ABSTRACT
According to the French sociologist Sami Naïr, the breakdown of the links between state and nation-which can be seen as a general phenomenon today-is perceived in France very specifically as the revenge of civil society on an oppressive state. He says:
The past has been reconstructed by means of a sort of teleological reading of the present in which the disarticulation of the links between state and nation are seen not so much as the result of a general, world-wide process but more as the revenge of civil society on a state which has always oppressed it.1
