Andreas Wimmer, Nation building: Why some countries came together while others fell apart.

The Department of Sociology Form/Huber Colloquia Series presents Andreas Wimmer on “Nation building: Why some countries came together while others fell apart.”

Andreas Wimmer is Lieber Professor of Sociology and Political Philosophy at Columbia University. His new book takes up the old question of why national integration across ethnic divides succeeds in some places while other countries are destabilized by ethnopolitical inequality, contentious ethnic politics or even separatism and ethnic war.  Slow moving, generational processes are highlighted that allow political alliances to cross ethnic divides: the spread of civil society organizations, linguistic assimilation and the state’s capacity to provide public goods. These are in turn enhanced by historically achieved (pre-colonial) levels of state centralization. Empirical evidence from cross-national datasets is combined with paired case studies to support the argument.