74 February 2015
States
burgeon
while
world
shrinks
INTERNATIONAL NATION STATES
February 2015 75
business of State formation for centuries,
the process of new States coming into
being subsists in Eastern Europe. It has
scarcely begun in Africa and Asia, where
the bulk of the 7,000 million people who
make up the human race now live.
There are some 6,000 different lan-
guages in the world. At their present rate
of disappearance there should be 600 or
so left in a century’s time. These will sur-
vive because in each case they are spoken
by a million or more people. Not every
such language group will necessarily
become a national community aspiring
to its own State, but that is the histori-
cal tendency.
The international community looks
like growing to 300 or 400 States or
more over the coming century. At the
same time ease of communications, the
internet, free movement of trade and
capital, and common environmental
problems make us all conscious today
that we are part of a ‘global village’. The
world shrinks while simultaneously the
number of States in it grows.
Nations exist as communities before
nationalisms and Nation States. To ana-
lyse nations and the national question in
terms of ‘nationalisms’ is philosophical
idealism, looking at the mental reflection
rather than the thing it reflects.
Nationalism developed as an ideology
legitimating the formation of Nation
States in the 18th century, although its
elements can be found in some of the
world’s oldest States centuries before – in
Denmark, England and France in Europe;
in China, Japan, Iran and Thailand in
Asia.
Nations evolve historically as stable,
long-lasting communities of people,
sharing a common language and terri-
tory and the common history and culture
that arise from that. On this basis develop
the solidarities, mutual identifications
and shared interests which distinguish
one people from another.
Some nations are ancient, some young,
some in process of being formed. Like all
human groupings – for example the fam-
ily, clan, tribe, they are fuzzy at the edges.
No neat definition will cover all cases. The
empirical test is what people say them-
selves. If people have passed beyond the
stage of kinship society, where the clan
or tribe is still a political unit, as it was
in Ireland 400 years ago – and some half
of mankind still live in kinship societies,
mostly in Africa and Asia – they will know
themselves what nation they belong to.
What are the implications of these
trends for democrats? Nationhood,
T
HE growth in the number of
States in the world is one of the
most remarkable features of
our time, though it is not often
commented on. The United
Nations had 51 Member States when it
was established in 1945. It had 193 at
the last count – a near fourfold increase
in 70 years.
The dissolution of the colonial empires
after World Wars 1 and 2 brought many
new States into being. The number of
European States has gone from 30 to 50
since 1991.
When the USSR dissolved that year one
State was replaced by 15. Czechoslovakia
divided into two new States around then,
Yugoslavia into seven.
Will Scotland eventually leave the
UK? Will Catalonia leave Spain? Will the
Flemish and Walloons in Belgium hold
together indefinitely? If nation state
boundaries are still at issue in Western
Europe, where people have been at the
Multinational States to
break up into national
ones.
By Anthony Coughlan
The number
of States has
increased
fourfold since
1945; in
Europe from
30 to 50 since
1991. When
the USSR
dissolved that
year one State
was replaced
by 15
“
76 February 2015
If such a people is incorporated into
a State with its own government, this
mutual identification and solidarity
underpins people’s sense of shared citi-
zenship of that State and their allegiance
to its government as “their” government,
possessing democratic legitimacy. It is
what makes them willing to finance that
government’s tax and income-transfer
system, thereby tying the richer and
poorer regions and social classes of that
State together.
The right to self-determination of
nations does not require a nation to seek
to establish a separate State. Nations can
co-exist amicably with other nations
inside a Multinational State, as the
English, Welsh and Scots did for three
centuries in the UK, or the many Indian
nationalities inside India. They can do
this, however, only if their national rights
are respected and the smaller nations do
not feel oppressed by the larger ones, in
particular linguistically and culturally.
If this condition is not observed, polit-
ical pressures will develop to break-up
the Multinational State in question. Some
Multinational States are the legatees of
colonial conquest – for example, India,
Indonesia and most of the States of Africa.
Others have been formed by the govern-
ments of large nationalities extending
their sway over smaller ones and incor-
porating the latter into either a unitary
or a federal State. Examples are Britain,
Spain, Russia, Turkey.
The historical tendency seems to be
for Multinational States to break up into
national ones, mainly because of the
breakdown in solidarity between their
component nationalities and the develop-
ment of a feeling among the smaller ones
that they are being put upon by the larger.
It is the absence of such solidarity in the
European Union which makes the notion
of turning the EU into a meaningful
“United States of Europe” so problem-
atic and unlikely to succeed.
Shared ethnic nationality is the polit-
ical basis of Nation States, shared civic
nationality the basis of multinational
States. In both cases, if the State is a
democratic one, all citizens will be equal
before the law and the rights of national
minorities in Nation States and of minor-
ity nationalities in Multinational States
will be equally respected.
There is a library of books on nation-
ality and nationalism. In my opinion
the works of Anthony D. Smith, who
is Professor Emeritus of Nationalism
and Ethnicity at the London School of
Economics, are the most insightful on
this important topic. Google him and
see. •
Anthony Coughlan is Associate Professor
Emeritus in Social Policy at Trinity College
Dublin and Director, The National Platform
EU Research and Information Centre
shared membership of a national com-
munity, is the normal basis of democratic
states in the modern world. We are inter-
nationalists on the basis of our solidarity
as members of the human race. As inter-
nationalists we seek the emancipation
of mankind. The human race is divided
into nations. Therefore we stand for the
self-determination of nations. This is
internationalism, not nationalism. The
word “internationalism”, from Latin
“inter”/”between”, implies the pre-ex-
istence of nations.
The right of nations to self-determina-
tion inspired the 18th-century American
Revolution. It was formally proclaimed
as a democratic principle of universal
validity in 1789 in the Declaration of the
Rights of Man of the French Revolution.
It is now a basic principle of international
law, enshrined in the United Nations
Charter.
The right of nations to self-deter-
mination is based on the fact that it is
principally within the national commu-
nity that there exists sufficient solidarity
and mutuality of identification and inter-
est to transcend other social divisions
and induce minorities freely to consent to
majority rule, and to obey a common gov-
ernment based on such rule. Such mutual
identification and solidarity characterise
the “demos”, the collective “We”, which
constitutes a people possessing the right
to national self-determination.
INTERNATIONAL NATION STATES
There are some
6,000 different
languages
in the world.
At their
present rate of
disappearance
there should be
600 or so left
in a century
“

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