeeping force to provide the temporary stability and security necessary in order to allow the process of nation-building to proceed, the question of whether this is the best method remains. If a military stays too short a time, expectations of a dependable peace for the foreseeable future may not develop, and thus people will be unlikely to invest in the future. If, on the other hand, a military stays too long, people will rely on the security provided by outsiders and fail to develop their own institutions for providing it.

The same questions may be asked about outside civilian actors, whether a single state, a regional organization, a global organization, or an NGO. While a significant influx of resources may be necessary, especially in the period immediately following a violent conflict, the right amount, the right methods, and the right length of time are critical. In general, it appears that nation-building is best left in the hands of those whose nation it is or will be, and that outside organizations support, rather than direct, nation-building.

The nation-builders to bet on are those refugee families piled onto the brightly painted Pakistani trucks moving up the dusty roads, the children perched on the mattresses, like Mowgli astride the head of an elephant, gazing toward home.The nation-builders to invest in are the teachers, especially the women who taught girls in secret during the Taliban years. I met one in an open-air school right in the middle of Kabul's most destroyed neighborhood. She wrote her name in a firm, bold hand in my notebook, and she knew exactly what she needed: chalk, blackboards, desks, a roof and, God willing, a generation of peace. At her feet, on squares of U.N.H.C.R. sheeting, sat her class, 20 upturned faces, all female, having the first reading lesson of their lives.

-- Michael Ignatieff. "Nation-Building Lite," New York Times Magazine, 28 July 2002.

Arguing for the importance of indigenous nation-building does not mean that outside actors should ignore the process. If an outside military is to be involved, it must be funded and supplied sufficiently so that it can bring order and security following conflict. Or it must stay out. Similarly, if there is to be outside civilian involvement, whether state-based, IGO or NGO, it must also have sufficient funding and technical skills in order to provide what is needed and to stay the course. Arguing for the indignity of the process should not be an excuse for exiting the process where there is need for outside help.

[1] Lipset, Seymour M.(1979). The First New Nation .W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.

[2] Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Available online at http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/hpaied/res-main.htm . Accessed Feb 9, 2005.

[3] Dobbins, James. (2003). "Nation-Building: the Inescapable Responsibility of the World's Only Superpower." RAND Review, Summer 2003.

[4] Weber, Max. "Politics as a Vocation," in Gerth and Mills. From Max Weber. New York, 1946. 48.

[5] Reinhard Bendix, Nationbuilding and Citizenship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

[6] Karl Deutsch, "Nation-Building and National Development: Some Issues for Political Research," in Karl Deutsch and William Foltz, eds., Nationbuilding (New York: Atherton, 1963) 7-8.

[7] Almond, Gabriel A. and James S. Coleman (eds.) The Politics of the Developing Areas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960.

[8] Ibid, p 17.

[9] Pye, Lucian W. Aspects of Political Development. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

[10] Ibid, p. 9

[11] Ibid, pp. 33-45

[12] SeErs, Dudley, "The Meaning of Development," in Uphoff, Norman T. and Warren F. Ilchman (eds.). The Political Economy of Development. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. p. 124.

[13] Almond, Gabriel A. and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963, pp. 315-324.

[14] Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America . Hardcover ed. New York: Signet Books, 2001.

[15] Putnam, Robert D. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 86-91.

[16] Kant, Immanuel. Perpetual Peace, and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals. Hacket Publishing Company, 1983.

[17] As cited in Donohoe, "Preparing Leaders for Nationbuilding"Military Review. http://www.Leavenworth.army.mil/milrev/download/English/MayJun04/don.pdf

[18] Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Mission Statement and Commander's Intent," on-line at http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/regs/r870-1.pdf , accessed 16 April 2004.

[19] Robert Kaplan, "Supremacy by Stealth," The Atlantic Monthly (July-August 2003): 65.

[20] John Hersey, A Bell for Adano. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1944.

[21] Donohoe, Patrick. "Preparing Leaders for Nationbuilding"Military Review. http://www.Leavenworth.army.mil/milrev/download/English/MayJun04/don.pdf

[22] Michael Ignatieff. "Nation-Building Lite," New York Times Magazine, 28 July 2002.

[23] Dobbins, James. (2003). "Nation-Building: the Inescapable Responsibility of the World's Only Superpower." RAND Review, Summer 2003.

[24] Anderson, Mary. "Do No Harm." Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999.

Use the following to cite this article: Stephenson, Carolyn . "Nation Building." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: January 2005 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/nation-building >.

Additional Resources

The intractable conflict challenge.

Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts. More...

