What is a State? It seems hard to get a simple answer. Perhaps the word State is that kind of word which everyone can understand but it is difficult, if not impossible, to define (see Popper’s lesson about definitions in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Postscript, Unended Quest) .

Nevertheless, even if not rigorously definable, I think States are anyhow describable, at least enough describable to be distinguished by Nations, which is the main point of this post.

States are characterized by their legislative activity, we can roughly say that States set laws and they set them within a given territory. The whole body of institutions which States are composed by are ultimately aimed to formulate (Parliaments), make into force (Governments) and safeguard (Courts) laws, within a certain territory.

Of course not all States are liberal-democratic ones, but even in ancient kingdoms or modern dictatorships what is pursued within a State is the empowering of the law. What makes different a Liberal Democracy from kingdoms or dictatorships is the end of their laws, in the former laws are meant to guaranty citizen rights, in the latter laws are tools for enabling the king or the dictator to maintain his own power to pursue its own interests.

Therefore it seems clear to me that Nations are not States. The so-called Nations exist, at least in a supposed logical order, before any State can apply any law on any territory (an this is the reason why the so-called principle of self-determination was seen as capable of justifying rebellions against already established States), Nations are supposed to be something primitive in the sense of primordial or primeval.

Well, which is the link among Nations and States? People or, to put it better, The People. Every Nation is made by a People who straggles for its own territory upon which building its own State.

But The People actually is just an inflated way for writing the plural of a person, and in this sense people usually do not struggle for territories but they just claim for rights, among which there are also property rights upon lands, of course, and in order to have their rights preserved they need States or, to put it better, Liberal-Democratic States.

My point, therefore, is this: the are not any Nations and there are not any Peoples constituting those Nations, there are just communities of people (in the sense of the plural of person) or, to put it better, of citizens which set, manage and safeguard laws by means of a set of institutions collectively labelled State.