State (polity)
A state is an organized community living under a unified political system, the government (in American English, a government). States may be sovereign. The denomination state is also employed to federated states that are members of a federal union, which is the sovereign state. Some states are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony where ultimate sovereignty lies in another state. The state can also be used to refer to the secular branches of government within a state, often as a manner of contrasting them with churches and civilian institutions (civil society).
Read more about State (polity): Definitional Issues, Theories of State Function, Theories of State Legitimacy, Etymology, History
Famous quotes containing the word state:
“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)