American Sociological Review 75(5) 764–790 The Rise of the Nation-State Ó American Sociological Association 2010 DOI: 10.1177/0003122410382639 across the World, 1816 to http://asr.sagepub.com 2001

Andreas Wimmera and Yuval Feinsteina

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.

Keywords nationalism, nation-state, diffusion, historical institutionalism

The French and American revolutions of the the globe, British governors brought progress late-eighteenth century gave birth to the ideal to ‘‘backward’’ peoples in far-away places, of the modern nation-state—an independent and, during the twentieth century, the party state with a written constitution, ruled in cadres of the Soviet Union advanced a revolu- the name of a nation of equal citizens. During tionary, transnational project in the name of those days, all other states were still the world’s working classes. Kings, theo- governed on the basis of other principles of crats, and imperial elites attempted to extend legitimacy. In dynastic states, a prince was their states’ boundaries irrespective of the entitled to assume the mantle of power upon the death of his father (as in the multi- aUniversity of California, Los Angeles ethnic Habsburg and Ethiopian empires); in theocracies, religious leaders guided Corresponding Author: their flocks in worldly matters as well (e.g., Andreas Wimmer, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, 264 Haines in Tibet and Montenegro); Ottoman and Hall, Box 951551, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551 Spanish elites spread the true faith across E-mail: [email protected] Wimmer and Feinstein 765

Figure 1. Number of Nation-States Created per Five-Year Period, Smoothed Hazard Rate ethnic backgrounds of those who came under Understanding the global rise of the nation- their rule. state is one of the most formidable tasks of Compare that situation to the world today: comparative historical sociology—on par empires have dissolved, theocracies have been with the analysis of the emergence of sover- dethroned, and only a handful of countries, eign, territorial states in early modern Europe mostly in the Middle East, are still governed (see Tilly’s [1975] pioneering work). Why did as absolutist monarchies comparable to pre- modern states—once they emerged out of the revolutionary France, where the king ruled dynamics of war-making, bureaucratic cen- in the name of God and represented the House tralization, and increasing taxation—become of Bourbon, not the French nation. The once nation-states? A rich literature has devel- revolutionary template of political legitima- oped to answer this question, including the cy—self-rule in the name of a nation of equal well-known oeuvres of Gellner, Anderson, citizens—is now almost universally adopted. Smith, Hechter, and Meyer. This research This framework is recognized as the essence tradition displays two main weaknesses. of modern statehood, so much so that the First, many general theoretical statements terms ‘‘nations’’ and ‘‘states’’ are often used are meant to explore universal processes interchangeably. Figure 1 shows that the that could account for the rise of the global ascent of the nation-state over the nation-state in the modern world as a whole, past 200 years was a discontinuous process, but empirical support for these generaliza- unfolding in various waves linked to the tionsisoftenbasedonexamplespicked break-up of large empires. selectively, sometimes in a merely 766 American Sociological Review 75(5) illustrative manner (deplored by Breuilly information from secondary sources, such as 2005; Wimmer 2008). Second, more empir- country histories. Despite its limitations, this ical research on particular trajectories of new, global dataset allows us to assess the nation-state creation tends to be segmented plausibility of major theories of the nation- along regional and disciplinary lines. For state from a global, comparative perspective. example, the political science literature on Many comparative historical sociologists decolonization (Spruyt 2005; Strang 1990) are deeply skeptical of the use of quantitative and nation-building (Bendix 1964) in the techniques and large datasets because these postcolonial world developed quite indepen- seem to imply a disregard for contingency, dently from debates among historical sociol- context, and complexity. We show that at ogists about the origins of the nation-state in least some of these concerns can be the West. Yet another strand of scholarship addressed within a quantitative framework. investigates the historical developments A focus on recurrent patterns does not rule that led to the collapse of the land-based out the importance of contingency, and Ottoman, Habsburg, or Soviet empires and enough cases will be ‘‘off the regression subsequent waves of nation-state creation line’’ to motivate in-depth case studies based (e.g., Barkey and von Hagen 1997; Rosh- on historical methods. Context can be trans- wald 2001; Saideman and Ayres 2008). formed into cause by using dummy variables Given that nation-states cover almost the that indicate whether a group of cases or entire world by now, one wonders whether a particular time period differs from the rest an integrated view might be within reach. (Collier and Mazzuca 2006) or by using sub- To overcome some of these limitations, sample analysis (Young 2009). Causal com- we assembled a new, global dataset that plexity can be addressed, for example, by allows identification of those patterns of exploring whether the effects of one variable nation-state formation that recur across depend on the values of another. In other continents, empires, and time periods. This words, some of the configurational logic of required considerable efforts because only inquiry that underlies traditional comparative independent nation-states systematically col- historical sociology can be translated into lect information on their economies and soci- a quantitative research design, while keeping eties. Available datasets thus do not allow us the advantage of being able to generalize to understand why such states emerged in the across a large number of cases. This is partic- first place, which is perhaps the main reason ularly important if the outcome of interest why quantitatively minded scholars have so recurs across the globe—as is the case with far shied away from a more systematic eval- nation-state formation. uation of existing theories of nation-state for- mation (but see the work of Strang and Roeder, to be discussed in later sections). HYPOTHESES AND EXISTING The new dataset introduced here includes independent states, colonies, and imperial QUANTITATIVE STUDIES dependencies over two centuries, and Alas, a quantitative approach to historical pro- contains almost the entire universe of cesses comes at a price. Not only must we con- nation-state creations. It provides informa- tent ourselves with proxy variables that mea- tion on 145 of today’s states from 1816 until sure the hypothesized processes imperfectly, the years they achieved nation-statehood (or we also cannot address the rich arguments 2001 if they did not). Many of the variables offered by past scholarship in an as nuanced in this dataset—for example, the length of way as one would wish. Effectively, we test railways, government expenditures, and liter- crucial elements of theories—the correlation acy rates—had to be assembled by extracting between core conditions and outcomes—but Wimmer and Feinstein 767 not whether the postulated mechanisms empires of the past, the economic system linking conditions to outcomes are actually contained many highly specialized niches at work. Our empirical analysis therefore reproduced through on-the-job training in does not pretend to submit whole theories the specific skills demanded. The industrial to a sort of Popperian falsification test. mode of production, by contrast, needs Rather, we focus on key arguments that a mobile and flexible labor force. A rational- can be evaluated for a wide range of territo- ized, standardized education in a common ries over long periods. language provides workers with the generic What are these theories theories of? They skills to shift from job to job and communi- do not mainly concern the emergence of the cate effectively with strangers. The educa- nation-state model in the United States, tional apparatus of a nation-state eventually France, or perhaps earlier in Britain, but provides the new, standardized, and homoge- rather its subsequent proliferation across the nized culture that industrial societies need. world. While sharing this common focus, Gellner’s (1983) functionalist analysis is many classical authors are somewhat ambig- complemented by a subtle study of four his- uous as to whether their primary aim is to torical pathways through which industrial explain nationalism as a political movement, society’s needs were met (we will discuss the spread of national consciousness among only the two most important). First, uneven a population (i.e., nation-building), or the industrialization drew rural peasants into shift in the institutional set-up of the state industrialized centers, where their ascent (i.e., the creation of a nation-state). They all and prospects remained limited if their lan- concur, however, that these three processes guage and culture did not correspond to the are closely related to each other, if through center’s high culture. Resentment fed into different pathways. In Anderson’s account, nationalism and eventually led to the creation nationalism leads to nation-building and of nation-states, as in the Balkans and the eventually a nation-state, while according peripheries of the Habsburg Empire. Second, to Gellner, nationalists form nation-states a similar process unfolded in the colonial that then build their nations. World polity world, where skin color was associated with theorists such as Meyer, by contrast, con- unequal power, unleashing anti-colonial sider neither nationalism nor nations to be nationalisms as soon as industrialization set a necessary condition for nation-states to in and delegitimized the colonial hierarchy. emerge. Our own historical institutionalist These different trajectories describe how approach assumes that nationalists create industrial society, arriving at different times nation-states, whether or not nations have in different parts of the world, led to the reor- already been built. All of these arguments ganization of political boundaries along contain the nation-state as a central element cultural lines and the formation of nation- in the analytic tableau; the emergence of states. Focusing on this general association, nation-state institutions therefore represents rather than the mechanisms that bring it about, an appropriate dependent variable for this we can state the simple hypothesis that the study. likelihood of nation-state creation should increase with industrialization (Hypothesis 1).

