Defining the nation through the Kantian lens

1 Introduction

The highly problematic nature of defining the nation may best be summarized in Daniele Conversi’s argument that “the nation cannot be defined because it is a self-defined entity” (Conversi, 1995). This claim suggests that, in political reality, nationalists themselves subjectively determine what constitutes their nation. As a result, they often do not seek to define the nation in theoretical terms; rather, they take its existence for granted—whether that be their own nation or those they perceive as distinct from it. Or, to use Kantian terms: even if they do not grasp the nation as a thing-in-itself, they remain confident in the reality of the nation as it appears to them as observers (Kant, 1998).

Still, what parameters do they use to identify it specifically as a nation, among all other possibilities? In other words, even if they fail to define, avoid defining, or refuse to define the nation as an objective category, they must still be subconsciously guided by certain distinctive features in order to apply them to a particular unit of populace they identify as a nation. Ultimately, this implies that such distinctive features do exist and can be objectively defined.

Scholars, on the other hand, commonly declare their intention to understand and define the nation as a thing-in-itself. Yet, their repeated failures to adequately define it also stem from their tendency to conflate the thing-in-itself (the underlying constitutive principle) with its appearances (observable, contingent features). In most cases, they actually try to capture the thing-in-itself by cataloguing the visible aspects of its appearances. These failures, then, are not to be seen as mere accidents; they rather reflect a fundamental methodological and epistemological error: the more observable aspects of the nation scholars include in their definitions, the further they drift from an adequate one.¹

1.1 Analytical lens

This article is a work of conceptual synthesis and theoretical genealogy. Its objective is not to test a hypothesis with new empirical data but to resolve a persistent epistemological problem in nationalism studies by constructing a new theoretical framework for defining the nation.

The analytical lens applied is Kantian, distinguishing between the noumenal core of a concept (the Ding an sich, or “thing-in-itself”) and its phenomenal appearances. This lens is used to analyze and critique the field’s foundational texts.

The method consists of:

1. Conceptual Genealogy: Tracing the evolution of the concept of sovereignty in political philosophy (from Bodin to Rousseau) to identify the historical moment when the “nation” could first be conceived as a sovereign subject.

2. Theoretical Synthesis: Reinterpreting key theorists of nationalism (e.g., Smith, Gellner, Anderson, Weber) through the Kantian lens to isolate a constitutive principle from a catalogue of manifestations.

3. Logical Argumentation: Building a new definition through deductive reasoning from first principles.

Source selection is based on the canonical status of the authors examined. The evidence presented consists of the logical coherence of the argument and its capacity to offer a more economical and powerful explanation of the problems inherent in the definitions offered by these canonical texts.

The use of specific concepts, introduced in this article, is explained progressively as the text unfolds. Equipped with the Kantian lens, we can now clearly identify the epistemological error at the heart of mainstream definitions of the nation.

1.2 The limits of appearance-based definitions

Such a methodological and epistemological error is clearly visible in the famous definition offered by Anthony D. Smith. In his book National Identity, Smith (1991) defines the nation as “a named population sharing a historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy, and common legal rights and duties for all members” (p. 14). Although the author’s ambition was evidently to provide the most comprehensive definition ever offered, he actually produced only a long list of the nation’s visible aspects, as they appear to an observer. His definition is a paradigmatic example of listing contingent, observable features (territory, myths, culture, economy, rights) without identifying the constitutive political essence binding them into a nation. Such a definition describes manifestations; it does not identify the foundation. Moreover, this definition could just as easily refer to ethnic groups as to nations.

In this sense, Smith’s definition is not substantially different from a much earlier attempt at defining the nation articulated by Stalin (1935): “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture”. Despite their vastly different contexts, both share a taxonomic methodology: they catalogue contingent socio-cultural features (territory, language, economy, memory) without interrogating the political ontology binding these features into a nation.

The same applies to Miroslav Hroch’s definition: “Let us define at the outset the nation … as a large social group integrated not by one but by a combination of several kinds of objective relationships (economic, political, linguistic, cultural, religious, geographical, and historical), and their subjective reflection in collective consciousness. Among them, three stand out as irreplaceable:

1. a ‘memory’ of a common past, treated as a ‘destiny’ of the group or its core constituents;

2. a density of linguistic or cultural ties enabling a higher degree of social communication within the group than beyond it; and

3. a conception of the equality of all members of the group organized as a civil society (Hroch, 1996, pp. 78–97).

Guibernau’s (1996) definition sounds very similar: “A nation is 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.” (p. 47). Still, Guibernau’s inclusion of ‘claiming the right to rule itself’ marks a pivotal departure: here, sovereignty enters the definitional frame. Yet treating it as one attribute among others still obscures its potential constitutive role.

By contrast, probably the most obvious exception to this practice of confusing the-thing-in-itself with its appearance is to be found in Brubaker’s (1996) definition: “Nation is a category of practice, not (in the first instance) a category of analysis.” (p. 7). This definition clearly points to the need to establish a distinction between appearance (a category of practice) and essence (a category of analysis). The nation thus cannot be regarded as a pre-existing entity, nor as a substantive collectivity, since it is essentially a dynamic process consisting of political, intellectual, and bureaucratic practices.

In any case, a definition is not intended to encompass the totality of a phenomenon’s empirical determinations; rather, it should delineate the conditions of possibility for that phenomenon’s existence as a distinct entity. In other words, it must identify the inherent features that constitute the object as a thing-in-itself, thereby enabling a transcendental distinction between its constitutive principle and its contingent manifestations. Only such a definition can distinguish the nation from all other things-in-themselves and from the multiplicity of its phenomenal appearances.

