U.S. state

A state of the United States of America is one of the 50 constituent political entities that shares its sovereignty with the United States federal government. Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the federal government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside.State citizenship and residency are flexible and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders (e.g., paroled convicts and children of divorced spouses who are sharing custody). States range in population from just under 600,000 (Wyoming) to over 38 million (California). Four—Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names.

States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local governmental authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state. State governments are allocated power by the people (of each respective state) through their individual constitutions. All are grounded in republican principles, and each provides for a government, consisting of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.

Organization of American States

The Organization of American States (Spanish: Organización de los Estados Americanos, Portuguese: Organização dos Estados Americanos, French: Organisation des États Américains), or the OAS or OEA, is an inter-continental organization founded on 30 April 1948, for the purposes of regional solidarity and cooperation among its member states. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, the OAS's members are the 35 independent states of the Americas.

As of 26 May 2015, the Secretary General of OAS is Luis Almagro.

History

The notion of an international union in the New World was first put forward by Simón Bolívar who, at the 1826 Congress of Panama (still being part of Colombia), proposed creating a league of American republics, with a common military, a mutual defense pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly. This meeting was attended by representatives of Gran Colombia (comprising the modern-day countries of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela), Peru, Bolivia, The United Provinces of Central America, and Mexico but the grandly titled "Treaty of Union, League, and Perpetual Confederation" was ultimately ratified only by Gran Colombia. Bolívar's dream soon floundered with civil war in Gran Colombia, the disintegration of Central America, and the emergence of national rather than New World outlooks in the newly independent American republics. Bolívar's dream of American unity was meant to unify Hispanic American nations against external powers.

Organization (disambiguation)

An organization or organisation is an entity, such as an institution or an association, that has a collective goal and is linked to an external environment.

Organization or organisation also may also refer to:

Music

Bands

Other uses

See also

State

State may refer to:

Law and politics

Science and technology

Organization

An organization or organisation (see spelling differences) is an entity comprising multiple people, such as an institution or an association, that has a collective goal and is linked to an external environment.

The word is derived from the Greek word organon, which means "organ".

Types

There are a variety of legal types of organizations, including corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, political organizations, international organizations, armed forces, charities, not-for-profit corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, and educational institutions.

A hybrid organization is a body that operates in both the public sector and the private sector simultaneously, fulfilling public duties and developing commercial market activities.

A voluntary association is an organization consisting of volunteers. Such organizations may be able to operate without legal formalities, depending on jurisdiction, including informal clubs.

Organizations may also operate in secret and/or illegally in the case of secret societies, criminal organizations and resistance movements.