Economic Modernization Political Modernization According to Gellner (1983), the epochal shift from an agricultural to an industrial Tilly’s (1994), Mann’s (1995), and Hechter’s society brings about nationalism and eventu- (2000) political modernization theories shift ally the nation-state. In the agricultural our attention to the system of governance. 768 American Sociological Review 75(5)

Starting in the sixteenth century, permanent enabled and propelled literacy in vernacular war between competing European states languages, replacing complex elite languages made techniques of governmental control such as Latin. The emerging reading public and resource extraction ever more effective thus shared a narrative cosmos and soon and efficient. Indirect rule via regional elites imagined itself as a national community of and notables was replaced by direct rule common origin and future political destiny. through a unified and hierarchically inte- Mass literacy was less important for the grated bureaucracy. From there, two major first wave of nation-state creation than for pathways led to the nation-state. In autono- subsequent waves. Overall literacy levels mous states (e.g., France), state elites gradu- were still low when the first wave rolled ally homogenized the population over the over Latin America, but Anderson neverthe- course of the nineteenth century and devel- less sees the emergence of newspapers and oped an assimilatory nationalism to legiti- reading publics as crucial. Mass literacy mize their rule (Hechter 2000; Tilly 1994). then became central to the empowerment of In Mann’s (1995) related, yet differently second wave linguistic nationalisms in nine- accented, account of this process, national- teenth-century Europe, as well as for the ism emerged from below to justify the third wave, when dynastic rulers sought to public’s demands for democratic representa- contain nationalism by adopting it as a state tion vis-a`-vis the increasingly interventionist doctrine themselves. Mass literacy remained military state. a central causal force during the fourth Far more frequent than the transition to wave, leading to decolonization after World the nation-state within existing boundaries, War II. Anderson’s first mechanism of however, is the second, secession trajectory. nation-state formation thus leads to Hypothe- In the multiethnic empires of the Habsburgs sis 3: an increase in the literacy rate in ver- and the Ottomans (and according to Hechter nacular language should make nationalism, also in Yugoslavia and beyond), the shift to nation-building, and ultimately a transition direct rule led to nationalist mobilization by to the nation-state more likely. peripheral elites who resented being Anderson’s second mechanism comes governed by ethnic others and sought to re- into play during the first and fourth waves establish self-rule. Whether such state-seek- of nation-state creation. Why did Bolivia, ing nationalists are successful depends on the Ivory Coast, and Vietnam become inde- additional (including international) factors pendent states, rather than the whole terri- and forces. Simplifying these accounts by tory of Spanish Latin America, French subsuming these additional factors and forces West Africa, or French Indochina as one under a ceteris paribus clause, we can derive would expect in view of the popular literacy Hypothesis 2: the more directly a territory is argument? Low-level colonial administra- ruled, the more likely nation-state formation tors recruited from the local population should be. could not aspire to positions above the pro- vincial levels, Anderson argues, which led to resentment and growing nationalist dis- Cultural Modernization sent. Being confined to the provincial bureaucratic space laid the groundwork for Anderson’s (1991) theory of nationalism imagining the nation along provincial, distinguishes between three mechanisms rather than linguistic, lines. During the that combine in different ways across four fourth wave, the European colonies’ vastly different waves of nation-state creation. First, expanded educational system not only reformation, state bureaucratization, and, helped fuel nationalism by spreading liter- most importantly, the rise of print capitalism acy, but it also reinforced the provincial Wimmer and Feinstein 769 segmentation of these nationalisms, espe- power configurational and political factors cially where educational and administrative overlooked by modernization and global dif- boundaries overlapped, as in Indonesia fusion theories. Transition from one form of (Anderson 1991). This suggests Hypothesis state organization to another is seen as the out- 4: a territory that corresponds to a province come of a struggle between various politically or a state should be more likely to see organized segments of society. The balance of nationalism arise and more likely to eventu- power between these actors determines which ally become a nation-state. vision of a legitimate political order and The third, and perhaps least crucial, mech- which institutional principles will prevail. In anism in Anderson’s account relates to global this view, proximate causes, most importantly diffusion processes, which are especially the power configurations between actors, important for the last wave of nation-state trump slowly moving structural forces, and formation in the former colonies, as well as external diffusion is more important than in Japan, Thailand, and Switzerland. Such endogenous modernization. global processes are at the heart of Meyer’s Historical institutionalism usually takes world polity approach. the emergence of new templates of political legitimacy as exogenously given. It is a the- ory of selection, as it were, not of mutation. World Polity Theory The global diffusion of nationalism is thus Meyer’s diffusion theory emphasizes exter- outside the purview of the historical institu- nal influences rather than domestic moderni- tionalist argument we develop here. It is zation. Meyer and his co-authors show that enough to assume an imitation process the nation-state template is part of a world through which a variety of political move- culture that emerged over the past 200 years ments across the world adopt nationalist and eventually became institutionalized in ideologies (Greenfeld 1992). Because the the United Nations. This world culture grad- first nation-states (i.e., Great Britain, the ually forced state elites and political chal- United States, and France) happened to be lengers alike to adopt nationalism as a tem- the most powerful states in the world from plate of political legitimacy and the nation- the eighteenth century to today, these politi- state as the most legitimate form of statehood cal movements ‘‘pirated’’ nationalism, to (Meyer et al. 1997). use Anderson’s felicitous term, hoping they World polity theory offers a cross- would one day preside over states that sectional and a longitudinal argument. First, matched the military glory, political might, the more linkages a territory maintains to the and cultural prestige of these powerful centers of global culture and power, the nation-states. This imitation process proceeds more its elites are exposed to world culture along established networks of political and and the more likely they will adopt world-cul- cultural relations: African nationalists were tural templates and create a nation-state inspired by the might of France or Great Brit- (Hypothesis 5). Second, the likelihood of ain, Turkish and Japanese nationalists a transition to the nation-state should increase resented these two imperial powers and the more territories of the world have already looked at their German nemesis for inspira- adopted the nation-state (Hypothesis 6). tion, Kurdish and Arab nationalists oriented themselves on Turkish models, and so on. This diffusion process is neither driven by Historical Institutionalism the hegemonic power of a uniform world cul- ture, nor by domestic modernization process, Historical institutionalism (Lachmann 2009; but rather follows the logic of a decentralized Pierson and Skocpol 2002) emphasizes the contagion process. If this accounts for 770 American Sociological Review 75(5) nationalism’s global appeal as a political a nationalist revolution possible. The likeli- ideology and its subsequent diffusion across hood of nation-state creation thus increases the world, under what conditions are nation- with an increase in the number of wars alists able to establish nation-states? fought on a territory or within an empire We propose the following set of hypoth- (Hypotheses 8 and 9). Similarly, a pre- eses that refer to various domestic and inter- nationalist state’s global military and national aspects of the power configuration. economic standing should influence its A power shift in favor of nationalism is capability to co-opt or suppress nationalist more likely when nationalists are able to movements and thus maintain the status convert existing elites to their cause or reach quo, making nation-state creation on its ter- out to larger segments of the population, ritories unlikely (Hypothesis 10, as pro- beyond the intellectual circles, army posed by Strang [1990]). factions, clergymen, and colonial bureau- Finally, diffusion of the nation-state crats who are often the first supporters of within empires and between neighboring ter- nationalist movements (Hroch [1969] ritories can also shift the power balance in 2000). This process of empowerment has favor of nationalists.1 Empires establish political and symbolic aspects. Nationalists a communicative field within which periph- need to build networks of political organiza- eral political elites observe and imitate each tions and alliances and effectively scandal- other’s nation-building projects or mirror ize the existing regime as an instance of that of the imperial center (Fieldhouse ‘‘alien rule’’ or as a sclerotic and frag- 1966). Recently established nation-states mented ancien re´gime unable to withstand within the same imperial domain demon- domination by powerful nation-states. This strate that independence is feasible and effectively undermines the legitimacy of that the center is no longer willing or able the ethnopolitical hierarchy that character- to uphold the status quo. The new nation- izes many empires and dynastic states. states not only provide a model to follow, Disregarding short-term cycles of popular but also new alliance partners in the impe- mobilization and demobilization (Beissinger rial political arena, and thus empower 2002), we assume that nationalists’ political nationalist movements and further delegiti- and symbolic power increase monotoni- mize the pre-national regime. This leads to cally. The more time nationalists have to Hypothesis 11: the more territories within propagate their worldview and establish an empire that have become nation-states, networks of followers, the more powerful the more likely that other territories will they will be vis-a`-vis non-nationalist forces follow. Note that this imperial diffusion and the more likely they will succeed in effect is theoretically distinct from global eventually establishing a nation-state diffusion because the source of the external (Hypothesis 7). influence is different (i.e., the empire versus The power balance also depends on the the world), as is the mechanism through strength of the established regime—its which it operates (i.e., contagion versus capacity to resist nationalist forces and to imposition).2 avoid conversion to the nationalist cause, Within neighborhoods, a new nation- institutional reform in the direction nation- state may propel its own replication in adja- alists propose, abdication, or the loss of ter- cent territories through similar demonstra- ritory to nationalist secession. Following tion and alliance effects. It might also take Skocpol’s (1979) lead, we assume that the more bellicose form of a domino effect wars fought either on the territory in ques- through competition over ethnically mixed tion or elsewhere in an empire reduce the or ill-defined territories (Weiner 1971; established elites’ staying power and make Wimmer 2002): if one territory is organized Wimmer and Feinstein 771 as a nation-state and demands inclusion of autonomy, he maintains, allows provincial its ethnic kin population across the border, elites to establish cultural and ethnic hege- this increases pressure in the adjacent terri- mony within their territories and provides tory to adopt the nation-state model as them with the political resources necessary well. Hypothesis 12 states that the likeli- to successfully challenge the metropolis and hood of nation-state formation increases establish an independent state. This argument with the number of nation-state creations parallels Anderson’s provincial confinement in a neighborhood. hypothesis and can thus be tested, in an approximate way to be sure, with Hypothesis 3 (i.e., territories that correspond to a prov- Existing Datasets and ince or an autonomous state should be more Quantitative Findings likely to become nation-states). Roeder’s (2007) dataset uses autonomous To date, only two quantitative studies have provinces, including colonial dependencies, explored the dynamics of nation-state for- as units of observation and provides informa- mation, both with a different focus and tion on 336 units from 1901 to 2000. He a much smaller universe of cases. Strang’s shows that the likelihood of nation-state for- (1990) work attempts to understand the mation increases if a substate unit is self- conditions under which colonial dependen- governing, if central elites are weakened by cies became independent states from 1870 internal strife and political turmoil, if the pro- to 1987. He finds support for Wallerstein’s vincial population is excluded from political hegemonic cycles theories (decolonization participation or is linguistically and reli- is more likely when a global hegemon giously different from the core population, rules), world polity theory (decolonization and if the province experienced independent accelerated after the UN general assembly statehood prior to incorporation into the cur- adopted an anti-colonial statement in rent state. 1960), balance of power arguments (colo- Roeder’s institutional capacity model nies governed by a metropole with strong advances the theoretical understanding of naval capability are less likely to become nation-state formation by revealing the independent), and imperial diffusion effects. importance of the balance of power between Strang (1991) arrived at similar findings in nationalist contenders and representatives of a related study with fewer variables but the ancien re´gime.Manyofhisarguments a longer time span. This second study also parallel our own understanding of the rise reports a global diffusion effect, measured of the nation-state. However, his quantita- by the number of colonies that have already tive analysis displays weaknesses that raise achieved independence. We build on this doubts about the validity of this specific endeavor by enlarging the empirical horizon version of the balance-of-power argument. to include autonomous states, dependencies Most importantly, there are serious sample of land-based empires (e.g., of the Otto- selection problems. His dataset misses mans, Romanov, and Habsburgs), as well many provinces that never became nation- as the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. states, such as German Bundesla¨nder,U.S. Our dataset also improves on data quality states, and Swiss cantons, although these and adds variables that are relevant to the enjoyed as much autonomy as the states of classic literature on nationalism and the India that do appear in his list. The Ottoman nation-state. Empire has only Bulgaria, Crete, and Samos In the second existing study, Roeder uses listed as substate units, and none of the a global dataset to test his institutional capac- Ottoman villayets, which never developed ity argument. A large degree of institutional into nation-states. 772 American Sociological Review 75(5)

