Constitution

The leading role of the party is a constitutional principle of communist states. It holds that the ruling party leads the state by virtue of being the vanguard of the proletariat, a communist party.

A nation is a type of social organization where a collective identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory, or society. Some nations are constructed around ethnicity (see ethnic nationalism) while others are bound by political constitutions (see civic nationalism).

A nation is generally more overtly political than an ethnic group. Benedict Anderson defines a nation as "an imagined political community […] imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion", while Anthony D. Smith defines nations as cultural-political communities that have become conscious of their autonomy, unity and particular interests. Black's Law Dictionary also defines nation as a community of people inhabiting a defined territory and organized under an independent government. Thus, nation can be synonymous with state or country. Indeed, according to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, what distinguishes nations from other forms of collective identity, like ethnicity, is this very relationship with the state.

The Constitution of Turkey, formally known as the Constitution of the Republic of Türkiye (Turkish: Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Anayasası), and informally as the Constitution of 1982 (Turkish: 1982 Anayasası), is Turkey's fundamental law. It establishes the organization of the government, and sets out the principles and rules of the state's conduct along with its responsibilities in regards to its citizens. The constitution also establishes the rights and responsibilities of the latter while setting the guidelines for the delegation and exercise that sovereignty belongs entirely and without doubt to the people.

The constitution was ratified on 7 November 1982. It replaced the earlier Constitution of 1961. The constitution was amended 21 times, three of them through a referendum: 2007, 2010, 2017, one of them partly through referendum: 1987. As of April 2017, 117 of the 177 articles of the Constitution of 1982 were amended overall.

Denmark is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark, also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland in the north Atlantic Ocean. Metropolitan Denmark, also called "continental Denmark" or "Denmark proper", consists of the northern Jutland peninsula and an archipelago of 406 islands. It is the southernmost of the Scandinavian countries, lying southwest of Sweden, south of Norway, and north of Germany, with which it shares a short border. Denmark proper is situated between the North Sea to the west and the Baltic Sea to the east.

The Kingdom of Denmark, including the Faroe Islands and Greenland, has roughly 1,400 islands greater than 100 square metres (1,100 sq ft) in area; 443 have been named and 78 are inhabited. Denmark's population is over 6 million (1 May 2025), of which roughly 40% live in Zealand, (Sjælland) the largest and most populated island in Denmark proper; Copenhagen, (København) the capital and largest city of the Danish Realm, is situated on Zealand and Amager and Slotsholmen. Composed mostly of flat, arable land, Denmark is characterised by sandy coasts, low elevation, and a temperate climate. Denmark exercises hegemonic influence in the Danish Realm, devolving powers to the other constituent entities to handle their internal affairs. Home rule was established in the Faroe Islands in 1948; Greenland achieved home rule in 1979 and further autonomy in 2009.

The Constitution of 1924, formally titled the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey (Ottoman Turkish: Teşkilât-ı Esasiye Kanunu; Turkish: 1924 Türk Anayasası), was the fundamental law of Turkey from 1924 to 1961. It replaced the Constitution of 1921 and was ratified by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey following the proclamation of the republic on October 29, 1923. It was ratified on April 20, 1924. It remained in force until the 1960 coup d'état, following which it was replaced by the Constitution of 1961.

A confessional state is a state which officially recognises and practices a particular religion (also known as a state religion), usually accompanied by a public cult, ranging from having its citizens incentivised to do likewise through government endorsement to having public spending on the maintenance of church property and clergy be unrestricted, but it does not need to be under the legislative control of the clergy as it would be in a theocracy.

Over human history, many states have been confessional states. This is especially true in countries where Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism were the religions of the state. Until the beginning of the 20th century, many if not most nations had state religions enshrined in their respective constitutions or by decree of the monarch, even if other religions were permitted to practice.

In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is an idea, theory, or model that usually, although not always, concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Conceptualized in the Age of Enlightenment, it is a core concept of constitutionalism, while not necessarily convened and written down in a constituent assembly and constitution.

Social contract arguments typically are that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority (of the ruler, or to the decision of a majority) in exchange for protection of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order. The relation between natural and legal rights is often a topic of social contract theory. The term takes its name from The Social Contract (French: Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique), a 1762 book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that discussed this concept. Although the antecedents of social contract theory are found in antiquity, in Greek and Stoic philosophy and Roman and Canon Law, the heyday of the social contract was the mid-17th to early 19th centuries, when it emerged as the leading doctrine of political legitimacy.

A monarchy is a hereditary form of government in which political power is legally passed on to the family members of the monarch, a head of state who rules for life. While monarchs gain their power depending on specific succession laws, they can also gain their authority via election.

Monarchies were the most common form of government until the 20th century, when republics replaced many monarchies, notably at the end of World War I. As of 2025, forty-three sovereign nations in the world have a monarch, including fifteen Commonwealth realms that share King Charles III as their head of state. Other than that, there is a range of sub-national monarchical entities. Most of the modern monarchies are constitutional monarchies, retaining under a constitution unique legal and ceremonial roles for monarchs exercising limited or no political power, similar to heads of state in a parliamentary republic.

The primacy of European Union law (sometimes referred to as supremacy or precedence of European law) is a legal principle of rule according to higher law establishing precedence of European Union law over conflicting national laws of EU member states.

The principle was derived from an interpretation of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself. For the European Court of Justice, national courts and public officials must disapply a national norm that they consider not to be compliant with the EU law.

A federated state (also state, province, region, canton, land, governorate, oblast, emirate, or country) is a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federation. A federated state does not have international sovereignty since powers are divided between the other federated states and the federal government. Unlike international sovereign states, which have what is often referred to as Westphalian sovereignty (such as exercised by their federal government), federated states operate under their domestic or federal law with relation to the rest of the world.

Federated states do not have automatic standing as entities of international law. Instead, the federal union (federation) as a single entity is the sovereign state for purposes of international law. Depending on the constitutional structure of a particular federation, a federated state can hold various degrees of legislative, judicial, and administrative jurisdiction over a defined geographic territory and is a form of regional government. A federated state may nonetheless establish offices internationally, for example, to promote trade or tourism, while still operating only within the trade policy or other applicable law of their federation, and their host country. They also may enter into international regional agreements under the laws of their federation and state, such as to protect a cross-border resource like water or other shared matters.