Nation Making

Notion has it that, nation building is a political creation rather than a natural phenomenon, taking a political economy as its organizing theme, as characteristics and values define its identity.

In the making and unmaking of nations, some become rich while others remain poor, traditional mainstream economic growth theory has done little to answer these occurrences, while, nationalism, and ethnicity have played pivotal roles in the making and breaking of nations.

The 'League of Nations' (1920–1946), founded by Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), the 28th President (1913–1921) of the United States, was an attempt to unify the nations of the world against the possibility of future wars.

In its Covenant’s ‘Preamble’ is written:

“The High Contracting Parties in order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security; by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war… agree to this covenant of the League of Nations.”

Despite a formal structure that included a 'Council' of powerful founding members, the League was not effective at preventing military aggressions. Confined largely to its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the organization had no physical power of its own.

The following definition of a nation has been put-forth to conceptualize such:

“A nation is a specific political, social, economic and cultural community, often with a common language, culture and history, living in neighboring territories, with ‘independent’ political institutions and social organizations; it presupposes a politically sovereign people, master of its own territory, with its own economic life and its state or, failing this, which aspires strongly to these things.”

A nation is a territory where all the people are led by the same government. The word “nation” can also refer to a group of people who share a history, traditions, culture and, often, language, even if the group does not have a country of its own.

Nation-building does include the creation of national paraphernalia, such as, flags; coats of arms; anthems; national days; national stadiums; national airlines; national languages, and national myths...

At a deeper level, national identity may be deliberately constructed by molding different ethnic groups into a nation, especially since in many newly established states, colonial practices of divide and rule had resulted in ethnically heterogeneous populations.

Benedict Anderson (1936–2015), an Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian, defined a nation as:

“An imagined political community imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign."

Of course, the fact that the nation is imagined does not make it any less real. Nations are very real, enough that people are prepared to kill and die for them.

Nowadays, many nations are making efforts to overcome growing spatial imbalances in social, economic and physical development. The imbalances have occurred due to inadequate and late attention given by their government, as well as numerous institutional deficiencies.

The result of such irregularity is that some places have experienced progressive growth, while others portray a dismal picture, characterized by poor living conditions, acute poverty, infrastructure and service deficiencies, and outmigration.

The concept of planning varies among nation-states. In particular, non-Western nation-states, planning was initiated under the influence of the imperialist orders.

To advance a ‘planning theory’, there is a need to understand how the concept of planning is constructed in different cultures, as forward-thinking planners from government and the private sector begin to develop ambitious transformation strategies.

Montserrat Guibernau, a Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London, defined a nation as:

“A human group conscious of forming a community, sharing a common culture, attached to a clearly demarcated territory, having a common past and a common project for the future and claiming the right to rule itself.”

So awareness, territory, history and culture, language and religion all matter. However, it is rare in the real world to find a case of a nation with a clear-cut and homogenous character in terms of this list of possibilities.

Each nation is unique in its makeup of special character and worth. One crucial question is whether, and to what extent, a group must be aware of its alleged distinctiveness from other groups, in order to be classed as a nation?

One could argue that a nation can objectively be defined as a group of people which possesses a shared and distinct, historically persistent cultural identity, and which makes up a majority within a given territorial area.

If that is the case, then one could argue that even if such a ‘nation’ is not pushing for a right to self-determination, it nevertheless is a nation.

There are other would-be objective approaches to what might signify nation-ness, including statehood, ethnicity and naturalness…

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Food for thought!