Importing the European nation-state model exacerbated rather than resolved regional ethnic divisions.

Evidence

The adoption of the nation-state model, however, did not eliminate ethnic and/or religious differences overnight. In fact in some instances it exacerbated them. Thus, in Palestine the emergence of Israel immediately created an ethnic Arab Palestinian issue, both as a minority within the new State of Israel and as refugees in a variety of other Arab states. Furthermore, the new Israeli State also faced an internal “ethnic” problem between the hegemonic control of the European (and later American) Jewish immigrants and those of Asian and African origin. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3480

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the general thesis in this chapter that nation-state models agitate the very ethnic questions they claim to settle — connects to Ferguson’s ‘instrumentalization of disorder’ and to the Milgrom law-merchant institutions material on how imposed systems misfit local realities.