Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each entity by whether it is best described as a STATE, a NATION, or both together.
Groups: A state · A nation · A state containing several nations
- Spain, on most accounts
- The United Kingdom
- The Catalans
- The Kurds
- Japan, on most accounts
- The Vatican City
Hints
- A state is a legal and coercive apparatus; a nation is a community that believes itself one.
- Two of the six are communities without a state of their own.
Show the answer
A state: Japan, on most accounts, The Vatican City
A nation: The Kurds, The Catalans
A state containing several nations: The United Kingdom, Spain, on most accounts
Why
The middle column is the normal case rather than the exception. Roughly 195 states hold several thousand ethnic and linguistic groups between them, so a state whose boundaries coincide with a single nation is unusual, which makes the hyphen in "nation-state" a political claim rather than a description.
Practise The State, the Nation and the Political System
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