Nation State

11 Key excerpts on "Nation State"

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  Encyclopedia of Human Geography

  • Barney Warf(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  NATION-STATE The nation-state is an ideal concept rather than one that is an actual or real geographic phenomenon. The nation-state is the ideological belief that the population of one state consists entirely of the members of one national group. Nearly all states in the world contain multinational populations and so violate the nation-state ideal. For example, Great Britain is home to the English, Welsh, Scottish, Ulster, and Irish nations. Those pressing for Scottish independence from Great Britain are acting in the nationalist belief that the Scottish people have a right to their own state, a Scottish nation-state. Although nation-states are practically nonexistent in the world, nationalist politics, or the desire to create nation-states, has been the most effec-tive and powerful ideology of modern times and is the cause of the ever changing boundaries of the world political map. Despite the fact that the nation-state is an ideal concept, everyday language usually denies the prob-lematic difference between political reality and rhetoric. Politicians usually convey the impression that their country is a nation-state, in other words, that their population shares a common national identity. However, contemporary geographic analysis is more focused on the national diversity within states and on how the geography of collective identity transcends state spaces in the form of networks. The nation-state was the fundamental geographic unit of the modern period. The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 established the principle of state sovereignty, that is, a singular authority to rule over a territorial area defined by state boundaries. In Europe, the system of nation-states replaced feudal empires in which a hierarchy of sovereignty through baronial and majestic rule was played out over a network of fuzzy political boundaries. In addition, the ideal of the nation-state emphasized the ideal that sovereignty lay within the people rather than within a royal divine right to rule.

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  Quebec

  State and Society, Third Edition

  • Alain G. Gagnon(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • University of Toronto Press

    (Publisher)

  Stateless Nations or Regional States? Territory and Power in a Globalizing World MICHAEL KEATING Beyond the Nation-State Recent years have seen a vigorous debate about the past, future, and present of the nation-state and about the emergence of new forms of order above, below, and alongside it. For some, the nation-state remains the fundamental unit of political and social order; for others, it is fading away; while others again argue that it is being transformed. The problem is that the nation-state is itself such a complex concept. Some observers put the emphasis on the nation part of the expression to claim that, given the plurality of most states, the expression is a misnomer. Others put the emphasis on the state part, using the expression as a synonym for a sover-eign actor in world politics. It is probably most useful not as a description of a state of affairs, but as an ideal type of political order, with which we can compare regimes past, present, and future. Taken in this way, the key features of the nation-state are its internal and external sovereignty and its ability, within its territorial borders, to contain a range of social, political, economic, and cultural systems. Nation-states have often defined national cultures, in the process making a nation out of the state. They have defined the citizenry, who are the only ones endowed with full civil and political rights, and who comprise the demos underlying democracy. They create, define, and sustain political institutions, including systems of representation and accountability. Finally, they define and regulate a series of functional systems, in 391 19 392 Quebec: State and Society the economy, social integration, and other forms of regulation. These are, in the ideal type, linked to each other so that social solidarity is sustained by a common identity and common norms. This in turn facilitates the production of public goods and handles the externalities that could otherwise hamper economic development.

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  Globalization and the Nation State

  2nd Edition

  • Robert J. Holton(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  This is obviously a hybrid word, linking the idea of ‘nation’ with the idea of ‘state’. While the former refers to what might loosely be termed a ‘people’ – that is, to a cultural entity often defined in terms of ethnicity – the latter refers to a set of institutions through which public authority is exercised within a particular bounded territory. Although the connection between the two is conventionally regarded as a necessary one, this is largely a reflection of the formative experience of European Nation State building, founded on the normative concept of rights to national self-determination. This has helped, first in Europe and later in the colonial world, to legitimate the idea of ‘one people – one state’. This normative principle is not, however, reflected in the basis of many existing Nation States, which, for one reason or another, contain a mixture of peoples or ethnicities. (For further elaboration, see Chapter 6.) In such cases, the identity of the nation has often become a matter for dispute and, sometimes, national fragmentation. Even in such instances, however, the Nation State is more than a state apparatus, requiring that attention be given to the intersection of politics, culture and economic change. If the Nation State is thought of in this dual or hybrid sense, then the question of the relationship between Nation States and globalization becomes larger and more complex. Two large issues stand out. The first 98 Globalization and the Nation State is the challenge of maintaining state sovereignty in relation to the cross-border character of the global economy and global regulatory processes. The second problem, that of the national integrity of a people, brings into focus questions of political and cultural identity.

