POL 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Nationstates, Cultural Globalization
14 May 2018
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Thursday, January 11, 2018
Introduction to Politics – Week 2 Notes
o Chapter 2 – The Nation-State and Globalization
o The nation-state is often considered to be the primary basis for the way the
modern world is organized.
o Modern states claim to be the highest authority within a particular well-defined
territory.
o State sovereignty is the legal principle that states have the right to govern their
populations and territories without outside interference and that they should be
treated as equals on the world stage.
o Questions have been raised, however, as to whether outside intervention is
justified in some instances, such as when state authorities violate or are unable
to protect the basic human rights of the people they govern.
o The rationale often given for state sovereignty is that states are political
expression of a nation and that nations should have the right to govern
themselves.
o However, not all nations have their own state, and many states are not based
on a single nation.
o The determination of what constitutes a particular nation can be controversial.
o Nations are often thought of in terms of the common ancestry, language,
culture, and other characteristics of a people.
o However, a sense of belonging to a nation can also develop among people of
diverse backgrounds and characteristics living in a particular country.
o Governments, along with intellectuals and artists, have often developed myths
of nationhood to try to unify the people of their country and create a common
culture.
o However, the large influx of refugees, particularly from the Middle East in recent
years, has resulted in serious tensions in a number of European nation-states.
o The political doctrine of nationalism – with its goals of trying to establish or
maintain a self-governing state based on a particular nation and promoting the
interests and values of that nation-state – continues to have great significance
for the politics of the modern world.
o However, many states are not based on a people with a single, common identity
or set of characteristics.
o Although some binational and multinational states are stable and successful,
the determination of the common good in these states can be difficult because
the good of each nation needs to be taken into account to maintain the
legitimacy of the state.
o Associated with the development of the nation-state is the concept of
citizenship.
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