In political geography and international politics, a country is a political division of a geographical entity, a sovereign territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation and government. Look up country in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Political geography is the field of human geography that is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. ... International relations (IR) is an academic and public policy field, a branch of political science, dealing with the foreign policy of states within the international system, including the roles of international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs). ... A political division is a geographic region accepted to be in the jurisdiction of a particular government entity. ... “Sovereign” redirects here. ... A territory (from the word terra, meaning land) is a defined area (including land and waters), usually considered to be a possession of an animal, person, organization, or institution. ... For other uses, see State (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Nation (disambiguation). ...

In common usage, the term is used casually in the sense of both "nation" (a cultural entity; see below) and "state" (a political entity; see below). Definitions may vary. It is sometimes used to refer to both states and some other political entities.^[1], while in some occasions it refers only to state.^[2] It is not uncommon for general information or statistical publications to adopt the wider definition for purposes such as illustration and comparison.^[3] For other uses, see Nation (disambiguation). ...

There are dozens of non-sovereign territories (subnational entities, another form of political division or administrative division within the expanse [realm or scope] of a larger nation-state) which constitute cohesive geographical entities, some of which are former countries, but which are not sovereign states. Most of these nowadays even have a great deal of autonomy and local governments but such do not constitute a nation as they are possessions of such states — as several states have overseas dependencies, with territory and citizenry separate from their own. Such dependencies are sometimes listed together with states on lists of countries.^[3] “Sovereign” redirects here. ... World map of dependent territories. ...