How does the nation-state work?

It has been known that a nation-state is similar with one another. There are times when these two terms are mixed up and used interchangeably. But what is their difference and most importantly, how does this term affect the development of a particular country and globalization?

A State is a political and legal concept. It is a group of people residing as one community and permanently occupying a portion of territory. It has sovereignty as one of its elements, along with population, territory and government. Again, a state comprises of a group of people residing in a specific territory. They have a government which governs them as one society in order for them to be orderly and peaceful. It has a political association with effective internal and external dominion over a geographic area which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state.

A Nation on the other hand is not a political-legal concept but rather a cultural concept. It is a group of people who is also a community who are together because of their similarities or common bonds such as religion, tradition, culture, etc.

These two concepts are not the same, the other is different from the other. While a nation can survive without a government, a state cannot survive without a governing power that has authority over its people. A nation refers to a group of people who are deemed to share common origins and history wile a state refers to a community with a set of governing institutions that have the power over a definite territory and their people.

Shapiro (2009) named three examples of structures of feeling and identity commitments that are in tension with national allegiance. The three writers: Michelle Cliff, Sherman Alexie and Toni Morrison, “constitutes modes of thought generated from outside the spaces authorized by the conventional nation-building narrative within which every individual is an undifferentiated sovereign citizen-subject and the social order is merely an ahistorical class structure.” Michelle Cliff, a diasporic Jamaican, published a book entitled No Telephone To Heaven wherein she focused on transnational lives that produce imaginaries opposed to the conventional national subjects. She sees the nation-state as an ontological and territorial actor and sees its governance as symbolic and territorial. Her primary linguistic imaginary is silence, emphasizing a form of resistance to the colonizing forces within language. Sherman Alexie gives a similar perspective as Cliff as he also embodied the split consciousness of a person existing in two worlds. His novel The Toughest Indian in the World featured Indian presence in the Unites States. Toni Morrison also had the same thought process. She made her political struggles into literary culture by referring to the paradox inherent in her participation as a novelist.

Traditional theorists focused on two issues: first is the problem of allegiance and second is the treatment of the process by which citizens extract rights. The problem of allegiance refers to how nationalism affects how citizens become identified with their nation-state. Theorists resolved this issue by resorting to media. The latter issue refers to how citizenship is treated as a result of enactments, a form of transactional citizenship where national affiliation is the outcome of processes of claim making between the actors and state itself (Shapiro, 2009).

A state has sovereignty as one of its elements and it exercises its sovereign right to sign a treaty. Whenever a state does this, it is also limiting its right by the act of undertaking international legal obligations. States follow a specific set of rules such as customary international law. These limitations lead sovereignty to rise even in the age of globalization. This is manifested in activities such as coining of money, gathering of taxes, promulgation of domestic law, conduct of foreign policy, etc. States interests are favored within a broader system of rules that are binding that without a system. Rules define rights and these obligation and rights depend on factors such as political, economical, cultural and technological. In our world today, globalization has a significant effect upon rules, affecting the norms that govern world commerce and the like. A nation on the other hand, serves as a backbone of political power of the administrative state and it has rallied behind great causes including reforms in social, economic and environmental policies. Up until now from historical events, the nation has been linked with the age of total war and nationalism. Hans Morgenthau said that nowadays, the nation-state is becoming obsolete as a principle of political organization for the nation-state is not able to perform what its core function is: to protect the lives of its members and their way of living. The modern innovations in transportation and communications have now left the function of the nation destroyed (Dhanapala, 2001).

Globalization is the process of commercialization involving rapid increase in trade and exchange of goods, capital and services across national frontiers. When there are profits, jobs, efficiencies of scale, lowered unit costs, and increased the variety of goods available for everyone to buy, globalization is taking place. Dhanapala (2001) posits that the main challenge right now is not to achieve the end of the nation-state but to recuperate the ends of the nation-state. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated in his Millennium Report that in order to make a success of this great upheaval, “we must learn how to govern better and above all how to govern better together. We need to make our States stronger and more effective at the national level. And we need to get them working together on global issues, all pulling their weight and having their say.” The core essence of good governance is popular participation, transparency, and public accountability (Dhanapala, 2001).

So what is the future of the nation-state in the age of globalization? I think the concept of the nation-state must be expanded or “modernized” in a way that it suits the age of innovation today. Globalization cannot be avoided and if the nation sticks to the old traditional way, states and countries may not be able to develop and improve their ways. Our world today involves several mixed cultures and countries that are filled with diverse people. It is important that the nation-state can adapt with the fast paced society in order to develop and grow. Hence, in the age of globalization, the nature-state must adapt and practice what is necessary (modernize) in order to further build up augmentation. Otherwise, it might just get left behind.

Sources:
Dhanapala, J. (2001). Globalization and the Nation State. The Global Forum Policy. Retrieved February 15, 2010 from: http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/172/29952.html
Edkins, J. and Zehfuss, M. (eds.). (2009). Global politics: A new introduction. London: Routle