Concepts of state and nation in Western discourses. Stereotyping Eastern Europe and East Central Europe

In Western discourses, the terms state and nation embrace very different concepts, which have undergone much change throughout the last millennium. The term nation was mostly connected with political participation. The stronger visibility of state-building processes was always the consequence of a necessity to create concrete legal institutions. In the general perspective, international systems differentiated between empires and (smaller) nation states. Stereotypes are produced by emotionalizing the perception of nations and states. A closer analysis shows that Western discourses about Eastern Europe and East Central Europe express a colonial attitude, because they present quite similar images and functions about Asia and Africa.