Nation

The earliest attempt to define a nation was made in 1882 by Ernest Renan, a French scholar. He defined nation, as a human collectively brought together by will, consciousness and collective memory (and also common forgetfulness, or a collective amnesia). The strength of Renan’s definition lay in providing a voluntaristic (as against naturalistic) component to the understanding of nation. In a significant corrective to Renan’s understanding , Joseph Stalin in 1912 stated that a Nation, was a human collectivity sharing a common territory, language, economic life and a psychological make-up. His complete definition in his own words: ‘A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of the a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.’ Although it must be taken into consideration,  the capacity of many human groups to form nations without already being blessed by either a single language or a common territory. Jews in the 20th century, scattered through Europe and America and completely devoid of a territory they could call their own, nonetheless possessed the necessary prerequisites of a nation, without fulfilling some of Stalin’s criteria.

Therefore , Nations are complex phenomena that are shaped by a collection of cultural, political and psychological factors. Culturally, a nation is a group of people bound together by a common language, religion, history and traditions. There is, however, no objective blueprint for the nation because all nations exhibit some degree of cultural heterogeneity. Politically, a nation is a group of people who regard themselves as a natural political community. Although this is classically expressed in the form of a desire to establish or maintain statehood, it also takes the form of civic consciousness. Psychologically, a nation is a group of people distinguished by a shared loyalty or affection in the form of patriotism. Nevertheless, 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.

Nationalist ideologues, writers, poets or practitioners of nationalist politics) have tended to look upon nations as given and somewhat perennial. These nations, according to nationalist perception, only needed to be aroused from their deep slumber by the agent called nationalism.

Definitions on nations have been quite scarce. It would be true to say that nations have been described much more than they have been defined.

Nation-State

Inclu­sive concepts of the nation tend to blur the distinction between the nation and the state, between nationality and citizenship. It is an autonomous political community bound together by the overlapping bonds of citizenship and nation­ality. In practice, however, the nation-state is an ideal type and has probability never existed in perfect form anywhere in the world. No state is culturally homogeneous; all contain some kind of cultural or ethnic mix. There are two contrasting views of the nation-state. For liberals and most socialists the nation-state is largely fashioned out of civic loyalties and allegiances; for conservatives and nationalists it is based upon ethnic or organic unity.

The nation-state is widely considered to be the only viable unit of political rule and is generally accepted to be the basic element in international politics. The vast majority of modern states are, or claim to be, nation-states. The great strength of the nation-state is that it offers the prospect of both cultural cohesion and political unity. When a people who share a common cultural or ethnic identity gain the right to self-government, community and citizenship coin­cide.

A com­bination of internal pressures and external threats has produced what is commonly referred to as a 'crisis of the nation-state'. Internally, nation-states have been 'subject to centrifugal pressures, gener­ated by an upsurge in ethnic and regional politics. This has meant that ethnicity or religion has sometimes displaced nationality as the central organizing principle of political life. Externally, nation states have arguably been rendered redundant by the advent of *globalization. This has meant that major decisions in the eco­nomic, cultural and diplomatic spheres are increasingly made by supranational bodies and transnational corporations, which nation states have only a limited capacity to influence. Those who criticize the nation state ideal point out either that a ‘true’ nation-state can be achieved only through a process of ‘ethnic cleansing’ – as Higher and the Nazis recognized – or that nation-states are always primarily concerned with their own strategic and economic interests, and are therefore an inevitable source of conflict or tension in international affairs.

Exclu­sive concepts of the nation tend to blur the distinction between the nation and the race, between nationality and ethnicity.

The importance of the nation to politics is most dramatically demon­strated by the enduring potency of nationalism and by the fact that the world is largely divided into nation-states.

Critics of the national principle argue that nations are political constructs, 'imagined' or 'invented' communities whose purpose is to prop up the established order in the interests of rulers and elite groups. In this view nation­alism creates nations, not the other way round.

State

The study of simple societies by anthropologists and sociologists have revealed some correlation between the complexity, size of society and settled political authority. R.H. Lowie writing about the early Communities says they must have been tiny and egalitarian and were like a ‘kindred group’. Thus kinship exercised a great influence in maintaining unity. The society was more or less undifferentiated, so there was no great distinction made between religious institutions and political  institutions. The head of the community was both a religious as well as a political head. In modern societies there is separation between the religious and the non-religious domain, separate the domain of authority. Comte and Herbert Spencer regaded the emergence of state as a Consequence of the increasing size and complexity of societies.

