THE SOCIETY OF NATION-STATES

 

THESIS: THE SOCIETY OF NATION-STATES DEVELOPED A CONSTITUTION THAT ATTEMPTED TO TREAT STATES AS IF THEY WERE INDIVIDUALS IN A POLITICAL SOCIETY OF EQUAL, AUTONOMOUS, RIGHTS-BEARING CITIZENS.

In the society of nation-states, the most important right of a nation was the right of self-determination. This, however, posed a conundrum for that society: given the interpenetration of national peoples in multiethnic states, when did a nation get its own state? Was it when a majority of the people of the state agreed, or when a majority of a national group—which was usually a minority of the persons in the state as a whole—demanded it? And when one national group held power, what were the limits on its treatment of other national groups (“minorities” within the nation-state), given that one purpose of the nation-state order was to use law in furtherance of the cultural and moral values of the dominant national group? Confusion arising from this conundrum led to a diffusion of international responsibility, culminating in the Third Yugoslav War in Bosnia, which finally discredited the legitimacy of a society of states built on this constitutional order.