Sorry to disagree, but the confusion between the nation and the state is the great lie of the modern states.

The state is an organisation which has the monopoly of violence over a nation (= people, territory, infrastructure, capital).  The workings of this organisation are similar to that of the maffia: they extort the nation, and they provide some services such as "protection".

The distinction between state and nation was much clearer in times when there was still a monarchy.  Louis XIV said it clearly "The state, that's me !".

However, after cutting off heads of state by the disgruntled nation, the state went on in a different way, by trying to make the nation think it is responsible for all the extortion of the state: they invented elections.  There's a price to pay: elections are on one hand what limits the maffia's time at the hands of the state.  Elections can alternate between different maffia families at the head of the state, which was not the worry of an hereditary monarchy.  In order to gain elections, now lies and mass manipulation is necessary which was much less the case before.  But the great thing about elections is that the nation is now "guilty" and "responsible" for all of the extortion by the state, which will avoid heads cut off of the maffia leading the state.

But that doesn't mean that the state is the nation.  The state is the organisation that extorts the nation, it being the violence monopolist. 
That has historically always been so, and it is not because there are elections in modern states, instead of hereditary monarchy, that that basic principle has been overthrown.