Brief Description
Mylonas argues that foreign policy goals and international relations drives a state's assimilation or exclusion policies towards an ethnic group.
Learn More about the Book
What drives a state's choice to assimilate, accommodate, or exclude ethnic groups within its territory? In this innovative work on the international politics of nation-building, Harris Mylonas argues that a state's nation-building policies toward non-core groups any aggregation of individuals perceived as an ethnic group by the ruling elite of a state are influenced by both its foreign policy goals and its relations with the external patrons of these groups. Through a detailed study of the Balkans, Mylonas shows that how a state treats a non-core group within its own borders is determined largely by whether the state's foreign policy is revisionist or cleaves to the international status quo, and whether it is allied or in rivalry with that group's external patrons. Mylonas injects international politics into the study of nation-building, building a bridge between international relations and the comparative politics of ethnicity and nationalism. This is the first book to explain systematically how the politics of ethnicity in the international arena determine which groups are assimilated, accommodated, or annihilated by their host states."
About the Author
Harris Mylonas' research focuses on the processes of nation- and state-building, the politicization of cultural differences, immigration policy, and political development. He completed his Ph.D. at Yale University in 2008 and then joined the Political Science department at George Washington University as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2009. He is also an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies where he conducted research during the 2008 9 and 2011 12 academic years. His work has been published in Security Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Ethnopolitics, the European Journal of Political Research, and various edited volumes. He has also published opinion pieces in international newspapers and magazines (Los Angeles Times, ForeignPolicy.com, CNN.com, Newsweek Japan, and the Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, among others). He is currently working on his second book project - tentatively entitled The Politics of Ethnic Return Migration - analyzing the policies that states develop either to attract and/or to incorporate people returning to their country of origin, allegiance, or citizenship.
Review Quotes
1. Through thorough analysis of archival records and integration of theory from both international relations and comparative politics, Harris Mylonas argues that external factors often override internal factors in the formation of nationality policy. In contrast to more common approaches, Mylonas concentrates on the processes underlying nationality policy formation. He persuasively shows how elite perceptions of international threats shape such decisions. Roger D. Petersen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. This book makes an important, original argument about the international factors that exert substantial influence on a state s decision to assimilate, accommodate, or exclude its ethnic minorities. Based mainly on analytic comparisons of case histories of Balkan nation building, Mylonas shows that states are much more likely to exclude, expel, or exterminate such groups when they receive backing from foreign enemy states and when the host state is a dissatisfied power harboring a grievance over lost territory. Many readers will find Mylonas s insights to be of great interest. Jack Snyder, Columbia University
3. Harris Mylonas is one of the rare scholars who combines sophisticated knowledge of political science techniques with in-depth historical expertise. This book will be of great interest to political scientists, international relations scholars, and historians, and it will also be a valuable resource for policy makers. Most of the events it discusses happened a century or more ago, but the repercussions from those events are still very much in evidence in the Balkans today. Mark Kramer, Harvard University
4. "Harris Mylonas is one of the rare scholars who combines sophisticated knowledge of political science techniques with in-depth historical expertise. This book will be of great interest to political scientists, international relations scholars, and historians, and it will also be a valuable resource for policy makers. Most of the events it discusses happened a century or more ago, but the repercussions from those events are still very much in evidence in the Balkans today."
Mark Kramer, Harvard University
5. "Through thorough analysis of archival records and integration of theory from both international relations and comparative politics, Harris Mylonas argues that external factors often override internal factors in the formation of nationality policy. In contrast to more common approaches, Mylonas concentrates on the processes underlying nationality policy formation. He persuasively shows how elite perceptions of international threats shape such decisions."
Roger D. Petersen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. "This book makes an important, original argument about the international factors that exert substantial influence on a state s decision to assimilate, accommodate, or exclude its ethnic minorities. Based mainly on analytic comparisons of case histories of Balkan nation building, Mylonas shows that states are much more likely to exclude, expel, or exterminate such groups when they receive backing from foreign enemy states and when the host state is a dissatisfied power harboring a grievance over lost territory. Many readers will find Mylonas s insights to be of great interest."
Jack Snyder, Columbia University"
7. "Mylonas deftly combines quantitative analysis of cross-national data with an in-depth study of policies toward non-core groups in Greek Macedonia and provides impressive evidence to support his theoretical propositions. Summing up: recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections."
A. Paczynska, Choice
8. "Mylonas highlights a hitherto understudied aspect of minority policy making in the Balkans: whether newly nationalizing states tolerated, assimilated, or forcibly removed ethnic minorities from their territories crucially depended on whether or not these minorities were supported by other states and whether these other states were allies or enemies. Combining broad statistical analysis with detailed archival research, the book puts the international aspects of domestic nation-building into sharp relief."
Andreas Wimmer, Princeton University
9. "There is much to praise in this book. To begin with, Mylonas is one of those rare scholars who adopt a sophisticated positivist methodology that combines large analysis with a detailed knowledge of (some) historical cases obtained through patient archival research. Second, while much scholarship discusses two policy options (inclusion or exclusion), Mylonas interestingly broadens the analysis to include three policies - assimilation, accommodation and exclusion - producing, respectively, co-nationals, minorities and refugees. And, third, in an age of liberal interventionism Mylonas advances sober and thoughtful recommendations on how the international community may be able to diminish the recurrence of crimes of mass atrocity by intervening less, not more."
Roberto Belloni, Buchbesprechungen
