Ethnonationalism and State Building

Publication Series Democracy, Volume 9

Ethnonationalism and State Building

Since the end of the Cold War, ethnic and religious conflicts have increased significantly. The international community was largely helpless in the face of genocide in Rwanda and the Balkan wars. Since then, interest in conflict management methods has grown considerably. Nation building and state building in fragile states has thus become an instrument of international policy. The issues related to the structuring of government bodies, constitutions, or institutional frameworks for political pluralism are regularly confronted with forms of ethnic and religious conflicts. Managing these conflicts involves finding equilibrium between the territorial integrity of a state and its inherent promise of stability and the principle of a peoples’ right to self-determination. Comparisons can be helpful in evaluating the successes and failures of various ethnic integration strategies. The international political weight of the topic was underscored by the events related to the war in Georgia in the summer of 2008.