Let us begin by examining several unsuccessful attempts at defining the nation, from which we may eventually deduce its essential constitutive features. Even the most concise definitions offered by renowned dictionaries often contradict one another, each emphasizing different aspects—some focusing on territory, others on population, language, culture, or common descent. Some even equate “a country” with “a body of people.” A brief comparison illustrates this conceptual divergence.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines a nation as “a country, especially when thought of as a large group of people living in one area with their own government, language, traditions, etc.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines a nation as “a country considered as a body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular area or territory” or as “a body of people with common descent, history, culture, or language but without a separate or politically independent territory.” Standard dictionaries often conflate nations with states, ethnic groups, or mere populations—underscoring the conceptual confusion that this article seeks to resolve.

Many scholars also conflate ethnic groups with nations, even if they are trying to introduce subtle distinctions between the two. For instance, Connor (1994) describes a nation as “a self-aware ethnic group,” emphasizing that “all that is irreducibly required for the existence of a nation is that the members share an intuitive conviction of the group’s separate origin and evolution” (p. 202). However, this self-awareness, which is meant to distinguish a nation from an ethnic group, still revolves around “the group’s separate origin and evolution”—something that any ethnic group can be conscious of without necessarily becoming a nation.

For Hechter (2000), “Nations therefore constitute a subset of ethnic groups. They are territorially concentrated ethnic groups (…), rather than ethnic groups … who are spatially dispersed.” (p. 14). Yet immediately afterwards, Hechter adds: “Nationalism is collective action designed to render the boundaries of the nation congruent with those of its governance unit.” Therefore, although defined as “concentrated ethnic groups,” Hechter’s nations function within the framework of nationalism attempting to make their boundaries congruent with those of the state. Because of this aspect, Hechter’s vision of the nation aligns with definitions offered by Ernest Gellner.

Gellner’s definitions, like Connor’s and Hecther’s, tend to blur the distinction between ethnic and national identity. On the first page of Nations and Nationalism, Gellner (1983) states that “nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy which requires that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state … should not separate the power-holders from the rest,” and that “nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” (pp. 1, 6). In other words, the boundaries that constitute the national unit are practically the same as those that define the ethnic unit. Furthermore, by asserting that “two men are of the same nation if and only if they share the same culture,” Gellner equates the national unit with the cultural one, implying that the boundaries of the cultural unit are to be perceived as identical with ethnic boundaries.

We later demonstrate why the distinction between nations and ethnic communities must not only remain unblurred—even in the slightest—but also cannot, in principle, be blurred. Consequently, we will show why Connor, Hechter, and Gellner are all profoundly mistaken in their definitions of the nation.

At the other end of the spectrum, some define the nation primarily as a product of an organized governance structure, namely the state. This tradition dates back to the French Encyclopaedists, who stated: “A nation is a group of people inhabiting a given territory and obeying the same laws and government.” (Kemiläinen, 1964). Kohn (1944), one of the earliest theorists of nationalism, holds a similar view regarding nationalism: “The growth of nationalism is the process of integrating the masses into a common political form. Nationalism, therefore, presupposes the existence, in fact or as an ideal, of a centralized form of government over a large and distinct territory.” (p. 4). This perspective is perhaps most explicitly stated by Giddens (1985), who argues that “a nation […] only exists when a state has a unified reach over the territory it claims sovereignty over” (pp. 116, 119). For Giddens, a nation is “a collectivity existing within a clearly demarcated territory, subject to a unitary administration, reflexively monitored both by the internal state apparatus and those of other states.”

However, these definitions leave unclear what distinguishes such a state from, for instance, centrally administered empires, such as the Habsburg Empire, and why the populations of those empires could not also be categorized in the same way, as members of a nation. By this logic, the Habsburg Empire, despite its imperial nature, is not fundamentally different from the French Republic constituted as a nation-state, which then contradicts a common distinction between empires and nation-states. This raises the question of whether a definition focused solely on governance and territorial control can adequately capture the deeper sense of identity, shared experience, and collective vision that a nation typically includes. Moreover, equating nationhood with centralized power ignores the role of common national identity, which often persists even in the absence of state structures, as in cases of stateless nations such as the Kurds or Catalans.

If we were to recognize stateless nations as a theoretical and practical possibility, while still maintaining a clear distinction between the category of the nation and that of the ethnic group, Max Weber’s definition could bring us closer to understanding the nation’s essence. Weber (1946) defines the nation as “a community of sentiment which would adequately manifest itself in a state of its own; hence, a nation is a community which normally tends to produce a state of its own” (pp. 171–179). Weber also says that “the sentiment of ethnic solidarity does not by itself make a nation. […] Thus it seems that a group of people under certain conditions may attain the quality of a nation through specific behaviour, or they may claim this quality as an ‘attainment’.” According to Weber, this very aspiration to form a state is the specific behavior that defines a nation. It is through this aspiration that a nation differentiates itself from other solidarity groups, including those based on presumed ancestral ties, such as ethnic groups.

A definition of the nation resonant with Weber’s was offered by Margaret Moore. Moore (1997) defines the nation as follows: “The term ‘nation’ refers to a group of people who identify themselves as belonging to a particular nation group, who are usually ensconced on a particular historical territory, and who have a sense of affinity to people sharing that territory. It is not necessary to specify which traits define a group seeking self-determination.” Her definition implicitly parallels Kant’s distinction between appearances and the-thing-in-itself: by rejecting the cataloguing of empirical traits (appearances), she emphasizes the claim to self-determination as the constitutive essence—the thing-in-itself—of nationhood.

