Darden and Mylonas 2016, ‘Threats to Territorial Integrity, National Mass Schooling, and Linguistic Commonality’

Questions

Why, according to Darden and Mylonas, do some states have a particularly strong interest in “nation-building”? In other words, what characteristics predict why some states have more incentive to nation-build, and others have less incentive to do so?

Why do Darden and Mylonas take national schooling as an indicator of nation-building?

• How does schooling connect to the sense of national identity from Anderson and Sambanis, Skaperdas, and Wohlforth?

• Through what mechanisms does schooling increase social cohesion?

• What are the alternatives to national schooling, and why are they assumed to result in lower social cohesion?

Why do Darden and Mylonas use “linguistic commonality” as their dependent variable? What does Table 1 show about differences in linguistic commonality across regions?

What are the most prominent alternative explanations for variation in linguistic commonality across regions? Why do Darden and Mylonas conclude that these alternatives are insufficient?

We saw in Thies that Latin American countries faced fairly low levels of interstate war. So why do Darden and Mylonas still think it makes sense for Latin America to have ended up with such high linguistic commonality?

How do the case studies of Indonesia, Congo/Zaire, and Zambia illustrate both the predictions and the causal mechanisms of Darden and Mylonas’ theory?