Bio

I am a political scientist specializing in the impact of international politics on nation-building,  political development, and diaspora policy. After completing my Ph.D. in political science at Yale University and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, I joined the Department of Political Science at George Washington University. There, I teach undergraduate courses on International Affairs, Nationalism, Patriotism, and European Integration,... Continue Reading →

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Varieties of Nationalism

Nationalism has long been a normatively and empirically contested concept, associated with democratic revolutions and public goods provision, but also with xenophobia, genocide, and wars. Moving beyond facile distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalisms, Harris Mylonas and Maya Tudor argue that nationalism is an empirically variegated ideology. Much like the proverbial blind men who each... Continue Reading →

American Constitutive Stories 🎙

Together with Andrew Thompson we have put together a space where Americans from different walks of life can share their understanding of their national identity, how it relates to other identities, who they think to be American heroes, and what they see as the most promising connecting tissue of our society in the future.

The Global Politics of Fifth Columns

The invocation of fifth columns in the political arena—whether contrived or based on real fears—has historically recurred periodically and is experiencing an upsurge in our era of democratic erosion and geopolitical uncertainty. Fifth columns accusations can have baleful effects on governance and trust, as they call into question the loyalty and belonging of the targeted... Continue Reading →

Pandemic Nationalism

What does the pandemic reveal about perennial moral dilemmas between individual and societal interest, as well as the national and the global interest? In our introductory essay for the special issue on Pandemic Nationalism Ned Whalley and I suggest that while nationalism has unquestionably helped overcome collective action problems within state borders, it has undermined... Continue Reading →

Research Methodology

Over the years, my research has focused on addressing significant methodological challenges in the study of nation-building and the social sciences more broadly. Through a series of publications discussed in more detail below, I have critiqued common practices in social science research, such as inferring intentions from behavior, relying on census data to study nation-building,... Continue Reading →

Nation-Building

How do states decide their policies toward “non-core” groups—any aggregation of individuals that a state’s ruling elite perceives as an unassimilated ethnic group? What accounts for the variation in diaspora policy across different groups of co-ethnics living abroad by the same government? Both my published book and the one that I am currently writing serve... Continue Reading →

Political Development

Beyond my interest in the international dimension of internal processes, I have also systematically studied the effects of institutions in domestic politics. In a co-authored article that Nasos Roussias (University of Sheffield) and I published in Comparative Political Studies we explored the links between regime type, electoral conduct, and political competition in Sub-Saharan Africa. In... Continue Reading →

Diaspora Policy

I am currently at work on a book tentatively entitled Diaspora Management Logics. The book is building on various diaspora-related projects I have been involved with. My prior work on Diasporas was publish in a special issue I co-edited with with Alexandra Délano Alonso on “The Microfoundations of Diaspora Politics: Unpacking the State and Disaggregating... Continue Reading →

EJPR Political Data Yearbook

My involvement and writings on the financial crisis in Europe, with Greece at its epicenter, led to me being invited to become one of the contributors for the Political Data Yearbook published by the European Journal of Political Research, a major journal of European political science. Richard Katz and Peter Mair began editing the Political... Continue Reading →

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