1.2 - Defining Political Organizations
Political Systems
A political system is basically the whole package of laws, ideas, and procedures that determine who has authority to rule and how much influence the government has over people and the economy. It's the overall framework political activity happens within.
States
A state is a political organization with four key features:
- A permanent population (people actually living there)
- Defined territory (clear borders)
- Governing institutions (structures that exercise control)
- International recognition (other states acknowledge it)
Sovereignty means a state has independent legal authority over the population in its territory. This includes the right to govern without outside interference, the legitimate power to enforce policy, and ultimate authority within its own borders. Japan, for instance, governs its islands and makes its own laws without needing anyone else's permission.
Regimes
A regime is the fundamental set of rules that controls who gets access to political power and how that power is used. Regimes usually outlast individual governments, they set up how power is gained and exercised, and they stick around even when leadership changes.
Regimes are generally classified as:
- Democratic, where the rules allow broad participation, competitive elections, and limits on power
- Authoritarian, where the rules concentrate power, restrict participation, and limit any challenge to authority
When France moved from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic in 1958, the regime changed (new rules about presidential power) even though France stayed the same state.
Governments
A government is the specific set of institutions or people who are legally empowered to make binding decisions for a state at a given time. Governments change often, through elections, coups, whatever, while regimes persist across many different governments. A government's authority comes from the state's legitimate right to use power.
The UK is a good example: it's had lots of different governments (Conservative, Labour) but the regime, a constitutional monarchy with parliamentary democracy, has stayed the same.
Recent UK politics shows this clearly. In July 2024, a general election swapped Rishi Sunak's Conservative government for Keir Starmer's Labour government. Then in July 2026, Labour replaced Starmer with Andy Burnham as prime minister with no general election at all. That's two changes of government in two years, but the regime (the rules about how power is gained and used) didn't change.
Nations
A nation is a group of people who share things like race, language, religion, ethnicity, political identity, or common goals. Nations and states are not the same thing:
- A nation is about shared identity and culture
- A state is about political organization and territory
- A nation-state is when a nation and a state line up (this is actually pretty rare in its pure form)
- A multinational state is one state containing multiple nations
- A stateless nation is a nation without its own state
The Kurds are the classic example of a stateless nation: they share language, culture, and identity, but they don't have their own sovereign state, and Kurdish populations are spread across Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
Course country examples: the United Kingdom is a multinational state that brings together England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and Scottish national identity is strong enough that Scotland held an independence referendum in 2014 (about 55% voted to stay in the UK). Nigeria is a multinational state with more than 250 ethnic groups, the largest being the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and the Igbo in the southeast. Iran is home to millions of Kurds, part of the stateless Kurdish nation.
The Six Course Countries (as of 2026)
Here's how the state, regime, and government ideas apply to each course country:
Country | Regime | Government (top leaders, as of October 2026) |
China | Authoritarian: one-party state run by the Chinese Communist Party | Xi Jinping (party general secretary since 2012, president since 2013); Premier Li Qiang |
Iran | Authoritarian: theocracy (the Islamic Republic) with some elected offices | Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei (since March 2026); President Masoud Pezeshkian (since 2024) |
Mexico | Democratic but not fully consolidated (Freedom House: Partly Free) | President Claudia Sheinbaum of Morena (since October 2024) |
Nigeria | Democratic in form, with competitive elections, but weak rule of law; often called an illiberal democracy or hybrid regime (Freedom House: Partly Free) | President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (since May 2023) |
Russia | Authoritarian: the CED calls it a competitive authoritarian regime or illiberal democracy, since it holds elections that aren't free or fair (Freedom House: Not Free) | President Vladimir Putin (2000 to 2008, and again since 2012); Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin (since 2020) |
United Kingdom | Democratic: constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system | King Charles III (head of state since 2022); Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Labour (since July 2026) |
Several of these governments changed recently without the regime changing: Mexico and Nigeria elected new presidents, the UK's governing party swapped prime ministers, and Iran's Assembly of Experts picked a new Supreme Leader after Ali Khamenei was killed in US and Israeli airstrikes in February 2026 (see 1.6).