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| | State - Facts, Information, and Encyclopedia Reference article |
 | | A number of modern commentators have claimed that we are experiencing the decline of the Westphalian state as the principal actor of the international system, pointing to economic, cultural, political, and technological changes in the world, such as globalization and the emergence of regional and supernational groupings such as the European Union. |
 | | The term "state" is also used to describe subnational territorial divisions within a federal system, as in the case of the United States of America. |
 | | Currently, the entire land surface of the Earth is divided among the territories of the roughly two hundred states now existing, with the special case of Antarctica, a variety of disputed territories, and a number of areas where state power exists in theory, but not in practice (the most significant of these being Somalia). |
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