At the heart of the problem is the idea of the nation state.
A nation is generally understood to be a culture or peoples, the main features of which include a shared language, ancestry, and perhaps a shared creed. A state is, more plainly, an administrative organization and a geopolitical realm. For Germany in 1871, the challenge was to inflate shared cultural features while downplaying sectarian differences, lingering loyalties felt in some regions to their neighbours (including France, Austria, and Switzerland), and the fact that some of the German states had been at one another’s throats for centuries. Old histories of difference had to be superseded by histories of sameness and mutual interest. Italy— a linguistic patchwork that at least shared a common Catholic heritage (however vexed relations might have been between Italy and the Papal States) — seized upon Dante as the father of the Italian language and, like Germany, sought to minimize historic rivalries between regions. A new iconography of the Italian state, with General Giuseppe Garibaldi at its spiritual centre and a new king in a shared capital, were key to creating an “Italian” nation state. Increasingly the United States would invoke the language of “nation” as well, most notably in its Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 in which the “nation” and the federal “state” become indistinguishable.
Clearly some nation states in the late 19th century were less unified culturally than others. Canada’s odds in this respect were hardly worse than those of many other newly emergent countries. But it is worth noting that there was, at the time of Confederation, confusion about what constituted a nation state, a sense that expansion and territorial unification was a legitimate part of building a country, and that “nation building” involved more than a railway or two.
Federation
a group of states with a central government but independence in internal affairs.
Ethiopia is following Eritreas central government policies I believe today we are in a federation with PDFG God Isaias Afwerki and it’s EPRDF student PP
What Ethiopia needs is a new constitution
