ABSTRACT
Since the Westphalia Peace, the modern state is the prevailing type of political regime. Its core is reliance upon bureaucracy, the territorial jurisdiction and the monopoly on the means of physical violence, whether the regime is monarchical or republican, unitary or federal, democratic or authoritarian. The emergence of the modern state in Western Europe took one form that needs to be examined closely, namely the nation-state. This came to be regarded as the natural form of a political community to such an extent that the entire remodelling of the world after the First World War in the various peace treaties was based on the Wilsonian ambition to create nation-states not only in Europe but also in the Middle East.
