Countries - Definition and Overview

This article describes a type of political entity. Country is also a short form for the countryside or the country music genre.

A country, a land, or a state, is a geographical area and an independent political entity with its own government, administration, laws, often a constitution, police, military, tax rules, and people.

All recognized states follow some degree of international standards in terms of the creation of official national symbols such as flags, and political rights such as citizenship. There are currently 193 countries recognized by the United Nations.

Some countries are nation states – for example, France or Israel. In these nation states one particular nation is dominant. Other states, such as Canada, the People's Republic of China, Spain or the United Kingdom contain several nations (or, at least, some parts of the population call themselves a nation), in spite of some of them considering themselves as nation states.

Sometimes, parts of states with a distinct history or culture are called "lands" or "countries": England, Scotland and Wales – the three nations on the island of Great Britain – are known as countries, even though they are effectively governed as "components" of the British state. Tibet, an autonomous region of China, is similary called a country in everyday speech. Ireland is also sometimes called a country, even though it consists of one nation-state (the Republic of Ireland) and one component of a different state (Northern Ireland).

The terms country, nation, state and land are often used as synonyms, but in a more strict usage they are distinguished:

• country is the geographical area
• nation designates a people, however national and international both confusingly refer as well to matters pertaining to what are strictly states, as in national capital, international law
• state is about government, and an entity in international law
• land may be used for "a country and its people" but also thought of as country belonging to a nation or a monarch

Some states consist of non-contiguous parts (an exclave), separated by land of one or more other states. Oecussi-Ambeno region of East Timor is an example of this.

See also

• Nation state for the history of the development of the modern nation states
• List of countries
• Lists by country
• Dependent area
• List of dependent territories
• List of subnational entities
• ISO 3166, list of countries and corresponding international standard codes
• List of country name etymologies
• Enclave, includes a list of enclaves.
• Territory
• Border
• Wilderness

External links

• The CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html)
• The US Department of State (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/) Background notes on countries the US has relations with
• Lonely Planet (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/) Clickable map and information on the world's countries
• Nationmaster.com (http://www.nationmaster.com/) Allows sorting countries on all kinds of statistics
• PopulationData.net (http://www.populationdata.net)
• United Nations statistics devision (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/)
• The World Bank Group (http://www.worldbank.org/) Includes railway statistics (http://www.worldbank.org/transport/rail/bdg.htm)