However, what underpins this aspiration for self-determination? Kohn (1944) reduces it to voluntarism: “Nationality is formed by the decision to form a nationality.” (p. 15). Yet such a decision cannot be purely arbitrary; it requires legitimizing narratives. Nationalism itself is a theory of political legitimacy, asserting that the nation alone holds the rightful claim to statehood. Consequently, a claim to nationhood presupposes determinants of legitimacy—it cannot be self-validating. Crucially, these determinants rely on the prior emergence of the theory of popular sovereignty. Within this framework, the nation functions analogously to the populus in classical political theory: both are collective subjects entitled to exercise sovereignty through a state. Under the earlier epistemic regime of divine sovereignty, the very concept of the nation as a bearer of sovereignty was impossible; the transition to popular sovereignty thus constitutes a necessary condition for the epistemological and political recognition of nations. In other words, the possibility of nationhood is historically and theoretically contingent upon the conceptual shift from divinely ordained authority to collective, secular legitimacy.

1.3 Theories of popular sovereignty

Interestingly, the founder of the theory of popular sovereignty, Bodin (1566), defines the nation in pre-political terms: “Natio nihil aliud esse videtur, quam corporis multitudo ab alio corpore loci distinctione seiuncta, communi linguae, morum, legum, & religionis vinculo coniuncta.” (“A nation seems to be nothing other than a multitude of people, separated from another group by geographical boundaries, united by a common bond of language, customs, laws, and religion.”) (Chapter V). Thus Bodin frames nationes as pre-political entities based on shared geography, language, and culture, distinct from the state, which requires sovereignty. This aligns with, and probably follows, medieval university usage of the term (e.g., student nationes at particular universities). However, he also introduces the category of laws as a common bond among members of the nation. In Les Six livres de la République, Bodin notes that customs (coutumes) of nationes may inform local law but remain subordinate to sovereign decree. Here he also provides the first definition of the state whose sovereignty is detached from the principle of divine will: “La République est. un droit gouvernement de plusieurs mesnages, et de ce qui leur est. commun, avec puissance souveraine.” (“The Commonwealth [State] is a lawful government of several households and their common interests, endowed with sovereign power.”) (Bodin, 1576, Book I, Chapter 1).

For Thomas Hobbes, Bodin’s successor and the founder of the theory of social contract, the Commonwealth emerges from a covenant to escape the violent “state of nature” (“war of all against all”). Individuals surrender natural rights to a sovereign (monarch or assembly), who embodies the collective will: “A Commonwealth is said to be Instituted when a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, every one with every one, that to whatsoever man or assembly of men shall be given by the major part the right to present the person of them all (that is to say, to be their representative), every one, as well he that voted for it as he that voted against it, shall authorize all the actions and judgments of that man or assembly of men in the same manner as if they were his own.” (Hobbes, 1651, Part I, Chapter 17). Hobbes (1998), like Bodin, also contrasts the Commonwealth to pre-political “nations” lacking unified will: “Nations are populations distinguished by place or language, but they gain legitimacy only through subjection to a sovereign.” (p. 92). However, Hobbes implicitly leaves it open for a nation to become political through a state.

John Locke, a co-founder of the theory of social contract, does not refer to “nations” as a political category, either. For him, free will of any number of free individuals is the only relevant aspect for creation of a political society: “That which begins and actually constitutes any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of majority, to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world.” (Locke, 1689, Chapter VIII, §99). From the conceptual perspective, it remains unclear whether “any number of free individuals,” on the basis of their free will, would constitute what later became known as ‘the nation’. However, from the historical perspective, the American Founding Fathers, using Lockean categories, proclaimed the result of their free will ‘the nation’.

Thus Bodin, Hobbes, and Locke dismantled the theory of divine sovereignty by progressively grounding legitimacy in ‘the people’ (populus). Their theories created the essential precondition—sovereignty as an attribute of human collectives, not God—for the theories which eventually located sovereignty in ‘the nation’. For, this replacement of God’s will with popular will as the source of legitimacy created the conceptual space for sovereignty claims by those units of populace that aspired to form their own states and thereby constitute themselves as ‘nations’.

Algernon Sidney, an English Republican and Locke’s contemporary, and one of Thomas Jefferson’s philosophical guides, is probably the first one who introduces ‘nations’ as a political category, as the creation of individuals’ free will and the ultimate bearer of sovereignty: “I say that nations being naturally free may meet, when and where they please; may dispose of the sovereignty, and may direct or limit the exercise of it, unless by their own act they have deprived themselves of that right: and there could never have been a lawful assembly of any people in the world, if they had not had that power in themselves. It was proved in the preceding section, that all our kings having no title, were no more than what the nobility and people made them to be; that they could have no power but what was given to them, and could confer none except what they had received. If they can therefore call parliaments, the power of calling them must have been given to them, and could not be given by any who had it not in themselves.” (Sidney, 1698, Chapter Three, Section 31).² Sidney’s formulation marks a theoretical rupture: by defining ‘nations’, rather than ‘the peoples’, as sovereign collectives constituted by free will, he transcends Bodin/Hobbes’ pre-political ‘nationes’ and lays the groundwork for Rousseau’s fusion of nation and sovereignty.

Some theorists of nationalism, such as Liah Greenfeld and Adrian Hastings, are aware of the historical moment and place in which the transition from the old theory of legitimacy to the new one took place, and position that transition at the centre of their theories. Greenfeld (1992) notes that the term ‘nation’ “acquired the meaning of the bearer of sovereignty, the basis of political solidarity, and the supreme object of loyalty” in the early sixteenth-century England (p. 7). However, Greenfeld fails to identify Algernon Sidney as the theorist who fully articulated this transition in his Discourses Concerning Government (composed 1,682, published 1,698).

Hastings (1997) does not explicitly address the element of sovereignty in his definition: “Nations require above all a shared written vernacular literature. […] The Bible, translated into a vernacular, became the model and sustainer of the nation. In this, ancient Israel was itself the prototype nation” (p. 185). Still, sovereignty in ancient Israel—as a model for subsequent nations—is implicitly present in his framework. However, ancient Israel’s sovereignty was divinely granted centuries before its textual recording in the biblical canon. Thus, Hastings’ cultural prerequisite (vernacular versions of biblical texts) is not foundational but derivative—the outcome of a prior sovereignty grant.

The author who brings the theory of social contract to its peak, Rousseau (1923), is the one who practically equates the nation with the state and sovereignty: “The State becomes a moral person by the union of its members. This public person, formed by the association of all others, formerly took the name city, and now takes that of Republic or body politic. When passive, it is called the State; when active, the Sovereign; and when compared with others like itself, it is called a Nation.” (Book I, Chapter 6). Rousseau distinguishes the nation from mere populations or territories by its political legitimacy derived from collective consent. A nation exists only when individuals transform into “Citizens” (participants in sovereignty) and “Subjects” (bound by law). Rousseau’s nation is thus a revolutionary construct: a sovereign community bound by the general will, legal equality, and collective self-determination.³

1.4 Towards the definition

Sidney and Rousseau, the founders of contractarian theory alongside Hobbes and Locke, clearly identify sovereignty as the animating principle of nationhood. Yet their equations of the nation with sovereign will have remained overshadowed by definitions of the nation cataloguing manifestations (Smith, 1991) or reducing nationhood to culture or ethnicity (Gellner). The partial exceptions, as noted above, are Weber and Kohn, who identify the free will to possess a sovereign state as the crucial factor that constitutes a nation. To some extent, this may also apply to Benedict Anderson. Although Anderson primarily conceived nations as a by-product of ‘print-capitalism’, he acknowledged the significance of sovereignty in defining the nation. In his definition, the nation is an “imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson, 1983, p. 15). The nation is thus clearly imagined as inherently sovereign (and limited).

Although most readers of Anderson emphasize only the imagined nature of the community (and Anderson himself may have encouraged this reading by titling his work Imagined Communities), it is productive for our purposes to explore the implications of viewing the nation as inherently sovereign.

Let us, for a moment, assume that imagining a unit of populace as inherently sovereign is what actually constitutes it as a nation. In this case, nationhood is not a voluntary decision to form a nation per se, but a voluntary act of imagining a group as inherently sovereign—a cognitive act that brings the nation into being. While Anderson overlooked this voluntaristic aspect, defining nationhood as a consequence of the mechanical dissemination of ideas via print capitalism, his emphasis on inherent sovereignty becomes the crucial pivot for our reconceptualization. Using Anderson’s categories but discarding his mechanistic logic, we arrive at an original vision: by voluntarily imagining itself as inherently sovereign and acting in accordance with that logic, any unit of populace “may attain the quality of a nation” (to borrow Weber’s phrase).

We must then ask: what drives a unit of populace to imagine itself as inherently sovereign? For such an idea to take hold, it requires a narrative that both proposes and legitimizes the concept of inherent sovereignty. This narrative emerges from, and is embedded in, the theory of popular sovereignty: in all its versions, sovereignty is understood as inherent to ‘the people’, provided they are aware of this right and claim it as their own. Indeed, the mental shift toward such awareness—and the act of imagining oneself as possessing that right—is what constitutes a unit of populace as a nation. Yet given that a right to sovereignty—whether popular or divine—can only be asserted in a self-referential and inherently unverifiable manner, the awareness of this right is, in essence, arbitrary.⁴ In other words, it functions as a constitutive myth—an ontologically unverifiable claim—legitimized not through empirical validation but through collective belief. Here, ‘myth’ is the overarching term for the constitutive narrative. Laclau’s (2005) ‘empty signifier’ precisely describes its function: a concept devoid of precise meaning, filled with diverse content to unify a political community. This is distinct from ‘ideology’ (which implies distortion) or ‘discourse’ and ‘narrative’ (which lack constitutive unverifiability).

The construction of such a myth by a unit of populace constitutes it as a nation, while the myth’s ongoing perpetuation re-constitutes and sustains that unit’s national identity.⁵ It is through this continuous re-constitution that, in Renan’s famous words, the existence of a nation becomes “an everyday plebiscite” and “a perpetual affirmation of life.” (Renan, 1990, p. 17 [Original lecture published 1882; cited p. 29]). By implication, without that everyday plebiscite, without that perpetual affirmation of life, the nation would eventually dissolve and cease to exist.

In Renan’s view, the individual’s will to participate in this metaphoric plebiscite (idealised as daily, though only occasional in practice) plays a crucial role in both the formation and perpetuation of every nation. This will is not confined merely to affirming membership in an aggregate of individuals; it also extends to the perpetuation of the myths and values required to constitute and preserve the nation as a community. These myths and values are thus re-constituted daily—through border rituals, currency, schooling, flags, anthems, and similar practices—as the essential form of the nation’s permanent re-constitution.

Hence, we arrive at the core proposition: the nation is a social formation constituted and perpetuated by a myth of its inherent right to sovereignty. A claim to sovereignty—understood as a political act derived from and legitimised by this myth—signals the existence of a nation. This constitutive myth, the nation’s thing-in-itself, resolves Kant’s epistemological challenge: it is unobservable yet empirically verifiable through sovereignty claims. In other words, the myth represents the nation’s noumenal core; sovereignty claims are its phenomenal expressions.

1.5 Sovereignty as the foundation of identity, and vice versa

From this definition, it follows that, in essence, a claim to sovereignty—rooted in the myth of a unit of populace’s inherent right to sovereignty—generates a sense of particular identity. A unit of populace homogenized around such a claim acquires a new subjectivity and structure. It constitutes itself as a nation internally and, in turn, assumes its status as a nation externally. Whether it achieves statehood (like 19th-century Germans) or remains stateless (like the Kurds or Catalans) is not crucial for its constitution as a nation: the myth itself, articulated at the societal level as a political claim, is constitutive and therefore crucial. Conversely, this assertion of a particular identity reinforces the belief in its right to sovereignty, leading to ongoing, self-reinforcing cycles of homogenization. Thus, the nation’s identity is continually shaped by a dynamic interplay with its claims to sovereignty. Within the discourse of nationhood, sovereignty ultimately transforms into identity, and identity into sovereignty. Nationalism, therefore, may be defined as a continuous cyclical interplay between these two sides of the same narrative, leading to the nation’s perpetual homogenization (Renan’s ‘daily plebiscite’).

