State-seeking nationalism: the emergence of small nations in multiethnic empires

Abstract

This paper focuses on the bottom-up process of nation formation in multiethnic empires. The key idea is that nations emerge from a conflict over economic, political, and other resources. Under specific conditions, these conflicts give rise to coalitions based on shared ethnicity. The nation emerges if the number of ethnic-based coalitions is sufficiently large. We identify the following conditions for nations to emerge: the existence of conflict, a locally heterogeneous population, and the salience of shared ethnicity. We apply this model to account for the emergence of the Czech nation in the late Habsburg Empire and Austria-Hungary.