DATASET AND MODELING Austrian empires that controlled pieces of APPROACH what is today Poland. The disadvantage of creating units that do not conform to politi- The two existing quantitative studies thus cal entities is outweighed by the advantage leave room for improvement. Each excludes that these units actually experienced the parts of the world that were candidates for event: it is Poland that became a nation- making the transition to the nation-state: state, not any of these Russian, German, or the land-based Eurasian empires stretching Austrian provinces on their own. Medical from Vienna to Vladivostok, or the nine- studies of mortality take a similar approach: teenth-century waves of nation-state crea- they use individuals, rather than families or tions in the Americas, the Balkans, and couples, as units of observation because it is Western Europe. Furthermore, both studies individuals, not families, who die. Constant include a list of variables that is mostly territorial units also have the advantage of unrelated to classical theories of nation-state defining a stable risk set. They allow us to formation, perhaps because corresponding pursue ‘‘Poland’’ and other territories data is not easily available. throughout history, rather than having to deal with a different set of units every timeastateceasestoexistorcomesinto Units of Observation being, or every time provincial boundaries are redrawn, as would be the case if the Our dataset contains information on 145 ter- dataset was composed of provinces or states. ritories from 1816 until a nation-state was Does choosing today’s countries as units created. By 2001, 139 of these territories mean that we select on the dependent vari- had made the transition to the nation-state, able because we include only successful while the others were still governed as abso- instances of nation-state creation and not lutist monarchies. All territories refer to the failed ones? Note that the grid of states geographic boundaries of countries that defines our units in 2001, independent of existed in 2001. Data coverage is almost whether these are nation-states. Most are complete; we miss only mini-states with nation-states simply because the nation-state less than 20,000 km2 surface plus eight larger has proliferated so widely, not because our states for which no literacy data are avail- research design excludes non-national states. able.3 We also exclude early nation-state To be sure, we define the risk set retrospec- creations in Great Britain, France, Paraguay, tively; there is no Kurdistan, Tibet, West- and Haiti because they occurred before our Sahara, or Southern Sudan in our dataset, data series starts in 1816. In line with most although they could eventually become classical theories of nation-state formation, nation-states. This potential selection problem our analysis is not about the origins of the is less severe than it might first appear nation-state but the general mechanisms because we know from past research that might help explain its subsequent prolif- (Wimmer and Min 2006) that few secessionist eration across the world. states break away from nation-states and most Some notes on the units of observation emerge from imperial polities. No such may be in order. To clarify, our approach empires are left today. We thus do not expect leads us to combine data from various poli- a large number of nation-states to be created ties in the case of territories that did not cor- in the foreseeable future. We believe our respond to a political unit at a given point in risk set, while certainly not complete, never- time. Data for Poland in the 1870s, to give theless captures the overwhelming majority an extreme example, are proportionally of possible events.4 Furthermore, there is no combined from the Russian, German, and reason to believe that the dynamic of future Wimmer and Feinstein 773 nation-state creations will differ from that of Following these coding principles, 24 ter- the past (i.e., there is no sorting mechanism ritories experienced more than one episode of biasing our results systematically). nation-state formation, which we treat as independent from each other. The Baltic ter- ritories, for example, were independent Dependent Variable national states from 1918 to World War II, when they were swallowed again by the To use event history methods, we need to Soviet Union, and they regained nation-state identify the particular point in time at which status in 1991. In other cases, a territory a territory became a nation-state.5 We code achieved nation-state status as part of a larger year of nation-state creation when sover- state, which subsequently broke apart into eignty shifted from kings, emperors, or theo- smaller nation-states. Such was the case for crats to the nation. Sovereignty has a domes- Gran Colombia (which later gave birth to tic and an external component. Domestically, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and eventu- a written constitution claims a nationally ally Panama), the Central American Republic defined community of equal citizens as the (which fragmented into Guatemala, Hondu- political (and moral) foundation of the state ras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador), and foresees some institutional representa- Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. To check tion of this community (not necessarily for selection bias in this definition of the a freely elected parliament). Internal sover- risk set, we ran all our models with eignty thus stands in opposition to dynastic- a restricted definition of the outcome that ism, theocracy, feudal privilege, and mass excludes these repeated events (see Table slavery. Externally, national sovereignty 2). Our results remain almost identical. A means control over foreign policy decisions list of nation-state creations per territory that affect the nation, and it stands in opposi- can be found in the online supplement tion to foreign rule of all sorts. These two (http://asr.sagepub.com/supplemental). conditions must be cumulatively fulfilled. The definition and most data were adopted Independent Variables from Wimmer and Min (2006). Note that we focus on principles of polit- To test the economic modernization argu- ical legitimacy, regardless of how far these ment, we code the length of railway tracks have been realized in practice. For example, (in km) per 1,000 square kilometers. We adopt we code autocracies as nation-states as long data from the monumental compendium of as the dictator claims to rule ‘‘in the name historical statistics assembled by Mitchell of the people.’’ The transition to a nation- (various years) and code other data from pri- state is therefore not always associated with mary sources, which are remarkably rich democratization—sometimes a nation-state thanks to the enthusiasm that the history of is as autocratic as the regime it replaced. railways has sparked among lay and profes- Less than 50 percent of independent states sional scholars (see the online supplement were democracies by 2000 (Gleditsch and for sources). Is this an adequate proxy to mea- Ward 2006), while over 95 percent were sure Gellner’s notion of industrialization? A nation-states. The extent to which citizen- flexible labor market is the crucial element ship rights are granted to all citizens is in his analysis of industrial society, while also not of concern here. We disregard the the manufacturing of industrial goods is not fact that property restrictions on voting given much consideration. It therefore makes rights and denial of citizenship rights to sense to include fully commercialized agricul- women usually last many decades into tural and extractive economies into his defini- nation-statehood.6 tion, both of which are historically associated 774 American Sociological Review 75(5) with railway construction. This is also justi- particular regions, and existing quantitative fied by Gellner’s treatment of African colo- datasets (see the online supplement for sour- nies as representing early stages in industrial ces). In all cases, we found estimations society’s development—despite the almost within a 10-year range from the year of complete absence of manufacturing. nation-state creation; to interpolate, we com- Certainly, a more direct measurement of bined these data with the best estimates the degree of industrialization or the flexibil- available for the beginning of the time series ity of the labor market would be preferable. in 1816, as well as several later data points. The railroad variable, however, offers the The reliability and comparability problems possibility of full data coverage for the entire characteristic of literacy estimates (see Reis dataset, while it would be unthinkable to col- 2005), especially before census taking lect global data on the sectoral distribution of became widespread in the 1870s (Kaestle the labor force, for example. The railroad 1985), also haunt our efforts. In view of the variable is also very precise; it is possible, substantial variation of estimated literacy for instance, to find out how many kilometers rates over time and across territories, how- long the railways of colonial Burma were in ever, we believe that the quality of the data 1880, but it is quite impossible to learn how is sufficient to justify inclusion of this vari- many people were employed in which able in the study. professions. We did use existing historical To test Anderson’s ‘‘provincial horizon of data on energy consumption, urbanization, identity’’ argument and Roeder’s theory of iron and steel production, and the percentage institutional capacity, we code for each year of the labor force employed outside agricul- whether a territory corresponds to an auton- ture as alternative measurements, available omous state or a substate unit (1) or not (0). for only 1,000 to 2,000 pre-nation-state Given that our territorial grid is fixed, while observations, and we arrived