ABSTRACT
The state is the institution exerting over a population and a territory a legitimate power that is guaranteed by its monopoly of force. The recasting of popular sovereignty and the other pillars of the modern state resulted from two intertwined novelties, one theoretical and the other economic and social. State and society is an odd couple, born in recent centuries from the splitting of something that used to be one. The Greeks and the Romans possessed the notion of the state, as attested by Cicero's definition of it as res publica/commonwealth given in the book he dedicated to it. It is a generally accepted doctrine that, while the state may or may not have goals to pursue beyond guaranteeing security and the minimal conditions for the citizens to thrive, it always has functions to fulfil, the first of which in the modern state is to make, adjudicate and enforce laws.
