The international system today comprises just short of 200 recognized independent entities. These states are de jure independent even though dozens sorely lack de facto state capacity. Such de jure independence remains highly coveted by dozens of nations that lack international recognition. Stronger even, as Ernest Gellner once argued, there are potentially thousands of such nation-state projects.
Given that the number of nation-state projects vastly exceeds the number of recognized states, Philip Roeder sets out to explain why some of these projects succeed while many more fail. As he demonstrates, the institutional architecture of the extant polity prior to independence provides a key explanation of how new nation-states emerge.
Starting from a brilliant analysis of the Soviet Union and the Russian republic, and the diverse arrangements between the center and the component parts, Roeder develops a general theory of successful secession and new nation-state demands. New nation-states emerge out of the ruins of a segmented state. Such a state might very well claim to be a nation-state itself but actually consists of a common-state, a governance structure that is common to the territory and the population as a whole, and separate segment-states. These segment-states are thus territorial subcomponents of a larger entity. Each of these segment-states consists of a juridically distinct community that can make special claims to a given territory.
Roeder's taxonomy distinguishes several types of polity. In unitary states, neither territorial nor communal partitioning occurs. A federal state partitions administration territorially but does not recognize communal partition. A third type, the corporate state, does not provide territorial autonomy but does recognize distinct communal jurisdictions. Segmented states do both. They create distinct territorial administrations, as well as recognize distinct ethnic communities with special legal status and unique claims to that territorial unit. It is this latter form of state that is most susceptible to centrifugal forces.
Segmented states inherently lead to hard bargaining between the segment-state leaders and the common-state leaders. The nature of the bargaining relationship between the center and periphery tends to be influenced by the coherence of the center's leadership, the degree to which segment-state leaders have access to decision making in the center, the cultural differentiation of center and segment-state, the distribution of resource endowments, and external allies.
Particularly important variables are the unity in the center and the degree to which segment-state leaders have established hegemonic leadership in their local communities and territories. These factors influence the means by which segment-state leaders might challenge the common-state leaders, as well as affect the incentives for segment-state leaders to initiate such a challenge. In other words, the subcomponents of the segmented states create the institutional opportunity for local elites to seek an administrative upgrade, that is, pursue full independence.
While the examination of the USSR and Russia constitutes the bedrock of Roeder's analysis, he develops a global data set of segmented states to test his theory statistically. Braiding diachronic analysis, comparative case methods, and statistical inquiry, he creates a masterful account of how prior institutional arrangements are critical for the success of new nation-state bids anywhere.
In so doing, he challenges accounts that focus on broad changes in the cultural milieu (the age of nationalism argument), as well as accounts that place primacy in the international environment. He does not deny the importance of the emergence of a national identity, but argues that such nationalist awakenings only occur if there are segment-state leaders who have been able to carve out some institutional autonomy from the center, and who have been able to forge a horizontal cultural homogeneity. Such cultural homogeneity in the subcomponents of the state differentiates these local administrative units from the culture of the group in the center—what he calls vertical differentiation. Similarly, the impact of the international environment is secondary to the institutional structure. External intervention only affects outcomes when the center is faced by disunity in the core and when the segment-state leaders have considerable autonomy.
It would be wrong to see the book as only an account of politics in the former Soviet space. The inclusion of Africa in Roeder's analysis provides a telling example and demonstrates the relevance of his argument for the study of other areas. Given the weakness of many African states, this should be an “easy case” for the state capacity argument, which claims that successful secessionism will occur where central governments are weak. Yet, as he shows, without segmental institutions the manifestly weak states on the African continent have seen few successful challenges to central authority.
Like Valerie Bunce's Subversive Institutions (1999) and Mark Beissinger's Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (2002), Roeder's book is destined to become a classic. It is essential reading for anyone interested in how new states emerge and how extant states might disintegrate. Like these other books, Where Nation-States Come From utilizes a careful study of the USSR and Russia to draw out important theoretical insights for the field as a whole.
Yet even the best books will invariably leave some items for further discussion and research. One might wonder whether some nuances are lost when insights from the USSR are extracted and applied to other cases, such as the Western maritime empires. This is hardly a flaw, for who after all could master the multiplicity of organizational forms? However, whereas Roeder notes how the segment-states in the USSR were treated differently by the center—in terms of resources, access to the center, and the ability to establish political hegemonic identity—this kind of fine-grained analysis drops out when he applies the model to many other cases in the statistical analysis. One might, for example, wonder whether the significant access of the titular elites to the center in the USSR was duplicated in other segmented states.
Roeder could also have benefited from a more extensive discussion of how his argument fits with or differs from accounts that have stressed the nature of principal-agent relations in the USSR (such as Steven Solnick's Stealing the State, 1998). His work arguably squares well with such accounts but goes further in examining how the broader institutional structure determines preferences, and how particular local elites establish cultural hegemony.
One might also wonder whether Roeder overstates the primacy of domestic politics. One could, by contrast, view the international environment as providing several antecedent conditions. In such an understanding, the various waves of nation-state formation became possible because of shifts in polarity, the expansion of free trade, the expectation that extant boundaries should not be altered by force, and so on. Such international conditions allowed domestic elites to capitalize on their positions when the international environment permitted. This would explain why segment-state leaders have tried to capitalize on their autonomy in some periods but not others.
These are minor points, however. Roeder's work obviously speaks volumes to a wide range of scholars across many fields who study national identities, ethnic cleavages, consociationalism, the effects of institutional structure, and so on. In sum, Where Nation-States Come From sets a high standard for scholarship indeed. With this book, Roeder has hit the proverbial home run.
