Nation-building

Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to Harris Mylonas, "Legitimate authority in modern national states is connected to popular rule, to majorities. Nation-building is the process through which these majorities are constructed." In Harris Mylonas's framework, "state elites employ three nation-building policies: accommodation, assimilation, and exclusion." Nation builders are those members of a state who take the initiative to develop the national community through government programs, including military conscription and national content mass schooling. Nation-building can involve the use of propaganda or major infrastructure development to foster social harmony and economic growth. According to Columbia University sociologist Andreas Wimmer, three factors tend to determine the success of nation-building over the long-run: "the early development of civil-society organisations, the rise of a state capable of providing public goods evenly across a territory, and the emergence of a shared medium of communication." In the modern era, nation-building referred to the efforts of newly independent nations, to establish trusted institutions of national government, education, military defence, elections, land registry, import customs, foreign trade, foreign diplomacy, banking, finance, taxation, company registration, police, law, courts, healthcare, citizenship, citizen rights and liberties, marriage registry, birth registry, immigration, transport infrastructure and/or municipal governance charters. Nation-building can also include attempts to redefine the populace of territories that had been carved out by colonial powers or empires without regard to ethnic, religious, or other boundaries, as in Africa and the Balkans. These reformed states could then become viable and coherent national entities.