States are political entities with the authority to govern over particular geographic areas. Nations are large bodies of people united by common descent, history, culture and/or language.

When the two converge, a nation-state arises, with the state acting as the official representative of a single nation.

Today, all sovereign states in the world can be categorized as either nation-states or multi-national states – in which multiple nations are administered by the same state.

It is not necessary for a state to become a nation-state to become a recognized sovereign state.

However, with a strong sense of common identity, nation-states face greater chances of surviving in the long-run then multinational states – which can fragment due to external or internal shocks disturbing the internal sociopolitical and constitutional balance.

So, which came first, the nation or the state?

In general, states are much older – they are as old as human sedentary life.

Nations are more recent products, emerging in the 16th century, particularly in Europe.

The spread of the printing press, improvements in mass literacy, transportation and communication technologies all led to cultural and linguistic convergences.

Simultaneously, industrialization, the rise of middle classes, and overthrow of medieval, feudal, monarchic social orders transformed the social fabric of human societies.

Nation-states either became states first, and then nations, or nations first, and then states.

When a state becomes strong enough to project legitimate authority over people, it sometimes chooses the path of “ethnogenesis”, a state-led initiative to develop an ethnic group with a cohesive identity. France and Spain are such examples, whereby one dominant language gradually replaced regional dialects.

At times, tribes unite, on equal footing, to establish a political entity backed by a constitution. This happens when tribes already feel like they belong to the same nation, and argue that they should share the same borders.

This happened in Italy and Germany for example, where cultural convergence preceded state building.

Lebanon’s experiment as a multinational state has failed, to say the least. Becoming a nation-state appears to be the only realistic option for the survival of Lebanon.

Either a political force will take charge and use the state to form a nation, or the tribes will unite as a nation and form a state.

Until then, the status quo remains…