The Logic of the State in (Re)Building a Nation: When Do States Change Their Policies Toward Ethnicity and Nationhood?

Abstract

The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities. By Harris Mylonas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 248 pp., $29.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1-107-66199-8). The formation of nation-states and the process of nation-building in different cultural and historical settings have received considerable attention within studies of nationalism. However, while macro-historical accounts explain the emergence and spread of nation-building projects across different cases, variations and shifts in nation-building policies within and across different cases need further theorization. In other words, the question of why some political elites pursue policies of assimilation while others choose accommodation or exclusion (and under what conditions the same political elites would change from one policy option to another) has been understudied. In The Politics of Nation-Building , Harris Mylonas attempts to build a new and insightful theoretical framework that explains such questions by studying the post-Ottoman Balkan States after World War I. In his theoretical approach, Mylonas builds upon the existing literature on nation-building by combining insights from comparative politics and international relations. His causal mechanism focuses on the interstate relations and foreign policy goals of the political elites, which explain the variation of nation-building policies in domestic politics. In the preface of the book, after explaining his motivation for the study of nation-building policies and …