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city-state  

Definition

  • The compound word city-state was coined in nineteenth-century political science to describe a type of state concurrently in terms of its characteristics as a settlement and as a social and political organization. As a settlement, the city-state consists of a comparatively large and densely populated urban nucleus with a sufficient degree of internal complexity to foster division of labor, specialized skills and crafts, trade, and market exchange and thus to act as a social, economic, and religious center of an agricultural hinterland. [Source: Encyclopedia of Political Theory; City-State]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/city-state

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