What do you understand by the State in Modern World?

The state is an organized political community, living under a government states may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. There is no academic consensus on the most appropriate definition of the state.

The term “state” refers to a set of different, but interrelated and often overlapping, theories about a certain range of political phenomena. The act of defining the term can be seen as part of an ideological conflict, because different definitions lead to different theories of state function, and as a result validate different political strategies.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a state is “An organized political’ community under one government, a commonwealth, a nation; such a community forming part of a federal republic, especially the United states of America”.

Max Weber’s commonly used definition describes the state as a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory. General categories, of state institutions include administrative bureaucracies, legal systems and military or religious organizations. states may be classified as sovereign if they are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state.

Other states are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony where ultimate sovereignty lies in another state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union. A federated state is a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federation. Such states differ from sovereign states, in that they have transferred a portion of their sovereign powers to a federal government.

The concept of the state can be distinguished from the concept of government. The government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy, which controls the state apparatus at a given time.

That is, governments are the means through which state power is employed. states are served by a continuous succession of different governments. Each successive government is composed of a specialized and privileged body of individuals, who monopolize political decision-making, and are separated by status and organization from the population as a whole.

Their function is to enforce existing laws, legislate new ones, and arbitrate conflicts via their monopoly on violence. In some societies, this group is often a self-perpetuating or hereditary class. In other societies, such as democracies, the political roles remain, but there is frequent turnover of the people actually filling the position.