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  Human Geography

  People, Place, and Culture

  • Erin H. Fouberg, Alexander B. Nash, Alexander B. Murphy, Harm J. de Blij(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Because a nation is identified by those who are able to define and control membership, we cannot simply define a nation as the people within a territory. Indeed, rarely does a nation’s extent correspond precisely with a state’s borders. For example, in the country of Belgium, two nations—the Flemish and the Walloons—exist within the state borders. While some groups who envision themselves as nations do not seek territo- rial control and autonomy, there are numerous examples of groups seeking independence and the creation of their own ter- ritorially defined nation-state—for example, the Kurds of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran; Tamils in northern Sri Lanka; and the Québécois in the province of Quebec. • Political geographers are interested in nations and states, their territorial organization and boundaries, and nationalist ideologies. Political geographers are also interested in the political organization of space from the global to the local. • Borders are never natural. They are always socially con- structed; they are products of social practice, historical context, and are often the result of conflict. • A state is not a “natural” organizational structure. It is a particular form of political and social order created by hu- mans. The state is a politically organized territory with a per- manent population, a defined territory, and a government. It must be recognized as such by the international commu- nity in accordance with international law. • States need to establish boundaries and do so in a number of different ways. Disputes between countries about boundaries take a number of different forms including definitional, locational, operational, and allocational. • A nation is a group of people who collectively understand themselves as having a shared history and a common cul- ture attached to a particular homeland. Some states are made up of many nations, and many nations do not have their own state.

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  From Hierarchy to Anarchy

  Territory and Politics before Westphalia

  • J. Larkins(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Mutual recognition of each other’s sovereignty is the ground rule of international society and confirms membership of the society of states. However, in order to gain access to this club, prospective members must possess a territory. Hedley Bull defines states as “independent political communities” that “possess a govern- ment and assert their sovereignty in relation to a particular portion of the earth’s surface and a particular segment of the human population.” 29 Similarly Alan James asserts that since each of the member states of international society exclu- sively represents a distinct “physical sector of the land mass of the globe”, so the landscape of international society is “divided into states by frontiers rather as a farm is into fields by fences and walls.” 30 Now that international society has expanded globally “almost every square kilometer of the earth’s land sur- face” has been allocated to “one sovereign state or another, with virtually all frontiers being tidily delineated or clearly demarcated.” 31 English School think- ers also endorse the institutionalist assumption that the inside/outside spatial distinction between domestic and international politics is primarily articulated in terms of sovereignty. Bull, for example, distinguishes the exercise of internal sovereignty (which gives a state supremacy over all other authorities within a territory and over a population) from external sovereignty (which denotes inde- pendence from outside authorities). 32 Again the underlying assumption here is that territory exists a priori and is something onto which sovereignty is some- how fixed. English School emphasis on the importance of international law has lead many of its advocates to endorse the idea of the state as a Rechstaat, that is, as the embodiment of the collective agency of social power through represen- tative institutions, created by laws, customs, and practices. However, even the Rechstaat resides upon the territorial a priori.

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  Dynamics of Political Change in Ireland

  • Niall Ó Dochartaigh, Katy Hayward, Elizabeth Meehan(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part I Context 1 State, nation, island The politics of territory in Ireland Niall Ó Dochartaigh State, nation and nature The nation and the modern state emerged together as part of a conjunction of economic, social, technological and political forces that unfolded from the late eighteenth century onwards. As Ernest Gellner tells us in Nations and National- ism, the modern world is the site of ‘a deep adjustment in the relationship between polity and culture which is quite unavoidable’ (Gellner 1983). Identity and political power are fused together in the form of the nation-state. National- ism provides a compelling model of collective identification in an age of mass media, anonymity and disorienting social change (Anderson 1991; Breuilly 1993), while the modern state’s project of homogenisation and infrastructural control over its territory naturalises the nation-state unobtrusively but powerfully in everyday life (Giddens 1996; Mann 1993). These processes are greatly rein- forced by the constantly repeated ‘we’ and ‘here’ of nation and state circulated through mass media, addressing people as part of a collective whose boundaries and identity are so obvious that they don’t even have to be named. This ‘banal’ or everyday nationalism so powerfully analysed by Billig (1995) is crucial to the naturalisation of state territory. When state, territory and nation are brought into close alignment they combine to exert an almost ‘magical’ power, as Sack (1986 38) puts it, to make it seem as though a contingent set of political and social arrangements is deeply natural, inevitable and eternal. While pre-modern rulers looked upwards to sanction their authority, to divine powers represented by the sun or heaven above, claims to authority in modernity search for legitimation in the opposite direction, looking downward to the ground below their feet. In the modern spirit of the natural sciences, they seek authority in material rootedness rather than transcendence.

