Greek Polis on the Scale of Potestary Formations

First of all, it should be noted that any debate on State and statehood in contemporary scholarship is to some extent irrelevant due to the serious terminological difference between classical and modern political vocabulary. In most modern European languages, the term under discussion (State, Staat, État etc.) is derived from the Latin word status. A special case is the Russian language, where the term for the State – государство (gosudarstvo) – is generated directly from государь (gosudar’) ‘sovereign’, that is, the monarchical ideology is immanent. Quite another situation is there in classical languages, be it Latin with its res publica (applied mainly to the Roman State properly) and civitas or Greek with its πόλις and πολιτεία. The latter word shows especially close connection with the notion of citizenship. Πολιτεία is both statehood (‘constitution’) and citizen rights. The above-mentioned circumstances should be taken into account in the fullest degree. Was polis a (kind of) State? Scholars who deny that (they are very rarely ancient historians, but very often political scientists) point out to the virtually complete absence of bureaucracy in Greek poleis, which really makes this structure extremely different from ‘normal’ States. Sometimes, the term ‘proto-State’ is applied to polis; so the latter is equated, say, with chiefdoms in late tribal societies. The ‘proto-’ prefix clearly marks something imperfect and incomplete compared to traditional bureaucratic states