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Nation Building presents bold new answers to an age-old question. Why is national integration achieved in some diverse countries, while others are destabilized by political inequality between ethnic groups, contentious politics, or even separatism and ethnic war? Traversing centuries and continents from early nineteenth-century Europe and Asia to Africa from the turn of the twenty-first century to today, Andreas Wimmer delves into the slow-moving forces that encourage political alliances to stretch across ethnic divides and build national unity. Offering a long-term historical perspective and global outlook, Nation Building sheds important new light on the challenges of political integration in diverse countries.

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"This fluent and powerful book demonstrates at the deepest level that early state formation rests on ethnic and linguistic homogenization - and this, together with the presence of civil society alliances that crosscut a territory, allows for successful nation building. Wimmer is a great sociologist at the top of his profession, producing a work of immense sophistication that exhibits all his gifts."--John A. Hall, McGill University

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Andreas Wimmer is the Lieber Professor of Sociology and Political Philosophy at Columbia University. His books include Waves of War and Ethnic Boundary Making.

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