Nation-building

Nation-building is the process of constructing or structuring a national identity through the utilization of state power. The objective of nation-building is to achieve the unification of the population within the state, thereby ensuring its political stability and viability. 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.” In Mylonas’s framework, “state elites employ three nation-building policies: accommodation, assimilation, and exclusion.”