Nationalist Passions by Stuart J. Kaufman, professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware, has won the 2017 ENMISA Distinguished Book Award from the Ethnicity, Migration and Nationalism Section of the International Studies Association (ISA).

It has also been selected to share the 2017 ISSS Annual Best Book Award, which is granted by the International Security Studies Section of ISA. Both awards will be formally presented in February at the ISA convention in Baltimore.

The ENMISA award recognizes the best book published over the past two years in the study of the international politics of ethnicity, nationalism or migration.

Selection criteria include the originality of the writer’s argument, multidisciplinary scope, innovative methods, readability of the text and the practical implications of the scholarship. 

The ISSS award recognizes the book on any aspect of security studies that excels in originality, significance and rigor, published during the 2015 calendar year.

Nationalist Passions explores why ethnic violence explodes in some countries while other countries remain peaceful.

Since its publication in October 2015 by Cornell University Press, the book has won acclaim. Earlier this year, it was the co-recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Robert E. Lane Award for the best book in political psychology published in the last year.

Kaufman, who focuses his work on international relations and comparative politics, first studied ethnic conflicts after the Bosnian war that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia.

“That research helped me develop a theory about how ethnic conflicts in general occur,” Kaufman said. “I studied conflicts in different countries for 10 years, and then I looked at the flip side: How did some countries avoid these kinds of conflicts?”

In Rwanda, for example, horrible ethnic violence in 1994 resulted in the deaths of as many as 1 million people. But Tanzania, home to more than 100 different ethnic groups, has escaped large-scale conflict, Kaufman said.

He identified three factors that appear to make the difference: prejudices and values, feelings of being threatened, and a country’s leadership. When people are biased against other groups and feel threatened by them — either physically or in damage to their culture and way of life — conflict becomes likely, he said.

Tanzania, he said, has worked hard at downplaying individual ethnic identities and instead encouraging an inclusive identity as “Tanzanian.”

“If you don’t have prejudices, then people aren’t afraid of each other,” Kaufman said. “And then, even if you have a leader someday who wants to stir things up, there’s nothing to stir.”

Kaufman, who earned his doctorate at the University of Michigan, joined the UD faculty in 2004 after teaching at the University of Kentucky and serving on the staff of the U.S. National Security Council.

He is the author of Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, published by Cornell University Press in 2001. That book won the 2003 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, given annually to those who have presented views that could lead to a more just and peaceful world. He also is co-editor of the book The Balance of Power in World History.

At UD, Kaufman teaches courses in international security affairs, diplomacy, U.S. foreign policy, ethnic conflict and Russian politics. In 2011, he taught at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna on a Fulbright scholarship.