|
The
nation-state "is one where the great majority are conscious
of a common identity and share the same culture".(1)
The
nation-state is an area where the cultural boundaries match up with
the political boundaries. The ideal of 'nation-state' is that the
state incorporates people of a single ethnic stock and cultural
traditions (2). However, most contemporary states are polytechnic.
Thus, it can be argued that the nation-state "[…] would
exist if nearly all the members of a single nation were organised
in a single state, without any other national communities being
present. Although the term is widely used, no such entities exist".(3)
The
nation as we think of it today is a product of the nineteenth century.
In modern times nation is recognised as 'the' political community
that ensures the legitimacy of the state over its territory, and
transforms the state into the state of all its citizens. The notion
of 'nation-state' emphasises this new alliance between nation and
state. Nationality is supposed to bind the citizen to the state,
a bond that will be increasingly tied to the advantages of a social
policy in as much as the Welfare State will develop.(4)
After
the First World War the principle of 'the right to national self-determination'
were commonly used by international lawyers, national governments
and their challengers. The demand that people should govern themselves
became identified with the demand that nations should determine
their own destiny. By this followed that 'state' and 'nation' came
to signify the same and began to be used interchangeably. 'National'
came to mean anything run or regulated by the state, as in 'national
health insurance' or 'national debt' (5). Today, the idea is that
nations should be represented within a territorially defined state.
Nevertheless,
the idea of the nation-state is more problematical as the state
can no longer be seen as the primary focus of national culture (6).
The 'crisis of the nation-state' refers to the separation of the
state from the nation. Social identities, and in particular national
culture, can reassert themselves in a variety of ways due to a gradual
freeing of the state from some of its traditional functions (7).
In Western Europe the crisis of national identity is related to
the rise of a new nationalism that operates at many different levels,
ranging from extreme xenophobic
forms to the more moderate forms of cultural nationalism. Underlying
this new nationalism is more a hostility against immigrants than
against other nations; it is motivated less by notions of cultural
superiority than by the implications multiculturalism has for the
welfare state. Accordingly, one important challenge facing the democratic
multi-cultural state is to find ways of preserving the link between
social citizenship
and multiculturalism.
Without a firm basis in social citizenship, multiculturalism can
undergo continued attacks from nationalism, often as a result of
social insecurity.
(1)
Davis,
1997
(2)
Kazancigilali,
A. and Dogan, M. 1986. The State in Global Perspective; Comparing
Nations: Concepts, Strategies, Substance. Gower/UNESCO. France.
Page 188.
(3)
Halliday sited in Baylis, J. and Smith, S. 1997. The Globalisation
of World Politics. An Introduction to International Relations, Oxford.
(4)
Smelser, N. J. and Baltes, P. B. (eds.) 2001. International Encyclopaedia
of the Social and Behavioural Sciences. Vol. 15. Elsevier. Oxford
Science Ltd.
(5)
Smelser, N. J. 1994. Sociology. UNESCO. Blackwell. UK.
(6)
Delanty, G. 1996. Beyond the Nation-State: National Identity and
Citizenship in a Multicultural Society - A Response to Rex, Sociological
Research Online, vol. 1, no. 3
(7)
Balibar, 1991 in Delanty, G. 1996.
|
