The Nation

For over two hundred years the nation has been regarded as the proper, indeed only legitimate, unit of political rule. This belief has been reflected in the remarkable appeal of nationalism, without doubt the most influential of the world’s political creeds during the last two hundred years. Nationalism is, at heart, the doctrine that each nation is entitled to self-determination, reflected in the belief that, as far as possible, the boundaries of the nation and those of the state should coincide. Thus the idea of a ‘nation’ has been used as a way of establishing a non-arbitrary basis for the boundaries of the state. This implies that the highest form of political organization is the nation-state; in effect, the nation, each nation, is a sovereign entity.

Nationalism has redrawn the map of the world and continues to do so, from the process of European nation-building in the nineteenth century, through the national liberation struggles of the post-1945 period, to the collapse of the last of the major multinational states, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, at the end of the twentieth century. However, it is often far from clear what constitutes a ‘nation’, or why nations should be regarded as the only legitimate unit of political rule. It is still more difficult to identify the political character of nationalism, a force that has at times been linked to racialism and aggression, but at other times has been associated with international stability and harmony. Finally, it has been suggested that the days of the nation-state are numbered, that the idea of the nation is a hangover from the disintegration of the European empires of the nineteenth century and has no place in a world of ever-closer international cooperation.

Cultural and Political Nations

All too frequently, the term ‘nation’ is confused with ‘country’ or ‘state’. This is evident, for example, when ‘nationality’ is used to indicate membership of a particular state, more properly called ‘citizenship’. The confusion is also found in the title of the United Nations, an organization that is clearly one of states rather than nations or peoples. A nation is a cultural entity, a body of people bound together by a shared cultural heritage. It is not, therefore, a political association, nor is it necessarily linked to a particular territorial area. Nations may lack statehood either because, like all African and many Asian nations in the early years of the twentieth century, they are the subjects of a foreign imperial power, or because they are incorporated into multinational states such as the UK and the Soviet Union of old. Nations may also be landless, as the Jews were in modern times until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and as the Palestinians are currently.

The cultural factors that define a nation are usually a common language, religion, traditions, historical consciousness and so on. These are objective characteristics but they do not in any sense provide a blueprint for deciding when a nation exists, and when one does not. There are, in other words, many examples of enduring and successful nations which contain, like Switzerland, several languages, or, like Indonesia, more than one religion, or, as in the case of the USA, a diverse range of historical traditions and ethnic backgrounds. Ultimately, nations can only be defined subjectively, that is by a people’s awareness of its nationality or what can be called their national consciousness. This consciousness clearly encompasses a sense of belonging or loyalty to a particular community, usually referred to as ‘patriotism’, literally a love of one’s country. Commentators such as Ernest Gellner in Nations and Nationalism (1983) have, however, insisted that the defining feature of national consciousness is not merely the sentiment of loyalty towards or affection for one’s nation but the aspiration to self-government and independence. In effect, a nation defines itself by its quest for independent statehood; if it is contained within an existing larger state it seeks to separate from it and redraw state boundaries. An alternative school of thought, however, sees the quest for statehood as merely one expression of nationalist sentiment, the defining feature of nationalism being its capacity to represent the material or economic interests of a national group. This view would accept, for example, that the desire of the French Basques to preserve their language and culture is every bit as ‘nationalist’ as the openly separatist struggle waged by Basques in Spain.

Because the assertion of nationhood often carries with it significant political demands, the definition of ‘nation’ tends to be fiercely contested. Many of the most enduring political conflicts turn on whether a particular group is, or should be regarded as, a nation. This is evident in the Sikh struggle for an independent homeland, ‘Khalistan’, in the Indian state of Punjab, the campaign in Quebec to break away from Canada, and demands by the Scottish National Party (SNP) for independence within Europe. Not infrequently, national identities overlap and are difficult to disentangle from one another. This is particularly clear in the UK, which could either be regarded as a single British nation or as four separate nations, the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish, or indeed as five nations if divisions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland are taken into account. Such complications occur because the balance between the political and cultural components of nationhood are almost infinitely variable. The German historian Friedrich Meinecke tried to resolve this issue in Cosmopolitanism and the Nation State ([1907] 1970) by distinguishing between what he called ‘cultural nations’ and ‘political nations’, but when cultural and political considerations are so closely interlinked this task is notoriously difficult.

