The article is devoted to the problem of conceptualizing the concepts of “stateness” and “state sovereignty”, revealing the structure of the factors of stateness and the essence of state sovereignty. The study is based on a system-organic vision of the nature, existence and development of the state as a single and integral sociopolitical organism, and not as a state machine. It is shown that the socio-political organism of the state can be considered as an autopoietic system capable of its own reproduction.
The identification of the factors of stateness and the essence of sovereignty by the author is based on the achievements of modern researchers of the problem, on the causal methodology of Aristotelian organicism and the doctrine of the essence of Hegel, which made it possible to determine the structure and meaning of the four grounds-factors (aitions), to reveal the essence of state sovereignty. As a result, within the framework of the teleological approach, the acting, ideal, material and target factors are formulated as key aspects of statehood that determine the statics and dynamics of the existence and development of the state.
The presence of autopoietic properties of the state made it possible to propose a relational model of the socio-historical process of state life, in which three, mutually conditioned, organic functions, in a causally closed loop, cyclically provide the metabolism (self-maintenance) of state, self-restoration of stateness and selfreproduction of state power.