Critical Reflection Paper 1

Reflecting on ‘State Formation’

When we come to define a state we can say that a specific territory has a state that has authority over every resident of the area. ‘Authority of state’ means the ability to declare and enforce the law of the land. State has a monopoly over the legitimate means of power; they claim the right to apply coercive force. As Max Weber’s definition of the state is “an entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in any given territory.” A state comes into being, through the use of force; it is applied by violence that is to be done by people who are authorized by the state. The question brought up in the lecture notes is “How did the Canadian state come-into-being through violence?” An obvious answer would be that the laws announced by the state determine the duties and the rights of the state subjects. For example, in today’s society one of these duties is the payment of taxes; giving away a part of our income to the state is law enforced on everyone. There are also the rights to express you opinions but that does not change most of the laws enforced. If we compare the nation with the state out of curiosity; we could ask ourselves ‘Is the nation an entity that has a monopoly over the legitimate means of power on any territory?’ Now the state is ‘real’ in the sense of having clearly drawn boundaries, both on the map and on the land. For example Canada is shown on the map separate from the United States and the United Kingdom. However, the same cannot be said about the nation; the nation is not a ‘reality’ because it does not exist. The nation only exists as an entity as long as its members mentally and emotionally ‘identify themselves’ with a collective body. Nations usually occupy a continuous territory, but hardly any nations have a monopoly of residence on any territory. Within any territory there is people living side-by-side who define themselves as belonging to different nations. The nation usually consists of a group of people who share a common culture and language. Nationalisms normally demand power, the right to use coercion, in order to preserve the nation. As stated in the lecture notes “What makes the use of force legitimate in state formation is that it is recognized in law as such.” It has come to my attention that the nation is what complies with the law. The state makes the law and the nation has its claim to the land. As much as the state needs nationalism for its legitimating, nationalism needs the state for its effectiveness. The national state is the product of this mutual attraction.