POSC 017 Lecture 2: POSC017 Lec#2 9/29/16
2 Oct 2016
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The most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government. (samuel huntington 1991) Ex: when you call the police, you get a relatively fast response time. A compulsory political organization will be called a state" insofar as its administrative staff upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force is the enforcement. Sovereignty (within territory a group/body having authority) Agencies for taxing and policing the population (roads, schools, law enforcement, etc) Ex: cop asking for license, judge making decision. Modern states have mostly a rational-legal legitimacy. The state is an abstraction, the gov is a concrete organization. Governments come and go, whereas state remains. A nation is a collectively held political identity. Ex: kurdistan contains turkey, syria, iraq, armenia, etc. There is also opposite- switzerland:one state many nations. The state is an enforcer or contracts. The state is a provider of public goods and services.
