I'm still confused how much some Americans pay attention to the Treaty of Westphalia as a supposed birth of states. It's probably due to Lind's obsession with it. In Germany we pay more attention to the Thirty Years War itself (if at all) and think of the treaty mostly as a document which concluded the war and divided Germany in a Protestant North and a Catholic South.
The "state" thing developed only slowly and incrementally afterwards. Prussia got most of its revenues from the King's domains (agricultural estates) well into the 19th century, for example.
The alternative to a state - a patchwork of different legislative, executive and judicature powers from village to village if not from farm to farm - would have inhibited economic and political development with unbearable transaction costs and uncertainty.
We learned to build and run sophisticated economies and states. There are indeed minority problems (border regions, nomads, multi-ethnic metropolis, political fringes, race, gender, age et cetera) and the political minority still dislikes being ruled by the majority.
Minority protection rights, the hope of one day being on the ruling team again and constitutions with supposedly eternal basic rules are still unsatisfactory to some. This is especially evident if a lack of democratic culture devalues the reliability of rights and constitution. It's also evident when a minority is obviously a permanent minority because it's too small.
The new Western European way of handling ethnic problems is largely to make borders less relevant and to have large parties which strive to represent a large spectrum of the society.
The old Lebanese way up until their civil war was proportional power allocation; power was shared according to strict and lasting rules. This system ultimately broke down under the stress of being Israel's neighbour.
I suppose Egypt is not going to solve its political dilemma any time soon because its politicians and generals are too egoistic and treat the country too much as a reproducing cake of which they want the biggest possible share. It's their prey, and they're not intent on working out a sustainable solution.
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