The Rise of the Nation-State across the World, 1816 to 2001

Abstract

Why did the nation-state proliferate across the world over the past 200 years, replacing empires, kingdoms, city-states, and the like? Using a new dataset with information on 145 of today's states from 1816 to the year they achieved nation-statehood, we test key aspects of modernization, world polity, and historical institutionalist theories. Event history analysis shows that a nation-state is more likely to emerge when a power shift allows nationalists to overthrow or absorb the established regime. Diffusion of the nation-state within an empire or among neighbors also tilts the balance of power in favor of nationalists. We find no evidence for the effects of industrialization, the advent of mass literacy, or increasingly direct rule, which are associated with the modernization theories of Gellner, Anderson, Tilly, and Hechter. Nor is the growing global hegemony of the nation-state model a good predictor of individual instances of nation-state formation, as Meyer's world polity theory would suggest. We conclude that the global rise of the nation-state is driven by proximate and contextual political factors situated at the local and regional levels, in line with historical institutionalist arguments, rather than by domestic or global structural forces that operate over the long dure´e.

Is nationalism the cause or consequence of the end of empire?

“…Previous research(Wimmer and Feinstein 2010) has shown that none of the well-known modernization arguments are supported by quantitative analysis: neither industrialization (proxied by railroad length), nor mass literacy in vernacular languages (proxied by adult literacy rates), nor the shift from indirect to direct rule (proxied by government expenditures per capita) affect the likelihood of nation-state creation in significant ways.…”

“…The following graph is based on the data set assembled for Wimmer and Feinstein (2010). If nationalism was indeed a significant cause of imperial breakdown, it should emerge beforehand.…”

“…Some of our preceding work (Wimmer and Feinstein 2010) answered this question as part of a global analysis of all transitions to nation-statehood. Can we show that nationalism was responsible for a successful breakaway from empire?…”

Is Diversity Detrimental? Ethnic Fractionalization, Public Goods Provision, and the Historical Legacies of Stateness

“…Among the more commonly used are adult literacy rates, which are supposed to be strongly influenced by public school systems as well as state-led alphabetization campaigns. The data were assembled from various sources (see Wimmer & Feinstein, 2010). They refer to the proportion of alphabetized adults in the overall population and are available for most countries of the world since the early 19th century.…”

Comparing Protest Massacres

“…The modern era of history arose during the transition of nation states replacing kingdoms, and in some instances, city‐states. The French and American Revolutions helped forge the first nation states (Wimmer & Feinstein, ). Violence between competing elites in areas such as Western Europe was rampant (Tilly, ).…”