Efforts at building a homogeneous national identity in the Philippines over the centuries have resulted in an unusual pattern of successes and failures. Spanish missionaries successfully spread the Catholic religion in the northern and central portions of the Philippines in the sixteenth...

The aim of this paper is to determine which country-specific characteristics promote and which impede the adoption of institutions. On the basis of a broad panel of 183 countries for the period between 1996 and 2010, we test whether there are tendencies towards a general improvement and towards...

This paper assesses the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa using hitherto unexplored variables in the literature. The previously missing dimension of nation building is integrated and the hypothesis of state fragility being a function of rent seeking and/or lobbying by de...

Review of the monograph: Barr, Michael and Zlatko Skrbiš, Constructing Singapore. Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project, Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2008, ISBN 978-87-7694-029-4, 304 pages

About fifty years after the independence of most former colonies on the African continent, books on African nationalism again rank high on the agenda of the international academic discussion. A selection of three recent publications demonstrates the advances made in scholarly analysis in the...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the determinants of state fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using hitherto unexplored variables in the literature. Design/methodology/approach The previously missing dimension of nation building is integrated and the hypothesis of state...

For plural societies like India, the only workable strategy of nation building is to provide all segments of society with an equal sense of belonging, respect and security. The Indian constitutional framework, despite some assimilationist influences, was broadly drawn on accommodationist lines....

The scholarly terrain of this article charts a course from the making of Nehruvian consensus to the present times. In the true spirit of a social conciliator, Nehru created a system of governance that eschewed left and right extremism. It is this system that is popularly known as Nehruvian...