[5][6] The consensus among scholars is that nations are socially constructed, historically contingent, organizationally flexible, and a distinctly modern phenomenon.
He viewed them as the "true proto-nation" that provided the original model of nationhood through the foundational example of ancient Israel in the Hebrew Bible, despite losing their political sovereignty for nearly two millennia.
The Jews, however, maintained a cohesive national identity throughout this period, which ultimately culminated in the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of modern lsrael.
[14] Anthony D. Smith wrote that the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation ... perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world.
He argues that Alfred the Great, in particular, drew on biblical language in his law code and that during his reign selected books of the Bible were translated into Old English to inspire Englishmen to fight to turn back the Norse invaders.
[page needed] Azar Gat also argues China, Korea and Japan were nations by the time of the European Middle Ages.
[25] In contrast, Geary rejects the conflation of early medieval and contemporary group identities as a myth, arguing it is a mistake to conclude continuity based on the recurrence of names.
He criticizes historians for failing to recognize the differences between earlier ways of perceiving group identities and more contemporary attitudes, stating they are "trapped in the very historical process we are attempting to study".
Lawrence goes on to argue that such documents do not demonstrate how ordinary people identified themselves, pointing out that, while they serve as texts in which an elite defines itself, "their significance in relation to what the majority thought and felt was likely to have been minor".
[42] Nationalism is consequently seen an "invented tradition" in which shared sentiment provides a form of collective identity and binds individuals together in political solidarity.
A nation's foundational "story" may be built around a combination of ethnic attributes, values and principles, and may be closely connected to narratives of belonging.
According to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world.
The theory was originally formulated in a 1992 lecture[49] at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?
Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy and capitalist free market economics had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post–Cold War world.
Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had reverted only to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict.
Several factors contribute to the trend Huntington identifies, including economic globalization, a rise in importance of multinational corporations, the internationalization of financial markets, the transfer of socio-political power from national authorities to supranational entities, such as multinational corporations, the United Nations and the European Union and the advent of new information and culture technologies such as the Internet.
[51][52][53] Jan Zielonka of the University of Oxford states that "the future structure and exercise of political power will resemble the medieval model more than the Westphalian one" with the latter being about "concentration of power, sovereignty and clear-cut identity" and neo-medievalism meaning "overlapping authorities, divided sovereignty, multiple identities and governing institutions, and fuzzy borders".