Dissertation
State-building and nation-making in the former Soviet republics: Transformation and institutionalization of citizenship, 1990-2005
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
08/2009
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000006123
Abstract
This dissertation is written in a three journal-length article format. I examine the external and internal factors that shaped nation-state building of new and young fifteen former Soviet republics, and determined what citizenship and naturalization legislation the republics adopted to construct a new nation, state and a polity since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In manuscript-1 I synthesize two opposing theoretical perspectives-- World Society theory (addressing external pressures from the world culture) and Nationhood (addressing nationalism, ethno-demographic dynamics and the national identity). I divide fifteen post-Soviet republics into three theoretically distinct groups to examine the variation in the extent to which nationhood is incorporated and strengthened. I argue that in the post-World War II era the universally empowering nature of human rights scripts has provided new opportunities for states to do nation-building without defying world dominant political culture. To legitimate their actions, young states use not primordialism, but human rights scripts to reinforce and strengthen the ethnic nation that the state is named after and represents. "Tamed" versions of nationhood are emerging, yet citizenship policies still reinforce the national identity of the nation that gave the name to the state. Manuscript-2 is a methodological piece on migration--a variable that can be both a cause and an effect of citizenship regimes of the state. There is consensus among researchers that international migration data are undercounted in fifteen post-Soviet republics. I compare and investigate various methods of international migration estimation and argue that population censuses and household surveys provide superior quality of data on migration than the immigration-by-origin method. Manuscript-3 focuses on conditions of diffusion of state practices and policies among social adopters. The manuscript explains the mechanism of diffusion of policies (globally and locally) that determined the citizenship regimes adopted by Baltic republics when the USSR collapsed in 1991. The manuscript suggests a synthesis materialist (coercive) and ideational (scripted and learned) explanations of diffusion-- to suggest a model where these competing mechanisms of diffusion intersect rather than occur in isolation or in opposition.
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Details
- Title
- State-building and nation-making in the former Soviet republics
- Creators
- Shushanik Makaryan
- Contributors
- Gregory Michael Hooks (Chair)Michael P. Allen (Committee Member)Thomas Rotolo (Committee Member) - Washington State University, Department of SociologyNella Van Dyke (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Sociology
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 192
- Identifiers
- 99901055121401842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation