Who defined state as “a community of persons more or less numerous, permanently occupying a difinite portion of territory independent or nearly so of external control, and possessing an organized government to which the great body of inhabitants render habitual obedience”?

A. Woodrow Wilson
B. Garner
C. MacIver
D. Holland

J. W. Garner’s definition is the most acceptable one because it contains all the attributes of the state. He defined the state as “a community of persons, more or less numerous; permanently occupying a definite territory, independent of external control, and possessing an organised government, to which the great body of inhabitants render habitual obedience.”

Sir Thomas Holland’s definition is more elaborate:
“A state is a numerous assemblage of human beings generally occupying a certain territory, amongst whom the will of the majority of an ascertainable class of persons is, by the strength of such a majority or class, made to prevail against any of their number who opposes it.”

There are too many definitions of the state. President Woodrow Wilson’s definition of the state is “a people organised for law within a definite territory.” Harold J. Laski defines the state as “a territorial society divided into government and subjects claiming, within its allotted physical area, a supremacy over all other institutions.”

According to R. M. MacIver, the state is- “An association which, acting through law as promulgated by a government, endowed to this end with coercive power, maintains within a community, territorially demarcated the universal external conditions of social order.”