This homogenizing potency of nationalism arises not merely from the voluntarist claims by units of populace to establish and maintain their own states, but from the structural logic of the capitalist system, which territorializes and thereby constitutes its own power under the guise of popular sovereignty, as argued in Nations and Capital (Hadžidedić, 2022).⁶ This structural logic is manifested through the global generation and local exploitation of geopolitical crises, which politicize the sovereignty myth. As Laclau’s notion of the empty signifier suggests, this myth acquires force only when (geo)politicized. The process is activated as capital channels crises toward either centralization (e.g., inequality-driven authoritarian nationalism) or fragmentation (e.g., resource-triggered secessionism or irredentism), depending on its diverse requirements for accumulation. This myth—essential to the functioning of the capitalist system—is articulated, transmitted, and perpetuated within liberalism, which serves as capitalism’s ideological framework. From their inception in the works of early liberals such as Locke, Sidney, and Rousseau, liberalism’s core concepts –‘inherent rights’, ‘popular sovereignty’, ‘self-determination’, ‘liberty’, and ‘property’—have been intrinsically intertwined with capitalism’s economic interests, becoming constitutive elements of nationalism’s discursive architecture, as demonstrated in Forced to be Free: The Paradoxes of Liberalism and Nationalism (Hadžidedić, 2012). Moreover, the myth of an inherent right to sovereignty has been directly articulated by—and has derived its content from—this liberal lexicon. For, despite its alleged individualist and universalist pretensions, this lexicon has always been territorialized in accordance with nationalism’s dimensions: ‘liberty’ codifies bounded sovereignty; ‘self-determination’ mandates national exclusivity; and ‘inherent rights’ are confined to the right to the nation-state. Liberalism thus provides both nationalism’s conceptual infrastructure and the Kantian “transcendental illusion” that naturalizes historical contingency (capitalism’s interests) as rational necessity (liberalism’s concepts).⁷ These merge within nationalism’s noumenal core—the myth of an inherent right to sovereignty—while their phenomenal expressions take the form of diverse sovereignty claims aligned with capitalism’s interests. The loop is closed: capitalism’s interests generate liberalism’s concepts, which generate nationalism’s myth, which spawns nationalist claims that, in turn, reproduce capitalism’s interests.⁸ As demonstrated at length in Nations and Capital, capitalism and nationalism are thus co-constitutive; they are two sides of the same coin—there is no capitalism without nationalism—and liberalism is their discursive bridge, making them mutually comprehensible and shaping popular perception of both.⁹

The nation-state, constituted by the sovereignty myth, provides the essential bordered container required for capitalism to function: defined territories, uniform legal systems, regulated labour markets, protected property rights, and currency zones, along with the inherent loyalty of the masses to ‘their’ nation and, by extension, to the capitalist system itself. Consequently, capitalism has a structural interest in promoting and sustaining the sovereignty myth. Liberalism, through notions such as ‘popular sovereignty’ and ‘self-determination’, ideologically legitimizes and naturalizes this historically contingent arrangement, thus securing the structural conditions for capitalism’s systemic reproduction.

Of course, sovereignty—both as a concept and as a practical force—can only be exercised over a defined, bordered territory. Sovereignty, when exercised over a defined territory, constitutes a state. The state is defined by its sovereignty, or, in Weber’s words, by “the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Weber (2015) emphasizes that this monopoly is “limited to the geographical area” of the state and that such territorial limitation is constitutive of its very existence (p. 136). Without this territorial anchoring, the state would be deprived of both its empirical boundaries and its defining attribute of sovereignty, and thus could not exist as such. The state is the institutionalization of sovereignty over a territory.

Thus, the nation’s claim to sovereignty—fundamental to its very constitution—entails a claim to its own state: the nation-state. In this claim to sovereignty, a particular piece of land is inherently designated as its national territory—whether for a future state (where the nation is constituted by its claim to sovereignty) or an existing state (where the possession of sovereignty constitutes the nation)—thereby becoming a constitutive part of its national identity. Consequently, defining and consolidating the borders of the nation-state is decisive for the formation and maintenance of national identity and for the perpetuation of the nation’s existence. As Anderson acknowledges, the nation is “imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” Yet, whereas Anderson treats sovereignty as imagined, we argue that it is mythically constituted through claim-making. This is why nationalist discourse treats these borders as essential to the nation’s survival—not primarily because of external threats by other states, but because borders are conceived as intrinsic to national identity.

John Breuilly rightly identifies sovereignty as nationalism’s goal but overlooks its ontological force: the claim itself territorializes identity, transforming populations into nations even before statehood is achieved. Breuilly defines nationalism as a political doctrine built upon these three assertions:

a. There exists a nation with an explicit and peculiar character.

b. The interests and values of this nation take priority over all other interests.

c. The nation must be as independent as possible. This usually requires at least the attainment of political sovereignty (Breuilly, 1993, p. 2).

Although this doctrine culminates in the “attainment of political sovereignty,” Breuilly treats it as instrumental—a means to realize nationalist goals—rather than constitutive of nationhood itself. Where he posits the nation as a rhetorical precondition for sovereignty, we argue that the sovereignty claim itself constitutes the nation by territorializing its identity.

