The territory is one of fundamental signs of the state. Any state always exists and carries out the activity within a certain territory.
Instruction
1. The territory is space for self-determination of the people. In its limits the state has sovereignty and carries out jurisdiction. The territory is usually considered in two aspects - in spatial and legal.
2. Today the territory acts as a material basis of the state and its indispensable attribute. However so was not always. Earlier many people led a nomadic life and changed the place of the accommodation. At the same time they had other signs of statehood - the population, the public power, sovereignty. Further in the period of settled life the territory became basis of development of the state.
3. The territory has a number of important properties. It is indivisibility, inviolability, exclusiveness (in the state territory has the right to work only one power) and inalienability (it means that the state which lost the territory stops being that).
4. The ban on violent annexation of territory and violation of borders is registered in international law. Also in it the principles of territorial integrity, inalienability of the territory and inviolability of the states are established. On the other hand, borders of the state can be changed on the basis of self-determination of the people. The specified principles in fact conflict with each other, and the international community recognizes or rejects changes of territorial borders on the basis of political tactical interests. It turns out that actually only some people (ethnic groups) have rights for self-determination. Also in international law it is registered that the states can transfer or concede the territory voluntarily for the benefit of good-neighbourhood coexistence. Though similar precedents in modern history are absent.
5. Many scientists point to the fact that the value of the territory gradually weakens. There is it under the influence of development and strengthening of impact of interstate political and economic associations, blocks. Moreover, the trend on washing out of frontiers constantly faces the anti-globalization resistance supporting maintaining national identity.
6. The period of aggressive wars remained in the past. The importance is given today by the states to not how many actual, legal control over the territory, how many geopolitical. However the specified trends do not mean dying off of the territory as main sign of statehood at all.