Selected Recent BI Posts Including Hyper-Polarization Posts

Guy and Heidi Burgess Talk with David Eisner about Threats to Democracy and How to Address Them -- The Burgesses talked with David Eisner about what he thinks the threats to democracy are, and how (and when) we might respond to them. We agreed, citizen involvement in governance is key.
Updating Our Impartiality Discussions - Part 1 -- The Burgesses update their 2-year old discussion of impartiality, adding to it Martin Carcasson's notion of "principled impartiality" which adds in quality information and "small-d" democracy.
Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of September 1, 2024 -- More in our regular set of links from readers, about colleague's activities, and from outside news and opinion sources.

Get the Newsletter Check Out Our Quick Start Guide

Educators Consider a low-cost BI-based custom text .

Constructive Conflict Initiative

Join Us in calling for a dramatic expansion of efforts to limit the destructiveness of intractable conflict.

Things You Can Do to Help Ideas

Practical things we can all do to limit the destructive conflicts threatening our future.

Conflict Frontiers

A free, open, online seminar exploring new approaches for addressing difficult and intractable conflicts. Major topic areas include:

Scale, Complexity, & Intractability

Massively Parallel Peacebuilding

Authoritarian Populism

Constructive Confrontation

Conflict Fundamentals

An look at to the fundamental building blocks of the peace and conflict field covering both “tractable” and intractable conflict.

Beyond Intractability / CRInfo Knowledge Base

Home / Browse | Essays | Search | About

BI in Context

Links to thought-provoking articles exploring the larger, societal dimension of intractability.

Colleague Activities

Information about interesting conflict and peacebuilding efforts.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Beyond Intractability or the Conflict Information Consortium.

Beyond Intractability

Unless otherwise noted on individual pages, all content is... Copyright © 2003-2022 The Beyond Intractability Project c/o the Conflict Information Consortium All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced without prior written permission.

Guidelines for Using Beyond Intractability resources.

Citing Beyond Intractability resources.

Photo Credits for Homepage, Sidebars, and Landing Pages

Contact Beyond Intractability Privacy Policy The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess , Co-Directors and Editors c/o Conflict Information Consortium Mailing Address: Beyond Intractability, #1188, 1601 29th St. Suite 1292, Boulder CO 80301, USA Contact Form

production_1

Essay on Role of Youths in Nation Building for Students and Children

500 words essay on role of youths in nation building.

It is a well-known fact that the youth of any country is a great asset. They are indeed the future of the country and represent it at every level. The role of youths in nation-building is more important than you might think. In other words, the intelligence and work of the youth will take the country on the pathway of success. As every citizen is equally responsible, the youth is too. They are the building blocks of a country.

Role of Youth

The youth is important because they will be our future. Today they might be our partners, tomorrow they will go on to become leaders. The youths are very energetic and enthusiastic. They have the ability to learn and adapt to the environment . Similarly, they are willing to learn and act on it as well to achieve their goals.

Our youth can bring social reform and improvement in society. We cannot make do without the youth of a country. Furthermore, the nation requires their participation to achieve the goals and help in taking the country towards progress.

Likewise, we see how the development of any country requires active participation from the youth. It does not matter which field we want to progress in, whether it is the technical field or sports field, youth is needed. It is up to us how to help the youth in playing this role properly. We must make all the youth aware of their power and the role they have to play in nation-building.

Ways to Help the Youth

There are many ways in which we can help the youth of our country to achieve their potential. For that, the government must introduce programs that will help in fighting off issues like unemployment, poor education institutes and more to help them prosper without any hindrance.

Similarly, citizens must make sure to encourage our youth to do better in every field. When we constantly discourage our youth and don’t believe in them, they will lose their spark. We all must make sure that they should be given the wind beneath their wings to fly high instead of bringing them down by tying chains to their wings.

Furthermore, equal opportunities must be provided for all irrespective of caste, creed, gender , race, religion and more. There are various issues of nepotism and favoritism that is eating away the actual talent of the country. This must be done away with as soon as possible. We must make sure that every youth has the chance to prove themselves worthy and that must be offered equally to all.

In short, our youth has the power to build a nation so we must give them the opportunity. They are the future and they have the perspective which the older generations lack. Their zeal and enthusiasm must be channelized properly to help a nation prosper and flourish.

FAQ on Essay on Role of Youths in Nation Building

Q.1 What role does youth play in nation-building?

A.1 The youth plays a great role in nation-building. It has the power to help a country develop and move towards progress. It also is responsible for bringing social reform within a country. The youth of a country determine the future of a nation.

Q.2 How can we help youth?