There are strong reasons for believing that to some degree all nations have been shaped by historical, cultural or ethnic factors. In The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1986), Anthony Smith stressed the extent to which modern nations emerged by drawing upon the symbolism and mythology of pre-modern ethnic communities, which he calls ‘ethnies’. The nation is therefore historically embedded: it is rooted in a common cultural heritage and language that may long predate the achievement of statehood or even the quest for national independence. Modern nations thus came into existence when these established ethnies were linked to the emerging doctrine of popular sovereignty and associated with a historic homeland. This explains why national identity is so often expressed in the traditions and customs of past generations, as clearly occurs in the case of the Greeks, the Germans, the Russians, the English, the Irish, and so on. From this perspective, nations can be regarded as ‘organic’, in that they have been fashioned by natural or historical forces rather than by political ones. This may, in turn, mean that ‘cultural’ nations are stable and cohesive, bound together by a powerful and historical sense of national unity.

Some forms of nationalism are very clearly cultural rather than political in character. For instance, despite the demands of Plaid Cymru for a separate Welsh state, nationalism in Wales consists largely of the desire to defend Welsh culture and, in particular, preserve the Welsh language. Equally, the nationalist pride of the Breton peoples of Brittany is expressed as a cultural movement rather than in any attempt to secede from France. Cultural nationalism is perhaps best thought of as a form of ethnocentr-ism, an attachment to a particular culture as a source of identity and explanatory frame of reference. Like nations, ethnic groups such as the Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean communities of the USA and UK share a distinct, and often highly developed, cultural identity. However, unlike nations, ethnic groups are usually content to preserve their cultural identity without demanding political independence. In practice, however, the distinction between an ‘ethnic minority’ and a fully fledged ‘nation’ may be blurred. This is especially the case in multicultural societies, which lack the ethnic and cultural unity that has traditionally provided the basis for national identity. In one form, multiculturalism (see p. 215) may establish the ethnic group, rather than the nation, as the primary source of personal and political identity. However, the idea of multicultural nationalism suggests that national identity can remain relevant as a set of ‘higher’ cultural and civic allegiances.

In other cases, national identity has been forged by circumstances that are more clearly political. The UK, the USA and France have often been seen as the classic examples of this. In the UK’s case, the British nation was founded upon the union of what, in effect, were four ‘cultural’ nations: the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish. The USA is, in a sense, a ‘land of immigrants’ and so contains peoples from literally all round the world. In such circumstances, a sense of US nationhood has developed more out of a common allegiance to the liberal democratic principles expressed by the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution than out of a recognition of cultural or historical ties. French national identity is based largely upon traditions linked to the 1789 Revolution and the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity which underlay it. Such nations have, in theory, been founded upon a voluntary acceptance of a common set of principles or goals as opposed to an already existing cultural identity. It is sometimes argued that the style of nation-alism which develops in such societies is typically tolerant and democratic. The USA has, for example, sustained a remarkable degree of social harmony and political unity against a background of profound religious, linguistic, cultural and racial diversity. On the other hand, ‘political’ nations can at times fail to generate the social solidarity and sense of historical unity which is found in ‘cultural’ nations. This can be seen in the UK in the growth of Scottish and Welsh nationalism and the decline of ‘Britishness’, particularly since the introduction of devolution.

Particular problems have been encountered by developing-world states struggling to achieve a national identity. Developing-world nations can be seen as ‘political’ in one of two senses. In the first place, in many cases they have achieved statehood only after a struggle against colonial rule, for which reason their national identity is deeply influenced by the unifying quest for national liberation. Nationalism in the developing world there-fore took the form of anticolonialism, and in the period since liberation has assumed a distinctively postcolonial character (see p. 102). Secondly, these nations have often been shaped by territorial boundaries inherited from their former colonial rulers. This is particularly evident in Africa, whose ‘nations’ often encompass a wide range of ethnic, religious and regional groups, bound together by little more than a common colonial past and state borders shaped by long defunct imperial rivalries. In many cases, the inheritance of ethnic and tribal tension was exacerbated by the ‘divide-and-rule’ policies of former colonial rulers.

Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

At the heart of nationalism lies a particular conception of human nature. If the nation is regarded as the only legitimate political community, this is because human beings are thought naturally to gravitate towards people with whom they share cultural similarities. In that sense, nations are organic communities which develop spontaneously. Conservative thinkers have usually been prepared to advance this argument in the belief that humans are dependent creatures, irresistibly drawn together by the prospect of security and social identity which nationhood offers. Socio-biologists such as Richard Dawkins (1989) have even suggested that the tendency to form kinship groups is rooted in human genes, a notion that can clearly be extended to explain the emergence of ethnic and national groupings. On the other hand, nations have also been thought to be ‘constructed’ by political and ideological forces. Benedict Anderson (1991) has stressed the degree to which nations exist as mental images or ‘imagined communities’, rather than genuine communities. Not even in the smallest nation will a person ever meet most of those with whom he or she supposedly shares a cultural identity. Whether they are natural or ideological entities, the belief in the nation undoubtedly has far-reaching political significance. Its precise nature is, however, a matter of considerable debate. In particular, are nations exclusive groups, unwelcoming and intolerant of minorities, and naturally suspicious, even aggressive, towards other nations? Or can nations live in peace and harmony with one another and also accept a high degree of cultural and ethnic pluralism within their borders?

Certain forms of nationalism are without doubt illiberal and intolerant. This applies when nationhood is defined in narrow or exclusive terms, creating a sharp divide between those who are members of a nation and those who are alien to it. Exclusive nationalism is usually a response to the perception that the nation is under threat from within or without, a perception that provokes a heightened sense of unity and is often expressed in hostility and sometimes violence. The integrity of the nation can be challenged by a broad variety of factors, including rapid socio-economic change, political instability, communal rivalry, an upsurge in immigration and the growing power of neighbouring states. In such cases, nationalism offers a vision of an ordered, secure and cohesive community. However, this form of nationalism invariably rejects liberal-democratic principles and is more commonly associated with authoritarian creeds. This can most graphically be seen in the case of fascism, which preaches a militant form of nationalism called ultra-nationalism. Termed ‘integral nationalism’ by Charles Maurras (1862–1952), leader of the right-wing Action Franc¸aise, this demands the absolute subordination of the individual to the nation. Typically, integral nationalism breeds a sharp distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between an in-group and an out-group. Not surprisingly, its clearest manifestation has been found in the pseudo-scientific doctrines of Aryan superiority and anti-Semitism preached by the German Nazis.

Exclusive nationalism also has clear implications for international relations. If immigrants and minorities within the nation are regarded as ‘alien’, foreigners outside are likely to be regarded with the same distrust and hostility. National exclusivity is thus often reflected in the form of xenophobia, a fear or hatred of foreigners. In such cases, nationalism becomes chauvinistic, aggressive and expansionist. There can be little doubt, for example, that both war and imperialism have at times had their origin in nationalism. The First World War was closely linked to a mood of popular nationalism affecting most of the major European powers, which found expression in demands for colonial expansion and finally war. The Second World War resulted from a programme of conquest and military expansion undertaken by Nazi Germany, fuelled by a heightened sense of nationalist zeal and legitimized by Nazi doctrines of racial superiority.

Such forms of nationalism are, however, very different from those proclaimed by liberal democratic theorists. Liberals have traditionally argued that nationalism is a tolerant and democratic creed which is perfectly reconcilable with international peace and cosmopolitanism. In origin, cosmopolitanism suggests the establishment of a cosmo polis or ‘world state’ that would embrace all humanity. Liberal thinkers have seldom gone this far, however, and indeed have traditionally accepted the nation as the only legitimate political community. Cosmopolitanism has therefore come to stand for peace and harmony among nations, founded upon understanding, tolerance and interdependence. Since the early nine-teenth century, thinkers such as the Manchester liberals Richard Cobden (1804–65) and John Bright (1811–89) have advocated free trade on the grounds that it will promote international understanding and economic interdependence, ultimately making war impossible. The hope is that a stable and peaceful world order will emerge as sovereign nations come to cooperate for mutual benefit. Indeed, liberals believe that if the central goal of nationalism is achieved – each nation becoming a self-governing entity – the principal cause of international conflict will have been removed: nations will have no incentive to go to war against one another. Just as liberals reject the idea that nationalism breeds war, they also deny that it necessarily leads to intolerance and racial bigotry. Far from threatening national cohesion, cultural and ethnic diversity is thought to enrich society and promote human understanding.

Such ideas, however, look beyond the nation and nationalism. As embraced by both liberal and socialist theorists, cosmopolitanism chal-lenges the idea that nations are organic or natural entities. Liberals and socialists subscribe to forms of internationalism, which hold that political activity should ultimately be organized in the interests of humankind rather than for the benefit of any particular nation. Such a belief is based upon the notion of a ‘universal’ human nature, which transcends linguistic, religious, territorial, ethnic and national boundaries. It would be wrong, however, to think, that internationalism is necessarily an enemy of the nation. The nation may, for example, still constitute a viable unit of self-government and can perhaps offer a sense of cultural identity and level of social cohesiveness which a global state would be incapable of doing. Nevertheless, if human beings can, and should, identify themselves with humanity as a whole, rather than simply with their nation, this suggests that supranational forms of political association will increasingly play a meaningful and legitimate role. In other words, the days of the sovereign nation-state may be numbered.

Nation-states and Globalization

Nationalists have proclaimed the nation-state to be the highest form of political organization, reflecting as it does the principle that the nation is the sole legitimate unit of political rule. Since 1789 the world has been remodelled according to this principle. In 1810, for instance, only 15 of the 191 states recognized in 2003 as full members of the United Nations were in existence. Well into the twentieth century, most of the world’s population were still colonial subjects of one of the European empires. Only 3 of the 65 states now found in the Middle East and Africa were in existence before 1910, and no fewer than 74 states have come into being since 1959. In large part, these changes have been fuelled by the quest for national independence, expressed in the desire to found a nation-state. In practice, however, the nation-state is an ideal type and has probably never existed in perfect form anywhere in the world. No state is culturally homogeneous; all contain some kind of cultural or ethnic mix. Only an outright ban upon immigration and the forcible expulsion of ‘alien’ minorities could forge the ‘true’ nation-state – as Hitler and the Nazis recognized. As a principle to move towards, however, the nation-state represents independence and self-government; it has elicited support from peoples in all parts of the world, almost regardless of the political creed they may espouse.

The attraction of the nation-state is that it offers the prospect of both cultural cohesion and political unity. When a group of people who share a common cultural identity gain the right to self-government, community and citizenship coincide. This is why nationalists believe that the forces that have created a world of independent nation-states are natural and irresistible: no other social group could constitute a meaningful political community. This is also why nationalists have been prepared to accord the nation rights similar to those that are usually thought to belong to the individual, treating national self-determination, for instance, with the same respect as individual liberty. Nevertheless, despite evidence of the see-mingly relentless spread of the nation-state principle in the proliferation of nation-states worldwide, powerful forces have emerged that have threa-tened to make it redundant. The most significant of these forces is globalization, linked to a complex of political, economic, strategic and ideological shifts in world politics that have accelerated since the collapse of communism. Philip Bobbitt (2002) has argued that the nation-state, which was characterized by the capacity of the state to better the welfare of the nation, has now been superseded by the market-state, which is able only to maximize the opportunities of its citizens.

Globalization is a slippery and elusive concept. It refers to a collection of processes, sometimes overlapping and interlocking processes but also, at times, contradictory and oppositional ones. However, the central feature of globalization is the emergence of a complex web of interconnectedness that means that our lives are increasingly shaped by events that occur, and decisions that are made, at a great distance from us. Not only has the world become ‘borderless’ in that traditional political borders, based upon national and state boundaries, have become increasingly permeable, but also divisions between people previously separated by time and space have become less significant and are sometimes entirely irrelevant. An obvious example of this is the immediacy and global reach of internet commu-nications. Scholte (2000) has thus defined globalization in terms of the growth of ‘supraterritorial’ relations between people. In other words, social space has been reconfigured in the sense that territory matters less because an increasing range of connections have a ‘transworld’ or ‘transborder’ character.

