POLSCI 1AB3 Lecture 2: Lecture 2a - State
17 Apr 2021
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Human communities are, by and large, organized under the authority of states. However - a world divided into separate states is not the only way of thinking about. A state-centric prism can also be a conceptual prison if we are not careful social/political life and how it is organized. 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. Sovereignty has both internal and external aspects. Sovereignty implies that there is one final source of authority within a community. The sovereign is recognized as having the authority to overrule all others. There is no higher authority: neither domestic nor foreign. Sovereigns (at least in principle) acknowledge that their legal authority does not extend.
