An understanding of the relationship between the Nation and the State must confront with two different trends—first, nationalities seeking their states; and second, politically or administratively demarcated states seeking and creating nations for themselves. In the latter case, political sovereignty is considered as contributing to the strengthening of nationalities/nation-building. This duality of relationships between ‘the Nation’ and ‘the State’ can be found both in Western as well as non-Western societies.
There can be, in fact, three possibilities in this context—one, a nation-state organized on the basis of homogenous cultural or ethnic identity; two, a nation-state organized on the basis of culturally or ethnically plural groups; and three, a colonially or administratively demarcated State having no clear-cut national basis. Some writers differentiate between the ‘Nation-State’ and the ‘National State’ as coinciding with the first two categories respectively.27 Many post-colonial societies as well as other States found themselves in the situation of having a state and political sovereignty but an absence of national consciousness. This has led to a state-sponsored nation-building process where national integration has been led by the State itself. David Beetham, in The Future of the Nation State has pointed out that ‘many of these new states were highly artificial constructions, states in search of nations still to be formed, in which the only national force remaining after the decay of the nationalist movements has been the army and the state bureaucracy.’28 This entity can be termed a state-nation, a nation being built by the State. The process of nation building reverses the relationship between the nation and the State; instead of the nation being the basis of the State, the given State becomes the basis of evolving a nation. In many developing countries, the process of creating an identity of citizenship as the basis of the nation seems to be addressing the need to wean individuals away from other loyalties such as tribal, caste-based, religious, ethnic, etc. These States were more or less artificially constructed and then left in search of their nations. Viewed in this context, as Beetham comments, ‘a nation can be as much the conscious creation of state policy as a pre-existing cultural entity demanding political autonomy within its own state boundaries.’29 Many States having multiple nationalities could be called state-nations instead of nation-states. The erstwhile USSR was one of them, which made the State the basis of integrating nationalities (Uzbeks, Kazaks, Chechens, Turks, Slavs, etc.). Thus, the relationship between the nation and the State could be viewed either way—as nation-state or state-nation.
The relationship between these two can be understood in terms of both the state-building process and the nation-building process. To understand further, Table 2.2 briefly discusses the process of state-building on the one hand and nation-building on the other.30
Table 2.2 State-building and Nation-building
As can be seen from Table 2.2, the state-making process itself could inculcate (to a certain degree) national consciousness. For example, it is said that colonial rule, partly and due to its requirements, contributed to national consciousness through their measures of state-making. However, in developing countries, both the processes have been taking place simultaneously. It may be mentioned that while the concept of the nation-state has generally described the relationship between the nation and the State, enquiry in post-colonial societies has led some writers like William Zartmann to describe this relationship in the context of African States as ‘State-nation’ where a State seeks to forge a nation for itself.
If we may attempt to categorize modern States in the categories that we have discussed so far—the nation-state, the national-state and the state-nation—the following grouping (see Table 2.3) may emerge.
| Nation-State | National-State | State-Nation |
|---|---|---|
| Conventional concept with strong nationality-based State where boundaries of a State coincide with the boundary of a nationality or a nationality with majority population | Poly-national basis of State where multiple ethnic and cultural groups/two or three cultural or ethnic groups are together with shared values | State forging nations |
| Examples include Armenia, Bosnia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Georgia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, Uzbekistan, etc. | Examples include India, United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada, China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc. | Examples include Afghanistan, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Congo, Iraq (after Saddam Hussein), etc. |
This suggests the dynamic nature of the relationship between the State and the nation, and that the journey of the nation-state is neither universal nor uniform. In fact, we can associate the emergence of these categories of nation-states at certain points in history—Treaty of Westphalia (1648), the Vienna Congress (1814-15) Europe, after both the World Wars and the post-colonial era, the end of the Cold War and the post-Soviet period. These represent terminal points when many nation-states emerged and got recognized as such. We should understand the present debate on the impact of globalization on the nation-state in the context of such a dynamic character of the state.
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