On the other side, in contrast to Siniša Malešević—who defines the nation as “a contingent historical product of long-term structural processes” (Malešević, 2019, pp. 15, 112) driven by organizational power, ideological penetration, and micro-solidarity—we contend that such processes presuppose a prior claim to sovereignty over a bounded territory. Sovereignty claims precede and enable the organizational work Malešević describes: before a state can bureaucratize national identity, it must first assert exclusive authority over territory—a process that constitutes the nation it seeks to administer. If a claim to sovereignty is the ontological force that constitutes the nation, it cannot be reduced to a ‘contingent’ outcome. Malešević’s analysis of nationalism’s everyday reproduction, while compelling, remains incomplete without recognizing that a claim to territorial sovereignty is the foundation of nationhood. Borders are not ‘banal’ administrative lines but existential boundaries, constituted by the Weberian claim to monopolize legitimate force over a defined territory.

The territorialization inherent in the sovereignty myth is distinctly modern. While pre-modern polities—ranging from the Greek city-states to the Roman Republic—certainly possessed myths of belonging and sovereignty, their “logic of space” (to use Franco Farinelli’s term) differed fundamentally (Farinelli, 2003). Their domains were often defined by shifting frontiers, personal allegiances, or cosmological orders rather than by the exclusive, homogeneous, and precisely bounded space demanded by the modern nation-state.

The nation-state, as the political container adapted to the capitalist system, requires a specific form of territory: a measurable, divisible, and controllable geographic space for administration, law, and market integration. This is what Stuart Elden terms “territory as a political technology”—a calculated space to be managed, owned, and defended absolutely (Elden, 2013). The nation’s myth of inherent sovereignty is thus mapped onto this modern, geometric conception of space, rendering borders not merely jurisdictional lines but the existential boundaries of the national self. This fusion of a political myth (sovereignty) with a specific spatial technology (modern state territory) is what distinguishes the nation from all prior forms of political community, as well as the nation-state from all other types of polity.

In the next step, using analogy, we may define an ethnic group as a social formation constituted and perpetuated by a myth of common descent. This concise definition aligns with Weber’s longer formulation, which also identifies “a subjective belief in […] common descent” as the determining factor for the existence of ethnic groups: “We shall call ethnic groups those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent. […] Ethnic membership (Gemeinsamkeit) differs from the kinship group precisely by being a presumed identity, not a group with concrete social action, like the sib or the clan; it is an identity that is believed in prima facie and rests in the majority of cases on mere traditions of origin.” (Weber, 1978, p. 389). Both definitions—of the nation and of ethnic groups—underscore the foundational role of their respective myths in sustaining these formations over time. Yet, while the ethnic and national identities derived from these myths may overlap in political reality, their myths reveal a fundamental distinction: the myth that constitutes and perpetuates ethnic groups refers to common descent; the myth that constitutes and perpetuates the nation refers to the right to sovereignty.¹⁰ Occasional overlaps at the practical-political level—when some national identities are grounded in pre-existing ethnic ones, or when some established nations later elaborate myths of common descent—must not obscure this distinction at the theoretical level.

From this distinction it follows that the borders of the nation-state—whether established or merely aspired to—are the primary constitutive elements of every nation, serving as material inscriptions of the nation’s mythical sovereignty. Over time, these physical borders are transfigured into symbolic boundaries, representing ultimate territorial aspirations and becoming essential constituents of national identity. Ethnic groups, by contrast, do not seek to transform symbolic boundaries into state borders; their boundaries remain symbolic, shaping identity by distinguishing members from others, as explained by Barth (1969). Nations may adopt descent myths, but their foundational logic remains sovereignty. Ethnic groups, conversely, lack the political imperative to territorialize sovereignty—even when spatially concentrated.

1.6 Theoretical application and illustrative examples

Researchers applying this Kantian framework would therefore shift their focus from cataloguing a group’s observable traits (language, culture, etc.) to identifying and analyzing the presence and function of the sovereignty myth. Methodologically, this entails:

1. Discursive Analysis: Tracing the articulation of claims to an inherent right to self-determination and statehood in political speeches, official documents, media, and educational curricula.

2. Identification of Political Practices: Observing acts—from formal declarations of independence to border disputes and citizenship laws—that function as phenomenal expressions (sovereignty claims) deriving from, and reinforcing, the noumenal myth.

3. Distinguishing from Ethnicity: Determining whether the group’s foundational narrative is primarily one of common descent (ethnic group) or inherent political sovereignty (nation), recognizing that these can overlap and be instrumentalized.

The sovereignty-myth framework allows us to distinguish different types of nations, each defined and sustained by their claim to inherent sovereignty.

• Civic Nations (e.g., the United States, Switzerland, France): These nations challenge ethnicity-based definitions. They are constituted by a civic sovereignty myth—the belief that the nation is a political association of citizens united by shared ideals and laws. In the U.S., this is the myth of a Novus Ordo Seclorum, a covenant grounded in universal rights and constitutional order. In Switzerland, it is the Volkswille, expressed through direct democracy across linguistic communities. In France, the nation arose from revolutionary rupture with the ancien régime, grounded in the ideals of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The nation is thus built around the claim to sovereignty itself, with the state serving as the vessel for a political ideal rather than an expression of a pre-political ethnic group.

• Post-Colonial Nations (e.g., Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Pakistan, and Indonesia): These nations pose a direct challenge to ethnicity-based theories, as their territorial borders are often arbitrary colonial constructs that encompass diverse, often tribally or ethnically oriented societies. Modernist theories might see them as ‘incomplete’ or ‘artificial’ projects of elite-led nation-building. Our framework, however, reveals their foundational logic: they are social formations constituted and perpetuated by a myth of their inherent right to sovereignty. This right is understood as inherent to their post-colonial status, as liberation from colonial rule necessarily implies the acquisition of sovereignty. Their claim to nationhood is territorialized within the inherited colonial borders, which are transformed from instruments of subjugation into the sacred geography of self-determination. The nation exists because its political consciousness is defined by the active assertion of a right to sovereignty against the former colonizer. This foundational myth becomes the central political claim that seeks to subsume and transcend internal tribal affiliations, making the post-colonial state itself the primary locus of national identity.

