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Why are states formed by nations, instead of people's "spectrum" (left or right, LGBT or not, and so on)? Even for states formed by immigrants (e.g. USA), spectra of folks have drastic differences.
Here I'm wondering something like freedom/order dilemma.
Nations and cultures have their rebels, but spectra ... Maybe that's because spectrum changes with one's age?
Can anybody give me some theories or books to explain this kind of stuff?
A state must have a territory. A government can only govern when there is a region over which it governs.
A nation can hope to form a state only when that nation occupies a defined territory. Right-wingers, LGBTQ people don't have a territorial home.
Consider the "nation of redheads". There are red-headed people through the UK. How could they exist a separate political entity to the non-redheads. If I am engaged in any kind of interaction with a red-head, then what laws apply? mine or the redhead laws?
A state with territory can function. If you are in the UK, you have to obey the law of the UK.
And redheads are at least fairly identifiable... but what if a redheadded man loses his hair... or dyes it. If it would be unworkable to have a red-head state co-existing, it would far far worse to have a "left-wing" state and a "right-wing" state occupying the same territory.
So in practical terms this is a non-starter. Unless a group has a reasonably clearly defined territory, it cannot become a State.
A historical example of this is the state of Israel. For thousands of years the Jewish nation existed within European societies. There was no possibility of European Jews becoming a state, as there was no territory held by the Jewish nation. It was only with the designation of a territory in Palestine as a Jewish homeland, was it possible for a Jewish State to develop.
First, a PoliSci clarification:
The difference is flexible. Sometimes we see states built around nations (e.g. Israel); sometimes nations are given self-governing powers within states (e.g. American Indian tribes); sometimes states try to form themselves into nations by creating a common political culture (the original intention in the US...); sometimes states exists within other states (as in the USA or the old USSR).
The problem with breaking states up into small, homogenous nation-states (one for every point on every spectrum) is that territory is not uniform. Some areas are pleasant to live in, some are rich in resources, some are on natural trade routes, and some are just poor, crappy, miserable places to be. This happened to Native American tribes, who were given tribal lands in places white settlers had absolutely no use for. It happened in South African apartheid and US segregation, where black populations were crunched into not-so-nice areas and told to stay there. It happened to Jews in Nazi Germany, who were first pushed into ghettos and then moved to camps. I mean seriously, if your group got Casper, Wyoming for your home state and my group got Kauai, Hawaii, I expect you'd be a little miffed (unless you really like snow and gritty, un-arable badlands; no offense to Casper). And that would lead to invasions and wars of conquest and unlikely alliances, until the whole thing reorganized into diverse multicultural states again.
Dealing with people unlike ourselves can be troublesome, sure. But dealing with them as neighbors under a common set of laws is far less troublesome than dealing with them as enemies on the other side of a wall.
