The subject of this study is to determine the mutual relations in which the creator of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997 located the nation and the state. The text presents two opposing trends, showing how this relationship is perceived in the literature of the so-called Western countries and countries that have joined this group in recent decades. Arguments pointing to the empirical truth of the current presented by Polish representatives of science - the East European trend were presented. It was pointed out that the state is not an indispensable nation-building criterion, and thus that the state is not always primary toward the nation. Then, two concepts of the nation adopted in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland were presented, and it was shown that the expectations of the “political nation” and the “cultural nation” toward the organs of state authority may refer to completely different spheres of state activity.