politys

Polity is a term used in political science and anthropology to refer to an organized community under a system of governance. It denotes a politically organized society with some form of centralized authority, leadership, and a defined territory. The plural form polities is used when comparing multiple such units across cultures or history. Polities range from small-scale units such as city-states and tribes with informal or weak central authority to large, centralized states, federations, or empires. Core features commonly associated with polities include mechanisms for making and enforcing laws, institutions for governance and public administration, processes for leadership succession, systems of taxation or tribute, and definitions of membership and territory.

The concept is used across disciplines to compare political organization independent of particular constitutional form. Some scholars emphasize that a polity may exist without modern sovereignty or bureaucratic apparatus, as in chiefdoms, confederations, or city-states, while others reserve the term for more formally organized political communities. The study of polities often examines governance structures, legitimacy, conflict resolution, external relations, and how political units integrate or fragment over time.

In contemporary political science, the word polity also appears in democracy indices and comparative datasets that quantify political authority, though such uses refer to different measurement constructs from traditional anthropological usage. Examples of polities throughout history include ancient Athens as a polis, various city-states, the Iroquois Confederacy, medieval kingdoms, and modern nation-states within broader political systems.