Nation-building

For nation-building in the sense of enhancing the capacity of state institutions, building state-society relations and also external interventions, see State-building.

Nation-building is the process of constructing or structuring a national identity through the utilization of state power. The objective of nation-building is to achieve the unification of the population within the state, thereby ensuring its political stability and viability. 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 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."

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