Curated category
Political science terminology
- FascismThe word fascism originates from the Italian term fascio, meaning bundle of sticks. This concept traces back to ancient Rome where a fasces was a bundle of…
- TotalitarianismIn the early 1920s, Italian Fascists coined the word totalitarian to describe their own regime. Giovanni Amendola first used the term in 1923 to define a…
- Separation of powersPolybius wrote in his Histories, Book 6, about the Roman Republic during the second century before Christ. He described a mixed government ruled by three…
- NationBenedict Anderson described a nation as an imagined political community. He noted that members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their…
- LiberalismThe word liberal traces its root to the Latin liber, meaning free. One of the first recorded instances of liberal appeared in 1375 when it described the…
- State (polity)In 1933, the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States established four qualifications for a state: a permanent population, a defined…
- InstitutionAn institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain social behavior. This definition appears in the work of Alexander…
- Nation stateA nation state is a political entity where the state and the nation are broadly congruent. This term describes a centralized political organization ruling…