the united kingdom is a state.
The United Kingdom is a State
The United States is a State
The states in the U.S. are states
notice the difference? Subtle, I know.
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Political terminology for sovereign bodies is a bitch that isn't even universal in education. Each discipline seems to have their own descriptions.
The best I've been taught?
A State is a sovereign entity
A Nation is a loosely-defined territory consisting of people of the same culture and ideology
A Nation-State is a sovereign entity with a single cultural constitution
Isn't that fun?
The states in the U.S.A. are, or... more correctly
were, defined bodies of sovereignty that simply shared a political union (like the E.U. currently). Over time the sovereignty of the states was slowly stripped away, although the pace has been hastening in the past century, at an exponential rate.
🙁
Though technically, the term is still apt even without the sovereign status. Because they are, in lawful terms, somewhat sovereign in the sense of a Republic.
Remember City-States? Aside from Vatican City, they really don't exist any more. But the concept was much the same, each entity within a Republic is sovereign, except for when they aren't.
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In the sense of territories within a sovereign State, you can see what can only be described as degrees of sovereignty, with Republics by the structural basis offering the most sovereignty for their territories than other governing styles.
Shit... I still cannot believe Canada is not a State. WTF is up with that?!
At least, if it is, it is not described as such anywhere I have seen. I always assumed it was, as the link to monarchy is so diluted it seems non-existent, unless I'm completely aloof to the Canada-U.K. interaction.