A.2 As well all know youth is facing too many problems nowadays. We need to give them equal opportunities in every field so they can succeed well. They must be given all the facilities and also encouraged to take the challenge to achieve success.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

Travelling Essay
Picnic Essay
Our Country Essay
My Parents Essay
Essay on Favourite Personality
Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
Essay on Knowledge is Power
Essay on Gurpurab
Essay on My Favourite Season
Essay on Types of Sports

Download the App

IMAGES

Nation Building and Nationalism Essay Example
Definition and History of Nationalism Argumentative Essay on Samploon.com
Life: Nationalism and Peace Building Essay Example
Nationalism Essay
essay on nationalism in english/10 lines on nationalism in english/nationalism essay
essay on nationalism in english/paragraph on nationalism in english/राष्ट्रवाद पर निबंध

VIDEO

essay on nationalism in english/10 lines on nationalism in english/nationalism essay
Alberta Social Studies A2 Brainstorming
Essay on Nationalism
National Unity,Nation and Nationalism by Jaiprakash Narayan,Class XI,Bihar Board English
The Story of Giuseppe Mazzini in 4 minutes!
Masculine Identities are Emerging

COMMENTS

Nation-building Process: [Essay Example], 2315 words
The process of nation-building is an effort to develop the spirit of patriotism and solidarity to create a country whose people share a common identity. The major aim is to foster national unity by developing a new nation and an integrated race (Hippler, 2002:1-3). In Malaysia, the idea of establishing a nation was initiated before Malayan ...
Nation-building
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of ... For a discussion of the definitional issues, see state-building, Carolyn Stephenson's essay, [20] and the papers by ... "The nation-building process in nineteenth-century Spain." in Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula (Routledge, 2020) pp ...
Nation-Building
Nation-building, when successful, results in societies where individuals are primarily loyal to the nation. This process of national integration facilitates military recruitment, tax collection, law enforcement, public goods provision and cooperation (Bendix 1977). There are also negative aspects of this process as well including violent ...
PDF Nation-Building, Nationalism and Wars
Nation-Building, Nationalism and Wars 2 This paper examines nation-building in times of war. Mass warfare favored the transfor-mation from the ancient regimes (based purely on rent extraction) to modern nation states in two ways. First, the state became a provider of mass public goods in order to buy the support of the population.
PDF Nation-building
10Recently, state-building and nation-building have sometimes been used interchangeably. However, state-building generally refers to the construction of state institutions for a functioning state, while nation-building the construction of a national identity, also for a functioning state.
PDF Nations, Nation-Building, and Cultural Intervention: A Social Science
1. The Nation as an Idea 2. Nation-Building: A Usable Past and its Creators 3. Factors of Successful Nation-Building a. Nationalism and Democracy b. Elite Consensus c. Symbolic Institutions III. Nation-Building as Cultural Intervention IV. Conclusions I. Introduction Nation-building has been one of the buzz words in the current debate
Nationalism: What We Know and What We Still Need to Know
For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism Oxford, UK: Clarendon [Google Scholar] vom Hau M. 2009. Unpacking the school: textbooks, teachers, and the construction of nationhood in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. ... Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. ...
Nation-Building
Nation-building may be defined as the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent. The desired outcome is to achieve national integration ( Reference Works: Concepts and Definitions ). The major divide in the literature centers on the causal path that leads to national integration.
PDF Nation-Building, Nationalism, and Wars
Alesina et al. (2017) consider nation-building but do not consider wars. They focus on the incentive to \nation-build" as a response to democratization. The interplay between democratization and external threats may exacerbate the need to nation-build and is left for future research. A number of papers study the relationship between war and the ...
The politics of recognition: symbols, nation building and rival
The celebrations of the constitution in Norway - and the 77 year struggle to get the Norwegian flag officially recognised - became part of resisting the enforced union with Sweden (1814-1905). Therefore, the growth of Norwegian nationalism must be understood in the context of rival nationalisms in Scandinavia.
Understanding the Constructive and Destructive Natures of Nationalism
Extreme nationalism (hyper-patriotism): Aggressively advancing one country's or nation's interests can have consequences that reverberate around the world. Such strident nationalism precipitated World War I. Shortly thereafter, the world witnessed perhaps the most dramatic example of extreme nationalism fueling global disorder: Nazi Germany.
Demystifying the Nation and Nationalism
nation has been interpreted in five different ways, in the different phases of its history. Hence, nation has variously been seen to mean: (1) a group of foreigners, (2) a community of opinion, (3) an elite, (4) a. sovereign people, and (5) a unique people.2. The nation as a community of citizens, that is a political entity, is the creation of ...
2 Forging Identities: The Politics and Ethics of Nation‐building
There are two closely related (and interrelated) ways of articulating the basic desires and projects of nationalists: in terms of self‐determination of the nation in question, and in terms of nation‐building or literally the attempt to determine the 'self' of the nation. Put another way, these are two basic nationalist ambitions that are sometimes, but not always, pursued together.
The consequences of nationalism: A scholarly exchange
The main thrust of the scholarship on nationalism has so far been concerned with its origins. But nationalism also has effects. Whether it underpins the nation-building efforts of states, is mobilised by counter-state forces or is used in everyday life, nationalism might implicate a wide range of substantive outcomes, including political regimes, public goods provision, citizenship and ...
PDF The Concept of Nationbuilding: Theoretical Expositions
Keywords: Nationbuilding, State building, Nationalism, Concept of nationbuilding, Building a nation Introduction . Journal of Humanities and Social Policy E-ISSN 2545-5729 P-ISSN 2695 2416 Vol 8. No. 1 2022 www.iiardjournals.org ... ―nation-building is the intervention in the affairs of a nation-state for the purpose of changing the state's ...
(PDF) The Essence of Nationalism and Patriotism in Nation Building
A Presentation on the Concept of Nationalism and Patriotism in Nation Building at the POSA-HISOK and Social Science Society Symposium at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, 13th ...
(PDF) Nation-Building
Harris Mylonas. 2020. Nation-building may be defined as the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent.The desired outcome is to achieve national integration (Reference Works: Concepts and Definitions). The major divide in the literature centers on the causal path that leads to ...
Between "imagined" and "real" nation-building: identities and
Framing nationhood and identities in post-Soviet Central Asia. Work on nation-building and identities in Central Asia has typically been framed using Rogers Brubaker's concept of "nationalizing states" (Brubaker Citation 1996).A "nationalizing state" is viewed in ethno-cultural terms whereby the titular national majority seeks to reinforce and promote its national identity upon the ...
Nation Building
By Carolyn Stephenson January 2005 Introduction Nation-building is a normative concept that means different things to different people. The latest conceptualization is essentially that nation-building programs are those in which dysfunctional or unstable or "failed states" or economies are given assistance in the development of governmental infrastructure, civil society, dispute resolution ...
PDF Nation-Building, Nationalism, and Wars
Alesina et al (2017) consider nation-building but do not consider wars. They focus on the incentive to \nation-build" as a response to democratization. The interplay between democratization and external threats may exacerbate the need to nation-build and is left for future research. A number of papers study the relationship between war and the ...
PDF Nation Building in Africa: Post-colonial Experiences and Lessons From
nation building by highlighting some of its potential pitfalls before some concluding remarks on a possible nation building project we should aspire to as Africans are posited. 1.1.2 Nation Building: A Conceptual Framework Nation building is a normative concept that can have divergent meanings in different contexts. It
Nationalism Essay for Students and Children
500 Words Essay on Nationalism. Nationalism is an ideology which shows an individual's love & devotion towards his nation. It is actually people's feelings for their nation as superior to all other nations. The concept of nationalism in India developed at the time of the Independence movement.
Essay on Role of Youths in Nation Building for Students
Q.1 What role does youth play in nation-building? A.1 The youth plays a great role in nation-building. It has the power to help a country develop and move towards progress. It also is responsible for bringing social reform within a country. The youth of a country determine the future of a nation.

