The Politics of Nation-Building
Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities

Mylonas argues that foreign policy goals and international relations drives a state's assimilation or exclusion policies towards an ethnic group.

Harris Mylonas (Author)

9781107020450, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 February 2013

271 pages, 20 b/w illus. 11 maps 20 tables
24.1 x 15.9 x 1.9 cm, 0.52 kg

'There is much to praise in this book. To begin with, Mylonas is one of those rare scholars who adopt a sophisticated positivist methodology that combines large analysis with a detailed knowledge of (some) historical cases obtained through patient archival research. Second, while much scholarship discusses two policy options (inclusion or exclusion), Mylonas interestingly broadens the analysis to include three policies - assimilation, accommodation and exclusion - producing, respectively, co-nationals, minorities and refugees. And, third, in an age of liberal interventionism Mylonas advances sober and thoughtful recommendations on how the international community may be able to diminish the recurrence of crimes of mass atrocity by intervening less, not more.' Roberto Belloni, Buchbesprechungen

What drives a state's choice to assimilate, accommodate or exclude ethnic groups within its territory? In this innovative work on the international politics of nation-building, Harris Mylonas argues that a state's nation-building policies toward non-core groups - individuals perceived as an ethnic group by the ruling elite of a state - are influenced by both its foreign policy goals and its relations with the external patrons of these groups. Through a detailed study of the Balkans, Mylonas shows that how a state treats a non-core group within its own borders is determined largely by whether the state's foreign policy is revisionist or cleaves to the international status quo, and whether it is allied or in rivalry with that group's external patrons. Mylonas injects international politics into the study of nation-building, building a bridge between international relations and the comparative politics of ethnicity and nationalism.

1. Introduction
Part I. Theory: 2. The international politics of assimilation, accommodation, and exclusion
Part II. Empirical Evidence: 3. Why the Balkans?
4. Cross-national variation: nation-building in post-World War I Balkans
5. Odd cases: analysis of outliers
6. Subnational variation: Greek nation-building in western Macedonia, 1916–20
7. Temporal variation: Serbian nation-building toward Albanians, 1878–1941
8. Application of the theory beyond the Balkans
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Comparative politics [JPB]