Nation Building Big Lessons from Successes and Failures

For example, historically, the level of segregation in Spain and France was similar – Bretons, Basques and Catalans are geographically concentrated, and the Breton and Basque populations of France were as culturally distant from the French majority as the Catalan and Basque populations of Spain were from the Spanish majority. [...] Curiously, the two first conditions that Jha argues as necessary for resilient inter-ethnic peace were present both in the case of Hindu–Muslim relations in South Asia and the case of the relationship between Jewish middlemen and the non-Jewish majority in the Russian Empire. [...] NATION BUILDING: WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? | ROHNER AND ZHURAVSKAYA This virtuous cycle can explain the building of a common identity and cooperative social norms even from difficult starting points, as in the case of the European Coal and Steel Community, which emerged in the aftermath of World War II and contributed to the ultimate creation of the European Union. [...] In France and the United States, the reforms contributed to the development of a national identity (although from the perspective of fostering political pluralism, the goals of these two reforms may be questionable). [...] The former paper analyses the impact of occupation and repression of local culture on the part of the Alsace and Lorraine region that was ruled by Germany from 1871 to 1918, compared to the remainder of Alsace and Lorraine that remained with France during this time period.