POLSCI 1AB3 Lecture 2: The State
1 Feb 2020
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Political science 1ab3 2020 lecture 2a the state. The state has been a central actor for much of the modern era: human communities have been organized and controlled largely under the authority of states. However - a world divided into separate states is not the only way of thinking about social/political life and how it is organized. In fact, looking at the world through a state-centric prism can be a conceptual prison if we are not careful. According to dickerson and flanagan: a state is defined by the joint presence of three factors: population, territory, and sovereignty. A state exists when a sovereign power effectively rules over a population residing within the boundaries of a fixed territory . Sovereignty has both internal and external aspects. Sovereignty implies that there is a clear hierarchy of authority within a community. The state has the authority to overrule all other actors: there is no higher authority: neither domestic nor foreign.
