Governed Society
A Governed Society is a human society with a sovereign/government (that possesses a monopoly on legitimate coercion) that exercises power over a defined territory.
- AKA: Polity State, Sovereign State.
- Context:
- It can range from being a Top-Polity to being a Sub-Polity.
- It can range from being a Patrimonial State to being a Modern State.
- It can (typically) contain an Executive Branch.
- It can (typically) contain a Bureaucracy.
- It can (often) have a Head of State.
- It can be evaluated by a Sovereign State Measure (sovereign state score).
- …
- Example(s):
- a Nation State.
- a City State.
- a Bronze Age City, such as Uruk ~3200BC?
- a Mohawk Nation Village.
- …
- Counter-Example(s)
- a Stateless Society.
- a Tribal Society, a Band Society, or a Neolithic Settlement.
- a Global Government.
- See: Sovereign State, Sovereignty, Civil Society, Civil Authorities.
References
2015
- (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/polity Retrieved:2015-8-11.
- A polity is a state or one of its subordinate civil authorities, such as a province, prefecture, county, municipality, city, or district. [1] It is generally understood to mean a geographic area with a corresponding government. Thomas Hobbes considered bodies politic in this sense in Leviathan. [2] In previous centuries, body politic was also understood to mean "the physical person of the sovereign:" emperor, king or dictator in monarchies and despotisms, and the electorate in republics. In present times, it may also refer to representation of a group, such as ones drawn along ethnic or the gender lines. Cabinets in liberal democracies are chosen to represent the body politic.
- ↑ See: Black's Law Dictionary, 4th ed., West Publishing Co., (1968), and Uricich v. Kolesar, 54 Ohio App. 309, 7 N.E. 2d 413.
- ↑ Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (1651); http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/hobblev2.pdf; accessed 28 November 2008.
2014
- (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity) Retrieved:2014-10-17.
- A state is an organized community living under one government. States may be sovereign. The term state is also applied 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. [1] The state can also be used to refer to the secular branches of government within a state, [2] often as a manner of contrasting them with churches and civilian institutions.
Many human societies have been governed by states for millennia, however for most of pre-history people lived in stateless societies. The first states arose about 5,500 years ago in conjunction with rapid growth of cities, invention of writing, and codification of new forms of religion. Over time, a variety of different forms developed, employing a variety of justifications for their existence (such as divine right, the theory of the social contract, etc.). Today, however, the modern nation-state is the predominant form of state to which people are subject.
- A state is an organized community living under one government. States may be sovereign. The term state is also applied 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. [1] The state can also be used to refer to the secular branches of government within a state, [2] often as a manner of contrasting them with churches and civilian institutions.
- ↑ For example the Vichy France (1940-1944) officially referred to itself as l'État français.
- ↑ https://mises.org/pdf/anatomy.pdf
- (Fukuyama, 2014a) ⇒ Francis Fukuyama. (2014). “Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy." Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN:0374227357
- QUOTE: The next important political transition was from a tribal to a state-level society. A state, in contrast to a band or tribe, possesses a monopoly on legitimate coercion and exercises that power over a defined territory. Because they are centralized and hierarchical, states tend to produce higher degrees of social inequality than earlier kinship-based forms of organization.
There are in turn two broad types of state. In those described by the sociologist Max Weber as “patrimonial,” the polity is considered a type of personal property of the ruler, and state administration is essentially an extension of the ruler’s household. The natural forms of sociability, reliance on family and friends, are still at work in patrimonial states. A modern state, on the other hand, is impersonal: a citizen’s relationship to the ruler does not depend on personal ties but simply on one’s status as citizen. State administration does not consist of the ruler’s family and friends; rather, recruitment to administrative positions is based on impersonal criteria such as merit, education, or technical knowledge.
- QUOTE: The next important political transition was from a tribal to a state-level society. A state, in contrast to a band or tribe, possesses a monopoly on legitimate coercion and exercises that power over a defined territory. Because they are centralized and hierarchical, states tend to produce higher degrees of social inequality than earlier kinship-based forms of organization.
2012
- (Fukuyama, 2012) ⇒ Francis Fukuyama. (2012). “The Strange Absence of the State in Political Science.” In: The American Interest.
- QUOTE: It is a curious fact that in contemporary American political science, very few people want to study the state, that is, the functioning of executive branches and their bureaucracies. Since the onset of the Third Wave of democratizations now more than a generation ago, the overwhelming emphasis in comparative politics has been on democracy, transitions to democracy, human rights, ethnic conflict, violence, transitional justice, and the like. There is of course interest in stability, but primarily as the absence of violence and conflict. Studies of non-democratic countries focus on issues like authoritarian persistence, meaning that the focus still remains the question of democracy in the long run or democratic transition. In other words, most people are interested in studying political institutions that limit or check power — democratic accountability and rule of law — but very few people pay attention to the institution that accumulates and uses power, the state.
1651
- (Hobbes, 1651) ⇒ Thomas Hobbes. (1651). “Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil"