Talk:State (polity)

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Should this page not link to the disambiguation page about states? Even the etymolgy of the word implies that the first meaning was not about the US. Would anybody like to comment on this?

"Curently the entire land surface of the Earth..."

User:Hogeye edited the article to include the following:

Currently the entire land surface of the Earth is divided among the territories of the roughly two hundred states now existing, with the exception of Somaliland (stateless since 1991 but unrecognized by the UN [1]) and the continent of Antarctica.

I previously corrected "more than two hundred states" to the vaguer but I think more accurate "roughly two hundred states," on the grounds that most if not all sovereign states and the United Nations do not recognize more than two hundred other states. Seven countries have partitioned Antarctica; the United States does not recognize these claims. The fact that these claims have been made by serious countries, however, forces us to qualify "with the exception...of Antarctica."

Somaliland is itself a state existing in the otherwise lawless country of Somalia. The author might have meant Somalia instead. The existence of the new transnational government complicates the matter, not to mention that most of the country is controlled by de facto states. There are other regions in the world that would qualify according to some rubric for being stateless - the interior of Colombia is lawless, along with the uplands of Uganda where the Lord's Resistance Army hangs out, the disputed Spratly Islands, Transnistria, the Triple Frontier region in South America, and probably a whole lot of other ones that could qualify with varying degrees of clarity. My point is that we probably don't need to be asserting any of them, particularly not in the introduction. It would be difficult to actively assert any selection of them without a serious discussion of what qualifies a state, and therefore statelessness, and why these territories qualify; a claim may well be enough, and since that is beyond the scope of the introduction, I think a vague reference to "disputed territories and the special case of Antarctica" would be better. Adam Faanes 4 July 2005 02:22 (UTC)

Someone wrote> "Somaliland is itself a state existing in the otherwise lawless country of Somalia."

This is mistaken. Somaliland is a stateless society, with competing legal/arbitration entities based on the Xeer (traditional law centuries old). What probably fooled the person above was that the UN does not recognize Somaliland - instead decreeing that the artificial colonial French, English and Dutch former colonies (Somalia, Somaland, and Puntland) are one State. This is simply a bald claim by the UN and those attempting to impose statist rule from afar (e.g. the constitution made by UN bureaucrats in Cairo, the installing of a Puntland warlord as "president" of Somalia even though the local won't recognize him, etc.) Anyway, if you study up a little bit on "Xeer" and "Somaliland" you'll see that only in foreign UN statists' eyes is Somaliland a part of Somalia. Hogeye 3 July 2005 16:49 (UTC)

In order to say that, you have to assert a definition of government, and indeed, you have to force your definition of what a state is on others before we have even entered into the topic - ironically, since that is what you accuse the United Nations of doing. This is not something that deserves to be put in the introduction. Besides which, the "Somaliland" entity has an army, a constitution, and a central bank. Beside that, the entire land area of the country is claimed by another recognized state (the new transnational government) which would, according to the constitutive theory of statehood we mention later in the article, deny Somaliland any chance at statehood. You cannot formally reject that theory in the introduction or else you're denying a fair hearing. Beyond that, the entity of "Somaliland has been titled a state by Le Monde[1], this policy analysis site [2], in its official news outlet[3], the Somaliland Times [4], the Ethiopian Addis Tribune [5], these political analysis of the situation [6] [7] [8], the Somaliland Policy and Reconstruction Insitute [9], the UN [10], Reporters sans frontieres [11], this news service [12], and most glaringly, in its constitution[13]. But all that is irrelevant beyond demonstrating that the issue is controversial, and it is not something that should be asserted in the introductory section of the article.Adam Faanes 4 July 2005 02:22 (UTC)

Nation versus Country, and the State

There is a distinction made between "country" and "nation" where country has also been used to mean the body of people, its territory, and a single national government. Granted "nation" is a better description of a "country" to avoid the confusion of describing the less populated areas of a nation also called country. Country is still often used to describe a nation. State is correct when applied to a body of people with its territory under one government. The United States also makes distinctions for "state" to be one of its subdivisions under its Federal government where at the start of the United States each State was an independent entity. Each State of the United States does possess independent government capacities apart from the national government; and, the current United States took 218 years (with State being a Constitutional word of the supreme law of the land) and one civil war to look like it does in the year 2005.

Franz Oppenheimer

http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/state0.htm One cannot understand the whole by studying only the parts, and if the whole is forgotten or explained away as unimportant. we condemn ourselves to ignorance. Dawson

Origins on the State

Unlike Locke and others, Oppenheimer rejected the idea of the "social contract" and contributed to the "conquest theory" of the State:

"The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors."

"No primitive state known to history originated in any other manner. [1] Wherever a reliable tradition reports otherwise, either it concerns the amalgamation of two fully developed primitive states into one body of more complete organisation; or else it is an adaptation to men of the fable of the sheep which made a bear their king in order to be protected against the wolf. But even in this latter case, the form and content of the State became precisely the same as in those states where nothing intervened, and which became immediately 'wolf states'." (p. 15)

State and it's meaning

Is it always necessary that State is an organization as the article says? I suppose, it could not be, because it is a sovereign legitimate political authority and it could take any form. It could be even the Constitution as in the case of India Or a Parliament as in the case of UK. It is the highest legitimate political authority ruling over a definite territory and a population and it may or may not possess a government. Icedlemonpeachtea (talk) 17:42, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

I've read things that critique the notion of state, and the degree to which it exists in the realm of ideas, or can be considered a single entity etc. I seem to remember Foucault going on about this, and imagine the post modernist crowd have opinions. Talpedia (talk) 22:01, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Michel Foucault advocated for radical view of power which is that one cannot locate power it could come from anywhere but the State is/has legitimate political power which is authority and authority may be located. It could be seen when it is exercised. Icedlemonpeachtea (talk) 04:48, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm not massively familiar with the topic, but we have

Foucault is renowned for his criticisms of state theory and advocacy of a bottom-up approach to social power; and for his hostility to many theoretical and practical manifestations of orthodox Marxism

I did not get the point you are trying to make regarding the theories of State. I just gave generally accepted features of a 𝙈𝙤𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙣 State in the field of Political Studies, and was a little surprised to see it termed as "organization". Icedlemonpeachtea (talk) 13:02, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Just that some postmodernist scholars and others) have critiqued the definition of the state in various ways, and that this seems to includes Foucault from the source, so this might be interesting to include. Talpedia (talk) 13:13, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

References

Philippine politics and governance

Example of state 103.236.177.84 (talk) 12:37, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

State

Community 106.206.13.47 (talk) 01:23, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Dias

State 49.145.113.89 (talk) 10:01, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Augustine ayuba

Augustine ayuba 8126820952 Opay — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.91.5.77 (talk) 19:28, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Language and State

Xing Yu advanced a theory about the origin and the growth of the state from the perspective of language. He argues that since humans began to use language, they have been able to develop and use media. Media in this context mean any form or being that facilitates linguistic communication. Media extend the distance of linguistic communication. Humans communicate and interact with one another on a large scale. They share traditional ideas, hold the same religious belief and gain the same historical memory. They unite for form a large community. This leads to the dissolution of tribes and the formation of the state. Language plays a crucial role in the growth of the state. He discusses this subject matter in two books. These two books are as follows:

Xing Yu, Language and State: An Inquiry into the Progress of Civilization, Second Edition, Friesen Press in Altona, MB, Canada,2021 isbn=978-1-5255-9506-6

Xing Yu, Language and State: A Theory of into the Progress of Civilization, Second Edition, Friesen Press in Altona, MB, Canada,2022 isbn=978-1-03--912517-9

I hope that the related contents can be added to the entry called the state in Wikipedia. 于星 (talk) 02:12, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Note that 于星 disclosed that they are Xing Yu at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Why was my editing reverted shortly after I did editing? GoingBatty (talk) 05:26, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

According to Google Scholar, this book Language and State: A Theory of into the Progress of Civilization has been cited only seven times, and three have to do with the niche topic of digital scanning of soiled bamboo scrolls from ancient China. It seems that the book's argument that the emergence of human language caused the development of political states has had no known impact on political science, linguistics or anthropology. The mainstream theories say that human speech and language emerged 250,000 to 100,00 years ago, but that political states emerged about 5,500 years ago, probably in Mesopotamia. I see no reason to cite this book in this article. Cullen328 (talk) 06:22, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Please see WP:SELFPUBLISH. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:05, 9 May 2023 (UTC)