The Creation Of A Successful Nation-State

To create a functional state, the government leaders must integrate the entire populace into the society as seamlessly as possible. This is created through a variety of ways.

Firstly, the state must excercise it’s dominance over the populace. One main purpose of the state is to eliminate violence among the population, leaving violence as a tool for the state, so that it may be used to domesticate the populace. Thus the state must have a monopoly over violence in any society, to retain proper authority.

Another tool wielded by the state is xenophobia. To unite the populace, the government might create an ‘outside force’ with which to rail against. This is an effective way of uniting the populace under a common banner: coming together to defeat a common enemy. Examples of this can be seen throughout history; Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, Germany (during unification, against Austria, and also the alienation of Jews during the 30′s and 40′s), and even today, in America, against the Muslim religion.

To unite the people, however, there must also be something that makes them associate themselves with the state, to see the entire population as being a member of the state, and not of a cultural or geographical group.

The easiest way for this to be instituted, is for a standardized language, bureaucracy (law), and education. Robbins uses the example of France, which I’ll continue upon. Even after France had been a united state for some time, much of the rural population still identified themselves as part of a smaller sub-group – not many would call themselves “French.” To alleviate this, the state instituted a standardized language: French. It was essential that the younger generations learned and embraced a standardized language. Then they would all have something in common.

Secondly, the government had to seep into every rural area of France. Without constant contact with the government, the rural populace would not feel nationalistic, and would not join the military, or pay taxes, or identify themselves as French. Thus the state built roads, railroads, homogenized the markets, etc.

Finally, the most crucial part, is education. The state must indoctrinate the young pupils with the ideologies of the state. Uniform, mandatory education is an easy way to do this. And within several generations, it was wildly successful in France.