state power
Official governing force
State power is the authority and capacity of a government to enforce its will—through laws, institutions, police, military, taxation, and control of territory.
The term often carries critical connotations, emphasizing coercion over consent: The protest was met with overwhelming state power.
Discussions of state power typically concern its limits, abuses, or concentration: a dangerous expansion of state power, checks on state power.
- voteFormal choice expression
- ruling classDominant governing stratum
- armed forcesNation's combined military services
- sovereigntySupreme independent authority
- bureaucracyRigid administrative system
intelligence agencies · secret police · governance · executive order · judiciary · propaganda · nationalization · taxation · monopoly · media control · big brother · cultural hegemony · legitimacy · autocracy · coercion · constitution · checks and balances · political repression
- Dystopia1984, Nineteen Eighty-Four, dystopian fiction, totalitarianism, Brave New World
- constitutional lawConstitution, Bill of Rights, First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment
- central powercentral authority, central government, centralized control, supreme authority, central command
- federalismstates' rights, federal law, federal district, enumerated powers, federal agency
- state theorysovereignty, legitimacy, social contract, legitimation, centralization
- powerauthority, potency, energy, hydropower, horsepower
state powerindividual liberty
One's own protected rights
personal freedom · civil liberties · self-governance · decentralization · popular sovereignty
state powerindividual rights
Freedoms held by persons
personal autonomy · self-determination · civil liberties · private enterprise · free market
state poweranarchy
Disorder from absent authority
statelessness · lawlessness · power vacuum · anarchism · chaos