at similar political boundaries might change over results (not shown here) as in the models time, we effectively test whether nation-state using the railway variable.7 creation is more likely if a territory previ- Does the rise of the automobile, which ously enjoyed some degree of institutional increasingly replaced railcars in the twenti- autonomy as a province or a state. We count eth century, make the length of railway provinces, colonies, mandate territories, tracks a poor proxy variable for industriali- vilayats and sanjaks, and Russian governo- zation? Most industrialized countries that rates, for example, as relevant substate units, ceased to build railways after World War I and we took into account dozens of reorgan- or II achieved nation-statehood before they izations of colonial and imperial provinces. started to rely on automobiles. While some We code pre-colonial territories that were Communist dependencies and colonies let divided between various indigenous states their railway systems decline, many more or were stateless as 0. continued to build railways after World The degree of directness of rule plays War II and well into the 1970s and beyond. a crucial role in Tilly’s and Hechter’s theo- We ran models for the pre–World War I ries of nationalism and the nation-state. It period alone and found that results do not can be approximated by calculating govern- change significantly. ment expenditure for a particular territory, To test Anderson’s main argument about assuming that the more a government spends the role of literacy in generating nationalist on a territory, the deeper administrative pen- imaginaries, we assembled data on adult etration will be, increasing the government’s literacy rates for all territories in the data- interference in local affairs and its ability to base, relying on published country studies, circumvent local power brokers. We again government censuses, historical research on use data from Mitchell (various years) and Wimmer and Feinstein 775 complement this with additional sources for we code number of memberships in interna- the Ottoman and Spanish empires and the tional governmental organizations by the Soviet Union (see the online supplement). polity to which a territory belonged. We We give imperial dependencies (but not col- assign dependencies the same value as their onies) the same values throughout an empire, centers, assuming that world cultural values assuming that land-based empires were more spread from a colonial or imperial metropolis uniform than sea-born colonial empires in to its peripheries. All data are adopted from modes of territorial control. Pre-colonial ter- the Correlates of War (COW) project. ritories that had not developed indigenous To evaluate whether wars in the territory states are assigned a value of 0 (because, or the empire affect the creation of nation- by definition, they cannot be ruled directly). states, we use Wimmer and Min’s (2009) All other polities (including pre-colonial dataset of wars in all territories of the world states such as Dahomey, Burma, and from 1816 to 2001. This dataset allows us to Morocco) are given their proper values or distinguish between inter-state wars, civil coded as missing values.8 These coding rules wars, and nationalist wars of independence. generate many missing values; we therefore We code a large number of different war test this variable in separate models.9 variables to test whether specific types of Is this variable a good proxy for directness wars are more effective in weakening the of rule? Lange (2005) developed a more spe- political center and thus shifting the balance cific measurement for British colonies, using of power in favor of nationalists. the percentage of court cases handled by tra- Strength of nationalist challengers is ditional courts as a proxy. This variable proxied by years elapsed since the foundation shows a high correlation with our measure- of the first national organization. To count as ment of direct rule via government expendi- national organization, its membership must ture (r = .82 for 19 data points, using non- be defined formally (thus excluding clientel- standardized values). In addition, our mea- ist networks and informal factions) and surement seems to capture historical shifts leadership roles must be institutionalized in directness of rule quite adequately. For independent of individuals (thus excluding example, the decentralization of the Haps- a political leader’s personal followings). In burg monarchy after the Ausgleich in addition, an organization had to claim to 1867—which effectively created two federal represent the national community in the states, one under Hungarian and one under name of which the territory eventually Austrian control—is faithfully reflected in became governed—without being necessar- a dramatic decrease in Vienna’s government ily nationalist in the strict sense of the expenditure for the Hungarian lands. term.10 To statistically distinguish the mono- We generated our diffusion variables by tonically increasing strength of nationalist counting the number of territories governed challengers from the presence or absence of as nation-states in the neighborhood, within nationalism as such, we include a dummy the same imperial domain, or in the world. variable that codes 1 for all years since the We then created a variable that reflects the first national organization was founded. number of nation-states established during The existence of nationalism should make the previous five years because imitation nation-state creation much more likely, given and domino effects are best captured by that our whole historical institutionalist argu- a dynamic coding. All results reported below ment is premised on this antecedent. hold when using a total count or the percent- To take the political center’s capacity to age of nation-states in the world, empire, or resist nationalist movements into account, neighborhood. To test the cross-sectional we rely on the COW dataset’s ‘‘composite version of the global diffusion argument, index of national capabilities,’’ which 776 American Sociological Review 75(5) combines energy consumption, military such as decades, to see whether specific peri- expenditure, number of soldiers, steel pro- ods are particularly likely to produce nation- duction, urbanization, and population size states. We also use natural cubic splines (the (Singer 1987). The index reflects a country’s standard in comparative political research share of total economic and military power [see Beck, Katz, and Tucker 1998]), which available in the world (ranging from 0 to allow us to control for nonlinear trends. We 100 percent). All dependent territories are ran all models with all three time specifica- assigned the value of the imperial or colonial tions and rely only on results that remain center; pre-colonial, stateless territories are robust across these different specifications coded as 0. Unfortunately, we have to code (Tables 2 and 3 show the results with cubic autonomous states not listed in the COW splines). dataset as missing values. Table 1 presents Substantively, the splines describe a con- correlation matrix and summary statistics. stant hazard rate until World War II and a sharply increasing baseline risk thereafter, similar to the smoothed hazard rates in Fig- Modeling Approach and Time ure 1. This trend could be interpreted in Specification line with Strang’s world polity argument by attributing it to an increase in the nation- We designed the dataset as an unbalanced state’s legitimacy after the United Nations’ panel with territories as units. All indepen- founding in 1945 (although Strang [1990] dent variables are lagged one year to avoid himself points to an anti-colonial UN decla- endogeneity problems. We use discrete-time ration of 1960 as a critical turning point). event history models, estimated via a logistic We are uncomfortable with the post- regression analysis of territory years, to ana- hoc-ergo-propter-hoc nature of these inter- lyze the effect of covariates on the likelihood pretations. The post-1945 surge in the of nation-state creation. Following standard baseline hazard rate might be due to the practice, we cluster standard errors on territo- increased global power of the United States, ries to account for the non-independence of champion of decolonization and self-deter- observations within territories. Given the mination. Or it may relate to the unprece- chronic instability of cross-national regres- dented growth of the global economy that sion results (see Young 2009), we ran all made many more nation-state projects eco- models with multiple specifications of nomically feasible. Or it may capture the dependent and independent variables and dif- decreasing popularity of the colonial project ferent combinations of variables. We report in France and Britain—which may or may only results that are robust to all different not be related to the decreasing legitimacy model specifications. of colonialism in the world as a whole.11 In One of the major challenges in event his- conclusion, period dummies and general tory analysis is how to conceptualize effects time trends rarely provide conclusive evi- of time. Much has changed between 1816 dence in support of a particular substantive and 2001 that our independent variables can- argument. not capture. The simplest possibility is to include a linear time trend in the statistical model (as is done in most diffusion models, RESULTS see Strang [1991]). This tests whether the passing of time itself affects the outcome, The correlation matrix in Table 1 shows that each year being more (or less) likely to see many of the developmental variables associ- nation-states created than the one preceding ated with modernist theories of nation-state it. One can also use discrete time periods, formation are strongly correlated. We Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among Variables

