State (polity)

A state is a political entity that regulates society and the population within a territory.[1] Government is considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states.[2][3]

Most often, a country has a single state, with various administrative divisions. It is a unitary state or a federal union; in the latter type, the term "state" is sometimes used to refer to the federated polities that make up the federation. (Other terms that are used in such federal systems may include "province", "region" or other terms.)

For most of prehistory people lived in stateless societies. The earliest forms of states arose about 5,500 years ago[4] as governments gained state capacity in conjunction with rapid growth of cities, invention of writing and codification of new forms of religion.

Over time, a variety of forms of states developed, which used many different justifications for their existence (such as divine right, the theory of the social contract, etc.). Today, the modern nation state is the predominant form of state to which people are subject.[5] Sovereign states have sovereignty; any ingroup's claim to have a state faces some practical limits via the degree to which other states recognize them as such.

Definitions of a state are disputed.[6][7] According to sociologist Max Weber: a "state" is a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, although other definitions are common.[8][9] Absence of a state does not preclude the existence of a society, such as stateless societies like the Haudenosaunee Confederacy that "do not have either purely or even primarily political institutions or roles".[10] The degree and extent of governance of a state is used to determine whether it has failed.[11]

  1. ^ Definition 7 (noun): "a politically unified people occupying a definite territory; nation."; Definition 10 (noun): "the body politic as organized for civil rule and government (distinguished from church)."; Definition 16 (noun): "of or pertaining to the central civil government or authority.". -Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Random House/Barnes and Noble, ISBN 9780760702888, pp. 1860-1861.
  2. ^ Black's Law Dictionary, 4th ed. (1968). West Publishing Co.
  3. ^ Uricich v. Kolesar, 54 Ohio App. 309, 7 N.E. 2d 413.
  4. ^ Sandeford, David S. (May 2018). "Organizational complexity and demographic scale in primary states". Royal Society Open Science. 5 (5): 171137. Bibcode:2018RSOS....571137S. doi:10.1098/rsos.171137. PMC 5990841. PMID 29892345.
  5. ^ Wimmer, Andreas; Feinstein, Yuval (October 2010). "The Rise of the Nation-State across the World, 1816 to 2001". American Sociological Review. 75 (5): 764–790. doi:10.1177/0003122410382639. S2CID 10075481. This global outcome—the almost universal adoption of the nation-state form
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cudworth-2007 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Barrow-1993 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cudworth et al., 2007: p. 95
  9. ^ Salmon, 2008: p. 54 Archived 15 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ "Stateless Society | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com.
  11. ^ Patrick, Stewart (10 December 2007). "'Failed' States and Global Security: Empirical Questions and Policy Dilemmas". International Studies Review. 9 (4): 644–662. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2486.2007.00728.x.