State and nation: From the conceptual analysis to the study of the political field and the law’s instruments

Abstract

The constitutional history has proposed that there is a radical transformation on the concept of nation around the XIX century: for one side, Joseph Sieyes has said that the nation is a subject whose development can be defined whit a collection of attributes (language, territory, class, etc.). But, on the other side, for Renán, the nation is a kind of effect, who can be inducted from the coincidence of different collectivities, and whose unity is defined by a political decision. For the understanding on the relevance of the transformation who has suffered the notion of nation from the beginnings to the end of the XIX century, it is not satisfactory the conceptual analysis: the nation must be analyzed in terms of an application field and of an instrument of the State development between his “puissance” and the parameters of the international law.