Nationalism and Conflict Management

Ethno-national conflict is one of the central issues of modern politics. Despite the emergence of approaches to managing it, from nation-building to territorial autonomy, in recent years, the application of these approaches has been uneven. Old conflicts persist and new ones continually emerge. The authors of this book contend that what is needed to drive forward the theory and practice of ethno-national conflict management is a more nuanced understanding of ethnicity and nationalism.

The book addresses this issue by linking theories of ethnicity and nationalism to theories of conflict management. Its contributors share a common goal of demonstrating that a nuanced understanding of ethnicity and nationalism can beneficially inform conflict management in theory and practice. To do so, they analyse both hot and cold conflict zones, as well as cases that have been important in the development of the most widely-used conflict management models.

The book is aimed at those interested in the theory and practice of ethno-national conflict management as well as the study of ethnicity and nationalism. It is well-suited for undergraduate and advanced research students, experts and policy-makers.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.

Eric Taylor Woods recently completed a PhD at the LSE. He is currently finalizing a book on the acknowledgement of injustice, with particular reference to settler-indigenous relations in Canada. He has been a Junior Fellow at Yale’s Center for Cultural Sociology, a Visiting Researcher at the Toronto School of Theology and was previously the co-Chair of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism.

Robert S. Schertzer recently completed a PhD in Government at the LSE. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of Ottawa, was previously the co-Chair of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and is currently a Senior Policy Advisor with the Government of Canada in the area of immigration, citizenship and federal-provincial relations.

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He recently returned from Harvard, where he was a Fellow at the Belfer Center in the Kennedy School of Government. He has published widely on ethnicity, national identity and religion.