Nation building and war

PSCI 2227: War and State Development

Prof. Brenton Kenkel
brenton.kenkel@gmail.com

Vanderbilt University

March 30, 2026

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Recap

Last time. Nationalism as a political ideology

  • Relatively new, past couple hundred years
  • Imagined, limited, sovereign (Anderson)

Today. Sambanis, Skaperdas, Wohlforth, “Nation-Building through War.”

Today’s agenda

  1. The nation-building problem
  2. How war builds nations (and thus states)
  3. …and how that in turn makes war

The nation-building problem

Alternatives to national identity

If people don’t identify with the nation, how do they identify?

One alternative: sub-national identity

  • City, state, province, etc.
  • Particularly plausible when country has been built from pieces

Another alternative: identities that don’t correspond to borders

  • Religious identity
  • Ethnic/linguistic identity

Nation-state’s challenge: make nationalism more appealing than alternatives

Sub-national identities in unification-era Germany

Bismarck’s challenge: how to bring the south into a German identity?

Ethnic and religious identities in post-2003 Iraq

US occupation’s challenge: how to foment functioning Iraqi democracy?

Consequences of non-national identification

When people identify with sub-national groups instead of the nation, two bad things happen from the state’s perspective:

1. Undermines public good provision

  • Why invest in national infrastructure, defense, education if you only care about your own group?
  • State capacity suffers when groups don’t cooperate

2. Fuels internal conflict

  • Groups compete over resources, territory, political power
  • Fighting is costly — wastes resources that could go toward productive activity

The reinforcing cycle


    ┌─────────────────────────────────┐
    │   Sub-national identification   │
    └──────┬───────────────┬──────────┘
           │               │
           ▼               ▼
    ┌────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐
    │ Low state  │  │   Internal   │
    │ capacity   │◄─┤   conflict   │
    └─────┬──────┘  └──────┬───────┘
          │                │
          └────────┬───────┘
                   │
                   ▼
          ┌─────────────────┐
          │ Weaker national │
          │    identity     │
          └─────────────────┘

How war builds nations

International level: status competition

States exist in a competitive, anarchic international system

  • Competing over territory, prestige, influence
  • A state’s status depends on its performance relative to rivals

Victory in war raises a state’s international status — defeat lowers it

Why does this matter domestically?

  • People like to identify with high-status groups
  • More attractive to identify with a nation that’s successful in battle

National level: the identification shift

When the nation’s status rises after a military victory, the calculus of identification changes

Each group weighs:

  • Status bonus: prestige of identifying with a winning nation
  • Distance cost: cultural/social distance from the national identity

After victory: status bonus goes up \(\Rightarrow\) more people identify nationally

  • Even groups that were previously non-nationalist may shift
  • The perceived benefits of being part of the nation outweigh the costs of giving up group identity

Individual level: effort allocation

Key idea in SSW: identification changes individual behavior, not just attitudes

How I think about the individual decision calculus:

Activity Description Effect on the state
State capacity Invest in public goods, institutions Great for the state
Private production Work for personal gain Good — taxable
Conflict Fight other groups for resources Bad for the state

Effects of nationalism:

  • State capacity building \(\uparrow\)
  • Conflict with other groups \(\downarrow\)

Nation-building as a cause of war

Tilly vs. SSW

Tilly’s story is essentially chronological

  • War happened \(\rightarrow\) states that built capacity survived \(\rightarrow\) those states made more war
  • A pattern, but not a reason — rulers don’t sit around thinking “I should start a war to build state capacity”

SSW add strategic nation-building

  • Forward-looking rulers anticipate nation-building if victorious
  • Makes war more attractive than it would be based on territorial gains alone

How nation-building can break the bargaining range

Remember back to the bargaining model of war

War costly \(\leadsto\) bargain available

But the “costly” assumption can break if victory builds one state, but defeat won’t break the other

The Bismarck strategy

Prussia’s problem: Southern German states resisted unification

  • Anti-Prussian sentiment was growing through the 1860s
  • Soft approaches (customs union, economic incentives) were failing
  • Bismarck: “German unity is likely to be fostered by violent events”

Bismarck’s solution: Engineer a crisis with France

  • Provoked a war that he expected Prussia to win
  • Deliberately framed the conflict as a Franco-German status contest
  • Goal: victory over France would make “Germany” a high-status identity that Southerners would want to join

The war’s effects on identification

War had exactly the effects SSW’s model predicts

  • Large-scale mobilization fostered a sense of shared purpose
  • Southern populations that had elected anti-unification parties in 1868–69 now demanded to join the Reich
  • Bavaria’s government had to bow to popular nationalist sentiment

Result was massive state-building

  • North German Constitution extended to the new Reich
  • New institutions: central bank, common currency, unified legal system
  • Investments in social welfare and public education
  • States that had initially resisted (Bavaria, Württemberg) accepted unification of German laws

Wrapping up

What we did today

  1. The nation-building problem
    • Sub-national identities undermine public goods and fuel conflict
    • These two problems reinforce each other in a vicious cycle
  2. How war builds nations
    • Victory \(\rightarrow\) higher national status \(\rightarrow\) national identification
    • National identification \(\rightarrow\) more state capacity, less conflict
  3. SSW vs. Tilly on why rulers start wars
    • Tilly: war \(\rightarrow\) state building is a historical pattern
    • SSW: war \(\rightarrow\) nation building is a strategic choice by forward-looking rulers
    • Bismarck and the Franco-Prussian War as the key illustration

Rest of this week

Reminder. https://calendly.com/brenton-kenkel/wasd-paper-consultations

Tomorrow. My office hours, 2:00–3:30pm.

Wednesday. Read paper by Darden and Mylonas on territorial integrity and mass schooling.

Friday. Seungho’s office hours, 3:00–4:30pm.