- 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 that connotes an independent
political entity, with its own government, administration, laws, often a constitution, police, military, tax rules, and population, who are one another's countrymen. "Country" is the English equivalent of French pays,
Compare the concept of nation, below.
All internationally recognized states follow to some degree 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 casually 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, separated by land of one or more other states. The Kaliningrad region of Russia
is an example of such an exclave; the Oecussi-Ambeno region of East Timor or Nagorno-Karabagh are others.
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