Introduction: variations and uniformities in nation-building.

The recent spurt of scholarly interest in the emergence of new "States" and "nations" has given rise, on the one hand, to a renewed interest in the historical study of similar phenomena in older States and, on the other, to a considerable effort at formulating general theories and models which can provide guide-lines for an understanding of these phenomena. By and large the initiative for these efforts has come from North American and European scholars. More recently, scholars from the developing nations have also joined in this work. Subsequent co-operation between these two groups of scholars from differing historical backgrounds and socio-cultural contexts has led to a series of questions concerning (a) the relevance of prevailing conceptual frameworks for an explanation of variations in the behavior of social and political phenomena; (b) the empirical validity of these frame-works in different historical settings; (c) the methodological assumptions underlying the whole effort at general theory; and (d) basic issues of teleology and directionality, determinacy and choice, in comparative theory.