AP Comparative Government and Politics States and Their Components

States and Their Components Defining States What is a State? ● States are political organizations. ● In day-to-day terms, you may be more familiar with the term “countries.” Although states and countries differ in terms of definition, knowing that they are similar will give you an advantage in understanding what states are. ● A state must have four distinct factors, which are: 1. A permanent population 2. Governing institutions 3. (Control over) A defined territory 4. International recognition ● States also have sovereignty, which means that they are essentially “at the top of the ladder” when making decisions for the people. ○ Much like CEOs that oversee a company, they do not have to confer with another person when making choices (although this doesn’t mean that they can do whatever they want). ● Today, it is customary to understand states as the fundamental unit of political systems. Measuring States Strong, Weak, and Failed States ● When looking into strong, weak, and failed states, you look at the state’s capacity, which is essentially how well it functions. In other words, a state should be able to make, enact, and enforce different policies. ● A strong state is any state that is able to execute these functions well. ● On the other hand, a weak state is a state that doesn’t have the capacity to do the things that strong states do. ● Weak states may have a hard time providing legal guidelines for enacting different policies. Sometimes, they may be severely underfunded, leading to the same result. ● Then, there are failed states, which are states that fail to provide basic necessities, like law and order, to their people. ● Oftentimes, in failed states, it’s nearly impossible to resolve internal issues like crime and mortality, because the state lacks the ability to do so. Hence, people who ruin the social order (like criminals) are able to easily get away with something that’s disruptive to society. ○ Currently, some failed states include Yemen, Somalia, and South Sudan. Legitimacy ● Legitimacy is how much people accept and believe the state’s right to rule the state. ● Legitimacy is critical for a state to maintain its control over the people. Without the people to believe and support them, a state essentially has no power. Therefore, they need to gain a form of legitimacy. ● You can measure and compare different states’ degree of legitimacy. A state that is trusted and accepted by its people regarding its policies would be more legitimate than a state where everyone thinks that it is bad at, and doesn't deserve the right to, policymaking. ● Another thing that you can measure is how different states derive their legitimacy. ● Traditional legitimacy is when a ruler is accepted because that’s how it has always been. ○ For example, monarchies often maintain traditional legitimacies for hundreds of years because power has always just been passed on from one generation of a certain family to the next. ● Charismatic legitimacy (also related to the term personality cult) is when one person is the central part of a state’s legitimacy. ● Thinking in a historical context, it’s very easy to see that charismatic legitimacies happen after significant revolutions. After success, a central person in the revolution will rise to power and will be praised by the public as a sort of “national hero.” ● Rational-legal legitimacy occurs when official and legal rules are the foundation of the state’s legitimacy. These rules determine who rules, when they do, and what they can do then. Because leaders accept and follow these rules, the people trust the state. Centralization vs. Decentralization ● Different states employ different strategies to rule nations. One of these strategies is where the power is located in a state, i.e. whether it is concentrated, or dispersed throughout the territory. ● Unitary states choose to concentrate most (or all) of their power in one level of government. (Remember, in this context, level equates to central and regional.) ○ Among the core countries, the United Kingdom, China, and Iran are unitary states. ● However, just because a state is unitary doesn’t mean that it can’t employ federalist policies. Devolution occurs when the central government gives certain important powers to regional governments. ● Federal states maintain an official (and constitutional) division of power between the central and regional governments. The regional governments are established as a part of the regime and conduct different essential activities. ● A prominent example would be the United States of America. Among the core countries, Russia (although debatable in recent days), Mexico, and Nigeria are federal states. Related Information Institutions ● You’ll probably remember that there are two types of institutions. ● State institutions carry out policy making tasks. ○ In most states, there will be a military, a legislature, an executive, and bureaucracies. ● Linkage institutions connect the people to the policymaking process. ○ Examples include political parties, voting, the media, and different interest groups. ● The sovereignty of a state, as well as its capacity, can be seen in different institutions. Nations, Regimes, and Governments ● Although these can be used interchangeably in some contexts, it’s critical to differentiate between them when taking this course. Term Definition Nation A group of people who share commonalities, like race, religion, language, political identity, ethnicity, and most importantly, the desire for sovereignty. ● Nations are not identical to states. Some states have a stronger sense of nationality than others, and some nations don’t have states at all. ● Stateless nations occur when nations are wrongly distributed into different states and their political systems. Regime The rules that oversee a political system’s operations. A regime determines the acquisition and practice of political power. ● Regimes can be determined by law (or constitution), as well as the person(people) who run the country. ● Regimes can change for multiple reasons. 1. Reforms are gradual and evolutionary changes. 2. Revolutions are sudden and extreme changes. 3. Coup d’états are when the military seizes political power. Government The people who currently hold political power in official positions of authority. ○ Therefore, when the president changes, there would be a change in government. ● Government change can happen through regular political actions (such as an election), or with actions that also change the regime. The Rise of Supranational Organizations ● Supranational organizations are organizations that involve many states (through their representatives) in order to make decisions for the states involved. ● Examples of supranational organizations include: ○ The European Union (EU) ○ The World Trade Organization (WTO) ○ The United Nations (UN) ● Supranational organizations’ decisions are not obligations for the states to follow. However, they could use political pressure from member states or threaten to revoke the benefits from being a member state to “enforce” their policies and decisions.