As a political model, the nation-state merges two principles: the principle of state sovereignty, first enunciated in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which recognizes the right of states to govern their territories without outside interference; and the principle of national sovereignty, which recognizes the right of national communities to govern themselves. National sovereignty, in turn, is based on the moral and philosophical principle of popular sovereignty, according to which states belong to their peoples. The latter principle implies that the legitimate domination of a state requires some kind of popular consent. However, this requirement does not mean that all nation-states are democratic. Indeed, many authoritarian leaders – both vis-à-vis the outside world of states and internally vis-à-vis the people under their rule – presented themselves as ruling on behalf of a sovereign nation. According to Andreas Wimmer and Yuval Feinstein, nation-states tend to emerge when changes in power allow nationalists to overthrow existing regimes or absorb existing administrative units. [27] Xue Li and Alexander Hicks establish a link between the frequency of nation-state creation and dissemination processes emanating from international organizations. [28] Most of the current challenges facing nation-states are not new, and some of them are as old as the nation-state itself. For several decades, however, the acceleration of globalization processes has tested the capacity of nation-states to contain, control and exploit flows of people, economic capital and cultural material, and to limit policies to public spheres and institutions, as well as to relations with other nation-states.
States in different regions of the world differ in their degree of exposure to the pressures created by globalization, as well as in their ability to resist or adapt to those pressures. Among the pressures exerted to varying degrees on all nation-states are the following. Israel was founded in 1948 as a Jewish state. Its « Basic Laws » describe it as both a Jewish state and a democratic state. Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People (2018) explicitly establishes the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. According to Israel`s Central Bureau of Statistics, 75.7% of Israel`s population is Jewish. [48] Arabs, who make up 20.4% of the population, are the largest ethnic minority in Israel. Israel also has very small communities of Armenians, Circassians, Assyrians, Samaritans. [ref. There are also non-Jewish spouses of Israeli Jews. However, these communities are very small and usually number only hundreds or thousands. [49] Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms of the nation-state This article deals mainly with the more specific definition of a nation-state as a typically sovereign country dominated by a particular ethnicity.
Multiculturalism is an ideological framework that offers an alternative to assimilationist and exclusionary policies because it seeks to embrace diversity and minorities rather than eliminate or oppress them. In some countries (e.g. Switzerland and Belgium) guarantees a particular type of regime, consociational democracy, cultural autonomy for all ethnic groups and an equal share of political power, and disagreements over politics are resolved through consultation and consensus, not domination. However, the most common approach in liberal democratic nation-states concerned with ethnic or religious diversity is not based on consocianzalism, but on institutional mechanisms that make ethnicity and religion a private matter, protected by individual civil rights and whose expression or practice takes place primarily in homes and small communities. all in a global national identity and state culture. Institutions are maintained and enhanced in the public space. According to a broader working definition, a nation-state is a type of state that combines the political unity of a state with the cultural unity of a nation, from which it seeks to derive its political legitimacy to govern and possibly its status as a sovereign state, if one accepts the declarative theory of the state as opposed to the constitutive theory. A state is specifically a political and geopolitical entity, while a nation is a cultural and ethnic entity. The term « nation-state » implies that the two coincide, as a state has decided to adopt and support a particular cultural group associated with it. The concept of the nation-state can be compared and contrasted with that of the multinational state, the city-state, the empire, the confederation and other state formations with which it may overlap. The main difference is the identification of a people with a political entity in the nation-state.
This definition of a « nation-state » is not universally accepted. « All attempts to develop a terminological consensus on the `nation` have failed, » concludes researcher Valery Tishkov. [8] In some nation-states, ethnic minorities have challenged the traditional model of national citizenship because they claim rights based on principles that are an alternative to citizenship: that is, they rely on international conventions that recognize the individual human rights or collective rights of minorities and indigenous peoples (some scholars call this phenomenon « post-national citizenship »). citizenship »). Nation-states have their own characteristics, which today can be taken for granted as obvious factors that shape a modern state, but which have all developed unlike pre-national states. Their territory is considered semi-sacred and non-transferable. Nation-states use the state as an instrument of national unity in economic, social and cultural life. Nation-states generally have a more centralized and unified public administration than their imperial predecessors because they are smaller and less diverse. After the triumph of the nation-state in Europe in the 19th century, regional identity was mainly subordinated to national identity. In many cases, the regional administration was also subordinate to the central (national) government.
This process has been supported since the 1970s by the introduction of various forms of regional autonomy in formerly centralised (e.g. France) partially reversed states. The most obvious departure from the « one nation, one state » ideal is the presence of minorities, especially ethnic minorities, who are clearly not members of the majority nation. An ethnic-nationalist definition of a nation is necessarily exclusive: ethnic nations generally do not have open members. In most cases, there is a clear idea that the surrounding nations are different, and that includes members of those nations who live on the « wrong side » of the border. Historical examples of groups explicitly designated as foreigners are Roma and Jews in Europe. The ideal of a state by and for a nation is reinforced not only by citizenship regimes, but also by mechanisms that promote national integration and develop and maintain an emotional commitment to the homeland. For example, school curricula are designed to teach children an official narrative about the history and heritage of the nation, the history of the State and the common national culture; Official national calendars define some days as national holidays celebrated with fundamental rituals of remembrance; The nationalization of physical space is encouraged by naming places, roads, infrastructure (e.g., roads and bridges), and parts of nature (e.g., rivers and mountains) after national heroes and glorious or tragic events in the nation`s history. The national collective memory is also preserved in memorials (e.g.
in memory of fallen soldiers); the nation is represented by official symbols of the State (e.g. flags and uniforms of the security forces); And in many nation-states, the language of the national core group becomes the official language of the country. European borders, defined by the Congress of Vienna, 1815.