Sieyès defined the nation by law and legislature rather than king or kinship

Evidence

We find a very different definition of the nation in Sieyes, or rather a double definition. On the one hand, a juridical state. Sieyes says that if a nation is to exist, it must have two things: a common law and a legislature. … So the nation is much less than what was required by the absolute monarchy’s definition. But in another sense, it 1s much more than what was required by the nobiliary reaction’s definition. According to that definition, and according to history as written by Boulainvilliers, all that was required for the nation to exist were men who were brought together by certain interests, and who had a certain number of things in common, such as customs, habits, and possibly a language. If there is to be a nation, there must, according to Sieyés, be explicit laws, and agencies to formulate them. The law-legislature couple is the formal precondition for the existence of a nation. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 233

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Sieyès’s first, juridical precondition for nationhood — the law-legislature couple — against both monarchist and Boulainvilliers-style definitions.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the imagined-community toolkit (Anderson) the reader is assembling for the Islamophobia readings. — connects to: Sieyès defined the nation vertically via its capability to form a State, not horizontally.; Sieyès inverted prior theory by making works precede the nation juridically — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 234; Sieyès grounded historical nationhood in works and functions, not law alone — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 234 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The manuscript note at location 232 suggests Foucault’s own text was uncertain on the king/nation relationship; worth checking the Lemontey reference.

Related

• Sieyés makes explicit law plus a legislature the formal precondition for nationhood. (similarity 0.90)
• Sieyès defined the nation vertically via its capability to form a State, not horizontally. (similarity 0.90)
• Sieyès grounded historical nationhood in works and functions, not law alone (similarity 0.83)
• Sieyès inverted prior theory by making works precede the nation juridically (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Sieyès grounded historical nationhood in works and functions, not law alone #qualifies (0.82) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 234
• The nation is conceived in language, not in blood #expands (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 552