ABSTRACT
The basic problem is to identify the typical properties of the set of states, huge in terms of population, such as China, India, the United States, Indonesia and Brazil as well as tiny states (e.g. Tuvalu, Kiribati, Iceland, Grenada and Swaziland). I focus on one well-known definition of the concept of the state that is also employed by the international community when identifying the present states of the world, albeit not entirely consistently, and I single out regime stability as one of the two basic points of reference for the understanding of comparative government. The concepts of political instability and state stability may be defined in several ways.
