States
A state is a set of institutions that possess the authority to make the rules that govern the people in one or more societies, having internal and external sovereignty over a definite territory. more...
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Thematics
United States
The state includes such institutions as the armed forces, civil service or state bureaucracy, courts, and police.
Although the term often refers broadly to all institutions of government or rule—ancient and modern—the modern state system bears a number of characteristics that were first consolidated in western Europe, beginning in earnest in the 15th century. Through conquest, war and revolution, the entirety of the world's inhabitable land has been divided into more than 200 sovereign states, the vast majority of which are represented in the United Nations.
The state is considered the most central concept in the study of politics, and its definition is the subject of intense scholarly debate. Political sociologists in the traditions of Karl Marx and Max Weber usually favor a broad definition that draws attention to the role of coercive apparatus. By Weber's influential definition, a state has a "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." The globalization of the world economy, the mobility of people and capital and the rise of many international institutions have all combined to circumscribe the freedom of action of states: however, the state remains the basic political unit of the world, as it has been since the 16th century.
Within a federal system, the term state also refers to political units, not sovereign themselves, but subject to the authority of the larger state, or federal union, such as the "states" in the United States and the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In casual usage, the terms "country," "nation," and "state" are often used as if they were synonymous; but in a more strict usage they are distinguished:
Country is the geographical area;
Nation designates a people, however national and international both confusingly refer as well to matters pertaining to what are strictly states, as in national capital, international law;
State refers to set of governing institutions with sovereignty over a definite territory;
Etymology
The word "state" originates from the medieval state or regal chair upon which the head of state (usually a monarch) would sit. By process of metonymy, the word state became used to refer to both the head of state and the power entity he represented (though the former meaning has fallen out of use). A similar association of terms can today be seen in the practice of referring to government buildings as having authority, for example "The White House today released a press statement..."
State forms over time
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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