Nation-building Process

Table of contents

Competition in International Markets

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Still can’t find what you need?

Related Topics

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

Harris Mylonas 2021

Recently Published

Annual Review of Political Science

Most Read This Month

International Relations

How to Subscribe

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Nation-Building

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

Other Subject Areas

Nation-Building by Harris Mylonas LAST REVIEWED: 24 September 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 24 September 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0217

Understanding the Constructive and Destructive Natures of Nationalism

When is nationalism positive?

When is nationalism negative?

Nationalism in a Global Era

Sign in through your institution

2 2 Forging Identities: The Politics and Ethics of Nation‐building

Personal account

Institutional access

IP based access

Society Members

Sign in through society site

Sign in using a personal account

Viewing your signed in accounts

Signed in but can't access content

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Nation-Building

Related Papers

RELATED PAPERS

RELATED TOPICS

Beyond Intractability

Introduction

What IS nation-building?

What is a nation?

The Evolution of Nation-Building Theory

Why does nation-building matter?

What can be done?

WHO? Military or Civilian?

WHO? The US? or the UN?

WHO? IGOs , States or NGOs ?

WHO? Indigenous or exogenous actors?

Additional Resources

Selected Recent BI Posts Including Hyper-Polarization Posts

Things You Can Do to Help Ideas

Conflict Frontiers

Conflict Fundamentals

BI in Context

Colleague Activities

Essay on Role of Youths in Nation Building for Students and Children

Role of Youth

Ways to Help the Youth

FAQ on Essay on Role of Youths in Nation Building

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Download the App

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS