Review: Nationalism and the State

Nicola McEwen is part of a new generation of scholars whose goal has been to move the debate on nationalism forward, using institutional approaches as a guiding tool for understanding nationalist politics. This is a welcome project for any student of nationalism whose concern is not in demonising nationalism or in celebrating it, but in understanding the factors which might explain its resurgences. This is the task that McEwen sets herself in Nationalism and the State. More specifically, she discusses the way the development of institutions such as the welfare sate have influenced national politics since the post-war period.