Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Wilson Center Project

The Making and Remaking of Nations: Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State

Project Summary

This book project seeks to extend our understanding of nationalism and the breakup of states through an empirical investigation of the wave of nationalist mobilization that engulfed the former USSR during the glasnost period. Utilizing unique event data on thousands of mass protest events throughout the former USSR from 1986-92 and other materials, this study will: 1) develop a broader theoretical framework to explain variations in patterns of nationalist mobilization and 2) place the glasnost wave of mobilization within the context of previous world-historical waves of nationalist mobilization, focusing particularly on the ways in which international norms, political opportunity structures, and state ideologies structure nationalist mobilization and discourse.