The state
Concept · Politics, stage 1: Learn the vocabulary
A state is a political organisation that claims final authority over a defined territory and the people in it, and that maintains institutions - courts, police, armed forces, tax collection - to make the claim effective. Max Weber's much-used description is that a state successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its borders. A state is not the same thing as a government, which is the particular set of people running it at a given moment, nor the same as a nation, which is a group of people who understand themselves as sharing an identity.
Why it matters
Nearly every argument in political theory is an argument about what states may do, and those arguments only become clear once the thing itself is defined.
Part of
Sources
- State (polity) Wikipedia
- Max Weber Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophySets out the definition of the state by monopoly of legitimate force, and what Weber meant by it.
- Sovereignty Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
