What Is A Nation?

In the most basic sense, a nation is a philosophical doctrine whose purpose is to unite a group of people under a common set of values Ð'- promoting some common interest or identity. I believe the term has been used lightly, and rather ambiguously, almost where the general public believes that "country, state, and land" all are roughly equivalent to what a nation is. However, not all groups of people can be considered nations. While there are different views on what requirements need to be met to constitute a nation, there are a few fundamentally accepted views. The original etymological root of the word refers to a people unified by birth and origins. Nations are formed when an identity of common descent, language, culture, values, history or religion is achieved.

In this sense, we can define it (not exclusively, necessarily) by an innate characteristic that all members of the group share. The implicative requirement here is that there must be characteristics shared between people in a nation Ð'- a group of people with nothing in common cannot be a nation. Because these traits are shared, the population gains a degree of homogeneity and uniformity. Furthermore, the most important requirement is that the characteristics of a nation's people must be exclusive, distinguishing one nation from another. While the extent to which a nation must be different from another is debatable, what is important is that they are different enough to retain a unique set of values independent of any other nation. Often in history, groups that have not had a strong sense of exclusivity have annexed each other's territories to form a nation, such as the consolidation that occurred in India. I think it is important to note here that a nation does not require territory, it just requires people Ð'- an example of this would be the Kurds, who are stateless, but are still a nation. A nation, as explained by Hans Kohn, "is an ideological formulation of identity" (Reader, 79). Religion sometimes defines a nation, due to the fact that it is shared. Notably, Judaism, which is both a culture and a religion, has a clear definition and requirement of what it means to be an Israeli. The underlying argument here is that the members of the nation, by their daily participation in the life of the nation, show their consent to its existence and to their own membership.

Taking this idea of nationalism, it is important to consider what political system governs the collectivity, and how that political system came to be. There are many various types of political systems, but they all share common threads. Robert Dahl refers to a theme of Aristotle, the "notionÐ'... that a political relationship in some way involves authority, ruling, or power" (Reader, 2). Legitimacy refers to the idea that the leaders of a nation must "possess the quality of Ð''rightness,' or moral goodness, and therefore their commands should be accepted because of this quality" (Price). What he means to say is that a nation is given validity and legitimacy by its people, who have given ethical authority to their leaders. Max Weber further illuminates this concept by expanding on different forms of authority and how there is both "mutual loyalty" and "diffused reciprocity" understood between the ruler and those he rules. Developing anticolonial "Ð'... leadership had to make a convincing demonstration that their claims to inherit the authority of the territorial state carried the sanction of the populace at large" (Reader, 79). Thus the existence of nations is based upon the legitimacy of both the nation's cultural integrity and the authority of the system by which it is governed and maintained.

Applying