Country Totally Explained

In political geography and international politics, a country is a political division of a geographical entity, a sovereign territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation and government.
In common usage, the term is used casually in the sense of both "nation" (a cultural entity; see below) and "state" (a political entity; see below). Definitions may vary. It is sometimes used to refer to both states and some other political entities., while in some occasions it refers only to state. It isn't uncommon for general information or statistical publications to adopt the wider definition for purposes such as illustration and comparison.
There are dozens of non-sovereign territories (subnational entities, another form of political division or Administrative division within the expanse [realmor scope] of a larger nation-state) which constitute cohesive geographical entities, some of which are former countries, but which are not sovereign states. Most of these nowadays even have a great deal of autonomy and local governments but such don't constitute a nation as they're possessions of such statesas several states have overseas dependencies, with territory and citizenry separate from their own. Such dependencies are sometimes listed together with states on lists of countries.
In addition to these, there are other non-sovereign territories which, under the philosophy of self-determination, wish to be considered countries in this sense. Some of these have de facto control over their population and territory, such as Abkhazia, but are not considered states as they're not recognised as having sovereignty. On the other hand, in some internationally-recognised states, there's no functioning central government or there are several de facto states and governments. These are internationally not considered to constitute separate states, but rather to exist on the territory of the internationally recognised state.

Nation

A nation is a 'set of people with a common identity who have formed a nation-state or usually aspire to do so' (Viotti and Kauppi, 2001). In this sense of country, the reference is more likely to be to a group that supposedly shares a common ethnic origin, language, religion, or history (real or illusory). The term has become synonymous with 'country' where nations without sovereignty (that is, nations that are not states) have aimed to identify themselves on the same terms as sovereign states. Others, including nationalists, may consider their single nation (or country) to be divided between different states.

Nation, country and state: a comparison

The casual use of 'country', 'state' and 'nation' as synonyms leads to confusion. Confounding this is the often confused official use: for example, the United Nations is actually a body made of 'states'; and the countries constituting the United Kingdom are sometimes called the home nations.
The United Kingdom is an internationally recognised sovereign state, which is also referred to as a country and whose inhabitants have British nationality. The terminology can be further complicated by the use of the word state to mean a non-sovereign sub-entity of a sovereign state, as is done in the United States of America and Australia. In most English-speaking countries when the terms state, nation and country are used internally, they're understood by the context in which they're used and are not controversial. However, when these terms are used to describe the statehood aspirations of a people who don't currently live in the internationally recognised independent State they'd like to dominate, these terms can be controversial and open to misunderstanding.
In reality, there's often a rough correspondence between both senses of country - this is the concept of the nation-state. It is one that many governments have attempted to encourage, in order to provide legitimacy to their control over a territory. However, because of historical and modern migration, ethnically homogeneous communities are rare or non-existent - Iceland and Japan being the most commonly quoted exceptions (and even this ignores minority aboriginal groups, such as the Ainu and Ryūkyūans, in the case of Japan.) However, nations may also be defined by culture instead of ethnicity.

External results

Click here for more details on Country

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://country.totallyexplained.com">Country Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.