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
In contemporary political science, the word polity also appears in democracy indices and comparative datasets that