Often they feel the terms are used State And Nation as synonyms but are concepts that they have different origins and evolutions: lo State It is apolitical entity with a government, a territory and a population, the Nation it is instead a more concept cultural and identity. Understanding the difference between the state and the nation is not only linked to a linguistic question, rather it is essential to interpret global political dynamics and conflicts still open in the modern world.
What is a state
The definition of state was born with the Western legal traditiontheorized by Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes between the 16th and 17th centuries, the choice of this term used with modern meaning, however, is of Machiavelli. We can therefore define it as apolitical and legal entity which must present three fundamental elements:
- a territory delimited by borders;
- a stable population;
- a government which exerts sovereignty on that territory and on those people.
A state can be said “sovereign“(like Italy or France) or part of a wider entity (such as federated states in the US); It is based on laws and institutions which may vary according to the form of government adopted (monarchy, republic, dictatorship, etc.).
What is a nation
That of Nation Instead it is a more cultural and identity concept than legal: it indicates a group of people united by language, history, traditions, religion or simply sense of belonging. Furthermore, the nation must not necessarily have defined physical boundaries or legal identity: in essence A state nation can exist, or a state that contains multiple nations! For example, the Kurdish people formed a nation, but do not have their own independent state; On the contrary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire consisted of multiple nationalities, such as Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovenians and others.
The nation is a modern idea, which emerged between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thanks to the birth of national consciousness. The Romance and the Industrial revolution strengthened the nationalismtransforming it into a mass ideology and from 1815 nationalism has pushed many nationalities in search of independence, but it was also an instrument of power of European states, contributing toimperialism and to world conflicts.
Historical evolution: from sovereignty to nationalism
In Greek culture there is no conception of the state separated by the community: the polis It is at the same time the social and political dimension of man, who outside of it is considered incomplete, and in the Middle Ages the concept of state did not exist in the modern sense: the territories were often fragmented and governed by feudal lords or monarchs with limited powers. Only in Modern age that develops theidea of the state as a centralized and sovereign entity, thanks also to the Westphalia treatise of 1648, which sanctioned the birth of modern state-nation. In the nineteenth century then, with the spread of nationalist ideas, many states began to be defined on the basis of ethnic and cultural criteria, it was then that the concept of National state He took hold, bringing to the birth of new states such as Italy and Germany, unified around a common national identity.
THE’agreement Sykes-Picot of 1916 It is a historical example of how the creation of states has not always followed the borders of the nations: in the Middle East, the European powers traced arbitrary boundariescombining or separating peoples without considering their cultural identitiescontributing to still current voltages. This is also why today’s world scene is complex: they exist Homogeneous nation states (like Japan), but also Multiethnic states (like the United States or Switzerland); some peoples without a state claim independence (such as i Kurd he is sahrawi), while some states try to strengthen national identity through cultural and linguistic policies: many of the global conflicts It is still existing often arise from the clash between states and nations. In short, nationalism can combine or divide, influencing borders, identity and geopolitics.
