Nation-State Orthodoxy

The established, institutionalized set of beliefs about nation-states that dominate political discourse—the often-unexamined assumptions that the world is and should be divided into sovereign states, that each state represents a nation, that borders are natural, that state sovereignty is legitimate, and that the nation-state is the proper unit of political organization. Nation-state orthodoxy includes specific commitments: that every people should have their own state, that states have rights to control borders, that international law should respect sovereignty, that the nation-state system is the only viable way to organize global politics. Like all orthodoxies, it provides a framework for political understanding, but it functions as ideology—making the nation-state system seem natural and eternal, obscuring its historical contingency and its violence, and delegitimizing alternative forms of political organization (empires, federations, confederations, anarchist arrangements). Nation-state orthodoxy determines what counts as "realistic" in international relations, what political arrangements are "legitimate," and who counts as a "serious" political actor versus a dreamer.

Example: "He couldn't imagine political organization beyond the nation-state—not because he'd examined alternatives, but because nation-state orthodoxy had made the current system seem like simply how the world is. The orthodoxy's power is making contingency feel like necessity."

Nation-State Orthodoxy by Dumu The Void March 17, 2026