In The Politics of Nation-Building, Harris Mylonas seeks to explain “variation in state policies to manage social diversity” (p. 2). The core of the argument is that the international system plays a key role in determining the types of policies that states pursue as part of their nation-building strategies. Mylonas makes several theoretical moves that each constitute a major contribution to our understanding of nation-building policies. First, he steps away from the usual distinction between national majorities and minority groups to focus instead on core and non-core groups. Core groups are defined as all of the inhabitants of a country who share those common national markers that are seen as defining national identity. Non-core groups include all other inhabitants of the country. This terminology allows Mylonas to avoid the common problems of how to deal with numerical minorities that may dominate a particular polity on the one hand and subordinate groups that may comprise a majority of the population on the other hand.
Second, Mylonas identifies three broad types of policies that may be pursued by ruling political elites vis-à-vis non-core groups. These include exclusionary policies that “aim at the physical removal of a non-core group” from a particular territory, assimilationist policies that seek to force the targeted group to adopt “the core group culture and way of life,” and accomodationist policies that generally respect the different culture and status of the non-core group (p. 21-22). By distinguishing between accommodation and assimilation, Mylonas broadens our conception of nation-building policies beyond the usual distinction between inclusion and exclusion while remaining sufficiently parsimonious to allow for the development of explanatory theories. The distinction between assimilation and accommodation is particularly important in highlighting a commonly pursued middle-ground policy that seeks to increase the dominance of the core group without pursuing overtly hostile policies against other groups.
The main theoretical contribution of the book is in the explanation of how political elites make choices to pursue one of these three policies. They key factors include a combination of international relations and comparative politics variables. The key IR variables include whether the non-core group has external support from another state and whether this state is an ally or enemy of the host state. Although several domestic factors play a role, the key variable in the explanation is whether the host state is pursuing revisionist or status quo foreign policy goals. Revisionist goals are pursued when a state has lost territory and/or increased in power relative to its competitors, whereas status quo goals are pursued when a state has gained territory and/or declined in power relative to its competitors.
Non-core groups without external support are expected to be subject to assimilationist policies. If there is an external state providing support for the non-core group, things get more complicated. If the external state is an ally of the host state, then the host state is expected to pursue accomodationist policies toward the non-core group. If the external state is an enemy of the host state, the host state’s foreign policy goals come into play. In that situation, revisionist host states are expected to pursue exclusionary policies, while status quo states would pursue assimilation.
Mylonas tests his argument through a meticulous analysis of developments in the Balkans, primarily in the period between the first and second World Wars. Using a combination of statistical analysis and case studies of outliers based on extensive archival research, Mylonas paints a convincing picture of the role of external support and domestic foreign policy orientations in affecting the policy choices made by governing elites in deciding what kinds of nation-building policies to pursue. Having made a strong case for his argument on the basis of national level data, he goes further by examining subnational variation in one part of Greece and temporal variation in Yugoslavian policies toward Albanians between 1878 and 1941. The thorough research and convincing argumentation of the empirical chapters should serve as a model for research in comparative politics.
The book’s only significant weakness appears near the end. The modern structure of the political science academy puts pressure on authors in comparative politics, especially in their first books, to show the generalizability of their findings by applying the model derived from their thorough field research in a particular region to other places and times. Given the resource and time constraints of dissertation research, this leads to final chapters that rely on secondary sources to confirm the findings of the research. This frequently leads to errors in empirical details that serve only to weaken the author’s overall argument.
Such is the case with this book. In sharp contrast to the rich detail in the book’s chapters on the Balkans, the brief discussions of China and Estonia are based entirely on secondary sources. Since I don’t know much about China, I’ll focus on the Estonia case. Here, the timing of events is very problematic. The prediction that Estonian elites would pursue exclusionary policies in the early 1990s is based on the idea that ethnic Russians represented an enemy-backed non-core group. The problem for the argument is that the Russian government did not begin to pursue policies that backed ethnic Russians in Estonia until the mid-1990s, after the Estonian government had already been pursuing exclusionary policies for several years. One could make the argument that Russian President Yeltsin was reacting to Estonian policies, rather than the other way around. Contrary to the description in the book, Russian officials frequently spoke out in support of co-ethnics abroad in the late 1990s. Estonia’s policy shift toward assimilationist policies during this period had more to do with EU pressure than changes in Russian policies. Finally, the shift to accommodation in the 2000s coincided with an increase in Russian pressure on Estonia, which culminated in 2007 with Russian-sponsored cyber-attacks in response to the relocation of a monument to Soviet soldiers in Tallinn. Despite this downturn in relations, Estonia did not modify its shift to an accomodationist policy toward its Russian minority.
My goal here is not so much to criticize Mylonas for inaccuracies in what is in truth a fairly small part of an otherwise top notch book. It is to argue that both authors and the discipline as a whole are ill-served by pressure being placed on authors to include chapters applying their theories to other cases based on secondary sources. Such work is important, but it should be done in separate journal articles that are based on empirical research, rather than secondary sources. When placed in an otherwise well-argued and meticulously researched book such as this one, it only serves to weaken the argument rather than showing its broader applicability. Nevertheless, this minor weakness does not in any way undermine the major contribution that The Politics of Nation-Building makes to scholarly understanding of the processes of nation-building. Mylonas’ book is destined to influence future scholarship on nation-building policies, not just in the Balkans but throughout the world.
