Political Science · Foundations of political science. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.
A state has four elements: population, territory, government and sovereignty. Government is only the agency that acts for the state, so governments change while the state continues. A nation is a people bound by a shared sense of identity; society is the whole web of associations, of which the state is one.
Four theories explain how the state began: God created it (divine origin), the strong subdued the weak (force), people agreed to form it (social contract), or it grew slowly out of kinship, religion, force, economic need and political consciousness (evolutionary). The last is the most widely accepted.
Sovereignty is the supreme power of the state: over all persons inside it, and free of control from outside.
Do not use 'state' and 'government' as the same word. A change of cabinet, or even of the whole form of government, does not end the state; the loss of sovereignty does.
Answer: It lacks sovereignty, so it is a unit of a state and not a state itself.
Type what you are stuck on. The helper finds the explanation, worked examples and the notes to read, free and instant.
← Nature, scope and approachesPower, authority, legitimacy and key concepts →Take a Political Science test