The interconnectedness that globalization has spawned is multidimen-sional and operates through distinctive economic, cultural and political processes. Economic globalization is reflected in the idea that no national economy is now an island: all economies have, to a greater or lesser extent, been absorbed into an interlocking global economy. This is reflected in developments such as the growing power of multinational companies, the internationalization of production, and the free and instantaneous flow of financial capital between countries. One of the key implications of economic globalization is the reduced capacity of national governments to manage their economies and, in particular, to resist their restructuring along free-market lines. Cultural globalization is the process whereby information, commodities and images that have been produced in one part of the world enter into a global flow that tends to ‘flatten out’ cultural differences between nations, regions and individuals. This has sometimes been portrayed as a process of ‘McDonaldization’, highlighting the growth of global goods and of increasingly similar consumption patterns and commercial practices worldwide. Cultural globalization has also been fuelled by the so-called information revolution: the spread of satellite technology, telecommunications networks, information technology and the internet. Political globalization is evident in the growing importance of international organizations, such as the United Nations, NATO, the EU and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The significance of such bodies is examined in greater depth in the next section, in connection with supranationalism.

Globalization has become a deeply controversial issue. In some respects, divisions over globalization have replaced more traditional left–right divisions, based upon the ideological struggle between capitalism and socialism. There is, nevertheless, a sense in which the pro- versus anti-globalization debate is nothing more than a reworking of the older and more familiar ideological divide. This is because the interconnectedness that lies at the heart of globalization is, as yet, invariably linked to the extension of market exchange and commercial practices. Globalization thus has a pronounced neoliberal or free-market ideological character. Supporters of globalization, sometimes called globalists, argue that the emergence of global capitalism has extended prosperity, widened oppor-tunities and spread individual rights and freedoms. Although free trade reduces national economic independence, it benefits rich and poor coun-tries alike, because it allows each country to specialize in the production of those goods and services that it is best suited to produce. Moreover, the spread of market-orientated economic reform fuels pressure for political reform in that a wider range of groups and interests seek a political voice. Globalization, in this view, promotes democratization.

On the other hand, globalization has also been subject to stiff criticism. The chief allegation made against globalization is that it has given rise to new and deeply entrenched patterns of inequality: globalization is a game of winners and losers. The winners are invariably identified as multi-national corporations and industrially advanced states generally, and particularly the USA; the losers are the peoples of the developing world, where wages are low, regulation is weak or non-existent, and production is increasingly orientated around global markets rather than domestic needs. The cultural impact of globalization is no less damaging. Globalization has strengthened a process of Westernization or even ‘Americanization’. Indigenous cultures and traditional ways of life are weakened or disrupted by the onward march of US-dominated global capitalism, producing resentment and hostility which may fuel, for example, the spread of religious fundamentalism. Further criticisms link globalization to ecologi-cal destruction, the advent of ‘risk societies’ and to the weakening of democratic processes. Globalization’s threat to the environment stems from the relentless spread of industrialization and from the dismantling of regulatory frameworks. Its association with risk, uncertainty and instabil-ity reflects the fact that wider interconnectedness expands the range of factors that influence decisions and events, creating, for example, more unstable financial markets and a crisis-prone and more unpredictable world economy. Finally, democracy has been endangered by the increasing concentration of economic and political power in the hands of multi-national companies, which can relocate capital and production anywhere in the world and so have come to enjoy a decisive advantage over national governments, allowing them, effectively, to escape from democratic control.

The image of the ‘twilight of the nation-state’ and the advent of a ‘global age’ may, however, significantly overstate the impact of globalization. Despite shifts such as the undoubted growth in world trade and the information revolution, the nation-state remains the key political, econom-ic and cultural institution in most people’s lives. For example, the over-whelming bulk of economic activity still takes place within, not across, national boundaries. Indeed, as Hirst and Thompson (1999) argue, globalization may, in some respects, be an ideological device used by politicians and theorists who wish to make the trend towards market reforms appear inevitable and therefore irresistible. Globalization may not so much have brought about the demise of the nation-state as provided the nation-state with a new purpose and role. This can be seen in relation to both economic life and security matters. Although nation-states may, in a globalized economy, have a reduced capacity to control national prosperity and employment levels, they have a greater need to develop strategies for, among other things, attracting inward investment and strengthening education and training in order to maintain international competitiveness. The nation-state’s security role and its capacity to ensure civic order has also, arguably, become more important in a globalized world, notably in the light of new threats such as global terrorism.