Early studies of nation building often emphasized the slow-moving and durable process by which national identity was formed and sustained. But as the recent promotion of ethnic nationalist narratives worldwide attests — through state-led efforts to revise textbooks, rename streets and cities, and venerate certain historical leaders and omit others — elites often aim to quickly transform public conceptions of the nation. This Element provides a theoretical framework for understanding how and under what conditions individuals can come to rapidly embrace an ascendant national narrative. We argue that elites’ recasting efforts can succeed in such short time because they often activate pre-existing narratives that, while previously occupying a marginal place in the national imagination, were nevertheless kept alive as latent constructs in individuals’ minds. Unlike nation building efforts — where elites had to instill both a sense of the nation and its content — leaders today are faced with the comparatively simpler task of drawing upon and warping pre-existing national visions in service of their preferred narrative. We test our theory in India, a context where the long dominance and substantial state investment in an inclusionary, secular national narrative might be seen as creating a difficult environment for an exclusionary, Hindu vision to take hold. We show, however, that the conditions for a rapid transformation were present: most notably, a Hindu nationalist vision was long relevant even as it occupied a marginal place in Indian politics and society. We further document that citizens swiftly began to adhere in greater numbers to a Hindu nationalist narrative as the government invested in a concerted recasting campaign, and we present experimental evidence linking elite-led symbolic politics to changes in public conceptions of the nation. Finally, we demonstrate that multiple narratives can be overlaid contemporaneously in individuals’ minds, and we explore the conditions under which resistance to an ascendant narrative are more likely to materialize. Our Element provides a guide to help resolve an enduring puzzle: how visions of the nation, once thought to exhibit such stability, can appear to shift so rapidly today.

Across the world, rising ethnic nationalism is leading to a deepening marginalization of ethnic minority communities. How does such exclusion affect marginalized group members’ sense of self and their commitment to the devalued in-group? Research suggests that minorities may respond to exclusion either by attaching more strongly to the minority group identity and defending the devalued group, or by disassociating from the devalued group in an attempt to seek acceptance by the majority. Through behavioural games in a laboratory setting in the field, this study explores how exclusion affects social identity choices and group commitment among Muslims in India. By randomly assigning a prime that highlights the symbolic exclusion suffered by Muslims in the context of rising Hindu nationalism, and by categorizing participants into high- and low-status groups, we study the role of social status in conditioning responses to exclusion. Specifically, we study responses to questions about social identity and behaviour in games aimed at eliciting pro-social behaviour towards in-group members among a sample of 320 Indian Muslims from Pune, Maharashtra. Our findings suggest that high- and low-status group members respond differently to exclusion; while the prime leads low-status group members to attach more strongly to their high-status (Maharashtrian) identity and reduces their contributions to Muslim in-group members and Muslim NGOs in dictator games, the prime has little effect on high-status minorities, somewhat increasing their contributions in dictator games. Our findings contribute to a growing literature on the effect of rejection on social identity choices and sociopolitical behaviour among marginalized groups.

Equal or Less Than? How National Narratives Undermine or Uphold Democracy (with Nicholas Haas)

Recently, leaders have come to power in contexts ranging from India to the United States aiming to redefine national narratives and challenge democratic institutions. We theorize that these are not independent developments: exclusionary (inclusionary) narratives make it easier (harder) for citizens to justify trespassing on the democratic rights of political opponents. We test our theory in two pre-registered studies (N = 5, 486) in India and the U.S. We first document a strong association between internalized narratives and democratic support. Second, we find that experimentally assigning inclusive national narratives from history textbooks increases ethnic minorities’ perceived centrality to the nation, as well as stated and revealed democratic support among individuals who associate the political opposition with minorities. Experimental effects only materialize in the U.S., a difference we attribute to a comparatively dominant exclusionary narrative in India. Our study provides new insights into national narratives and how they can alternatively undermine or undergird democratic support.

Ethnonationalist governments adopt symbolic policies that challenge the status of ethnic and religious minorities as equal members of the nation. We propose that exposure to such policies reduces the cognitive bandwidth of marginalised groups, leading to suboptimal economic decisions. We test this hypothesis in India, where the Muslim minority population has faced exclusionary policies. About 1,800 gig workers performed data entry and information processing tasks in a field experiment. In the course of completing their tasks, workers were randomly exposed to social media content referencing exclusionary policies. The policies varied in whether they were primarily symbolic or whether they were also likely to cause direct material harm to affected Muslim participants. We measured decision making by allowing workers to choose between two payment contracts—one of which would objectively lead to higher earnings for a given worker. Despite no change in productivity, treated participants were significantly more likely to select economically suboptimal (‘wrong’) contracts, leading to lower earnings. We explore additional data, including cognitive tests and categorisations of mistakes, that suggest that wrong contract choice is driven by increased cognitive load. Our findings demonstrate how even purely symbolic exclusionary policies can have tangible economic consequences, potentially exacerbating marginalisation of minority groups through cognitive and psychological channels.

Working Papers

Resisting National Narrative Change: The Role of Subnationalism (with Nicholas Haas and Maya Tudor)

Political leaders across the globe have come to power by advocating exclusionary national narratives, yet citizen adoption of these narratives varies widely across regions and social groups. We argue that national elites seeking to redefine the nation face durable constraints in regions where existing subnational narratives are normatively incongruent with the proposed change to national identity. In such contexts, subnational elites and institutions sustain alternative understandings of national belonging that limit narrative uptake. We test this argument in India by constructing survey-based state- and individual-level measures of subnational identity salience and religious inclusivity, and examining their relationship with the Hindu nationalist narrative promoted by the nationally dominant Bharatiya Janata Party. We complement this analysis with framing experiments that assess heterogeneity in nationalist narrative acceptance, and with comparative case studies of Tamil Nadu and Kerala—two southern states with strong inclusive subnational identities that differ in whether inclusion is achieved through cultural and linguistic opposition or pluralist recognition of religion. Our findings suggest that in decentralized political systems, subnational narratives that specifically recognize religious inclusivity can meaningfully constrain national narrative change, even under sustained national political dominance.

Selected Ongoing Projects