Waves of War Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics Series

Why did the nation-state emerge and proliferate across the globe? How is this process related to the wars fought in the modern era? Analyzing datasets that cover the entire world over long stretches of time, Andreas Wimmer focuses on changing configurations of power and legitimacy to answer these questions. The nationalist ideal of self-rule gradually diffused over the world and delegitimized empire after empire. Nationalists created nation-states wherever the power configuration favored them, often at the end of prolonged wars of secession. The elites of many of these new states were institutionally too weak for nation-building and favored their own ethnic communities. Ethnic rebels challenged such exclusionary power structures in violation of the principles of self-rule, and neighboring governments sometimes intervened into these struggles over the state. Waves of War demonstrates why nation-state formation and ethnic politics are crucial to understand the civil and international wars of the past 200 years.

1. Introduction and summary; 2. The birth of the nation; 3. The global rise of the nation-state; 4. Nation-state formation and war; 5. Ethnic politics and armed conflict; 6. Can peace be engineered?; 7. Conclusion; Appendices.

Andreas Wimmer is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research is aimed at understanding the dynamics of nation-state formation, ethnic boundary making and political conflict from a comparative perspective. He is the author of Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and his articles have been published by the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, World Politics, Sociological Theory and Ethnic and Racial Studies, among others. Professor Wimmer's work has won best article awards from the Comparative Historical, Political, Cultural and Theory sections of the American Sociological Association as well as the Thyssen Prize for Best Article in the Social Sciences.