Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ETHNICGOODS (States, Nationalism, and the Relationship between Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Provision)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-10-01 al 2025-03-31
A large literature considers ethnic diversity to have a negative effect on development. This perception has gained traction within non-academic audiences as well. Across the world, politicians and policy makers consider it as a source of conflict and an obstacle to development. ETHNICGOODS instead argues that researchers have systematically overlooked the macro-historical processes of nation-building and the ways in which these shape present-day diversity and developmental outcomes, be it economic growth, social wellbeing, democracy, or conflict. Accordingly, we anticipate that ETHNICGOODS will add historical nuance to the debate around the diversity-deficit thesis and revisit the usefulness of its simplistic causality for policy makers.
The project follows three wider objectives:
First, our theoretical work aims to endogenize current levels of ethnic diversity and development within historical patterns of national state formation. In doing so, we pay attention to historical variations in nation-building strategies, their relationship with historical state capacities, and their consequences for ethnic diversity and development. We propose that national building takes four main forms in which ethnic diversity is governed: assimilation, accommodation, eradication, and segregation.
Second, we are assembling the first global data set of Nation Building Policies (NBP). Once completed, this original dataset will provide a coding of nation-building projects from 1945 to 2020 across different countries, time periods, and ethnic groups. The dataset relies on indicators connected to three core arenas of nation-building: (1) mass education, (2) law and constitutions, and (3) state violence.
Third, the nation-building typology and the NBP dataset developed by ETHNICGOODS also provide the backbone for a broader empirical research programme on nation-building. The four variants of nation-building will be tested and validated against the NBP dataset. We will then explore potential drivers of observed differences in nation-building strategies and their context-dependent strengths and limitations. Finally, we will investigate the consequences of different nation-building strategies identified in the previous stages of the project. We explore how varieties of nation-building affect ethnic diversity and development and how these effects are mediated by initial conditions like geography or historical state capacity.
The project follows three wider objectives:
First, our theoretical work aims to endogenize current levels of ethnic diversity and development within historical patterns of national state formation. In doing so, we pay attention to historical variations in nation-building strategies, their relationship with historical state capacities, and their consequences for ethnic diversity and development. We propose that national building takes four main forms in which ethnic diversity is governed: assimilation, accommodation, eradication, and segregation.
Second, we are assembling the first global data set of Nation Building Policies (NBP). Once completed, this original dataset will provide a coding of nation-building projects from 1945 to 2020 across different countries, time periods, and ethnic groups. The dataset relies on indicators connected to three core arenas of nation-building: (1) mass education, (2) law and constitutions, and (3) state violence.
Third, the nation-building typology and the NBP dataset developed by ETHNICGOODS also provide the backbone for a broader empirical research programme on nation-building. The four variants of nation-building will be tested and validated against the NBP dataset. We will then explore potential drivers of observed differences in nation-building strategies and their context-dependent strengths and limitations. Finally, we will investigate the consequences of different nation-building strategies identified in the previous stages of the project. We explore how varieties of nation-building affect ethnic diversity and development and how these effects are mediated by initial conditions like geography or historical state capacity.
During the report period the ETHNICGOODS team has conducted a literature review of both the diversity-deficit literature and recent research that seeks to endogenize ethnic diversity. We also reviewed the scholarship on nation-building and state capacity. Against this backdrop we then have further developed the theoretical framework, conducted proof-of-concept research, while also doing some strategic adjustments to the overall research agenda.
A workshop in June 2021 with leading nationalism experts concluded that the consequences of nation-building remain squarely understudied. Our research also reinforced that the study of nationalism and nation-building lacks a global dataset. Initial work on state capacity revealed that the existing scholarship largely ignores the role played by information capacity in facilitating other aspects of state capacity formation.
In response, we have reworked the theoretical approach to focus on the identitary and developmental consequences of historical variations in nation-building, the information capacity of states, and possible interactions between the two. The main thrust of our empirical work has therefore focused on creating the Nation-Building Policies Dataset (NBP), which identifies variations in state policies aimed at creating national identification and loyalty among the people situated within the territorial boundaries of the state. We anticipate the dataset to be completed by Fall 2023.