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  A Philosophy of Nationhood and the Modern Self

  • Michal Rozynek(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  This is clearly a communitarian view of nationhood. However, rather than focusing on the roles of tested practices and traditions in forming our moral sources, I want to highlight the political value of the thus-constructed self in a way that allows us to participate in global discourse. Finally, one should note that while in the sense I will be using the term ‘nation’, it refers to communities of shared cultural and historical heritage which, while political, are not identical with states. National boundaries do not always overlap with state boundaries. 5 There are theorists, such as Gellner, 6 who do not make this distinction explicitly, because they regard the state as the main motor behind the formation of nations. But while INTRODUCTION 10 the link between the state and nation can indeed be strong, they are dis- tinct concepts. 7 I understand nationalism as a term that relates to a set of modern movements, where citizenship is derived from an inclusion in the nation rather than in a ‘mere’ state where citizenship is derived from cultural norms. NATION, NATIONALISM AND IDEOLOGY It is important to distinguish between the concept of nation a, nationalism as a process, nationalism as a normative theory and nationalism as an ideol- ogy. I have briefly outlined my understanding of the concept of the nation in the previous section, and further discussion can be found in Chap. 2. The majority of this book is preoccupied with nationalism understood as a socio-cultural process of modernity—one which can be traced to the mod- ern ideal of the self, and in particular to notions of individual autonomy and authorship. Nationalism can also refer to a normative stance, whereas some claim that we have special duties to our fellow nationals—or that we should simply give priority to members of our own nation when resources are scarce. But for most of us, we see nationalism as an ideology, which is often linked to xenophobia, tribalism and racism.

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  Political Science and Changing Politics

  • Philip van Praag(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Amsterdam University Press

    (Publisher)

  There are a number of reasons for this. In everyday language, ‘the nation’ is often used interchangeably with ‘the state’. This terminological confusion shows up in many quarters. Consider, for instance, the term ‘international’, which is used mainly to describe relationships and processes among states – or think of the United Nations, to which only internationally recognised states can belong. ‘Nation’, a term that describes a social unit, is in these cases used interchangeably with ‘state’, a term for a political-administrative unit. The essence of the nation is strongly linked with collective identity. An important discussion in academic debate revolves around whether nations inherently exist and are unchanging (primordialism), or are variable social constructions that have meaning because we think they exist and accord them an important social meaning (constructivism). Thinking about na-tions according to these approaches cannot really be separated from the debate on the historical origins of nations. We will expound on each of these approaches in turn. Primordialism Already in the early nineteenth century, in what we now describe in cultural-historical terms as the Romantic period, the idea arose that the nation was a naturally existing community characterised by a shared history, origin and future. Because of the emphasis on the inherent and immutable character of the nation, this idea is called primordialism. This primordial approach was epitomised by the German poet-philosopher Herder. He assumed that humanity has traditionally been divided into dif ferent peoples, each with its own specif ic language and its corresponding way of thinking. Primordialism stresses the idea that the nation is not only a cultural com-munity with its own traditions and customs, but also an ethnic community that is connected by a shared origin. Just as at birth one is immediately part of a family, people are also naturally born into a nation.

