ABSTRACT
The liberal nation-state is a representatively self-governed political entity encompassing a sovereign territory whose people have extensive civil liberties and operate a market economy consisting primarily of privately owned enterprises. The modern liberal nation-state's structure embodies other institutions than government, notably the market economy and civil society. There clearly is a corresponding danger in too large a set of transfers which may discourage the productive elements of society from risk-taking and effort. Absence of a stationary social structure is an important aspect of the continuing dynamism of the liberal nation-states—and a strong challenge to those that would join the club. There is another complexity of the liberal nation-state that facilitates the maintenance of domestic security. This additional aspect comprises limitations on economic inequality, what the philosopher John Rawls called fairness in the sense of the absence of a fixed social structure. As the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed, this aspect of fairness has substantively contributed to social stability.
