On the meaning of the term "state"

The article analyzes broad and specific approaches to the interpretation of the term «state» and points out the restrictions of such interpretation in the term’s narrow sense - solely as a system of authority institutions, administrative apparatus, and legitimate power of authorities. The authors express an opinion that state may be seen as such an organized territorial community of citizens which pursue the goal of securing their temporal and spatial reproduction, their necessities of life, as well as social, economic and cultural development. It forms or (in a non-democracy), support the political framework that regulates social relations and unites the majority of people, while ensuring a balance of social interests by both achieving public consent and legitimate enforcement. The authors show that at the same time the political framework is the composition of state, political and public organizations that perform their political enforcement and administrative activities on the base of certain principles and values. To make such interpretation of the term «state» clearer, the paper provides a list of the basic features of the state: the presence of territory and population as a community of citizens, an apparatus of public authority and administration, legal and tax systems, with actual national sovereignty and armed forces available.