Political Science Nations and States Key Terms & The Rise of the Nation-State
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Overview
Like an ideology, our nationality frequently determines how we behave and how we view politics. In the United States, many people think of themselves as “proud Americans.” They might display flags in their yards or on their cars, or they might wear flag lapel pins. They might display yellow ribbons as a sign of support for American troops around the globe. Particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, many Americans have felt strongly patriotic.
For much of the last 500 years, the nation-state has been the dominant political unit. But nation-states did not always exist. Indeed, other political forms dominated the world for most of world history, and the nation-state is a relatively recent phenomenon. Today, the nation-state still predominates, even as the recent rise of globalization and devolution promises to fundamentally alter global politics.
Key Terms
In this section, we cover three of the most important terms in political science:
- Nation: a large group of people linked by a similar culture, language, and history
- State: a political unit that has sovereignty over a particular piece of land
- Nation-state: a state that rules over a single nation
Because the nation-state dominates so much political discourse, many political scientists specialize in understanding how nation-states work internally, as well as how they relate to one another.
Nations
A nation is a large group of people who are linked by a similar culture, language, and history. Members of some nations share an ethnicity (almost everyone in South Korea is Korean, for example), whereas other nations consist of ethnically diverse groups of people (the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and Singapore, for instance). However, the members of a nation see themselves as connected. Fellow members are often regarded as part of an extended family. Many members of a nation take pride in being a part of something bigger than themselves as individuals, and they celebrate their nation.
Example: In common speech, we use the term nation to describe a collection of people with something in common. For example, some people refer to the “Red Sox Nation,” consisting of all those who root for the Boston Red Sox. The term is used even more often as a synonym for country, which is technically incorrect.
People disagree about what counts as a nation. Nationhood sometimes transcends geographical boundaries. Some groups consider themselves to be nations, even though much of the world does not consider them that way. Kurds, for example, live in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, but many Kurds believe they belong to a Kurdish nation. Also, members of a nation frequently differ in a variety of ways, including speaking different languages and participating in different cultural practices.
Example: Native American tribes in the United States are often referred to as nations because members of a particular tribe share a common set of language, history, and culture that differs from that of other Native American tribes. The language, history, and culture of the Cherokee Nation, for example, differs greatly from that of the Sioux Nation, which is different from that of the Iroquois Nation. Although the United States government grants these tribes some political autonomy (in other words, they can make many of their own laws), their classification as distinct nations comes from their shared ancestry and has nothing to do with their legal or political status.
In the end, determining what constitutes a nation is somewhat subjective. People may identify themselves as members of myriad nations, but even those identifications may change over time. And the strength of the identification also varies. The division between an ethnic group and a nation is a tricky one to make. To put it crudely, the moment that an ethnic group starts to view itself as a nation, it becomes a nation. The Kurdish people, for example, became a nation when they started thinking of themselves as an ethnic group with a common language, history, and culture that set them apart from the neighboring Turks, Arabs, and Persians.
Example: Nations and their attendant nationalism in many ways caused World War I. In the decades leading up to the war, several European nations struggled to assert themselves on the global stage. These conflicts ratcheted up the tension. The event that directly precipitated the war—the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914—was also the result of nationalism: The assassin was a Serbian nationalist trying to free his nation from Austrian control.
Changing Identities
A good example of how membership in a nation changes over time comes from the history of the United States. In the early decades of the Republic, many Americans valued their connection to their home states over an attachment to the federal government. People identified with and felt loyal toward Virginia or Massachusetts rather than with the young United States. This reluctance to identify with other Americans contributed to the Civil War. After World War II, Americans closely identified with the United States as a single nation of one people. But in recent years, the “red-state/blue-state” divide has caused some people to increasingly identify with “their America,” as opposed to the nation as a whole.
States
A state is a political unit that has sovereignty over a particular piece of land. Sovereignty is the ultimate power within a territory. So the state has the power to make laws, defend its borders, and enact policies. The state also exercises a monopoly on the legitimate use of force: No group within its borders can use force legally without the permission of the state. In the United States, we use the word state to mean something more akin to the word province (the difference being that American states have more political autonomy and power than provinces in most other countries). But political scientists use the word state as a synonym for sovereign governments.
Who is Sovereign
A state is the ultimate authority within a territory. Smaller political units—such as city governments—exist within a state, but ultimately the supreme power rests with the state. The governments of the city of Chicago, for example, or Orange County, California, have some power to enforce rules within their territories. However, these governments do not have the final say: Local governments are not sovereign because they are subordinate to the federal government of the United States and must abide by the government’s rules.
