Key Takeaways
1. The Nation-State's Rise: A Global Transformation
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, such empires covered about half of the world’s surface, while dynastic kingdoms, tribal confederacies, city-states, and so forth, made up most of the rest, as Figure 1.1 shows.
A world transformed. Over the past two centuries, the global political landscape has undergone a monumental shift, moving from a diverse array of multiethnic empires, dynastic kingdoms, and tribal confederacies to a world dominated by nation-states. This transformation is not merely a change in nomenclature but a fundamental reordering of political legitimacy and identity. Today, the globe is largely divided into sovereign states, each theoretically representing a nation bound by shared history and culture, a map that now seems as natural as continents and rivers.
The rise of ethno-nationalist conflict. This reordering has profoundly impacted the nature of warfare. At the dawn of the 19th century, only about a quarter of all wars were ethno-nationalist; the rest were fought over dynastic succession, territorial conquest, or balance of power. By the end of the 20th century, however, over three-quarters of all full-scale wars were driven by ethno-nationalist aspirations, either to establish separate nation-states or to contest the ethnic balance of power within existing ones. This dramatic increase underscores the deep connection between the rise of the nation-state and modern conflict.
Beyond Western Europe. While much scholarship focuses on the emergence of strong, centralized states in Western Europe, this book extends that narrative globally and into the modern era. It argues that the shift from empire to nation-state was both a cause and consequence of new waves of war, reaching Latin America in the early 19th century and the Soviet Union by the late 20th century. This global perspective challenges "European provincialism" in historical analysis, giving equal weight to all regions in understanding this universal phenomenon.
2. Nationalism: A New Principle of Legitimacy
Nationalism demands that rulers and ruled hail from the same ethnic background.
A new social contract. Nationalism emerged as a revolutionary principle of legitimacy, fundamentally altering the relationship between rulers and the ruled. Unlike previous systems where authority derived from divine right, dynastic lineage, or imperial conquest, nationalism posited that political power should be vested in "the people" – a nation defined by shared ethnic background and culture. This ideal of "like-over-like" fostered a new compact: political participation and public goods in exchange for taxation and military support from the populace.
Power and legitimacy intertwined. The first nation-states, such as Great Britain, the United States, and France, gained significant military and political advantages from this new compact. Their populations, feeling a sense of shared identity and receiving more favorable exchange relationships with their rulers, granted these states greater legitimacy and loyalty. This made them more powerful than traditional dynastic kingdoms or multiethnic empires, inspiring ambitious leaders worldwide to adopt this successful model.
The ideological framework. The idea of the nation as an extended family, united by political loyalty and shared identity, provided the ideological justification for this new arrangement. It delegitimized existing ethnic hierarchies within empires, reframing them as "alien rule" and fueling movements for self-determination. This ideological shift was crucial, transforming previously accepted forms of governance into targets for nationalist challenge and laying the groundwork for future conflicts.
3. The Birth of Nations: A Negotiated Accomplishment
Neither ideological imposition “from above” nor popular sentiment rising from “the bottom up,” Chapter 2 will argue, ethnic group formation and nation building are best seen as negotiated accomplishments involving both elites and masses.
Beyond elite manipulation or popular sentiment. The formation of national communities is not solely the result of elites imposing ideologies or masses spontaneously developing shared sentiments. Instead, it's a dynamic, interactive process of negotiation between state elites and the broader population, driven by mutual interests and resource exchange. This "negotiated accomplishment" determines whether political alliances and collective identities coalesce along national lines or fragment into ethnic divisions.
Resource exchange and civil society. The nature of this negotiation hinges on two key factors:
- State centralization: The degree to which dominant elites monopolize political decision-making, taxation, and public goods provision.
- Mass mobilization: The extent of popular engagement in central politics and military support.
- Voluntary organizations: The strength of civil society networks, which can foster cross-ethnic alliances.
