as Breton and Basque, some of whom would prefer an independent
existence. Conversely Switzerland, Belgium and Canada all contain
considerable French minorities to complicate their national identities.
Nor are these isolated examples – virtually every African country is
the product of the more or less arbitrary drawing of lines on the map
in the nineteenth century. For example, modern Nigeria contains
three major – and many minor – population groups, with two of the
major groups – the Yoruba and the Hausa – being found in sub-
stantial numbers in neighbouring states.
The nation state and sovereignty
Although nation states are difficult to come by in practice, the
predominant theory of the state today, as incorporated in the concept
of the United Nations and in international law, is that of the
‘sovereign state’. States’ legitimacy is based mainly on the idea that
each nation has a right of self-determination. The people of a nation
thus are seen to consent to the establishment of a government over
them which supports a system of law appropriate to their culture
and traditions. This idea came clearly to the fore in human history
only with the French and American revolutions at the end of the
eighteenth century.
The model of government in which a nation makes decisions
through the state machinery may be helpful in justifying the
establishment of self-governing democratic systems in opposition to
alien or autocratic rule. Arguably it becomes an obstacle to under-
standing the working of a modern sophisticated liberal democratic
state, which is usually divided into executive, legislative, and judicial
arms, and central, local and regional levels of government. The
outcome of the constitutional working of these specific institutions of
government can be regarded as the ‘nation’s’ decision. An over-
simplification that is, however, often put forward is that some
individual element in the constitutional structure is the body which
incorporates the national will. In the French tradition there has been
a tendency to see the National Assembly as that body. The Soviet
tradition was to see the Communist Party in an analogous position.
In the liberal tradition, however, the distinction between the govern-
ment of the day and the state – between opposition and treason – is a
clear and vital one.
SYSTEMS 39