Not constituting or belonging to a state; not characterised by the institutional power or authority of an organized government.
The nonstate peoples we are most familiar with are the hunters and gatherers living in small bands like the ǃKung San of the Kalahari Desert and the Inuit of the Arctic.2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, published 2012, page 49:
More than 70 non-state armed groups were recorded as using the weapons, including 12 that fired rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel.2013 April 12, Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian:
States that fail to sufficiently attend to the "imagined" attributes of statehood required by the international system risk being deemed nonstates by the international community...2005, Ann Hironaka, Neverending wars: