Brief outline on Nation-States Characteristics

A nation state is a political unit in which the state and the country are one and the same. It is a more precise concept than “country” because a country does not have to have a dominant ethnic group.

A nation in the sense of a common ethnicity may include a diaspora or refugees living outside the nation state; some nations in this sense lack a state where that ethnicity predominates. In a larger sense, a nation state is simply a big, politically sovereign country or administrative region. A nation state could be compared to:

• A multicultural state in which no single ethnic group is dominant (such a state may also be considered a multicultural state depending on the degree of cultural assimilation of various groups).
• A city-state that is smaller than a “nation” in the sense of a “large sovereign country” but may or may not be dominated by all or part of a single “nation” in the sense of a shared ethnicity.
• An empire is a collection of countries (potentially non-sovereign entities) and nationalities ruled by a single monarch or ruling state.
• A confederation is a grouping of sovereign nations that may or may not contain nation-states.
• A federated state that is only partially self-governing within a larger federation and may or may not be a nation-state (Bosnia and Herzegovina’s state borders, for example, are drawn along ethnic lines, but the United States’ are not).

Origins and history

Nation states’ origins and early history are debated. “Which came first, the country or the nation state?” is a major theoretical question. Scholars such as Steven Weber, David Woodward, Michel Foucault, and Jeremy The nation state, according to Black, is an unintentional outcome of 15th-century intellectual discoveries in political economy, capitalism, mercantilism, political geography, and geography, as well as developments in mapping and map-making technologies. As a result of these intellectual achievements and technological advancements, the nation state emerged. Others believe that the country came first, then nationalist movements demanded sovereignty, and the nation state was founded to satisfy that demand. Some “modernization theories” of nationalism see it as a result of government efforts aimed at unifying and modernising an existing state. Most views regard the nation state as a 19th-century European phenomenon aided by advances such as compulsory education, mass literacy, and mass media. Historians[who?] have also noted the early emergence of a relatively unified state and identity in Portugal and the Netherlands Republic.

Characteristics

Nation states have unique qualities that set them apart from pre-national states. To begin with, they treat their territory differently than dynastic kings do: it is semi sacred and non-transferable. No country would exchange territory with another simply because the king’s daughter married. They have a different form of boundary, which is mostly defined by the national group’s settlement region, however many nation governments have also sought natural frontiers (rivers, mountain ranges). Because of the restrictive limits of their borders, their population size and power fluctuate constantly.

The degree to which nation states employ the state as a tool for national unification in economic, social, and cultural life is the most visible trait.

By abolishing internal customs and tolls, the nation-state encouraged economic unity. The Zollverein was formed before formal national unity in Germany. The creation and maintenance of a national transportation infrastructure, which facilitates trade and travel, is traditionally a policy of nation governments. The expansion of rail transportation networks in nineteenth-century Europe was first largely the responsibility of private railway firms, but it gradually fell under the jurisdiction of national governments. The French rail network, with its main lines radiating from Paris to every corner of the country, is frequently viewed as a reflection of the centralised French nation state that ordered its creation. National highway networks, for example, are still being constructed by national governments. Transnational infrastructure programmes like the Trans-European Networks are relatively new.

Because they were smaller and had a less diversified population, nation governments tended to have a more centralised and uniform public administration than their imperial forerunners. (The Ottoman Empire, for example, had a tremendous amount of internal diversity.) Regional identity was subordinated to national identification in regions like Alsace-Lorraine, Catalonia, Brittany, and Corsica following the rise of the nation state in Europe in the nineteenth century. Regional governments were frequently subject to the central (national) authority. In traditionally centralised states like France, this process was largely reversed starting in the 1970s, when various degrees of regional autonomy were introduced.

Nation-Station: Challenges Of Definition

One of the modern era’s defining features is the nation-state. Since the 1990s, academics have been debating whether nation-states have lost some of their power and authority in the post-World War II era, which is sometimes referred to as “global,” “post-industrial,” “late modern,” or “postmodern.” Many academics have claimed that today’s nation-states have unprecedented hurdles in implementing programmes and maintaining social cohesion within their borders.

The majority of today’s threats to nation-states are not new, and some are as ancient as the nation-state itself. However, nation-states’ capacity to contain, control, and harness flows of people, economic capital, and cultural materials, as well as to confine politics to public spheres and institutions and relationships with other nation-states, has been challenged for several decades by accelerating globalisation processes. States in various parts of the world vary in their susceptibility to globalization-induced pressures, as well as their ability to resist or adapt to those influences. The following are some of the pressures that all nation-states face, to varying degrees.

Immigration

The influx of migrant workers and refugees to nation-states in the global North and West has tended to increase cultural and ideological fragmentation and tension, particularly in cases where immigrants’ religion and culture differ greatly from those of the host society, where immigrants are concentrated in urban ethnic enclaves, and where immigrants do not assimilate. Tensions between the majority and minority groups grow in such circumstances, and intergroup violence increases. The presence of non-assimilation minority in majority groups intensifies internal conflicts over the meaning of national collective identity, fundamental ideology, and national interests definition. Conflicts between the ultranationalist right and the liberal left in Europe and the United States in the early twenty-first century highlighted these phenomena.

Neoliberalism and global capitalism are two terms that are frequently used interchangeably.

The late-twentieth-century globalisation of production, consumption, and finance, as well as the parallel rise of wealthy and powerful multinational businesses, has hampered states’ ability to enact national protectionist measures and restrict cross-border migration. The spread of neoliberalism (an ideology and policy model advocating free markets and minimal government intervention in economic and social affairs) around the world, as well as the development of international institutions that support this ideology (e.g., the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund), has weakened countries’ ability to engage in long-term macroeconomic planning and regulation, as well as to maintain collectivist social welfare regimes. The neoliberal approach has exacerbated political instability by increasing citizen inequality, increasing economic uncertainty, and reducing welfare security.

Conclusion 

The state and the country are combined in a nation state. It is more precise since a country does not require a dominating ethnic group.

Some nations, in the sense of ethnicity, lack a state where that ethnicity is the majority. A nation state is a large, autonomous country or administrative unit.

A federated state that is partially self-governing and may or may not be a nation-state (for example, the state boundaries of Bosnia and Herzegovina are drawn along ethnic lines, but those of the United States are not).

A sovereign, ethnically dominant country is defined as a nation-state in this article.