What is the political stability of a state?

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of defining the concept of the political stability of a state. Its aim is to answer the following question: What does the statement that ‘a given state is politically stable’ mean? The paper is composed of four parts. In the first one the meanings of the words: ‘stable,’ ‘stability’ and ‘stabilisation’ are explained. In the second part, the meaning of the term ‘political stability’ in political science literature is analysed. In the third part of the paper, quantitative attempts at formulating the sense of the concept of political stability are discussed. In conclusion, an attempt to arrive at a definition of the concept is made via a synthesis of the elements most frequently used in academic literature devoted to explaining the essence of political stability; the possible correlation between the existence of political stability and the principal types of political regime (democracy and authoritarianism) is evaluated; and the major conceptual approaches in understanding the term under consideration are identified.