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A sovereign state is a state that has the supreme sovereignty or ultimate authority over a territory. [1] It is commonly understood that a sovereign state is independent . [ 2 ] When referring to a specific polity , the term " country " may also refer to a constituent country, or a dependent territory .
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, retain sovereignty over the government and where offices of state are not granted through heritage. [76] [77] A common modern definition of a republic is a government having a head of state who is not a monarch. [78] [79]
The dominant customary international law standard of statehood is the declarative theory of statehood, which was codified by the Montevideo Convention of 1933. The Convention defines the state as a person of international law if it "possess[es] the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) a capacity to enter into relations with the ...
A state can be distinguished from a government. The state is the organization while the government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time. [50] [51] [52] That is, governments are the means through which state power is employed.
While each of the state governments within the United States holds legal and administrative jurisdiction within its bounds, [3] they are not sovereign in the Westphalian sense in international law which says that each state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non ...
An expanded definition appears in Economy and Society: A compulsory political organization with continuous operations will be called a 'state' [if and] insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force (das Monopol legitimen physischen Zwanges) in the enforcement of its order.
A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonomy, or be subject to the direct control of the federal government. This relationship may be defined by a ...
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the leaders of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the source of all political legitimacy. Citizens may unite and offer to delegate a portion of their sovereign powers and duties to those who wish to serve as officers of the state, contingent on the ...