Please explain the concept of "country" in detail.

Hehe, don't take it too seriously, or you will fall into sophistry and become an extreme unilateralist. What is the definition of that country? Please refer to the following information, hoping to inspire you.

definition

Cicero's Republic: The state is the cause of the people, and the people are the aggregate of many people based on the unity of law and interests. Weber's "Economy and Society" (I): The state is an institutional power operation institution, which monopolizes legal individual coercion when implementing its rules. Dugit: The state is a mass organization. In this organization, people are divided into rulers and ruled. Bodin: The Republic of China is a sovereign country that manages public affairs. Engels: The state is the political authority of the economically dominant class for class rule. In a word, it is an abstract authority, which is based on violence or legitimacy, grows in society and is above society. If we make a list of all the components in a country according to the scope, the position of the country is probably: society-politics-country-government. The difference between the motherland and the country: the former is the concept of region, culture, history, religion, and sometimes nationality and race, while the country is the political authority. The difference between state and government: In the relationship between state and government, sometimes the concepts of state and motherland are indistinguishable. When the division of labor is very clear, the state is greater than the government, especially the state is synonymous with the sovereign, and the government is only the public servant of the state, the executor of power and the entrusted person. But in the international arena, the concept of state is much broader than domestic politics. At this time, the country is the subject of international law, the representative of the whole society within the country, and the representative of all the people in this country, which is very close to the motherland in domestic politics.

The origin of the nation

The state was not born with the civil society, it is the product of the development of human social life to a certain extent, or from the Marxist point of view, it is the product and expression of irreconcilable social contradictions. It should be a historical phenomenon, that is, it was born at a certain stage of the development of human society and will disappear at a certain stage.

There are two ways for western political circles to study the origin of a country. One is to compare the different political and social forms of human beings to see the particularity of modern countries relative to other forms of political organization. The first is to observe and describe the development track of western countries in history.

The result of the first way of thinking is to summarize the three characteristics of modern countries (namely, the three signs of the origin of the country):

1) Specialization of rulers and officials.

2) centralization of power center. At the same time, a unified and pyramid-shaped legal system (in a country ruled by law: constitution-law-regulations-administrative orders) or normative system has been formed nationwide.

3) The institutionalization, depersonalization and depersonalization of political power. This first means the separation of abstract public power from rulers: rulers are not countries, not public power itself, but only its executors or representatives in a certain period. It also means that the exercise of public power should be strictly limited within the statutory scope, and its use should strictly abide by the existing laws, rather than the personal likes and dislikes of the rulers, and all uncertain factors should be excluded.

Through the observation of the second way of thinking, we can see that the country grew up gradually in civil society and came into being to meet the needs of social development.

It has gone through the following processes: in the west, the city-state represented by the Greek city-state-empire (Macedonia or Rome)-nation-nation (Etat-Cité).

In the East, represented by China, countries appeared earlier and their forms rarely changed. The Qin Dynasty laid the foundation of China's modern state.

In the west, the establishment of a modern nation-state probably began in Britain and France in the13rd century, and its typical feature is the struggle between kingship, religious power and feudal power. In this process, the status of the state's independence from civil society has become increasingly prominent.

The first stage is the struggle between kingship and religious power;

The second stage is to eliminate the personal attachment of serfs and tenant farmers to the lords, so that the people of the whole country have only one superior: the king. After the revolution, this loyalty to the king was transformed into loyalty to the nation and loyalty to the motherland, and citizens in the modern sense appeared.

The third stage is the emergence of various political and administrative institutions, such as town councils and various advisory bodies (gradually evolved into government ministries), which is the beginning of modern bureaucracy.

The fourth stage is the increasing legalization of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. This process can be counted from the British Magna Carta, and the petition of Rheinische Zeitung of 1628 and the Bill of Rights of 1689 were initially realized. It standardized political power and its application within the framework of written law, and later became the pioneer of representative system. By the North American War of Independence, especially the French Revolution, this process was basically completed: a written constitution was formulated and a civil rights bill was promulgated, so that individuals could resist the excessive behavior of the state.

Elements and categories of countries

As we have said, sometimes a country means not only exercising political power within a civil society, but also the society itself in a political sense, such as in international relations. It is in this sense that several French and German scholars at the beginning of the 20th century, such as Jelinek, Labande and Kare de Mahlberg, founded the theory of three elements of state, emphasizing the unity of political power, territory and people.

The theory of three elements of the state can be summarized as follows: when a nation lives in a fixed territory (often the same nation or has the same sense of identity) and exercises legitimate political power in this nation, there is a state.