The literature review, in tandem with the adjusted theoretical framework, is under contract as an Elements book with Cambridge University Press. In a proof-of-concept paper, already published as a working paper and forthcoming in the Journal of Institutional Economics (JoIE), we show that information capacity contributes to the development of other dimensions of state capacity, most importantly fiscal capacity. Moreover, in a scholarly exchange published with Nations and Nationalism we take stock of what we know and do not know about the consequences of nationalism. Furthermore, since Fall 2021 we have organized a series of seminars and workshops, inviting experts to present their work, followed by meetings with the research team to discuss challenges we would like to get their input on. Members of the ETHNICGOODs research team, namely postdocs, RAs and PhD students, have also been invited to share their research results or doctoral proposals in the bi-weekly ETHNICGOODS seminars series.
A workshop in June 2021 with leading nationalism experts concluded that the consequences of nation-building remain squarely understudied. Our research also reinforced that the study of nationalism and nation-building lacks a global dataset. Initial work on state capacity revealed that the existing scholarship largely ignores the role played by information capacity in facilitating other aspects of state capacity formation.
In response, we have reworked the theoretical approach to focus on the identitary and developmental consequences of historical variations in nation-building, the information capacity of states, and possible interactions between the two. The main thrust of our empirical work has therefore focused on creating the Nation-Building Policies Dataset (NBP), which identifies variations in state policies aimed at creating national identification and loyalty among the people situated within the territorial boundaries of the state. We anticipate the dataset to be completed by Fall 2023.
The literature review, in tandem with the adjusted theoretical framework, is under contract as an Elements book with Cambridge University Press. In a proof-of-concept paper, already published as a working paper and forthcoming in the Journal of Institutional Economics (JoIE), we show that information capacity contributes to the development of other dimensions of state capacity, most importantly fiscal capacity. Moreover, in a scholarly exchange published with Nations and Nationalism we take stock of what we know and do not know about the consequences of nationalism. Furthermore, since Fall 2021 we have organized a series of seminars and workshops, inviting experts to present their work, followed by meetings with the research team to discuss challenges we would like to get their input on. Members of the ETHNICGOODs research team, namely postdocs, RAs and PhD students, have also been invited to share their research results or doctoral proposals in the bi-weekly ETHNICGOODS seminars series.
ETHNICGOODS creates the first global dataset on nation-building and develops a complementary typology that identifies four main variants. Nation-building has received relatively little attention when compared to other aspects of political development, such as democratization and the formation of state capacity. Moreover, the classical works on nation-building (Bendix 1966; Deutsch 1953), and more recently Wimmer (2018), tend to associate successful nation-building with the absence of violent conflict and assimilation, while we argue that nation-building is better understood as a process than an outcome, and that “successful” nation-building in no way has to be peaceful or assimilationist. The NBP dataset is also methodologically novel in that it distinguishes between manifestations of nation-building not only at the level of entire countries but also at the level of specific ethnic groups. State leaders may have an overall vision of nation-building, but the actual nation-building policies they adopt vary across groups (see Mylonas 2013).
Furthermore, the project also critically engages with the diversity-deficit thesis. The work done by ETHNICGOODS so far is the springboard for the broader research agenda pursued until the end of the project. First, we will investigate potential drivers of variations in nation-building. For instance, at group level, the adoption of a particular nation-building strategy might vary with the group’s relative size, territorial concentration, or its cultural distance from the core group. At the country level, possible factors include the role of interstate relations, colonial and precolonial institutional legacies, and temporal global trends of nation-building. Second, we will explore how differences in nation-building affect ethnic diversity and development. For example, we expect that strategies that accommodate group-specific cultural differences will be associated with greater ethnic diversity over time, but that they will result in higher levels of overall development and public goods provision than approaches that deal with diversity through exclusion or segregation. We also expect that these effects will differ with the size and geographic attributes of a polity and the historical strengths of its social and political institutions.
Furthermore, the project also critically engages with the diversity-deficit thesis. The work done by ETHNICGOODS so far is the springboard for the broader research agenda pursued until the end of the project. First, we will investigate potential drivers of variations in nation-building. For instance, at group level, the adoption of a particular nation-building strategy might vary with the group’s relative size, territorial concentration, or its cultural distance from the core group. At the country level, possible factors include the role of interstate relations, colonial and precolonial institutional legacies, and temporal global trends of nation-building. Second, we will explore how differences in nation-building affect ethnic diversity and development. For example, we expect that strategies that accommodate group-specific cultural differences will be associated with greater ethnic diversity over time, but that they will result in higher levels of overall development and public goods provision than approaches that deal with diversity through exclusion or segregation. We also expect that these effects will differ with the size and geographic attributes of a polity and the historical strengths of its social and political institutions.