State, The

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State, The

The term "state" denotes the complex of organizations, personnel, regulations, and practices through which political power is exercised in a territory. In simple societies organized as bands of families, as tribes, or as chiefdoms, political power is not separated from power relationships rooted in kinship structures or religion. Those societies also lack organizations and specialized personnel (beyond the chief) for exercising political authority and therefore have no real states. The state emerged only with the development of more complex societies, either cities or tribal confederations, which formed the bases for city-states, monarchies, and empires. Monarchies and empires in turn have given way to liberal states, modernizing dictatorships, and one-party states as the most widespread current forms of states.

The "state" is a rather abstract term. Over time and space, the concrete organizational forms, the kinds of personnel, the specific laws and regulations, and the practices of states have varied greatly with the historical development of societies and across different cultures and regions. The modern nation-state is a very particular kind of state that developed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and currently is spreading across the world (Poggi 1990). However, like other forms of the state, this organizational form is likely to have its day and then fade; already various kinds of supranational and international bodies have begun to take over some of the political power formerly monopolized by nation-states.

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