RLYES1 S2 INSW NSE NSN PWE WT

R: Length of railway tracks per km2 .555 .542 .025 .320 .298 .140 .299 –.009 .091 .010 .025 –.006 L: Percent literate among adults .667 .292 .449 .526 .253 .522 .041 .101 .132 –.007 .0025 Y: Years since first national organization founded .218 .435 .539 .266 .507 .054 .120 .051 –.019 .053 E: Central government expenditure for territory .419 .494 .299 .5021 .0842 .0527 –.005 .011 .041 S1: 1st cubic spline on year .897 .753 .9103 .2221 .1281 –.045 .096 .008 S2: 2nd cubic spline on year .726 .9526 .2383 .1341 –.070 .048 .016 I: Center’s membership in IGOs .6589 .3978 .0796 –.006 .220 .008 NSW: Total number of nation-states in world .217 .128 –.054 –.003 .006 NSE: Number of nation-states created in the empire .205 –.036 .191 .031 in past five years NSN: Number of nation-states created in –.074 .065 .108 neighborhood in past five years P: Center’s share of global power .254 .041 WE: Number of wars fought in an empire .102 WT: Number of wars fought in a territory

Mean 5.671 20.563 11.655 .447 1888.442 21.581 15.203 40.360 .252 .087 7.372 .539 .056 Standard deviation 16.044 27.161 24.185 1.249 46.625 30.221 20.803 26.898 1.076 .361 8.033 1.134 .252 N 17,500 17,667 17,667 9,821 17,667 17,667 17,522 17,667 17,667 17,667 16,488 17,522 17,522 777 778 American Sociological Review 75(5) therefore introduce them in separate models civil war, failed to achieve the same in its far- to test their explanatory power independent away colonial empire, long before it had been from each other. We maintain variables in touched by industrialization. subsequent models if results are statistically Model 2 contains variables associated significant and substantially plausible until with Anderson’s (and Roeder’s) approach. we arrive at what we consider the best fitting Territories that correspond to the boundaries explanation of nation-state creation. We of provinces or states are not more likely to include continental dummies in all our main become nation-states. The literacy variable models to account for unobserved heteroge- is negative and significant (indicating that neity across world regions. more literate societies are less likely to become nation-states). This result is not robust to other time specifications, however, Main Findings which all produce insignificant results. We therefore do not consider it reliable. What Model 1 in Table 2 includes the length of happens if we look more precisely at only railway tracks as a proxy to test the core the types of territories for which Anderson hypothesis derived from Gellner’s work. thought mass literacy or being a province The variable fails to achieve standard levels would be most effective in bringing about of significance, even if we restrict the sample a nation-state? The political entity variable to pre-1914 years, during which the length of is also insignificant for the colonial depen- railways is a better proxy for industrialization dencies of Europe, where it should matter than afterward. The main reason why we find most (results not shown). The literacy vari- no general association between industriali- able also fails to reach standard levels of sig- zation and nation-state formation (according nificance if we analyze only European terri- to additional analyses not reported here) is tories, that is, the domains of second- and that early nation-states in Latin America third-wave nationalisms for which high liter- were created in a preindustrial environment acy levels should be a catalyst (results not andmanyweaklyindustrializedAfricanter- shown). ritories achieved nation-statehood in the Why does the literacy variable not 1960s, while the highly industrialized behave as Anderson expected? If we again Soviet and Yugoslav provinces had to wait exclude the possibility of systematic mea- another generation to accomplish nation- surement error for the moment,12 additional statehood. This combination of historical analysis (not shown here) suggests the fol- developments might explain—if we leave lowing: After World War I, literacy was the possibility of systematic measurement promoted heavily by Communist regimes error aside for a moment—the lack of asso- all over Eastern Europe and the colonial ciation between industrialization and nation- empires, especially in Africa, long before state creation. the creation of nation-states in these areas This hints at the importance of power con- of the world. Perhaps these regimes were figurational factors that are largely missing able to keep nationalists at arm’s length by from Gellner’s account and which we will inducing the population to imagine—at least explore further below: The Soviet Union had temporarily—other, non-national communi- the power to keep nationalist movements in ties, such as a world-spanning family of its highly industrialized provinces in check subjects loyal to her Majesty, or the revolu- for generations, not least by co-opting and tionary working classes of the world. The controlling minority elites into the govern- relationship between mass literacy and ments of the republics. Spain, preoccupied nationalism might therefore be less straight- with the Napoleonic invasion and a subsequent forward than Anderson’s account suggests. Table 2. Parameter Estimates for Logistic Regression Models of Nation-State Creation

Model 6 Model 7 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 (fixed effects) (first NSCs only)

Length of railway tracks per km2 .005 (.004) Territory corresponds to state or province –.300 (.222) Percent literate among adults –.016** (.005) Central government expenditure for territory –.213* (.084) Center’s membership in IGOs .008 (.005) Total number of nation-states in world –.025** (.008) Number of nation-states created in the empire .165** .124** .304** .103** in past five years (.038) (.034) (.063) (.035) Number of nation-states created in neighborhood .780** .512** .419** .659** in past five years (.121) (.124) (.141) (.149) Existence of national organization 1.087** 3.60** 1.294* (.292) (1.135) (.346) Years since first national organization .007* .075* .008* (.003) (.036) (.004) Number of wars fought in the empire .297** .585** .315** (.051) (.073) (.054) Number of wars fought in the territory .481** .604* .490* (.182) (.29) (.213) Center’s share of global power .061* –.063 .053 (.029) (.162) (.031) Center’s share of global power 3 dependency –.108** .047 –.117** (.03) (.168) (.038) Dependent territory .406 –3.082** .502 (.287) (1.196) (.376) Middle East –2.839** –3.933** –2.459** –3.165** –2.298** –2.301** (.468) (.561) (.524) (.442) (.524) (.537) Eastern Europe –2.362** –2.658** –2.640** –2.187** –2.048** –1.461** (.312) (.340) (.452) (.292) (.410) (.442)

779 (continued) 780

Table 2. Continued

Model 6 Model 7 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 (fixed effects) (first NSCs only)

