Nationalism and Nationalist Concepts of the State

Abstract

The study discusses the various theories of nationalism, and the relations between the theory of nationalism and the nation state. The idea of nationalism places the nation at the centre of interest. Nationalism has proved to be an ideology that can be used in everyday life throughout the centuries; in terms of its practical importance, it has gained a strong reputation and has stimulated the struggle for nation states’ establishment. Putting the focus on the nation’s territorial component was the most important consequence of the historical process that created the nation state: by implication, the spatial separation of political units from one another has taken place, as a result of which – in the name of national sovereignty – they have made the power of the state almost unlimited. However, from the last quarter of the twentieth century, those perceptions that suggest that globalization takes away the meaning of sovereignty in the classical sense have intensified, as a result of which, nationalism also becomes an ancient ‘dogma’ under the aegis of a multicultural society.