In highly centralized states with robust civil societies, elites can offer sufficient public goods and political participation to make nationhood attractive to all, leading to encompassing alliances and nation-building.
Divergent paths: France vs. Ottoman Empire. The model illustrates two distinct outcomes:
- Nation-building (e.g., France): High state centralization and strong civil society led state elites to ally with the masses across existing divides, fostering a shared national identity.
- Ethnic closure (e.g., Ottoman Empire): Weaker state centralization and underdeveloped civil society meant elites could only offer limited public goods, leading to alliances along ethnic lines and the politicization of ethnic divisions.
This demonstrates that political modernization can lead to different equilibrium outcomes depending on specific resource distributions and the strength of civil society.
4. Global Spread: Power Shifts, Not Just Modernization
The nation-state form was not universally adopted because one society after the other gradually ripened enough – as theories of modernization would have it – to finally fall as fully blossomed nations onto the garden of the inter-“national” community.
Beyond linear progression. The global proliferation of the nation-state model was not a uniform process of societies "ripening" through economic, political, or cultural modernization. Instead, it was primarily driven by shifts in the balance of power between nationalist movements and existing regimes, coupled with processes of imitation and diffusion. Early nation-states, militarily and politically superior, became attractive models for ambitious leaders worldwide, who sought to "pirate" this successful institutional template.
Power configurations as catalysts. Nation-states emerged wherever the power configuration favored nationalists. This occurred when:
- Nationalist mobilization: Nationalists had ample time to organize, propagate their ideology, and delegitimize "alien rule."
- Weakened old regimes: Existing imperial or dynastic powers were weakened by wars or possessed limited global military and economic standing.
- Diffusion effects: The creation of nation-states in neighboring territories or within the same empire provided models and new alliance partners, further empowering local nationalists.
These factors, rather than internal modernization, were the decisive triggers for nation-state creation across the globe.
Decentralized contagion. Contrary to theories positing a coercive "world polity" imposing the nation-state model, its spread resembled a decentralized contagion process. Local and regional power shifts, driven by imitation and competition, accumulated to produce a global outcome. This suggests that the nation-state's global legitimacy emerged from its widespread adoption, rather than being a precondition for it. The process was less about a universal blueprint and more about opportunistic adaptation within specific power dynamics.
5. Nation-State Formation: A Major Source of Modern War
The shift from empire, dynasticism, or theocracy to national principles of legitimizing political power is a major source of war in the modern era.
Institutional transformation as a root cause. The transition from multiethnic empires and dynastic kingdoms to nation-states is a fundamental, yet often overlooked, cause of both civil and inter-state wars over the past two centuries. This perspective challenges traditional international relations theories that focus on power distribution or internal decision-making, arguing instead that changes in the very nature of political units drive conflict. The likelihood of war more than doubles after nationalism gains a foothold in a political arena.
Three pathways to conflict:
- Secessionist wars: Nationalism's "like-over-like" principle delegitimized imperial rule, prompting movements to fight for independent nation-states (e.g., Latin American independence wars, decolonization struggles).
- Inter-state wars: Newly formed nation-states often clashed over ethnically mixed territories or the fate of co-nationals across borders, driven by irredentist claims and the need to demonstrate national commitment (e.g., Balkan Wars).
- Ethnic civil wars: When new nation-states were captured by dominant ethnic elites who excluded others, civil wars erupted over control of the state and the violation of self-rule principles.
These conflicts represent a bloody, generation-long struggle to realize the nationalist ideal, often involving border changes, expulsions, and assimilation.
The changing face of warfare. The rise of the nation-state also fundamentally altered the types of wars fought. Wars of conquest, once common for empires seeking universal dominion, became increasingly illegitimate for nation-states bound by national self-rule. Instead, the modern era saw a surge in ethno-nationalist conflicts, replacing dynastic succession disputes and tax rebellions with struggles for national sovereignty, ethnic autonomy, and control over the national state. This shift is evident in the dramatic increase of ethno-nationalist wars from 25% to 75% of all conflicts over a century.
