Nation-Building, Nationalism and Wars

Alberto Alesina, Bryony Reich and Alessandro Riboni

No 23435, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The increase in army size observed in early modern times changed the way states conducted wars. Starting in the late 18th century, states switched from mercenaries to a mass army by conscription. In order for the population to accept to fight and endure war, the government elites began to provide public goods, reduced rent extraction and adopted policies to homogenize the population with nation-building. This paper explores a variety of ways in which nation-building can be implemented and studies its effects as a function of technological innovation in warfare.

JEL-codes: P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-gro and nep-his
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Published as Alberto Alesina & Bryony Reich & Alessandro Riboni, 2020. "Nation-building, nationalism, and $$\hbox {wars}^*$$," Journal of Economic Growth, vol 25(4), pages 381-430.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23435.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Nation-Building, Nationalism, and Wars (2020)
Working Paper: Nation-Building, Nationalism, and Wars (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23435

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23435

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().