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  Encyclopedia of Identity

  • Ronald L. Jackson II, Ronald L. Jackson(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Inside the state can become in practice identified with policy makers or elites or what can be ascer-tained by social surveys; although in themselves important foci of study, these seem insufficient grounds for a conceptualization of state identity . Finally, constructivist renderings of state identity tend to assume an ideal model of the state based on the experience of the Global North, that is, on states not struggling fundamentally with the forma-tion of political community. There is an assumption that states form relatively coherent political units and that these units are represented by govern-ments. This reduces the relevance of the concept, at least as it is currently and predominantly applied, to a significant proportion of the world. M. Anne Brown See also Civic Identity; Nationalism; Social Constructionist Approach to Personal Identity Further Readings: Guzzini, S., & Leander, M. (Eds.). (2006). Constructivism and international relations: Alexander Wendt and his critics. London: Routledge. Smith, S. & Owens, P. (2008). Alternative approaches to international theory. In J. Baylis, S. Smith, & P. Owens (Eds.), The globalization of world politics: An introduction to international relations (4th ed., pp. 174–191). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. S TATUS Status refers to social rank defined in terms of prestige or esteem. Status is one of the most important variables governing the lives of social animals, human beings included. Although status is not the same thing as power, the two are closely related. Status tends to stem from power, and vice versa, because status elicits respect and deference. This simple case illustrates that status is of interest as both a dependent variable (an outcome of social-psychological processes) and an indepen-dent variable (a cause of social-psychological pro-cesses). Thus, this entry considers the dynamics of status, including how it is gained, maintained through its effects on social interactions, and resisted.

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  Sovereignties

  Contemporary Theory and Practice

  • R. Prokhovnik(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  state; the significance of the differences between how sovereignty is studied in political theory and IR; and the idea of sovereignty as political, about state power, contrasted with the idea of sovereignty as unpolitical, a purely descriptive designation about a universal relation of ruling. The argument of this book holds that a broad perspective can help to work out what sov- ereignty means given all these debates in the western tradition. It would also be instructive, though beyond the scope of this book, to examine other, non-western traditions of political theory and practice about the issues and ideas sovereignty deals with. There are at least six contemporary discourses on sovereignty. The first three are deeply problematic, tending to essentialise and depoliticise sov- ereignty in different ways. The second three contain great potential for revitalising the notion of sovereignty. The mainstream international relations discourse sees sovereignty as paradigmatically ordaining hierarchy at home and anarchy abroad, with inter-state relations taking place on the basis of national interest and power. This discourse relies heavily on an analogy between the modern liberal rational, calculating, autonomous individual agent and the sov- ereign state. This supposedly neutral and descriptive discourse has an important, often unacknowledged, normative dimension. The tradition of political theory that deals with political concepts has emphasised the authority relationship by which sovereignty is seen to establish the domestic legitimacy and stability of government, a liberal constitutionalism, and the political obligation of the governed.

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  Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis

  France, Britain and Europe

  • Henrik Larsen(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The British political discourse in the 1980s on the concepts of nation/state, Europe, security and the nature of international relations

  Nation/State

  The historical aspects of the political discourse on state and nation will first be analysed. Central historical lines will be drawn. Then, it will be argued that the crucial concept in the dominant discourse historically, the nodal point, is ‘the sovereign parliament’ rather than state or nation. This section also includes an analysis of the way this dominant discourse presents what could be called the political layers in the British state – its spatial organisation and the central political units. Thereupon, the political discourse of the 1980s, the central object of study of the book, will be analysed.

  The historical discourse on state and nation: the proxy role of ‘sovereignty of parliament’

  The aim of this section is to present the political discourse on state and nation as it was before the 1980s. As there is continuity in many important respects between the period before and after 1979, the analysis in this section will be relatively detailed. Many of the findings from this section will be drawn on when analysing the political discourse on the state and the nation in the 1980s.

  The making of the United Kingdom

  The United Kingdom is a multinational state. English, Irish, Scots and Welsh came together in a process lasting from around 1400 (perhaps before in the case of Ireland and England) until around 1800 (the Southern Irish were to leave the union in 1921). The political unification took place through the Acts of Union between England and Wales in 1536, between England and Scotland in 1707 (which created ‘Great Britain’) and with Ireland in 1801.

  The most important driving force behind the political unification process can be interpreted as English conquest and political pressure (although in the case of Wales and Scotland there were also strong forces in favour of the union within these two countries). It was greatly facilitated by the already existing royal unions, first between England and Wales, later between England and Scotland (Clark 1991: 59).

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