Sovereignty - supremacy or ultimate political power.

Sovereignty, in its simplest sense, is the principle of absolute and unlimited power. We may make distinctions between legal and political sovereignty, and internal and external notions of sovereignty. Legal sovereignty refers to supreme legal authority = unchallengeable right to demand compliance, as defined by law. Political sovereignty, in contrast refers to unlimited political power = the ability to command obedience, which is typically ensured by a monopoly of coercive power.

In contrast to government, which is merely one of its parts, the STATE encompasses all public bodies and exercises impersonal authority on the basis of the assumption that it represents the permanent interests of society rather than the partisan sympathies of any group of politicians

In political science, a "nation" refers to a group of people who feel bound into a single body by shared culture, values, folkways, religion and/or language. A "state" just refers to a patch of land with a sovereign government. States often coincide with nations (and are called "nation-states," but not always. States that overlap multiple nations tend to have civil wars; states that exclude parts of a nation tend to have wars with the neighboring state(s) that contain the rest of the nation.

Depending on the source, there are 189, 191, 192, 193, 194 or 195 states in the world today and 800+ nations.

State: The accepted definition of a state was supplied by Max Weber in his book Politics as a Vocation: "A sovereign entity (rules itself), within a defined/specific territory (in defined borders), that holds a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in the enforcement of its order. An empire does not have borders as it chooses to continually advance them. A state does not necessarily rule a people with a common culture, it is merely a political concept. Examples of a state: Iraq/Yemen/any state in the United Nations.

A nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, identity, religion, morality, language, traditions, ethnicity or ethnic origin; typically inhabit a particular country/territory/region. Examples of a nation: the Kurds, which reside in northern Iraq and parts of Turkey; the Basque, which inhabit parts of northern Spain and southern France; the Palestinians.

Nation-State: Countries where the social concept of "nation" coincides with the political concept of "state" are called nation-state. Examples of a nation-state: France, USA, Israel, Spain, India…

a nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, identity, religion, morality, language etc, while a nation-state is a country where the social concept of a nation and the political concept of a state coincides.

nation

A nation is an individual country considered together with its social and political structures.

nationalism

4) patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts

5) an extreme form of this, esp. marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries

6) advocacy of political independence for a particular country: Palestinian nationalism

1. patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.
2. an extreme form of this, especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries.

Loyalty and devotion to one's nation or country, especially as above loyalty to other groups or to individual interests.

Nationalism is considered a major contributing cause of World War I, World War II, and many other wars of the modern era. In Africa and Asia in the 20th century, nationalist movements often arose in opposition to colonialism. After the fall of the Soviet Union, powerful nationalist sentiments in eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics contributed to ethnic conflicts, such as those in the territories of the former Yugoslavia.

The word exists in English and in all the Latin languages with a root related to birth as in ‘natal’ and ‘native’. But nationem in Latin referred to units much more like ‘tribe’, ‘clan’, or ‘family’ than the large, territorially based groupings which we think of as nations today. In eighteenth-century English there were references to ‘nations’ of Smiths, Hebrews, and gypsies or ‘the royal nation’ (meaning the royal family or dynasty). The idea that a ‘nation’ refers primarily or solely to something like England or France is a relatively recent development in the use of the term.

Nationalism is a sense of shared identity and loyalty, based upon common history, language, culture, and traditions. Though it has much in common with religious and local loyalties, it may be distinguished since it almost invariably aims to be the basis of government.

SUMMARY- nations are defined by a combination of cultural and political factors. Culturally, they are groups of people who are bound together by a common language, religion, history and traditions. Ultimately, however, nations themselves through the existence of a shared civic consciousness, classically, expressed as the desire to achieve or maintain statehood.

Cultural nationalism emphasizes the regeneration of the nation as a distinctive civilization on the basis of a belief in the nation as a unique, historical and organic whole. Culturally, a nation is a group of people bound together by a common language, religion, history and traditions, although nations exhibit various levels of cultural heterogeneity.

Political nationalism recognizes the nation as a discrete political community and is thus linked with ideas such as sovereignty and self-determination.

There are a number of contrasting manifestations of political nationalism:

Liberal (based on a belief in a universal right to self-determination);

Conservative (aims to achieve social and political unity),

Expansionist (which is a vehicle for aggression and imperial conquest);

Anti-colonial (associated with the struggle against for national liberation, social development)

Psychologically, a nation is a group of people distinguished by a shared loyalty or affection in the form of patriotism. However, such an attachment is not a necessary condition for membership of a nation; even those who lack national pride may still recognize that they “belong” to the nation.

Which came first, states or nations?

A nation is a population with a certain sense of itself, a cohesiveness, a shared history and culture and often (but not always) a common language. A state is a government structure, usually sovereign and powerful enough to enforce its orders.

Nation - a group of people who feel bound together by common racial, cultural or geographical ties.

Nation- a body of people who possess the consciousness of a common identity, giving them a distinctiveness from other peoples.

What constitutes a nation? The elements of nationhood: read the book

1) territory, 2) population, 3) common identity, 4) common history/ experience, 5) aspirations for the future

What constitutes a State? The elements of statehood:

1) territory, 2) population, 3) independence, 4) sovereign government

Multinational state - states with populations diverse in language, culture, religion or identification.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 1107