In this “Conversation with Authors,” we spoke with APSR authors Roberto Valli, Yannick I. Pengl, Carl Müller-Crepon, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Luc Girardin about their open access article, The Train Wrecks of Modernization: Railway Construction and Separatist Mobilization in Europe.

APSR: What motivated this study, and how did it develop over time?

The Authors: Our paper is part of a five-year ERC grant dedicated to the study of nationalist state transformation and conflict (NASTAC) in post-Napoleonic Europe. The inspiration for the paper comes from the classic literature on nation-building that guided the overall project. For instance, railways as a driver of state centralization and nation-building feature prominently in the work of Eugen Weber on France. Yet, the same technology has been linked to peripheral mobilization against state penetration in the Austro-Hungarian empire and India alike. Given the historical importance of steam powered transportation for European political and economic development, we decided to revisit the question and study its effects on secessionist mobilization.

APSR: What was the most challenging or difficult part of the research process?

The Authors: The most challenging part of the project has been the upstream data collection. The study relies on original data on state borders, ethnic settlements, railway lines and nationalist claims. Each of these datasets is spatially explicit and time-variant. We were able to collect them thanks to the work of many research assistants and the larger NASTAC team. Due to the historical nature of the project, we used a large number of primary and secondary sources, ranging from maps and atlases to historical accounts and scientific literature. Moreover, our comparative, cross-country approach forced us to use existing data creatively. For instance, our railway data is based on the work of amateur train historians, which we computationally processed and enhanced.

APSR: Was there something that really surprised, confounded, or excited you during your research?

The Authors: The existing literature on railways and nationalist mobilization provided very ambiguous expectations about the effects of railway construction – some argue that railroad construction helps to build stronger states while others expect backlash against it in states’ peripheries. We approached the study with arguments both in favor of and against an overall pacifying effect of railway connection. The overall effect shows that railroads increase separatist mobilization among peripheral ethnic groups. What was very exciting is that we found evidence that reconciled previous arguments through varying effects of different structures of railroad networks: while better connections to states’ capitals reduce mobilization, connections within ethnic groups increase it. This is consistent with our earlier findings on similar, double-edged effects of road networks in Africa.

APSR: Your main independent variable is whether a rail line intersects an ethnic segment. But we wonder if variation in train frequency or traffic volume, such as major lines with frequent service versus more marginal routes, might influence the strength of the observed political effects. Do you think this dimension could have played a role?

The Authors: The traffic volume and overall importance of a railway line could definitely have played an important role in their conflict-inducing effects. Our analysis suggests that an important driver of these effects was the increased internal connectivity that railways brought to peripheral regions. A higher frequency or speed of such connections might thus increase this effect. Yet, railroad connections had a transformative impact on societies by shrinking traveling times by orders of magnitude. The question of whether a place received daily or hourly connections is thus probably secondary to the existence of a connection in the first place. Empirically speaking, measuring the quality of connections and accounting for their potential endogeneity seems much more challenging than just measuring mere railroad construction, which put this beyond the scope of our multi-country study. 

APSR: Your use of average travel time to large cities, the capital, and within the segment as proxies for market access, state reach, and internal connectivity is intriguing. We are curious about any limitations you encountered with using these proxies. If more data were available, what other metrics would you have liked to use to capture these mechanisms more directly?

The Authors: Our proxies are based on estimates of the traveling times required to move along a stylized network. In order to compute the change in traveling times due to the construction of railways, we had to guess the speed of travel off the railroad network. Our guesses are based on what we believe to be reasonable average speeds and previous work in economics and historiography. Constructing more accurate counterfactuals would be possible when taking into account other forms of transportation – in particular roads – as well as different speeds of travel varying by road and railroad segment. In this regard, we were lacking not only comprehensive road network data across historical Europe, but also, crucially, data on road quality.

APSR: The findings provide support for the political and mobilization-related mechanisms, as state reach decreases mobilization while internal connectivity reduces the risk, and weaker evidence for market integration mechanisms. Could you expand a bit more on how you interpret these findings?

The Authors: At the core of this finding is the above mentioned double-edged nature of transportation networks. Once built, they can be used by the central state to facilitate direct governance through and deploy bureaucrats and security forces faster across larger distances. Yet, non-state actors and elites can likewise travel by train, increasing their ability to spread information and mobilize the population of a peripheral ethnic group. Both mechanisms depend on the structure of rail networks with connections to capitals facilitating the first and local connections fomenting the second dynamic. A third argument in the literature suggests that increasing populations’ national market access through connections to major population centers within a country reduces economic incentives for separatism. Empirically, though, we found that such a dynamic was not visible once we controlled for ethnic groups’ internal connectedness and that to state capitals.

APSR: The theory does not seem to be able to explain prominent cases of separatism in Western Europe, such as the Basque Country and Catalonia. Do you have thoughts on why this might be the case? On the other hand, why do you think the theory does not help explain the lack of separatism in continental France?

The Authors: While our theory does not aim to explain all variation in separatist mobilization, we do believe that it provides insights for these cases in a probabilistic interpretation. In the case of France, the railways were built with a very centralized radial structure that directly connects the periphery to Paris. As such, this network maximises the reach of state institutions into the periphery relative to the internal connection of these areas. Therefore, the case of France aligns with our theoretical discussion of how railways that promote state reach into minority areas reduce separatism (although the French Basque mobilized after World War II).

In the case of separatism in Spanish Catalonia and the Basque country, it is useful to remember that the respective movements have historical roots in the late 19th century. In our –admittedly non-expert– reading of these cases, part of the motivation of the early separatists stemmed from increasing state centralization. This was fomented by the government victory against the Carlists who had fought for restoring regional autonomy rights in the 3rd Carlist War (1872-1876). While we do not know the precise role of the railroads in these processes, we note that the Catalans and Basque ethnic segments got connected to the network in 1849 and 1861, respectively, potentially triggering greater state presence and backlash against it. 

APSR: Your findings suggest that infrastructure like railroads can have both integrative and disintegrative effects. What practical policy implications do you see for infrastructure development, particularly in multiethnic states?

The Authors: A main implication of our findings relates to the attention that multi-ethnic states should give to minority concerns. Major infrastructure investments are often described as public goods, and as such they are expected to build support for governments. Yet, in states with political tensions between the core and peripheral groups such projects can signal efforts of the state to encroach on the autonomy of the latter, threatening the equilibrium between the groups. Therefore, governments should include minority actors in the decision-making processes, and, when necessary, balance expansions of state capacity with adequate guarantees for regional autonomy and political inclusion in the central government.

APSR: The conclusion discusses more recent technological networks, such as mobile phones and social media. How does the study help us better understand the political consequences of these newer forms of connectivity, especially in relation to national integration and/or separatist mobilization?

The Authors: In relation to minority mobilization, all these forms of connectivity can be used both as tools of propaganda and control, but also as means for coordination and collective action. We know from previous research, by, among others, Anita Gohdes, that social media is a crucial tool to mobilize against unpopular governments. At the same time, authoritarian governments can try to limit such opposition through monitoring, shutdowns, or using the same channels for propaganda. Our findings illustrate how the net effect of technologies that foster connectivity can depend on whether they foster governmental control relatively more than they enable social movements to coordinate.

– Yannick I. Pengl, ETH Zurich

– Carl Müller-Crepon, London School of Economics and Political Science

– Roberto Valli, Princeton University

– Lars-Erik Cederman, ETH Zurich

– Luc Girardin, ETH Zurich