• Post-Imperial Nations (e.g., Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay): Emerging from the collapse of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, these nations further illustrate the primacy of the sovereignty myth. They often share a common language and religion across vast territories, problematizing ethnic definitions just as civic nations do, yet they are constituted and perpetuated by the myth of their liberation from imperial rule. The foundational sovereignty claim was articulated by creole elites, who territorialized the administrative units of the old empire (viceroyalties, captaincies-general) into the sacred geography of new republics. The nation is thus built upon the potent myth of the revolutionary ‘people’ (el pueblo) who seized their inherent right to sovereignty, making the post-imperial state the vessel for a new, politically-defined national destiny.

• Ethno-Linguistic Nations (e.g., Germany, Hungary, and Poland): These nations appear to be the strongest evidence for ethnicity-based theories. However, our framework reveals that shared language and culture are not the nation itself but form the predominant content of its sovereignty myth. The nation is constituted and perpetuated by a myth of its inherent right to sovereignty on behalf of and in the name of a perceived ethno-linguistic community. The Herderian ideal of the Kulturnation becomes the political claim of the Staatsnation. The myth territorializes this ethnic identity, positing that the state’s borders must align with the ‘natural’ boundaries of the folk community.

• Ethno-Religious Nations (e.g., Serbia, Croatia, and Israel): The nation is constituted and perpetuated by a myth of its inherent right to sovereignty that is fundamentally articulated through the defence of a specific religious tradition and the community it defines. The nation exists as a sacred, confessional-political entity. For Serbia, the mythos of the Battle of Kosovo (1389) and the institution of the Serbian Orthodox Church are the foundations of a sovereignty claim that has survived centuries without a state. For Croatia, the enduring idea of a Catholic kingdom defending Antemurale Christianitatis forms the bedrock of its national political consciousness. For Israel, the foundational myth is that of the eternal covenant between the Jewish people and their historic homeland, a claim sustained through religious texts and practices, politically territorialized as the modern State of Israel as the sovereign expression of the sovereignty myth. In all cases, the state is claimed as the necessary protector of this divinely-ordained communal existence.

• Nations-Civilizations (e.g., India, China, Iran, and Russia): This category describes states whose sovereignty claim is unique in scale and foundation: they posit an essential identity between the political nation and a major, self-sufficient civilization. These nations are constituted and perpetuated by the myth of being the sovereign vessel of a distinct, transcendent civilization. The myth subsumes more specific ethno-linguistic, religious, or civic claims and legitimizes the state as the protector and political expression of this civilizational sphere. India is constituted by the myth of Bharat, a continuous civilizational space defined by shared geography, a millennia-long philosophical and cultural tradition (Dharma), and enduring societal pluralism. Its sovereignty myth, expressed in the phrase “India, that is Bharat,” asserts civilizational continuity across linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity. China rests on the myth of a continuous Sinic civilization, featuring the Han ethnolinguistic core, Confucian and Legalist traditions, and the Mandate of Heaven. Its modern state frames “National Rejuvenation” as restoring China’s rightful centrality after a “century of humiliation.” Iran’s sovereignty myth combines pre-Islamic imperial legacies, Persian linguistic and literary heritage, and its modern Shi’a identity, positioning the state as the guarantor of a unique Perso-Islamic civilization. Russia is constituted by the myth of a distinct Orthodox Christian civilization, merging Slavic culture and Byzantine inheritance, framing the Russian state as the “Third Rome” tasked with preserving true Christianity. In all these cases, the nation is defined primarily by a civilizational-scale sovereignty myth, which underpins its political, cultural, and territorial identity.

• Complex Nations (e.g., Spain and the United Kingdom): This category describes states where a hegemonic, state-level sovereignty myth coexists with and legally subordinates the sovereignty myths of powerful, historically distinct sub-state nations. In these “plurinational” states, the central political struggle is not the absence of a state-level myth, but the tension between a dominant myth and rival, fully-formed national projects within the same borders. In Spain, the Castilian-derived myth of a unified, indivisible Spanish nation, forged during the Reconquista and centralized under the Bourbons, contends with the potent sovereignty myths of Catalonia and the Basque Country, which claim their own inherent right to sovereignty. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the British sovereignty myth of Parliamentary supremacy—forged by the English crown and encompassing the entire island—exists in a permanent dialectic with the resurgent sovereignty myths of Scotland and Wales. The state-level myth operates to contain, manage, and subordinate these sub-state claims through legal and political frameworks, transforming the state into a perpetual arena for negotiating—and suppressing—competing national potentials. These cases demonstrate that multiple nations can exist within a single state, with the stability of the arrangement depending on the continued hegemony of the central sovereignty myth.

• Fractured Nations (e.g., Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Bosnia and Herzegovina): This category describes cases where the foundational, state-level sovereignty myth has shattered. Crucially, this fracturing was often initiated by devastating foreign interventions and aggressions that broke the state’s monopoly on violence and legitimacy. The initial shattering of statehood created a vacuum, triggering a cascade of internal struggles that ultimately fractured the original, unifying sovereignty myth. In some cases, like Iraq and Syria, this remains a violent, ongoing contest. In others, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, the fracture has been formalized and frozen by international intervention, creating a state whose constitutional order is built upon the institutionalization of competing, sub-state ethno-religious sovereignty claims. The original unifying myth of a civic, multi-ethnic state (whether post-colonial or, in Bosnia’s case, post-Yugoslav) was first weakened and then overpowered by these competing myths. Our framework reveals that the subsequent violence and political stalemate are not merely civil war or governance failure but a constitutive struggle—a clash between a defunct or impotent state-level myth and empowered sub-state myths, each asserting its own “inherent right” to sovereignty. The unified nation, as a political form, ceases to exist when no single sovereignty claim can territorialize the state’s entirety. These cases prove that nationhood is not permanent; it is a conditional status that dissolves when the sovereignty myth is shattered by external force and can no longer be sustained internally.

