A '''nation-state''' is a political unit where the [[State (polity)|state]], a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory,1 '''and theDissolve'''''''Italic [[nation]],text''''Italic a community based on a common identity, are congruent.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cederman |first=Lars-Erik |jstor=j.ctv1416488 |title=Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolvetext'''' |date=1997 |volume=39 |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=978-0-691-02148-5 |pages=19 |doi=10.2307/j.ctv1416488 |s2cid=140438685 |quote=When the state and the nation coincide territorially and demographically, the resulting unit is a nation-state.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Brubaker |first=Rogers |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PXP7DwAAQBAJ |title=Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany |date=1992 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-25299-8 |pages=28 |quote=A state is a nation-state in this minimal sense insofar as it claims (and is understood) to be a nation's state: the state 'of' and 'for' a particular, distinctive, bounded nation. |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Hechter |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O3jnCwAAQBAJ |title=Containing Nationalism |date=2000 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-829742-0 |language=en |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Gellner |first=Ernest |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XPHpUSUAsF0C |title=Nations and Nationalism |date=2008 |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |isbn=978-0-8014-7500-9 |language=en |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> It is a more precise concept than "[[country]]", since a country does not need to have a predominant national or [[ethnic group|ethnic]] group.
A [[nation]], sometimes used in the sense of a common [[ethnicity]], may include a [[diaspora]] or [[refugee]]s who live outside the nation-state; some nations of this sense do not have a state where that ethnicity predominates. In a more general sense, a nation-state is simply a large, politically sovereign country or administrative territory. A nation-state may be contrasted with:
