The Politics of Nation-Building

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.

Mylonas argues that foreign policy goals and international relations drives a state's assimilation or exclusion policies towards an ethnic group.

1. Introduction; Part I. Theory: 2. The international politics of assimilation, accommodation, and exclusion; Part II. Empirical Evidence: 3. Why the Balkans?; 4. Cross-national variation: nation-building in post-World War I Balkans; 5. Odd cases: analysis of outliers; 6. Subnational variation: Greek nation-building in western Macedonia, 1916¿20; 7. Temporal variation: Serbian nation-building toward Albanians, 1878¿1941; 8. Application of the theory beyond the Balkans; 9. Conclusion.