Nation-building
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state.[1][2] Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to Harris Mylonas, "Legitimate authority in modern national states is connected to popular rule, to majorities. Nation-building is the process through which these majorities are constructed."[3] In Harris Mylonas's framework, "state elites employ three nation-building policies: accommodation, assimilation, and exclusion."[4]
For nation-building in the sense of enhancing the capacity of state institutions, building state-society relations and also external interventions, see State-building.Nation builders are those members of a state who take the initiative to develop the national community through government programs, including military conscription and national content mass schooling.[5][6][7] Nation-building can involve the use of propaganda or major infrastructure development to foster social harmony and economic growth. According to Columbia University sociologist Andreas Wimmer, three factors tend to determine the success of nation-building over the long-run: "the early development of civil-society organisations, the rise of a state capable of providing public goods evenly across a territory, and the emergence of a shared medium of communication."[8][9][10]
Foreign policy operations[edit]
Germany and Japan after World War II[edit]
After World War II, the Allied victors engaged in large-scale nation-building with considerable success in Germany. The United States, Britain, and France operated sectors that became West Germany. The Soviet Union operated a sector that became East Germany. In Japan, the victors were nominally in charge but in practice, the United States was in full control, again with considerable political, social, and economic impact.[28]
NATO[edit]
After the collapse of communism in Yugoslavia in 1989, a series of civil wars broke out. Following the Dayton Agreement, also referred to as the Dayton Accords, NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and also the European Union, engaged in stopping the civil wars, punishing more criminals, and operating nation-building programs especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina,[29] as well as in Kosovo.[30]