A multinational state is a sovereign state which is viewed as comprising two or more nations. Such a state contrasts with a nation state where a single nation comprises the bulk of the population. Depending on the definition of "nation" (which touches on ethnicity, language, and political identity), a multinational state might also be multicultural or multilingual. Pakistan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Spain, Canada, and China are viewed as present-day examples of multinational states, while Austria-Hungary, Soviet Union, Empire of Japan, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia are examples of historical multinational states which have since split into a number of sovereign states. Some analysts have described the European Union as multinational state or as a potential one. Many attempts have been made to define what a multinational state is. One complicating factor is that it is possible for many of the people of what can be considered a "nation" to consider they have two different nationalities simultaneously. As Oliver Peel has noted, One can be a Scot and a Brit in the United Kingdom, a Jew and an American in the United States, an Igbo and a Nigerian in Nigeria... One might find it hard to be a Slovak and a Hungarian, an Arab and an Israeli, a Breton and a Frenchman. A state may also be a society, and a multiethnic society has people belonging to more than one ethnic group, in contrast to societies which are ethnically homogeneous. By some definitions of "society" and "homogeneous", virtually all contemporary national societies are multiethnic. One scholar argued in 1993 that fewer than 20 of the then 180 sovereign states could be said to be ethnically and nationally homogeneous, where a homogeneous state was defined as one in which minorities made up less than five per cent of the population. Sujit Choudhry therefore argues that, "[t]he age of the ethnoculturally homogeneous state, if ever there was one, is over".

Read full article on Wikipedia · CC-BY-SA