• Self-Isolated Nations (e.g., North Korea, Bhutan, and Afghanistan under the Taliban): This category describes nations whose constitutive sovereignty myth is fundamentally based on the principle of self-isolation. For them, sovereignty is not just a right to self-rule, but a right to separate from the corrupting or threatening influences of the outside world. Their national identity is constituted by the myth of being a unique, sacred, or ideologically pure community that must be preserved through a defensive perimeter. This myth manifests differently in each case: in North Korea, it is the Juche (self-reliance) ideology, a myth of total political and economic autonomy in the face of a hostile world; in Bhutan, it was the deliberate policy of preserving its unique Buddhist culture and environment, with its sovereignty defined as controlled engagement. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have successfully unified the country under a sovereignty myth of sacralized isolation—the establishment of a pure ‘Islamic Emirate’ that explicitly rejects Western political, cultural, and social norms as existential threats. Their political claim to sovereignty (phenomenon) is inextricable from the enforcement of this myth of isolation (noumenon), making the nation’s borders a barrier against ideological contamination. In all cases, the phenomenal expression of this myth is a state apparatus designed to enforce this separation. The nation is defined not only by what it is, but by what it is not—and what it must be protected from.

• Stateless Nations (e.g., Kurds, Catalans, and Scots): Under appearance-based or ethnicity-focused definitions, these are often categorized as “ethnic groups” or “regions.” Our framework reveals their true nature: they are nations because their political existence is defined by a sustained, active sovereignty claim over a defined territory, rooted in a myth of inherent right to sovereignty. Their nationhood is confirmed by this claim (e.g., the Kurdish Regional Government, the Catalan independence movement, the Scottish periodic reactivation of a sovereignty myth—from the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath to the 2014 independence referendum).

• Internal Nations (e.g., Quebec and Wales): This category describes distinct national communities that have developed a politically recognized identity and self-governing institutions entirely within the constitutional structure of a larger sovereign state. Quebec’s nationhood was forged not from a pre-existing statehood but from the struggle for cultural and political emancipation within Canada. The foundational myth of a distinct French-speaking society in North America is perpetuated through its national assembly, civil law system, and control over immigration and education. The phenomenal expressions of this myth are the two sovereignty referendums (1980, 1995) and the passage of the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101), culminating in the 2006 parliamentary recognition of the “Québécois as a nation within a united Canada.” Wales offers a complementary case of a nation whose political consciousness has been crystallized through the modern process of devolution. Unlike Scotland, it lacks a history of independent statehood in the early modern period. The Welsh sovereignty myth is thus fundamentally cultural and linguistic, territorialized through the devolved Senedd. The phenomenal expression of its nationhood is the gradual, step-by-step expansion of the Senedd’s powers since 1999, and the successful political campaign to secure its own legislature. The active assertion of its distinct identity is embodied in the Welsh Language Act and the ongoing project of building a Welsh civic polity from within the United Kingdom.

Some of these categories clearly demonstrate that ethnic or religious groups (or, indeed, civilizations) can aspire to sovereignty and thereby transform themselves into nations. But any populace becomes a nation not through pre-existing traits, but by invoking the myth of an inherent right to sovereignty over a bordered territory.¹¹ Prior ethnic, religious, or even civilizational identity are incidental; the constitutive act is the sovereignty claim. For this transformation, prior existence of ethnic, religious, or civilizational boundaries is not necessary. What is required is a political aspiration to achieve sovereignty over a defined territory—a project grounded in the myth of an inherent right to do so.¹²

2 Conclusion

The ‘nation’ thus emerges when the myth of sovereignty becomes a group’s foundation, and it confirms its existence when this myth generates a political act—a claim to sovereignty. From this duality we may also derive a re-definition of nationalism: it is an ideology that operates through a dialectical loop, in which the permanent dissemination of the myth of sovereignty (its noumenal core) legitimizes political claims to sovereignty (its phenomenal expressions), which in turn reinforce the myth’s normative power. This self-sustaining cycle territorializes identity, renders borders existential, and perpetuates the nation as a political form.¹³ It also explains nationalism’s persistence across historical eras and political regimes.

This redefinition further reveals the limits of Eurocentric approaches to nationalism. If the myth of sovereignty—rather than ‘print-capitalism’, ‘industrialism’, or ‘ethnic origin’—defines nationhood, then non-European nationalisms are no less ‘authentic’ than European ones. While the myth was first decisively articulated in the early modern struggles of Europe (from the Dutch Republic’s 1581 Act of Abjuration to its fuller development in the 1,648 English Revolution), it spread globally without undergoing qualitative transformation: any populace, anywhere and at any time, invoking a sovereignty myth and asserting a sovereignty claim constitutes a nation.

Finally, this definition transcends the subjective/objective antinomy in nationalism studies (Brubaker).¹⁴ The subjective dimension (self-definition) resides in the sovereignty myth (noumenal essence), while the objective dimension (material expression) resides in sovereignty claims (phenomenal expressions).¹⁵ Their binary dissolves in Kant’s a priori unity of noumena (the-thing-in-itself) and phenomena (its appearance to us).¹⁶ In this light, we may also resolve the paradox of self-definition (Conversi, 1995): nations are indeed self-defined, but only through the structurally non-negotiable—yet historically plastic—grammar of sovereignty claims.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author contributions

ZH: Writing – original draft, Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis.

Funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Generative AI statement

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Footnotes

References