The Rise of the Nation-State
The nation-state developed fairly recently. Prior to the 1500s, in Europe, the nation-state as we know it did not exist. Back then, most people did not consider themselves part of a nation; they rarely left their village and knew little of the larger world. If anything, people were more likely to identify themselves with their region or local lord. At the same time, the rulers of states frequently had little control over their countries. Instead, local feudal lords had a great deal of power, and kings often had to depend on the goodwill of their subordinates to rule. Laws and practices varied a great deal from one part of the country to another. The timeline on page 65 explains some key events that led to the rise of the nation-state.
In the early modern era, a number of monarchs began to consolidate power by weakening the feudal nobles and allying themselves with the emerging commercial classes. This difficult process sometimes required violence. The consolidation of power also took a long time. Kings and queens worked to bring all the people of their territories under unified rule. Not surprisingly, then, the birth of the nation-state also saw the first rumblings of nationalism, as monarchs encouraged their subjects to feel loyalty toward the newly established nations. The modern, integrated nation-state became clearly established in most of Europe during the nineteenth century.
Example: Russia is a great example of consolidation of power by monarchs. Throughout most of the medieval era, what became Russia was a minor principality centered on the city of Moscow. Over the course of a few hundred years, the rulers of Moscow took over more land, eventually expanding to cover much of what is now Russia. This expansion came through a mix of diplomacy and war. When Ivan IV—also known as Ivan the Terrible—came of age and assumed the throne in 1547, he was crowned the first czar. He proceeded to devastate the nobility by means of a secret police and gained the loyalty of commercial classes by giving them positions in a new state bureaucracy. These actions led to the deaths of thousands.
| Time Frame | Major Event |
| Pre-1500s | Most people lived in small villages; they paid tithes to feudal landlords, didn’t travel, and cared little for anything beyond the village. |
| 1485 | Henry VII wins the War of the Roses in England, begins the Tudor dynasty, and starts the development of the English nation-state. |
| 1492 | Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella finish taking back all of Spain from the Muslims; the era of Spain as a global power begins. |
| 1547–1584 | Ivan the Terrible rules Russia; he unifies the government and creates the first Russian nation-state. |
| 1638–1715 | Louis XIV of France creates an absolute monarchy; France emerges as the dominant power in Europe. |
| 1648 | Peace of Westphalia cements the legal status of the nation-state as sovereign. |
| 1789 | The French Revolution begins; it creates the modern French nation-state and sparks nationalism around Europe. |
| 1871 | Unification of Italy and Germany is complete. |
| 1919 | Treaty of Versailles ends World War I; it breaks up several multinational empires and creates many new nation-states. |
| 1945 | The United Nations forms. |
Newly emerging nation-states in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a complex relationship with the predominant transnational power of the time, the Catholic Church. At times, partial nation-states were useful tools for the Catholic Church. On several occasions, for example, France and Spain intervened in Italy at the invitation of the Pope. But some monarchs wanted control over their national churches in order to get absolute power. In England, the dispute over who controlled the English church led Henry VIII to break from the Pope and establish an independent Protestant church in the 1530s. This break with the Catholic Church gave the English something to rally around, thus encouraging them to develop loyalty toward the English nation-state. At the same time, some devout Catholics in England refused to convert; their displeasure ultimately led to repression and civil war.
The Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia
The Thirty Years’ War, fought throughout central Europe from 1618–1648 between Protestants and Catholics, laid the legal foundation for the nation-state. The war involved many nations of Europe, including many small German states, the Austrian Empire, Sweden, France, and Spain. Despite a brutal war, the Catholics were unable to overturn Protestantism. The treaty that ended the war, called the Peace of Westphalia, decreed that the sovereign ruler of a state had power over all elements of both the nation and the state, including religion. Thus, the modern idea of a sovereign state was born.
Centralization
Centralization, or the process by which law- and policymaking become centrally located, helped spur the development of nation-states. Final power rested with the central government, which made the laws and practices more uniform across the country. A single centralized authority, rather than many diverse local authorities, allowed nation-states to quickly develop their economies. Merchants could trade throughout the nation without worrying about local taxes and regulations. Also, the nation-state was much stronger militarily than the feudal state. Rulers were able to create national armies, which were not dependent on the nobility. The armies could receive consistent training so that all units could work well together. In many cases, the newly emerging nation-states dominated the older forms of political organization.
Example: In the eighteenth century, nobles held most of the power in Poland. The monarch was very weak. As a result, Poland could not defeat its powerful neighbors Austria, Prussia, and Russia. These three centralized nation-states partitioned Poland on three different occasions—1772, 1793, and 1795—eventually eliminating Poland until 1918, when a new Republic of Poland formed.
The Importance of Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte was a key figure in the development of the nation-state. Amid the chaos of the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century, most remaining medieval and feudal laws were overturned and a truly national law code was established. Similarly, a national military was created. Although not the only reason, France’s status as a nation-state was a key factor in its ability to dominate feudal neighbors in Italy and Germany. Napoleon’s military victories also paved the way for the emergence of nation-states in the rest of Europe: In many places, the people rallied together as a nation in order to defeat Napoleon.