6. Ethnic Politics: Exclusion, Segmentation, and State Cohesion Drive Conflict
Civil wars and armed conflicts are most likely in ethnocracies that violate the principles of ethnic self-rule.
Beyond simple diversity. It is not ethnic diversity itself that breeds conflict, but specific configurations of ethno-political power within nation-states. The EPR dataset, which tracks politically relevant ethnic groups and their access to executive power, reveals that civil wars are most likely under conditions of:
- Ethnic exclusion: When large segments of the population are systematically denied access to central government power based on ethnicity (e.g., Saddam Hussein's Sunni rule in Iraq). This violates the "like-over-like" principle, fueling rebellions.
- Segmented centers: When many ethnic elites share power, commitment problems and competition over state resources can escalate into violent infighting (e.g., Lebanese Civil War). The fear of future domination by rivals makes alliances unstable.
- Low state cohesion: In states with a long history of indirect imperial rule or large populations, the central state commands less legitimacy and loyalty in peripheral regions. This makes both excluded groups and power-sharing elites more likely to pursue secessionist aims (e.g., Abkhazian secession from Georgia).
Poverty and oil as exacerbating factors. These ethno-political dynamics are often exacerbated by economic conditions:
- Poverty: Scarce resources in poor countries intensify competition over state revenue, making ethnic exclusion a zero-sum game and increasing conflict risk.
- Oil resources: Oil rents can enable state elites to indulge in ethnic clientelism, reinforcing exclusionary practices and fueling non-secessionist conflicts over state capture.
These factors highlight that while economic conditions matter, they often interact with and amplify underlying ethno-political power struggles.
Multicausality and disaggregation. A nuanced understanding of ethnic conflict requires disaggregating conflict types and recognizing that different power configurations lead to different forms of violence. The same variable can have opposing effects on different conflict types; for instance, high exclusion increases rebellions but may reduce infighting among ruling elites who unite against a common threat. This complex interplay underscores the limitations of single-cause explanations and the need for a configurational approach.
7. Peace is Not Engineered by Institutions Alone
The nature of political institutions – electoral rules, degrees of federalism, levels of democratization, etc. – matters less, the chapter shows, than the power configuration that underlies them.
The limits of institutional design. Despite widespread belief among policymakers and "constitutional engineers," formal political institutions like democracy, federalism, or specific electoral systems (proportional vs. majoritarian) have a limited and often unstable impact on preventing ethnic conflict. Empirical analysis reveals no robust, consistent evidence that these institutional arrangements systematically reduce the likelihood of armed conflict.
Democracy's indirect effect is misleading. While democracies tend to be more inclusive than autocracies, this correlation is primarily due to a selection effect: highly exclusionary regimes are less likely to democratize in the first place. Democracy does not necessarily cause inclusion; rather, deep exclusion prevents democratization. Furthermore, democratization itself can be violence-prone, as it may fragment existing clientelist networks along ethnic lines, leading to new forms of exclusion and conflict.
Weak evidence for specific institutional forms:
- Proportionalism & Parliamentarianism: Show no significant effect on either infighting or rebellions.
- Presidentialism: Some weak, unstable evidence suggests it might reduce infighting among power-sharing elites, but it has no effect on the more prevalent rebellions by excluded groups.
- Federalism: Results are contradictory; some codings show it increasing infighting, others decreasing it or having no effect.
These findings suggest that focusing solely on institutional engineering overlooks the deeper power dynamics that truly drive conflict.
8. Inclusive Power Structures: The Path to Durable Peace
Rather than trying to engineer institutions – finding the right electoral system or the right amount of decentralization – prevention policies should aim at encouraging inclusive power configurations.
Beyond formal rules. The most effective strategy for preventing ethnic conflict and securing durable peace lies in fostering inclusive power configurations, regardless of the specific institutional forms they take. This means ensuring that all politically relevant ethnic groups have meaningful representation at the highest levels of government, or working towards a long-term process of nation-building that depoliticizes ethnicity altogether.
