More on Nation

Excerpt from Peri Pamir's
"NATIONALISM, ETHNICITY AND DEMOCRACY: CONTEMPORARY MANIFESTATIONS"

Nations and Nation States

It would appear then that the drive for self determination, which has acted as the principal inspiration for many modern day nationalist movements, challenges the legitimacy of the state by placing in question its claim to represent the popular will of the nation. We will now turn to the dynamic between the nation and the state as a means of understanding the basis for what is broadly known as ethno-nationalism.

Part of the confusion concerning the nature of the relationship between nation and state arises from the different (sometimes overlapping) meanings ascribed to the former concept depending on the particular context, which are briefly enumerated below:

(1) Nation as synonymous with state.
(2) Nation as encompassing the state plus other political entities, such as trusts and non-self governing territories, as defined in the UN Charter.
(3) Nation as representing a people (not a population) belonging to the same ethno-linguistic group, not necessarily inhabiting the same political and territorial space, but possessing the political will or ambition to form a unitary state (e.g., the Kurds).
(4) Nation as representing a culturally homogenized population living in an existing state (e.g., as in the case of the French nation).3
(5) Nation as a community of peoples composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a defined territory and government (e.g., USA, Switzerland).

Given these definitions, a "nation (or multi-national nation) state" can connote:

(i) A form of political organization under which a relatively homogenized people inhabit a sovereign state; or
(ii) A political territory where different minority and majority nations formally possessing the same rights live together.

The nationalist belief, as expressed by Guiseppe Mazzini in the 19th century, maintained that every nation (each particular ethno-linguistic group) had the right to form its own state, and that there should be only one state for each nation. This claim has been historically impractical since, by current accounting, there exist practically no ethno-linguistically homogeneous nations.

The territorial distribution of the human race is older than the idea of ethnic-linguistic nation-states and therefore does not correspond to it. Development in the modern world economy, because it generates vast population movements, constantly undermines ethnic-linguistic homogeneity. Multi-ethnicity and plurilinguality are quite unavoidable, except temporarily by mass exclusion, forcible assimilation, mass expulsion or genocide - in short, by coercion (Hobsbawm, 1991).

In reality, therefore, the definitions are not so clear cut as states are generally multinational (and hence, rarely homogeneous) and nations are quite often polyethnic. Although the 'political nation' corresponds to the territorial boundaries of the nation state, an 'ethnic nation' may spill over several state boundaries (e.g., the Kurds) and therefore, in that sense, is not synonymous with state.