Blackwell Reference Online

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Comment on this article   Studying ethnicity, nationalism, and colonialism provides international relations with important opportunities for theoretical refinement and empirical enrichment. First, it draws attention to the levels of analysis, the causes of systemic change, and the concept of sovereignty. Second, the challenge facing postcolonial states, i.e. the establishment of a nation-state in a multiethnic environment demarcated by former colonial administrations, offers an opportunity to integrate the research on state formation and nation building into international relations. Third, the study of post-colonial states raises epistemological and normative questions by revealing Eurocentric biases and fostering critical self-awareness. This essay argues that international relations theory, postcolonial theory, and research on nationalism and ethnic conflict have a lot to gain from interdisciplinary cooperation in order to tackle analytical and theoretical questions as well as epistemological and normative questions. Decolonization emanated from the interplay of state-level and interstate-level processes and had transformative consequences for both levels. It can neither be explained by the change in the distribution of material capabilities in a Waltzian fashion nor by the social interaction of states in a Wendtian fashion. Any explanation of decolonization and its effects ... log in or subscribe to read full text