The so-called territory is three-dimensional in the present world: territory, territorial sea and airspace.

As a basic element of a country, territory is not just a piece of land where people live. It also forms a part of the historical, cultural and religious memory of this country and this nation, is the symbol of this country, and is the link that connects people and makes them identify with each other. Sometimes, the latter role even leads to conflicts between different races and nationalities, such as Kosovo and Jerusalem.

The most ideal territorial boundary is of course the natural boundary: mountains and rivers. But more often, the borders of modern countries are treaty borders. 19-20th century, the sanctity of borders was widely recognized by the international community and became the carrier of national sovereignty. At the end of the 20th century, with the development of economy and the interdependence and communication among countries, the importance of borders has changed.

The so-called people, in the past, especially in western Europe, first referred to a nation. In modern times, it refers to all people who are subject to sovereign power. Can be a nation, can also include several ethnic groups; It can be a local, that is, a person who obtains this status through blood relationship, or a naturalized foreign immigrant. When they leave their country, they will not lose their citizenship.

People are not just subjects of the country. In modern countries, it is first of all an important role in political life and the only source of the legitimacy of a country's political power and sovereignty. According to natural law theory and modern democratic theory, it existed before the emergence of state power, or they created the country. In the domestic political field, people are more defined as citizens, that is, people who have the right to participate in political affairs. It transcends people's differences in economic status, culture and occupation, and gives people a new identity.

Legitimate political power (government) is an important role and legal person in a country's political life. Therefore, the will of the state is different from the personal will of the ruler. In domestic affairs, it manages people according to law, handles conflicts among people fairly, and handles relations with other domestic legal persons as the central authority. It monopolizes the legal force and unilaterally formulates legal norms, which is an authority. Of course, in a modern country ruled by law, public power must also operate within the scope of its laws.

National classification

In the anthropological sense, we can divide a country into a mono-ethnic country or a multi-ethnic country.

In the sense of political science, we can divide countries into monarchies or republics, democracies or autocratic countries.

In the political and economic sense, we can divide countries into liberal countries or socialism, state interventionism and state protectionism.

However, our classification here is in the sense of public law, that is, countries are divided into unitary countries-—Etat unitaire (centralization or decentralization) and federal countries-—Etat fédéral (there is also the so-called confederation of state, but here, confederation is not a country, but a national alliance, each of which retains sovereign power).

The basic feature of a unitary state is that the central government monopolizes all constitutional powers, especially legislative power and judicial power. In this sense, in fact, the unitary state is centralized.

A unitary state can be centralized or decentralized (the definition of decentralization is different from decentralization and federalism).

A federal state means that the central government and local governments share constitutional power, and the ways and degrees of sharing are not exactly the same in different countries.

National concept

There have been different views and debates about the definition of a country. On the basis of in-depth study of the causes of the emergence of the state and its laws of development and change, and summing up the characteristics of various types of countries and their position and role in social life, Marxism puts forward a comprehensive and scientific definition of the state: "The state is a machine in which one class oppresses another class and one class controls all the ruled classes." This is V·I· Lenin's most comprehensive and accurate summary of Marx and Engels' view of state. It includes three meanings: ① The state is the organization of class society. This shows that the state is a historical phenomenon, which has never existed and will not exist forever. It is the result of the development of contradictions within society and the irreconcilable product of class contradictions after the emergence of private ownership and class formation. Similarly, the country will inevitably die with the complete elimination of class and class contradictions. This is the objective law of a country's emergence, development and demise. (2) the country is ruled by class. This points out the essence of the country, that is, which class of regime governs the country. In class society, the rule of any class comes from their economic rule, and the economic rule of a class must be maintained and consolidated by its political rule, so the state power always belongs to the economically dominant class. Political rule is the resultant force of the ruling class and the expression of the collective will and strength of the ruling class, which is generally realized through the will of the state. The essence of a slave country is the rule of the slave owner class, the essence of a feudal country is the rule of the landlord class, the essence of a capitalist country is the rule of the bourgeoisie, and the essence of a socialist country is the rule of the proletariat. (3) The country is a machine. It vividly points out that the country is an interconnected organic whole composed of many parts. The main difference between a state organization and other social organizations is that it has the ability to force the ruled class to obey the will of the state. There are officials (cadres) who exercise this power, military, police, courts, prisons and other compulsory organs that realize this power, and there are taxes and national debt that support officials and compulsory organs. These three items constitute an organizational force and material force, that is, a special social force.