Assignment seminar 1

Review the course literature with a particular focus on the notion of nation-building. Write a
presentation where you critically ‘dissect’ and reflect on the concept and its contemporary
relevance and applicability. What do you see as the normative and empirical strengths and
weaknesses of the concept? Use both contemporary and historical examples to illustrate
your points.

Prepare for a 7-10 minutes oral presentation. It is your choice to have a PowerPoint
presentation (or a similar presentation program) or not. However, you must prepare and
hand in the written basis for your presentation. It should not be a full paper, but it should
nevertheless be a document that can be apprehended without listening to the presentation.
The length of it depends a bit on the extent you use bullet points or write complete
sentences. It could be anything between 3-4 and 7-8 pages.

You will be evaluated on the basis of your oral presentation, but the written document will
also count.

Upload the assignment in a dedicated folder on Learn no later than Thursday16 September
at 12 am (noon) (CET).

Assignment seminar 2
It is stated in the introduction to this course that it “offers an overview of the development of
the nation state and the interplay between actors and institutions in this process”. In short, the
course focuses on historical processes, the role of elites and institutions, and issues related to
legitimacy (such as national identities).

In this task, you are asked to address and analyse several challenges of state- (and nation-)
building in a country of choice. You should justify your choice of case, but you should
dedicate no more than one page to present the case in your paper.

You should address the following challenges:

- Legacies and historical development (such as colonial legacy or civil war)
- External relations (such as friends and foes, the role of regional hegemons or
international organisations)
- The role of domestic elites (such as alliances and conflicts, parties and social
cleavages, or presence of minority mobilisation via for instance ethnic minority
parties)
- The choice of institutions (such as type of executive-legislative relations [i.e.
parliamentarism, presidentialism, or semi-presidentialism], federalism or
consociationalism).
- The degree of cultural pluralism (such as type and strength of ethnic minorities, the
degree of territorial, linguistic or religious divisions, possible kin-state relations, the
role and nature of nationalism, or citizenship laws regulating minority inclusion)

Although you should cover all these dimensions, the specific points will vary in importance
from case to case. Keep also in mind that you should write a coherent piece in which the
dimensions are covered but not necessarily in the same order or in a ‘visible’ way (you
should for instance avoid dividing your paper into sections named after the list of
dimensions).
Use of the course literature is obviously essential, but you may also include other academic
texts or reliable sources of information.
Length: max 5000 words (around 10 pages without list of references and appendix).
Format: use Times New Roman, size 12, and 1,5 line spacing. Use Harvard reference system
(with page specific references) and include a full reference list and a front page.

Upload the assignment in a dedicated folder on Learn no later than Wednesday 29 September
at 12 am (noon) (CET).

For the seminar:

Prepare a presentation of your paper, maximum 10 minutes. The presentation should
emphasise the key points in your paper. You may have a power-point presentation, but an
oral presentation is also fine. However, we strongly urge you to avoid reading from a
prepared manuscript.

We expect you to have a close look at the other papers in your seminar group and read at
least one of them well and prepare a few comments and questions.

Good luck!