Africa –1.864** –3.147** –1.898** –2.437** –1.682** –1.670** (.271) (.475) (.359) (.280) (.421) (.436) Asia –1.728** –2.905** –1.901** –1.850** –1.037** –.983* (.294) (.477) (.371) (.257) (.389) (.399) Oceania –.957** –1.071** –1.035* –.854* –.037 .082 (.347) (.329) (.521) (.345) (.483) (.544) Latin America .265 –.378 –1.309 –.339 .135 –.029 (.474) (.525) (.748) (.439) (.377) (.414) 1st cubic spline on year –.007 –.002 .020 –.010 –.015** .095** –.014* (.005) (.005) (.011) (.005) (.005) (.028) (.006) 2nd cubic spline on year .039** .045** .018 .062** .042** –.0233 .039** (.006) (.006) (.012) (.010) (.006) (.028) (.007) Constant 8.644 1.457 –42.428* 14.131 21.959* 19.33 (9.857) (9.628) (21.375) (9.784) (9.773) (10.976) Observations 17,500 17,522 9,821 17,522 16,488 15,533 15,351 Likelihood Ratio 266(9)** 280(10)** 185(9)** 375(12)** 448(17)** 636(11)** 431(17)** BIC –178 –182 –102 –258 –283 –582 –267

Note: Robust standard errors in parentheses. *p \ .05; ** p \ .01 (two-tailed tests). Wimmer and Feinstein 781

Model 3 integrates our measurement of nation-state creation substantially, pointing directness of rule, which reduces the number toward imitation and domino mechanisms.14 of observations by almost half because we Our findings thus parallel research on the could not find data for most pre-colonial ter- transition to democracy, which has been ritories. The variable is robustly significant shown to diffuse within networks of related but with a negative coefficient, indicating states (Torfason and Ingram 2010) and that the more directly a territory is ruled by among geographical neighbors (Gleditsch the political center, the less likely it is to and Ward 2006), rather than within a uniform eventually become a nation-state. This is global space. contrary to expectations derived from Examples of cases that underlie these Hechter’s and Tilly’s arguments. It seems results include the increasing pressure on that more directly ruled states are more capa- Bolivia’s remaining royalists after the Boli- ble of resisting the pressure to shift to the varian spirit of nationalist revolution gained nation-state model and can keep nationalists a foothold in most neighboring territories; in check by ‘‘buying’’ the population’s con- the impetus to create a modern nation-state sent. However, this result is mostly due to and to abandon the Hamidian search for the Middle Eastern kingdoms that have not imperial restoration felt by the Committee yet experienced a transition to the nation- for Union and Progress when one Ottoman state despite very high government expendi- province in Rumelia after the other became tures per capita. This is the only such depen- an independent state; and the powerful dem- dence on a few observations in all the results onstration effect that Indian independence that we report in this article. had on many nationalist movements in the To analyze the full dataset again, we British Empire. exclude the government expenditure variable The competing nation-state-building proj- from subsequent models and note that its ects on the Spanish peninsula, born out of effects are largely the same when additional nationalist resistance against Napoleon’s variables are added to the equation (results occupation, provide examples of neighbor- not shown). Model 4 introduces diffusion hood diffusion effects. The Portuguese lib- variables. The term for global diffusion is eral revolutions, and thus the creation of negative and significant because of collinear- a modern Portuguese nation-state, were ity with the cubic splines. This result is there- directed as much against the absent emperor fore substantially meaningless. In contrast to (who fled to Brazil) as against the state’s tra- Strang’s (1991) analysis of decolonization,13 ditional rival, Spain, whose newly formed we thus do not find any support for the lon- mass army—modeled after the French peuple gitudinal version of the world polity argu- en arme it had just defeated in the world’s ment. A political center’s number of IGO first guerilla war—threatened Portugal’s memberships—that is, the variable to test independence. its cross-sectional aspects—also fails to Model 5 contains variables that should achieve significance. A territory that is produce a shift of power from pre-national more integrated into the world polity is not elites to nationalists. Our proxy for the more likely than a more isolated territory to strength of nationalist movements—years become a nation-state. that have passed since the foundation of the We do, however, get strong and meaning- first national organization—has a significant ful evidence for diffusion at the imperial and effect on the likelihood of nation-state crea- neighborhood levels. The number of nation- tion. Because we also include a dummy for states founded during the past five years the period after the foundation of the first within an empire and within a territory’s national organization, this effect is net of neighborhood increases the likelihood of the existence of nationalism per se. However, 782 American Sociological Review 75(5)

Table 3. Additional Tables: Time Periods and Imperial Contexts

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Before 1915 After 1914 Decadesa Empiresb

Number of nation-states created in .297** .134** .110** .135** the empire in past five years (.104) (.037) (.040) (.049) Number of nation-states created in .496* .634** .486** .630** neighborhood in past five years (.232) (.158) (.123) (.124) Years since first national organization .025** .010** .018** .019** (.005) (.003) (.003) (.003) Share of global power 3 dependency –.150* –.028 –.056** –.047 (.059) (.017) (.014) (.026) Number of wars fought in the empire .521** .239** .289** .318** (.097) (.051) (.047) (.043) Number of wars fought in the territory .818** .394 .661** .555** (.230) (.224) (.173) (.183) 1821 to 1840 1.580 .650 Spanish (1.013) (.530) 1841 to 1855 .636 .080 Hapsburg (1.068) (.403) 1856 to 1870 .414 .461 Romanov (1.073) (.400) 1871 to 1885 .303 –.391 Ottoman (1.102) (.513) 1886 to 1900 –1.084 –.588 Yugoslav (1.408) (.370) 1901 to 1915 .868 –.777 Soviet (1.062) (.505) 1916 to 1930 .820 .444 French (1.041) (.347) 1931 to 1945 –.153 .455 British (1.119) (.458) 1946 to 1955 1.379 .168 Dutch (1.025) (.373) 1956 to 1965 2.456* –.732 Portuguese (1.008) (.569) 1966 to 1975 1.906 .748 Other empires (1.032) (.607) 1976 to 1985 –.411 .168 Independent states (1.409) (.299) 1986 to 1995 3.129** (1.026) 1996 to 2001 2.761* (1.28) Observations 11,116 5,372 16,488 16,421 Likelihood Ratio 112(8)** 164(8)** 406(20)** 374(20)**

Note: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Cubic splines are included in all models except Model 3. The coefficients of the splines and the constant are omitted from the table. aYears 1816 to 1820 are the reference category. bPre-colonial territories are the reference category. *p \ .05; ** p \ .01 (two-tailed tests). Wimmer and Feinstein 783 the coefficients of the two variables suggest An interaction term is significant and nega- that the existence of nationalism is itself tive, while the sign of the coefficient of the a strong factor. This is in line with the basic non-interacted term is positive and significant. power configurational argument, which This latter result disappears if we use deca- assumes that nationalist forces first need to des or a linear time trend instead of cubic emerge before they can eventually take splines to specify the effects of time (see over an existing state or found a new one.15 Model 3 in Table 3); thus, we do not rely Another core hypothesis associated with on this result. We conclude that imperial the power configurational argument is that states that are powerful players in the inter- nationalists will be more successful if the cen- national arena can more easily co-opt, con- ter is weakened by wars—similar to Skocpol’s trol, or suppress nationalist movements and analysis of revolutions. Indeed, both the num- prevent the establishment of nation-states ber of wars fought within a territory during the in their dependent territories. As an example past year and the number of wars fought for the opposite case, we can point to Spain, within an empire (excluding those fought on which could not contain or co-opt Creole a territory) significantly affect the likelihood nationalists in its New World possessions of nation-state creation. Examples of the latter or fight independence movements effec- include the civil war in Bolivia between royal- tively after its fleet was dramatically deci- ists and Bolivarists, the nationalist wars of lib- mated in the famous battle of Trafalgar eration that helped bring about the Baltic and its attention was further diverted by republics’ independence, and the Russian- Napoleon’s occupation of her lands. Turkish war that allowed Bulgaria to become Model 5 therefore lends strong and consis- an independent nation-state in 1879 after tent support to the various hypotheses associ- Ottoman forces had crushed a Bulgarian ated with our historical institutionalist model rebellion four years earlier. of nation-state creation. Model 6 reports World War I, which debilitated the Habs- results of a territory fixed-effect model, burg and Soviet empires and enabled a wave which takes into account that many time- of nation-state creations in their domains, invariant characteristics of individual territo- provides a prime example of the role of ries, which are not adequately captured by wars in other parts of an empire. Other cases our set of variables, might influence the like- include the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya and lihood of nation-state creation. To put it sim- the Malaysian anti-colonial Communist ply, fixed-effect models give much more insurgency, which decreased the British weight to within territory changes over time Empire’s willingness to hold on to its impe- than do standard models. With the exception rial possessions and helped accelerate of the center’s share of global power vari- Ghana’s independence—the first on the con- able, to which we turn in a moment, all vari- tinent. Similarly, the bloody struggles in ables remain statistically significant in the Algeria and French Cameroon weakened expected direction. Model 7 excludes instan- France’s capacity and willingness to erect ces of repeated nation-state creation on the further obstacles against decolonization in same territory (as in the Central American its West-African domains in 1960.16 republics), which might bias our results; According to our theory, a center’s power they stay almost identical, however. The to resist nationalist challengers also depends same holds true if we consider only the last on its international standing. The center’s events in cases of repeated nation-state crea- global power variable is negatively related to tions (results not shown). Note also that the likelihood of a transition to nation-state- Model 5 stays largely unchanged if we drop hood. The effect is different, however, for all observations of one continent from the self-ruled territories and for dependencies. sample (also not shown). 784 American Sociological Review 75(5)

Context and Contingency According to our model and data, Moscow would have had the capacity to fight Do our findings hold across time and across or co-opt independence movements—yet the different waves of nation-state creation nation-states popped up all over its domains. that rolled over the modern world? Is not Similarly, the dissolution of the French and the story of the dissolution of the Habsburg British empires in Sub-Saharan Africa were Empire quite different from that of the engineered in advance (for British Africa, break-up of the Soviet Union? Should we see Flint [1983]) and in the end supported, expect variables to affect outcomes in differ- rather than fought, by the imperial center ent ways in the early-nineteenth century than (on French West Africa, see Chafer [2002]). in the late-twentieth century? Table 3 shows Does the lack of willingness to uphold and the results of some additional tests meant to defend an imperial domain explain why so answer these questions. Model 4 demon- many territories achieved nation-statehood strates that none of the various imperial in 1960 and 1991, such that the two corre- domains—for example, Ottoman, Romanov, sponding decades stand out compared to all or British—is significantly different from others in Model 3? Does contingency play the others or from territories that remained a role in these two waves of nation-state autonomous throughout history, such as creations—contingent, that is, from the point Japan or Switzerland. No decade stands out of view of a power configurational argument as particularly prone to nation-state creation that does not foresee a lack of willingness to (see Model 3), with the exception of the use one’s power? decades starting in 1956, when Africa was Alternatively, we might have a problem decolonized, and the 1990s, when the Soviet of data quality, rather than theoretical Union dissolved and Yugoslavia disinte- misspecification and contingency. The fol- grated (more on this below). If we look lowing analysis focuses on the Soviet case, only at observations either before 1914 but similar arguments could be made with (Model 1) or after 1914 (Model 2), roughly regard to African decolonization. First, it the midpoint in our data series, we discover might be that the Kremlin was already too that the results are fairly similar. After World weak domestically to use its global military War I, wars fought in a territory no longer and economic power against nationalist significantly affect the likelihood of nation- independence movements, even if it had state creation, and the center’s share of wanted to. Our data are not fine-grained global power variable is only borderline enough to capture power relations between significant.17 the Russian president Boris Yeltsin—who We took a closer look at how the effects famously stood on a tank in the center of of the share of global power variable change Moscow amid thousands of supporters—and over time. It is negative (making nation-state the putsch generals who wanted to roll back creation less likely) until the 1970s, but it has the nationalist movements and strengthen a positive effect thereafter (making nation- the USSR’s control over the empire, includ- state creation more likely).18 This is because ing over Russia. many nation-states were created within the Second, the yearly resolution of our data domains of the Soviet Union in the nineties, does not capture fast moving possible diffu- while Moscow still commanded an extraordi- sion effects. For example, the inspiration nary share of global military and economic that Baltic declarations of sovereignty (in power, especially compared with some small 1988) and independence (in September Gulf states that continued to resist the siren 1991) provided to leaders of the Caucasian songs of nationalism and thus remain in the republics (who declared independence in risk set throughout the 1990s. early December of 1991); or the fact that Wimmer and Feinstein 785

Yeltsin’s Russian nationalism and declara- overthrow or absorb the established regime, tion of independence in mid-December pro- quite independent of whether domestic mod- voked the collapse of the remaining Soviet ernization processes have readied a society Union and left Central Asian republics no for nation-building. Our analysis shows that choice but to embrace independence them- such a power shift is more likely when selves, which they did later that month.19 nationalists have had ample time to mobilize With better data and a more fine-grained the population and delegitimize the old analysis, we could gain a deeper understand- regime or when the established regime is ing of the complex dynamics of political weakened by wars. Diffusion of nation-states mobilization, contestation, repression, diffu- among neighbors or within the same empire sion, and imitation that change the balance also empowers nationalists by providing of power between nationalists and existing a model to follow and new alliance partners elites within days or weeks (see Beissinger’s on which to rely. On the other hand, nation- [2002] superb analysis). Our global dataset, alists who struggle against an imperial center stretching from the fall of Napoleon’s empire are at a disadvantage when the empire has to the beginning of the twenty-first century, considerable global military and economic is not well equipped to handle this task. It power that it can use to fight independence can, however, highlight the waves of movements. nation-state formation in which such fast- We thus integrate balance-of-power and moving dynamics are particularly likely to diffusion mechanisms into a simple power have been consequential. configurational model that includes domestic and international dimensions as well as mili- tary, political, and symbolic aspects of the CONCLUSIONS balance of power. In contrast to political modernization arguments, this model empha- Past comparative historical scholarship has sizes more proximate political factors, such explored various routes of nation-state for- as war and the political standing of imperial mation: reform from above as in Japan; grad- elites. With regard to Gellner’s and Ander- ual transition into nation-statehood as in son’s classical theories, our analysis suggests Sweden and Thailand; the overthrow of an that the slow moving forces of economic and ancien re´gime through revolution as in cultural modernization did not play a crucial Russia or through civil war as in the United role in the rise of the nation-state across the States; nationalist secession as in Yugoslavia world.20 In contrast to world polity theory, and Mexico; and unification movements such we find diffusion effects operating within as in Germany and Yemen. Independent of neighborhoods and imperial domains, while which of these routes a territory travels the growing global hegemony of the nation- down, our analysis suggests that the success state template—certainly a historical fact of nationalist projects is determined by the worth underlining—is not a good predictor constellation of power relating nationalist of individual instances of nation-state crea- movements and factions to imperial centers, tion. This hints at the possibility that this ancien re´gimes, or other factions of the rul- global hegemony might result from the ing elites. worldwide rise of the nation-state rather These nationalist movements emerge than causing it. through an imitation process driven by the This global outcome—the almost univer- extraordinary success and global dominance sal adoption of the nation-state form— there- of the first nation-states. Nation-states are fore emerges from local and regional pro- subsequently created around the world wher- cesses that are not coordinated or causally ever a power shift allows nationalists to produced by global social forces. As in 786 American Sociological Review 75(5) epidemiology, processes of contagion follow and Sarah Zingg Wimmer for superb research assistance. established networks of political relation- Mauro Guille´n, Robert Mare, Brian Min, Gabriel Ross- man, Art Stinchcombe, and Don Treiman provided ships and cultural similarity that span the help and advice regarding research methods and data entire world. The logic of contagion is purely management. We are especially grateful for several regional and produces a decentralized pattern rounds of discussions with Robert Mare. Angus Maddi- of diffusion, all the while generating the illu- son helped with the standardization of economic data. sion of a systemic process when seen from We received advice regarding the early literacy rates of individual territories from Harvey Graff, Aaron a global point of view. Future research Althouse, Nola Jean Cook, Keith Weller Taylor, Olo¨f should attempt to theoretically decipher and Gardarsdo¨ttir, Loftur Guttormsson, Luca Godenzi, Alois empirically capture such processes with Gehart, Jo¨rg Baten, Brian Min, and Gustav Brown. Pre- more precision than we have been able to vious versions of the article were presented at depart- do here, perhaps by revitalizing some of mental lecture series of the sociology departments of Northwestern University, UCLA, the University of Gabriel Tarde’s anti-Durkheimian models Washington, and Cambridge University; the political of imitation and diffusion. science departments of the University of Chicago and We conclude with a note on what our anal- George Washington University; at the conference ysis implies for the contemporary salience of ‘‘Comparing Past and Present’’ organized by the Com- nationalism and the future of the nation-state. parative Historical Section of ASA in 2009; the Social Science History Association Annual Meeting of 2009; It is unlikely that many more countries will and the Association for the Study of Nationalism meet- experience the kind of fragmentation and divi- ing in 2010. We thank conveners and audiences for stim- sion into a series of nation-states that charac- ulating comments and challenging criticisms. Rogers terized the dissolution of the Soviet, British, Brubaker offered written comments and suggestions on and Ottoman empires. To be sure, secessions a first draft. The article greatly profited from the helpful advice and critical encouragement by outstanding ASR from established nation-states will continue reviewers. to occur, as the recent creations of Kosovo, East Timor, and Montenegro illustrate. And the few existing non-national states in the Notes Middle East and elsewhere might experience 1. Gleditsch and Ward (2006) describe a similar rela- a constitutional revolution in the future. Over- tion between regional diffusion and local empower- all, however, we do not expect new waves of ment in their analysis of democratization. nation-state creations to sweep over the world. 2. Our argument incorporates several of the diffusion The nationalist dream of organizing the world mechanisms identified by Dobbin, Simmons, and intoaseriesofstatesthatprovidearooffor Garrett (2005). The diffusion of nationalism corre- sponds to the ‘‘follow the leader’’ effects empha- each culturally defined people, to use a Gell- sized by constructivist sociologists. Imperial diffu- nerian metaphor, has come close to being real- sion is similar to the ‘‘copying between similar ized. History, however, refuses to ever come countries’’ mechanism underlined by sociologists to an end. It represents a trail traversed in or the ‘‘channeled learning’’ between networked the past, not a compass to determine its future actors studied by political scientists. Finally, neigh- borhood diffusion contains aspects of the copying direction. Generations to come will certainly mechanism, but also of the competition effects stud- imagine other communities than the nation ied by economists. and reshape the world’s political landscape 3. Due to missing literacy data, we exclude Albania, according to tectonic principles that we cannot Belize, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Greenland, possibly imagine today. Iceland, Lesotho, and Namibia. We do include Gambia, Kuwait, Cyprus, Bahrain, Qatar, and Mauritius, all of which control less than 20,000 2 Acknowledgments km of territory. 4. A brief discussion of the advantages and disadvan- The authors wish to thank Nurullah Ardic, Philippe tages of other possible definitions of the risk set Duhart, Wesley Hiers, Hazem Kandil, Yana Kucheva, might be in order. First, one could choose the states Joy Morgen, Anoop Sarbahi, Frank Yen, Jeremy Yobe, of 1816 as fixed units of observation, avoiding the Wimmer and Feinstein 787

