Polity

A polity is a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of political, institutionalized, social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. It is the unit or entity of a political community or body politic.

A polity can be any group of people organized for governance, such as by the board of a corporation, and in the case of a federal country, the government that exists at both its federal level and the level of its subdivided regions. A polity may have various forms, such as a republic administered by an elected representative, a realm of a hereditary monarch, an incorporated city managed by an appointed mayor, and many others.

The preeminent or most fundamental polities today are generally understood to be federal and unitary states made up of Westphalian states and nation-states, commonly referred to as countries, which, in the case of the former, may govern federated states varyingly referred to as states, provinces, regions, cantons, lands, governorates, oblasts, emirates, or countries (in the narrow definition). These form the basis of international law and organizations, such as the United Nations (itself the governing structure of a global polity).