ABSTRACT
Here is one conundrum. There are plenty of others. During
the past two centuries, the nation has been constructed on the
practical programme that it will defend its citizens from enemy
invasion and, within the national borders, enhance prosperity
and ensure justice for all. As the expression of popular
sovereignty, nations possess armies and tax collectors to enforce
and pay for their rule. They are underpinned by legal and polit-
ical systems that may share quite a lot with others but will always
have some idiosyncratic cast. But these practical matters, where
the nations have generally seemed successful in an era where
world trade, world income, world population and the number
of nations have rocketed upwards, are not the end of the story.
