Civilizations are cultural not political and rarely match state boundaries.

Evidence

Fifth, since civilizations are cultural not political entities, they do not, as such, maintain order, establish justice, collect taxes, fight wars, negotiate treaties, or do any of the other things which governments do. The political composition of civilizations varies between civilizations and varies over time within a civilization. A civilization may thus contain one or many political units. Those units may be city states, empires, federations, confederations, nation states, multinational states, all of which may have varying forms of government. As a civilization evolves, changes normally occur in the number and nature of its constituent political units. At one extreme, a civilization and a political entity may coincide. China, Lucian Pye has commented, is “a civilization pretending to be a state.” Japan is a civilization that is a state. Most civilizations, however, contain more than one state or other political entity. In the modern world, most civilizations contain two or more states. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 118

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to modernization-theory disputes over whether the nation-state or civilization is the natural unit of political analysis. — connects to: Culture need not align with language and state boundaries — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1089