Matthias Vom Hau

Biography

Matthias vom Hau is an assistant professor in comparative politics at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). A sociologist by training, he has a PhD (2007) from Brown University and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Manchester. His work is centrally concerned with the relationship between identity politics, institutions, and development, with a regional focus on Latin America. Matthias' primary research is on nationalism and ethnic politics. He has published widely on how states construct a sense of national belonging, how civil society actors negotiate and contest official nationalisms, and the extent to which ordinary citizens subscribe to official and counter-state identity projects. A book manuscript on this topic is about to be completed. It represents one of the first efforts to compare nationalism in Latin America, and provides a new theoretical framework that corrects for the relative absence of theories that explain changes of nationalism over time. The focus on nationalism is closely linked to Matthias' interest in states and development. He has published on distinct patterns of colonial state formation and long-run development in Latin America. He has also written on how different theoretical traditions conceptualize state capacity, and the relationship between state capacity and legitimacy. His most recent line of work brings together ethnic politics and state capacity. In this work Matthias critically re-examines the influential scholarship that establishes a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and the ability of states to provide public goods. Based on an analysis of indigenous movements and natural resource regulation in Argentina and Chile he develops an alternative approach that draws on solidly political conceptualizations of ethnicity and state capacity, and shifts the analytical attention from demographics to collective action by ethnic groups and the interests and perceptions of state actors.

Research Interest

Nationalism and Ethnicity, Latin American Politics, Development Studies and States and State Formation