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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] A country often has a single state, with various administrative divisions. A state may be a unitary state or some type of federal union; in the latter type, the ...
- Overview
- Greek and Roman precedents
- Machiavelli and Bodin
- Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau
state, political organization of society, or the body politic, or, more narrowly, the institutions of government. The state is a form of human association distinguished from other social groups by its purpose, the establishment of order and security; its methods, the laws and their enforcement; its territory, the area of jurisdiction or geographic ...
The history of the Western state begins in ancient Greece. Plato and Aristotle wrote of the polis, or city-state, as an ideal form of association, in which the whole community’s religious, cultural, political, and economic needs could be satisfied. This city-state, characterized primarily by its self-sufficiency, was seen by Aristotle as the means ...
It was not until the 16th century that the modern concept of the state emerged, in the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli (Italy) and Jean Bodin (France), as the centralizing force whereby stability might be regained. In The Prince, Machiavelli gave prime importance to the durability of government, sweeping aside all moral considerations and focusing ...
For Locke and Rousseau, as well as for Locke’s English predecessor Thomas Hobbes, the state reflected the nature of the human beings who created it. The “natural condition” of man, said Hobbes, is self-seeking and competitive. Man subjects himself to the rule of the state as the only means of self-preservation whereby he can escape the brutish cycle of mutual destruction that is otherwise the result of his contact with others.
For Locke, the human condition is not so gloomy, but the state again springs from the need for protection—in this case, of inherent rights. Locke said that the state is the social contract by which individuals agree not to infringe on each other’s “natural rights” to life, liberty, and property, in exchange for which each man secures his own “sphere of liberty.”
Rousseau’s ideas reflect an attitude far more positive in respect of human nature than either Hobbes or Locke. Rather than the right of a monarch to rule, Rousseau proposed that the state owed its authority to the general will of the governed. For him, the nation itself is sovereign, and the law is none other than the will of the people as a whole. Influenced by Plato, Rousseau recognized the state as the environment for the moral development of humanity. Man, though corrupted by his civilization, remained basically good and therefore capable of assuming the moral position of aiming at the general welfare. Because the result of aiming at individual purposes is disagreement, a healthy (noncorrupting) state can exist only when the common good is recognized as the goal.
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- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
2. The state is a political community living in a given territory with sovereignty.The nation is a social and psychological community based on identical feeling of common culture and heritage. The term nation-state can be traced in the writings of Machiavelli in the beginning of modern age with the union of fragmented Italy.
Mar 10, 2021 · State (polity) 1. In terms of a political entity, a state is any politically organized community living under a single system of government. States may or may not be sovereign. For instance, federated states are members of a federal union, and may have only partial sovereignty, but are, nonetheless, states.
Jun 28, 2020 · June 28, 2020 by PoliticalScience. What is the state , State is a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government. State is is the organization while the government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time.
community, and whether the state is such a community. On this account of community, there can be a political community, which is defined as a collectivity of individuals who share an understanding of what is public and what is private within that polity. Whether or not a state is a political community will depend, however, on the nature of
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May 13, 2021 · A state is an organized political community that has a government. States are classified as sovereign if they are not dependent on, or subject to, any other power or state. States are considered to be subject to external sovereignty, or hegemony, if their ultimate sovereignty lies in another state.
