Andreas Wimmer is a Swiss sociologist who is the Lieber Professor of Sociology and Political Philosophy at Columbia University.
In Great Britain, France, and the United States, Wimmer argues that elites and masses slowly grew to identify with each other as states were established in which more people were able to participate politically and receive public goods in exchange for taxes.
[11] Wimmer was awarded the 2019 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research in recognition of his book Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart.
[12] In the book, he argues that three factors tend to determine whether nation-building succeeds in the long term: "the early development of civil-society organisations, the rise of a state capable of providing public goods evenly across a territory, and the emergence of a shared medium of communication.
Where political institutions become exclusionary, ethnic groups are less likely to feel a sense of national belonging.