Three Models of Nation-Building and State Policies toward Ethnic Diversity

• In Event: From the Origins to the Changes and Consequences of Nationalism

Abstract

How do state policies toward ethnic diversity vary across countries? How can one measure and conceptualize cross-national variation in state policies toward ethnic diversity? What explains such variation? I present cross-national data on nine state policies toward ethnic diversity in 42 European countries, collected through a global expert survey over four years, which is the empirical core of the current article. Second, I find that there is significant cross-national variation in state policies toward ethnic diversity, with three meaningful patterns clustering in particular countries. I identify and conceptualize three different nation-building patterns as antiethnic, monoethnic, and multiethnic nation-state models. Third, I argue that three waves of nation-building, roughly corresponding to French (1789), German (1871), and Soviet (1922) nation-building experiences, and the diffusion of these three models across Europe through chronological, geographical, linguistic, and ideological mechanisms, explain the cross-national variation in state policies toward ethnic diversity. Fourth, and finally, I attempt to explain both the origins and the change over time in the ethnic policies of two polities that significantly deviate from the chronological and geographical patterns found in this study, namely multiethnic Belgium and antiethnic Turkey.

Author

• Sener Akturk, Koç University