I. IntroductionIt is rare for academic research to claim its usefulness in preventing violence, ethnic conflict and even war. Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies by Alfred Stepan, Juan J. Linz, Yogendra Yadav makes such a claim, if only indirectly. The authors state their intention “to establish a normative standard to which multinational democracies can aspire” (p. 7) in order to peacefully manage diversity within their borders. Are they successful? The book convincingly argues that multinational democracies – contrary to theoretical expectations – can generate a high degree of trust, positive identification with the state, and support for democracy when they deploy a specific set of political institutions that authors describe as “nation-state policies”. » Such policies facilitate identification with the statewide political community while establishing “institutional safeguards for respect and protection of politically significant sociocultural diversities” (p. 5). In presenting their arguments, the authors favor breadth over depth: their methodological approach encompasses ideal-type theory, cross-national survey data, a detailed case study of India, and shorter descriptions of Ukraine and the United States. The authors thus do justice to their intention "to expand our collective political imagination about what is achievable and unachievable in different contexts" (p. xiv), but the lack of depth means that Stepan, Linz, and Yadav do not address adequately address the question. the crucial question of what makes a “robustly multinational” political system amenable to nation-state politics in the first place; this flaw undermines the book's potential usefulness to the leaders of these states. This article will evaluate the creation of Nation-States as research...... middle of article ...... policy makers on issues of such fundamental importance.V. Conclusion The authors of Crafting State-Nations assert, in turn, that they intend to "expand our collective political imagination about what is achievable" and "argue that political leaders in [robustly multinational political regimes] must reflect on craftsmanship and normatively legitimize a type of political regime with the characteristics of a “nation-state” (p. xiv, p. 3-4). The first objective obviously motivated the authors to use a wide range of methodological tools and to cover as many existing systems as possible in terms of diversity management. The second objective would have been better served by a more in-depth and focused research design. While this compelling work certainly succeeds in forcing the reader to rethink political institutions in multinational contexts, the normative arguments for nation-state policies are less clear...