By Ethan Hollander, Wabash College
The overlapping boundaries between states and nations, between countries and the various ethnic groups that live within them—these can be tinder for some of the hottest flash points around the world. Understanding them is essential for the study of global politics and international relations. So, what exactly is a nation? And what makes it different from a state?
State Versus Nation
The words state and nation often get used interchangeably (especially by politicians), as if they were the same thing. But that’s not the case. There’s a subtle but important difference between the two.
Formally speaking, the word state refers to the political unit—the country—the institution with a monopoly on the use of force within its boundaries.
The word nation refers to a group of people who have (or feel like they have) some connection with one another—often on the basis of a shared language, religion, or culture.
Attachment to Territory
So, when political scientists use the word nation, they mean something like an ethnic group: a political community consisting of people who share a set of cultural characteristics or historical experiences, and often an attachment to a particular piece of land.
It’s this attachment to territory—or the idea that a nation should have its own nation-state—that leads to some of the confusion between the terms, and to the violence and instability that nationalism so often entails.
Because if the state is a country, and the nation is a group of people who have an attachment to a particular piece of land, problems can arise when the boundaries of the state and the place where the members of a nation live don’t line up.
This article comes directly from content in the video series Democracy and Its Alternatives. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Multinational States
In a multinational state—that is, in a state with more than one ethnic group living in it—the various ethnic groups are sometimes locked in bitter and protracted struggles for control over the state.
Northern Ireland and Pakistan in the 1970s, Lebanon and Ethiopia in the 1980s, Yugoslavia and Somalia in the 1990s, Congo, Myanmar, Syria, and Yemen—these are just a few cases where rival ethnic groups have fought over their competing ambitions to control the same piece of land.
And this is why nationalism, in its extreme form, can be the spark for ethnic cleansing or genocide.
That’s what the Ottoman Empire did to its Armenians during World War I; it’s what Nazi Germany did to Jews and Poles during World War II; it’s what Eastern Europeans did to ethnic Germans in the aftermath of World War II; it’s what Hutus did to Tutsis (and then Tutsis to Hutus) in Rwanda in 1994.
Why Partition Is Not the Solution
In situations where violent nationalism threatens to tear a region apart, it’s tempting to think of partition as an easy fix.
The theory is that if you have a single state with multiple ethnic groups, you draw a line, and make two countries where there used to be one. Now each nation can have its own nation-state.
But partition almost always works better in theory than in practice: Ethnic populations are seldom divided as cleanly as they appear on a map. And besides, if any ethnic minorities end up ‘orphaned’ on the wrong side of a new border, well, those groups are going to be prime candidates for the next round of oppression, ethnic cleansing, or genocide.
And this says nothing of natural resources or places of cultural significance. Israel and Palestine are covered with holy sites and shrines and cities that are important to Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. None of these things are easy to cut in half. And even where they have been, the agreement is often precarious.
International borders are already frequent flash points for military conflict, and so forming more of them is seldom a recipe for success.
Switzerland: Multinational State
Given everything that we’ve been talking about, you’d be forgiven for thinking that nationalism is inevitably destructive. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and isn’t always the case.
Switzerland is a multiethnic state with quite distinct ethnic communities. But, by and large, it makes it work.
Switzerland encompasses four major ethnic groups. The identities are based on the four groups’ primary languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh.
Despite the linguistic differences from one region to another, Switzerland functions rather well: It’s one of the world’s wealthiest democracies, and it has a long history of neutrality and peace, both internationally and internally. So, Switzerland really is an example of a well-functioning multinational state.
How Does Switzerland Function So Well?
Some people would say that Switzerland’s ethnic groups coexist precisely because they’re not nationalist, at least not in the traditional sense of the word; ethnic identity in Switzerland isn’t tied to territory in the way that it is in so many other places. And, it is true that Switzerland’s ethnolinguistic groups don’t aspire to independent existences. The people of Switzerland largely regard themselves as Swiss, despite their distinct identities. And it’s been suggested that this is why Switzerland is able to make multinationalism work.
But some people would point the causal arrow in the other direction. Sure, maybe Switzerland’s ethnic groups get along because they don’t aspire to independence. But it’s equally plausible that they don’t aspire to independence because they get along.
Switzerland’s linguistic regions have considerable autonomy, and the federal government is broadly representative. And if political power is shared, the resources tend to be shared as well. In other words, if the state’s distribution of public goods is regarded as fair by the various groups within it, then the groups don’t have to turn to violence or separatism in order to get their fair share.
Common Questions about Multinational States
The word state refers to the political unit—the country—the institution with a monopoly on the use of force within its boundaries. The word nation refers to a group of people who have (or feel like they have) some connection with one another—often on the basis of a shared language, religion, or culture.
An ethnic group is a political community consisting of people who share a set of cultural characteristics or historical experiences, and often an attachment to a particular piece of land.
Switzerland encompasses four major ethnic groups. The identities are based on the four groups’ primary languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh.