The state is regarded as highest of all human associations. Greeks used the word “polis” for which the word city-states. Nicolo Machiavelli  first used the term “state” in political science.Sociologists view it as a social phenomenon. Jurists regard the state as a juridical establishment. The state consists of a considerable number of individuals, occupying and controlling a reasonably well defined territory and possessing a government which is capable of maintaining order at home and of resisting interference and control from abroad. MacIver, "a state is an organisation which rules by means of a supreme government over a definite territory." According to Max Weber, State Is a human community which successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’.

5 MAIN FEATURES OF STATE

• State exercises Sovereignty - it exercises absolute and unrestricted power in that it stands above all other associations and groups in society; Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), for this reason, portrayed the state as a 'leviathan‘
• State institutions are recognizably 'public', in contrast to the 'private' institutions of civil society - state bodies are responsible for making and enforcing collective decisions in society and are funded at the public's expense
• The state is an exercise in legitimating its decisions that are usually (although not necessarily) accepted as binding on its citizens because, it is claimed, it reflects the permanent interests of society.
• The state is an instrument in domination - it possesses the coercive power to ensure that its laws are obeyed and that transgressors are punished; as Max Weber (1864-1920) put it, the state has a monopoly of the means of 'legitimate violence'.
• The state is a territorial association- it exercises jurisdiction within geographically defined borders and in international politics is treated (at least in theory) as an autonomous entity.

TYPOLOGIES OF STATE

• Minimal states or 'night watchman' states:      Advocated by classical liberals and the New Right, are merely protective bodies whose sole function is to provide a framework of peace and social order within which citizens can conduct their lives as they think best.
• Developmental states: Found in Japan and the 'tiger' economies of East and Southeast Asia, operate through a close relationship between the state and major economic interests, notably big business, and aim to develop strategies for national prosperity in a context of transnational competition.
• Social-democratic states: The ideal of both modern liberals and democratic socialists, intervene widely in economic and social life in order to promote growth- and maintain full employment, reduce poverty and bring about a more equitable distribution of social rewards.
• Collectivized states:  Found in orthodox communist countries, abolished private enterprise altogether and set up centrally planned economies administered by a network of economic ministries and planning committees. 
• Totalitarian states:  As constructed in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR and recently Saddam Hussain's Iraq have similar characteristics which penetrate every aspect of human existence through a combination of comprehensive surveillance and terrorist policing, and a pervasive system of ideological manipulation and control.

THEORIES OF STATE

LIBERALIST THEORY OF STATE

• Based on the liberal Notion of Man which gives due importance to man as a free agent in this world, having a free will of his own.
• State is seen as a necessity, an Institution – evil or otherwise – which may establish law and order, peace and justice in society. The state is there to serve the general interest of society as a whole.
• Regarded as an Agency of Human Welfare, which will secure life and property of man.
• Regarded as a Contributor to Moral and Social development of man. Liberalism distinguishes between state and society and maintains that state is for society and not otherwise.

MARXIST THEORY OF STATE

•     According to the Marxist theory, the state is a product of class division and class struggle and serves only the interest of one particular class, because all the classes cannot have a single interest/common interests.
•     It rejects the state, associates its pressure with the presence of classes, and suggests that by a revolution and the establishment of a classless society,
•     The institution of the state would be done away with.

GANDHIAN THEORY OF STATE

• Gandhi accepts the need of the State as an Advocate of Nonviolence
• Accepts the Minimal State.
• State should be limited on the basis of certain considerations.
• The authority of the state should be reduced by a system based on decentralization of power.

Functionalist 

•     View the state as carrying our collective objectives.

Democratic Socialists

•     Regard the state as an embodiment of the common good, highlighting its capacity to rectify the injustices of the class system.

Conservatives

•     Have linked the state to the need for authority and discipline to protect society from incipient disorder, hence their traditional preference for a strong state.

New Right

•     Has highlighted the non-legitimate character of the state by drawing attention to the extent to which it articulates its own interests separate from those of the larger society and often to the detriment of the economic performance.

Feminists

•     Have viewed the state as an instrument of male power, the 'patriarchal' state serving to exclude women from, or subordinate them within, the 'public' or political sphere of life.

Anarchists

•     Argue that the state is nothing less than legalized oppression operating in the interests of the powerful, propertied and privileged.

ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES OF STATE

POPULATION

• People are basic to the state.
• Without people, no state can exist.
• However, one single family or a group of families   does not make a state. There should be a viable number of people in a state.
• China with over 100 crores of people and Maldives with a little over one lakh of people are both states.
• States with large populations have certain  political advantage over states with very small populations.

