POLSCI 1G06 Lecture 15: October 29, 2013 - The State - Lecture #15.doc
31 Dec 2014
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Document Summary
The state as an institution has a history. It is not the only way of organizing political authority and political community. 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 : note that all of the bolded terms have a history that needs to be further explored. It is an institution with its own history. As an institution, sovereignty has both internal and external aspects. In the modern context, sovereigns (at least in principle) acknowledge that there are limitations to their own authority that their legal authority does not extend outside of their own state. Even in the recent past of canada, the idea that sovereign authority corresponds with the territorial borders of the canadian state is only partially true.
