Nation-State is currently exposed to disintegrative tendencies from within and integrative tendencies from without. Elucidate the statement in the context of developments in Europe. (1993)
The Westphalian nation-state joins a sovereign territorial state to a single national community. In the early 1990s Europe saw both halves of that formula strained at once: nations broke out of multinational states, while states pooled sovereignty in Brussels. James N. Rosenau later called this simultaneous process “fragmegration”, and Benjamin R. Barber framed it as “Jihad vs. McWorld” (1992).
Disintegrative tendencies from within
- Collapse of multinational federations. The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991 into fifteen states. Yugoslavia broke apart from 1991 amid war in Croatia and Bosnia, and Czechoslovakia split peacefully on 1 January 1993.
- Sub-state nationalism in the West. Scottish and Welsh nationalism in Britain, Catalan and Basque demands in Spain, and the Flemish–Walloon divide, which turned Belgium into a federal state in 1993, show that old democracies were not immune.
- Causes. The end of Cold War discipline, the delegitimation of communist federalism, economic disparity between regions and the revival of ethnic identity all loosened the bond between nation and state. Eric Hobsbawm saw this as nationalism’s fragmenting rather than state-building form.
Integrative tendencies from without
- Deepening. The Single European Act (1986) launched the single market, and the Maastricht Treaty (signed February 1992, in force November 1993) created the European Union, the path to a common currency and a common foreign and security policy.
- Pooled sovereignty. Majority voting and the supremacy of Community law place economic and legal authority above the state. Ernst B. Haas’s neofunctionalism explains this through spillover, as integration in one sector forces it in others.
- Enlargement as a magnet. The Copenhagen criteria (1993) drew post-communist states towards the Union even as they recovered sovereignty from Moscow, so new states sought membership almost as soon as they were born.
- Wider forces. Globalisation, capital mobility and the security umbrella of NATO reduce the state’s control over its economy and defence.
How the two pressures interact
- Multi-level governance. Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks show authority dispersing upwards to Brussels and downwards to regions at once. Maastricht’s subsidiarity principle and the Committee of the Regions gave regions a direct European voice.
- A cushion for secession. The EU lowers the cost of independence: a small Scotland or Catalonia could rely on the single market, which is why the Scottish National Party adopted “independence in Europe”.
- Accommodation as the alternative. Alfred Stepan (1999) called India, Belgium and Spain “holding-together” federations, which devolve power to keep a multinational state whole; India’s linguistic reorganisation of states (1956) shows the logic at work, and the contrast with Yugoslavia suggests why accommodation, more than coercion, decided which multinational states survived.
The nation-state persists
- Intergovernmentalism. Stanley Hoffmann (1966) argued that integration stops at high politics, and Alan S. Milward’s The European Rescue of the Nation-State (1992) shows integration strengthening member states by securing welfare and growth.
- Integration reaching high politics. Even defence, Hoffmann’s hardest case, is now being pooled: the EU’s SAFE instrument (2025) offers €150 billion in loans for joint procurement.
- Later evidence. Scotland voted to remain in the United Kingdom in 2014, Spain suppressed Catalonia’s 2017 referendum, and Brexit (2016 vote, exit in January 2020) reasserted national sovereignty against integration.
Conclusion
Europe shows the nation-state being reconfigured, not abolished. Sovereignty is now shared upwards and contested downwards, but the state remains the gatekeeper of both processes, as Brexit and the Catalan crisis showed. Pressure from above and below has made it a manager of interdependence rather than an absolute sovereign.