138 CHAPTER FivE ■ The STaTe
seat in the Security Council at the United Nations. Today, the PRC is recognized by
172 states, while the ROC is recognized by only 21 plus the Holy See. The PRC has
always maintained that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, a policy it calls “the
One China policy,” which the United States supports. The relationship between China
and Taiwan became more complicated after democracy was established in Taiwan in
1990, since one major po liti cal party supports in de pen dence for Taiwan while the
other supports a continuation of the status quo. The so- called China question, the
conflict over the state and nation of China, continues today, even though the first
top- level contact in 66 years occurred in late 2015 between President Xi Jinping of
the mainland and President Ma Ying- jeou of Taiwan.
Disputes over state territories and the desires of nations to form their own states have
been major sources of instability and even conflict since the end of colonialism in Africa
and the Middle East, and most recently, after the breakups of the Soviet Union and Yugo-
slavia. Another of these intractable conflicts is that between Israeli Jews and Palestinian
Arabs, who each claim the same territory. This conflict has been complicated by several
factors— that Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Bahá’ís each claim certain land and monu-
ments as sacred, the intense opposition from Arab states to the existence of the state of
Israel, and Israel’s gradual expansion of its territory through war and settlements. Since the
founding of Israel in 1948, the Arab and Jewish peoples of Palestine have been involved
in six interstate wars and three popu lar uprisings. Civilians on both sides have been
harmed and killed, and many continue to live as refugees. Policy makers have debated
several alternatives. Should Israel and the Palestinian territories be divided into two sepa-
rate in de pen dent states? The complicated bound aries exacerbated by increasing number
of Jewish settlers on the West Bank make that solution increasingly unlikely. Should the
two nations be part of one multinational state? That would likely mean the end of the
Jewish demo cratic state. Or, should the Palestinians focus on attaining rights other than
self- determination— basic po liti cal and civil rights within the current structure?
Contending Conceptualizations
of the State
Just as the nation is more than a historic entity, the state is more than a legal entity.
There are numerous competing conceptualizations of the state, many of which empha-
size ideas absent from the legalistic approach.
Other concepts of the state include the following: The state is a normative order,
a symbol for a par tic u lar society and the beliefs that bind the people living within its
borders. This entity also has a mono poly on the legitimate use of vio lence within a
society. The state is a functional unit that assumes a number of impor tant responsi-
bilities, centralizing and unifying them. These perspectives of the state parallel the