The Development and Sustainability of the Concept of the State

Doi:: 10.23918/ilic2021.36

Keywords: State; Power; Sovereignty; Self-determination; Territorial Integrity.

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PROCEEDINGS OF 6th INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ISSUES CONFERENCE (ILIC2021)

Faculty of Law/ Tishk International University

Date: 25th November 2021

Venue: Kurdistan Region Erbil

ISBN:978-9922-9036-7-5

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Hoshang Dara Hama Ameen
ALecturer at Soran University, Faculty of Law, Political Science and Management; Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Dr. Saeideh Shariati Najafabadi
Associate Professor at Soran University, Faculty of Law, Political Science and Management, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

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Abstract:  The concept of the state has always been the focus point to those who study politics; this is to an extent that politics has been defined as the study of state. The fact is that, the state still is what mainly shapes the life of individuals within a society and also the way that the international relations are functioning. This, simply, means that the state still is an undeniable and a functioning actor. Beside this sustainability, the state has been developed in terms of both its conceptual meanings and functional tasks. However, it is still almost what it was, as an abstract concept. The present paper studies the concept of the state and examines its development and sustainability. It is about analysing the concept in a way that could be understood as an abstract concept through the history of political philosophy. It, moreover, discusses the state’s elements in more than a perspective as a multi-dimensional and multi-aspect concept. This is to find the contractions and paradoxes in thoughts and practices on the states. The main argument is that the state as a concept is developing its appearances and manifestations, and preserving its essence and its core nature at the same time. The paper would ask several questions, such as: to what extent the contemporary state could be considered as the extension of modern, medieval and ancient ones? What are developments that the state as a concept has experienced and how it could preserve its main essence and always remains as state itself? To address these questions, the study uses qualitative methods of analysis within the framework of political science. It depends on secondary data to analyse related themes from different philosophical, legal and political perspectives. This will be about deconstructing the concept of the state into its component elements to know what state made of; and then to reconstruct them in a different way to know what the real nature of the state is. The research has been structured in a way that its chapters and section be helpful to conduct the methodology and to answer the questions. In doing so, the paper would have a philosophical conceptual framework of the concept of the state. It also analyses the concept from a legal and political perspectives. These all are about analysing the development and sustainability of the concept of the state.

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