The dilemma of inclusion. While integrating marginalized groups into power-sharing arrangements can increase the number of power-sharing partners and potentially exacerbate commitment problems (infighting), the benefits of reducing exclusion consistently outweigh these risks. Calculations for countries like Iraq, Mexico, and Bosnia demonstrate that greater inclusion, even in complex multiethnic settings, generally leads to a lower overall risk of conflict compared to exclusionary regimes.
Overcoming ethnocracy. Exclusionary regimes, or ethnocracies, are inherently unstable and prone to conflict. However, they are often resistant to peaceful reform, as ruling elites are unwilling to relinquish their monopoly on power. While negotiated transitions (like in South Africa) are possible, violence sometimes becomes the only path to dismantle such entrenched systems. Prevention policies should therefore focus on building pressure for power-sharing and promoting moderation among all political actors.
9. Nation-Building: A Generational Endeavor
Nation building takes generations, not years.
Beyond quick fixes. True nation-building, which fosters loyalty to the central state and depoliticizes ethnicity, is a long-term, generational process that cannot be engineered quickly or from the outside. It requires a state to establish a mutually beneficial exchange relationship with its entire population, offering public goods, security, and meaningful political participation in exchange for taxes and military support. This builds trust and a shared sense of national identity that transcends ethnic divides.
State capacity and civil society are crucial. As demonstrated in Chapter 2, successful nation-building is most likely in:
- Strongly centralized states: Capable of delivering public goods equitably and exercising effective control.
- Developed civil societies: Providing non-ethnic channels for political organization and alliance formation.
Without these foundations, states struggle to integrate diverse populations, leading to the politicization of ethnicity and persistent legitimacy problems, especially in peripheries with a history of indirect rule.
Rethinking foreign aid. External actors often undermine nation-building efforts by bypassing weak state institutions, channeling aid through NGOs, or imposing short-term democratic reforms. Instead, foreign assistance should focus on strengthening the state's capacity to:
- Provide public goods: Essential for building citizen loyalty and trust.
- Raise revenues through taxes: Fostering accountability and a sustainable social contract.
- Establish effective governance: Reducing reliance on coercion and external intervention.
This long-term approach, coordinated by independent international bodies, is essential for cultivating endogenous state formation and genuine national identification.
10. The Enduring Power of the Nation-State
If this book’s analysis is correct, and collective identities and political loyalties need to rest on institutionalized exchange relationships and mutual trust, the nation-state will, for better or for worse, remain with us for some time to come.
History's recurring patterns. The global rise of the nation-state and its associated conflicts are not unique to recent decades but reflect recurring patterns throughout modern history. The "Macedonian syndrome" of intertwined ethnic conflict and irredentist wars, for instance, has manifested repeatedly since the time of Napoleon, from the Balkans to the Indian subcontinent and the post-Soviet space. This challenges the notion that contemporary conflicts are fundamentally new phenomena driven solely by globalization or the end of the Cold War.
Beyond post-national dreams. Despite the increasing interconnectedness of the world and the rise of "global governance" discourse, the nation-state remains the dominant and most legitimate form of political organization. Global institutions, from the UN to the WTO, lack an independent basis of popular support and cannot replicate the deep, institutionalized exchange relationships that bind citizens to their national states. Similarly, "global civil society" networks do not provide public goods or meaningful political participation on a scale comparable to nation-states.
No immediate successor. The European Union, often cited as a post-national model, still largely depends on its constituent nation-states for power and legitimacy. For it to truly replace national identities, it would need to transform into a "super-nation-state" with its own welfare institutions, tax regime, and army, replicating the very dynamics of nation-building on a larger scale. As such, the nationalist dream of a world organized into distinct national homes, while largely realized, continues to shape political loyalties and conflicts. The nation-state, for better or worse, is likely to endure as the primary framework for collective identity and political action for the foreseeable future.
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