problem of ‘‘coding history backward.’’ However, 7. Still, railway track length is correlated .48 with the with the exception of Germany, Italy, and Yemen, percentage employed outside agriculture based on these units are much larger than those that actually 196 data points from Vanhanen (2000), and .65 made the transition to the nation-state, making it for the years prior to 1970. The correlations of per- difficult to identify a single event for these units. centage employed outside agriculture with other Second, one could code the political units that exist measurements of industrialization contained in the in any given year, rather than fixed territorial units. Correlates of War (COW) dataset are similar: .68 While all independent variables would be coded in with energy consumption per capita, .49 with total relation to meaningful political arenas, the outcome energy consumption, and .47 with iron and steel (i.e., nation-state creation) often would not be production per capita (all correlations based on attributed to units that actually experienced it only 633 observations). (e.g., in the case of empires that dissolved into 8. We code these variables in various ways (e.g., by a series of nation-states). Furthermore, these politi- assigning 0 to all pre-colonial and pre-modern cal units (states or provinces) would produce differ- autonomous states, assuming that direct rule neces- ent risk sets over time, depending on how states sarily means modern, bureaucratic rule). None of appear and disappear from the political map and the results depend on these coding decisions. how provincial boundaries are redrawn, making 9. We standardized all units as per capita figures, causal inference more difficult. A third alternative converted into U.S. constant dollars using time- research design would be to choose constant spatial varying conversion rates, and then additionally units of observation, for example, using a 100 3 adjusted for purchasing power differences using 100 km2 grid. This would have the advantage of gen- Maddison’s (2003) GDP estimations. We also esti- erating a risk set completely independent of the out- mated our models with unadjusted data and found come. The problem is that these units correspond no significant differences in the results. neither to arenas within which political processes 10. Most of the information used for this variable is unfold nor to areas that eventually experienced the based on Woronoff (Various years). nation-state event. The question would then arise of 11. It is interesting to note, in this context, that Britain whether to code a separate nation-state event for all had already started to prepare for decolonization in units that eventually formed a nation-state together, the late 1930s (Flint 1983), while Nazi Germany’s and how to deal with the fact that these events are imperial project was in full swing. obviously dependent on each other. Finally, one 12. One could argue that the foundation of the first could argue that today’s federal states (e.g., Nigeria national organization would be a better dependent and India) contain units that are still at risk of becom- variable to test Anderson’s mass literacy theory. ing nation-states of their own, especially if the fed- We find no significant association between levels eral provinces are populated by ethnic minorities. of literacy and the foundation of a national organiza- We redefined our risk set accordingly (using data tion as soon as continental dummies are included in from Christin and Hug [2009]) and found no major the model (results not shown); the same holds true differences in the results. This research design obvi- for the railroad length and government expenditure ously increases measurement error because we variables, while diffusion mechanisms within empires assign the same values for all independent variables and among neighbors seem to be at work again. to all substate units, and it is based on an ex-post def- 13. Note, however, that Strang’s (1991) finding does inition of which states contain federal subunits. not hold up if observations after 1955 are dropped, 5. While this is problematic for gradual processes of that is, without African decolonization. Further- nation-state formation that had few historical turn- more, we find no robust effects for Strang’s ing points or dramatic ruptures (e.g., Sweden), it (1990, 1991) other global-level variable—Waller- is quite unproblematic for most cases in our dataset. stein’s period of hegemony (results not shown). In any case, the alternative of coding ‘‘degrees of Also contrary to Strang’s findings, nation-states nation-stateness’’ for each year and each territory are not more likely to emerge among dependencies would be utterly unfeasible. of democratic centers or in settler societies. Our 6. We do not define states as modern nation-states results do confirm, however, his findings regarding that, in their constitutions, exclude segments of imperial diffusion effects and the international the population from the citizenry (e.g., the slave- power of an imperial or colonial center. holding United States before the Civil War). We 14. Are these really imitation and domino effects operat- do not consider subsequent repeals of citizenship ing at the imperial and neighborhood levels, or are status for segments of the population (e.g., Jews these regional and local manifestations of the pressure in Nazi Germany) as cases of reversal into a pre- to adopt the nation-state emanating from the global nation-state situation. Changing this handful of cod- system? First, these variables are significant for the ing decisions does not affect the results. pre-1915 subsample as well, when global pressures 788 American Sociological Review 75(5)

were arguably much weaker (see Table 3). Second, that nationalist mobilization is easier to achieve additional analysis shows that the absolute number within territories with a demographically dominant of nation-states in an empire or a neighborhood ethnic group that can form the ethnic core of a future increases the likelihood of nation-state creation in nation. This result is all the more remarkable because the remaining territories. One would not expect such the obvious reverse causation problem in this analysis a cumulative effect if we were dealing simply with works in favor of the hypothesis: early nation-state local manifestations of a global adoption pressure. creation could cause ethnic homogeneity over the 15. The years since the foundation of a national organi- long run through assimilation or ethnic cleansings, zation variable is sensitive to inclusion of a small rather than being caused by it. Second, some scholars group of territories. 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World, 1816–2001.’’ American Sociological Review Andreas Wimmer is Professor of Sociology at the Uni- 71:867–97. versity of California, Los Angeles. His research aims to ———. 2009. ‘‘The Location and Purpose of Wars understand the dynamics of nation-state formation, eth- around the World: A New Global Dataset, 1816– nic boundary making, and political conflict from a com- 2001.’’ International Interactions 35:390–417. parative perspective. Woronoff, Jon. Various years. Historical Dictionaries. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Yuval Feinstein is a PhD candidate in the Department Young, Cristobal. 2009. ‘‘Model Uncertainty in Socio- of Sociology at the University of California, Los logical Research: An Application to Religion and Angeles. He is studying why international wars fought Economic Growth.’’ American Sociological Review by democracies tend to be supported by the public dur- 74:380–97. ing ‘‘rally-round-the-flag’’ periods.