ABSTRACT
If you asked the average person to identify the state, they may look at you in astonishment, and say that they were not aware of living under a state, unless by that you meant the ‘government’. Indeed, some writers have spoken of Britain and the USA as stateless societies, although this is to confuse what people think about the state, and what the state really is. In tackling this question, we shall also try to deal with the problem: does the state really exist?