TERRITORY

•      A state should have a Fixed Territory, the boundaries of which can be identified.
•      There is no state at present which has no proper territory and no mechanism to enforce authority over citizens. Such a state cannot carry on relationship with other nations.
•      All states require Revenue which will not be forthcoming. The Economic Base is provided by the land (including water) under the authority of the state.
•      The state can Establish Authority over its subjects only if they live in a territory. Territory is very important because it identifies a certain population within it. It provides Physical limits.
•     Government of India cannot have any control over citizens staying outside its territory except with the help of the state of their residence.

GOVERNMENT

• The government is the agency of the state, and exists for carrying out the will of the state. Without a government a state cannot function.
• As a matter of fact, the very justification for a state is that it provides people with machinery for orderly life. The state does this through a government.
• A state cannot be conceived of without a government.

SOVEREIGNITY

• The word Sovereignty means “Ultimate Power”.
• The distinguishing character of a state is the monopoly of coercive power over all individuals and institutions within its territory. No one can question this power of the state.
• Sovereignty is not confined to the area within the state. It extends to the relationship with other sovereign states.
• No state has power to impose restriction on another state and neither has right to interfere in the internal government relations of the state. This is recognized by international law.

STATE AND GOVERNMENT

• A government can exist without a state, a state cannot exist without a government.
• Government, is an element of the state. It is created to achieve the goal of the state.
• Government is an instrument of the state to carry out its will. For this purpose it is vested with sovereignty.
• Government can take different forms such as democratic, totalitarian etc., and can have different goals such as communism, socialism, capitalism, welfare ideology, etc.
• The state is an abstraction, but the government is a concrete element of the state.
• The state is a supreme body, but the government is an element of the state.
• The state is more or less permanent, whereas the government’s authority is derived and  limited by the terms of the Constitution.
• Sovereignty is an attribute of the state and not of the government.

STATE AND SOCIETY

• The state is the agency which performs the political function in society and is a sub-system of the society
• The society is concerned with the functions of procuring food and meeting other economic needs, related integration needs, and security and related political needs, the state is invested with ensuring the satisfaction of all these needs in a smooth and continuous manner
• The state has also to protect the citizens from external interference

STATE AND NATION

     The state is different from the nation in the following respects.

• The state is a people organised for law within a definite territory, whereas a nation is a people psychologically bound together.
• Statehood is objective, nationhood is subjective.
• Statehood is an obligation enforceable by  law, whereas nationhood is a condition of the mind, a spiritual possession.
• A state may consist of one nation (Rumania, Albania, France) or different nations,  (India, Canada). For the same reason, a nation may be split into two or more states (North and South Korea, People’s Republic of China and Republic of China).

Recently, the late twentieth century nevertheless witnessed a growing irrele­vance of state in the modern world. Chief amongst these developments have been: globalization and the incorporation of national economies into a global one that cannot be controlled by any state; privatization and the growing preference for market organization over state management; and localism, the unleashing- of centrifugal pressures through a strengthening of regional and community politics

Civil Society

Civil society has been defined in a variety of ways. Originally it meant, a society governed by law, under the authority of a state as contrasted with uncivilized society. Now a days , civil society is distin­guished from the state, and is used to describe a realm of autono­mous groups and associations, such as businesses, pressure groups, clubs, families and so on. In this sense the divi­sion between civil society and the state reflects a 'private/public' divide; civil society encompasses institutions that are 'private' in that they are independent from government and organized by individuals in pursuit of their own ends. G. W. F. Hegel (1770­1831), on the other hand, distinguished civil society not only from the state but also from the family.

Civil society is widely used as a descriptive concept to assess the bal­ance between state authority and’ private bodies and associations. For instance, totalitarianism is defined by the abolition of civil society, and the growth of private associations and clubs, lobby groups and independent trade unions in post-communist societies is described as the re-emergence of civil society.

In the conventional, liberal view, civil society is identified as a realm of choice, personal freedom and individual responsibility. Whereas the state operates through compulsory and coercive authority, civil society allows individuals to shape their own desti­nies. This explains why a vigorous and healthy civil society is usually regarded as an essential feature of liberal democracy, and why classical liberals in particular have a moral preference for civil society over the state, reflected in a desire to minimize the scope of public authority and maximize the private sphere. In contrast, the Hegelian use of the term is negative in that it counter poses the ego­ism of civil society with the altruism that is fostered by the family and within the state. Marxists and socialists generally have viewed civil society unfavorably, associating it in particular with unequal class power and social injustice. Such views would justify either the overthrow of civil society as presently structured, or the con­traction of civil society through the expansion of state control and regulation.