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After the fragmentation of the state as modality of unity in late eighteenth-century thought, the fantasy of congruency becomes endemic to modern thought and practices. To exemplify this, this chapter analyses two political discursive formations that emerge in nineteenth-century Europe that draw on and further develop the discursive space of the nation/state and its idealised congruency. The first discursive formation is Hegel’s (political) philosophy in which state and nation are in a constant dialectical relationship as part of the telos of world history. The second discursive formation stems from liberal and democratic thought, focusing on the writings of James Mill, John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, thus illustrating how congruency is assumed to be vital to liberal democracies and the idea of representative democracy.