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United States

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The United States is a federal presidential republic in North America, formed when thirteen British colonies declared independence in 1776 and built a constitutional government over the following thirteen years. Its 1789 Constitution established a presidential system with power divided between a national government and the states, a structure the country has kept, amended twenty seven times, and exported as a model ever since.

Facts
Founding Year
1776 1
1776 is the Declaration of Independence, the conventional founding date. The constitutional government the Declaration promised took over a decade to arrive in practice: the Articles of Confederation in 1781, the Constitution's ratification in 1788, and the first Congress and president in 1789. This entry keeps the conventional date and narrates the gap rather than picking a different single year.
Foreign relations and policy

Current government: Trump Administration (since 2025)

Earlier governments

Party positions (proposed or ideological, not state policy)

Democratic Party (United States) (proposed or ideological position, not state policy; governs as Biden Administration)

Republican Party (United States) (proposed or ideological position, not state policy; governs as Trump Administration)

NATO Membership, Policy subject

Effective from 2024, ongoing.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names United States directly: "1840), based on his 1831 tour of the United States, examined how democratic societies could preserve individual liberty against the leveling pressures of equality."

This source names United States directly: "the federal logic exemplified by the United States Congress, where the Constitutional Convention's Great Compromise of 1787 paired a House of Representatives apportioned by population with a Senate..."

This source names United States directly: "decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on May 17, 1954, consolidating challenges brought on behalf of Black schoolchildren in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware who had been..."

This source names United States directly: "include the Bank of England, the United States Federal Reserve System, and the Bank of Japan."

This source names United States directly: "Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and a majority of other signatories."

This source names United States directly: "the practice its modern name in the United States; Thoreau had refused to pay taxes in protest of slavery and the Mexican American War, arguing that a citizen bears moral responsibility for..."

This source names United States directly: "and discrimination in the United States between 1954 and 1968."

This source names United States directly: "over congressional term limits in the United States, including the Twenty-second Amendment's presidential term limit."

This source names United States directly: "The United States Constitution, for example, requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, or a convention called by two-thirds of the states, followed by ratification by three-quarters of..."

This source names United States directly: "the two major political parties in the United States, alongside the Republican Party, and is the oldest political party in the country and among the oldest in the world."

The United States implements the Vienna Convention domestically through the Diplomatic Relations Act of 1978.

US states incorporate direct-democracy elements through statewide referendums and citizen initiatives.

This source names United States directly: "Sandford was an 1857 United States Supreme Court decision holding, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B."

This source names United States directly: "mandated mechanism by which the United States elects its president and vice president, in which voters in each state formally choose a slate of electors rather than the president directly."

This source names United States directly: "Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the United States Electoral College, its constitutional basis, elector allocation and the winner-take-all convention."

The United States is the primary and earliest still-operating example, federated in 1789.

This source names United States directly: "first organized political party in the United States, formed around Alexander Hamilton's supporters in the early 1790s to advocate a strong federal government, a national bank and close commercial..."

This source names United States directly: "Commons, the Indian Lok Sabha, and the United States House of Representatives and most state legislatures, and it reached these systems largely through the shared inheritance of British..."

The term originated in an 1812 Massachusetts redistricting law signed by Governor Elbridge Gerry.

This source names United States directly: "body rather than leave it, as in the United States, to ordinary courts."

This source names United States directly: "Presidential systems such as the United States instead combine both roles in a single elected president."

This source names United States directly: "several major powers, including the United States, Russia, and China, are not parties, which has led to disputes over the Court's authority to issue arrest warrants against their nationals or..."

This source names United States directly: "was a court established in 1945 by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union under the London Agreement and Charter of August 8, 1945, to try major officials of Nazi..."

This source names United States directly: "A foundational influence on liberalism and on the United States Declaration of Independence."

This source names United States directly: "The United States Congress's own procedure, tracked continuously on its own public record, documents the mechanism in full, though the same basic sequence, introduce, deliberate, vote, enact, recurs..."

This source names United States directly: "a foreign policy aligned with the United States."

This source names United States directly: "political label and movement in the United States in the mid twentieth century, developing internal variants from a minimal state associated with Robert Nozick to the anarcho capitalism associated..."

This source names United States directly: "its lasting name after touring the United States in the 1830s, writing in Democracy in America that a minority struck by injustice has nowhere to appeal, since public opinion itself is the majority..."

This source names United States directly: "Madison was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on February 24, 1803, arising after outgoing President John Adams commissioned William Marbury as a justice of the peace for the..."

This source names United States directly: "leader of the mid twentieth century United States civil rights movement."

This source names United States directly: "of Man and the Constitution of the United States."

This source names United States directly: "Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States, on 4 April 1949 at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington, D.C., committing signatories to collective defence under Article 5."

This source names United States directly: "the victorious Allied powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, prosecuted surviving leaders and officials of Nazi Germany for crimes committed before and during..."

Washington's 1797 voluntary retirement is the classic first case; historians also point to the contested 1800-1801 Adams-to-Jefferson transition (see dissent).

This source names United States directly: "Ferguson was an 1896 United States Supreme Court decision upholding a Louisiana law requiring racially segregated railway cars, ruling that state mandated segregation did not violate the Fourteenth..."

The United States is the paradigm presidential system, the office created 1787-88.

Public Health Policy, Policies

The US CDC is named as the national public-health coordinating body.

Referendum, Political Mechanisms

US states began ratifying constitutions and amendments by referendum in the 19th century.

This source names United States directly: "the two major political parties in the United States, alongside the Democratic Party, founded in 1854 by antislavery activists, including former members of the Democratic, Whig, and Free Soil..."

This source names United States directly: "ending on 20 December 1956 when the United States Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional in Browder v."

This source names United States directly: "Economic strain, political polarisation and a covert United States destabilisation campaign preceded the military coup of 11 September 1973, led by Augusto Pinochet, in which Allende died."

This source names United States directly: "women's rights convention held in the United States, meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, from 19 to 20 July 1848 and organised chiefly by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott."

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states Montesquieu's doctrine had an enormous impact on the framers of the US Constitution.

This source names United States directly: "The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States, established under Article III of the Constitution and given its organizational form by the..."

The 22nd Amendment imposes the two-term presidential limit.

This source names United States directly: "Congress.gov, the official portal for United States federal legislative information, of how a bill moves from introduction through committee, floor consideration in each chamber and presidential..."

This source names United States directly: "The United States Environmental Protection Agency's own official history page, describing its creation under President Nixon's Reorganization Plan No."

This source names United States directly: "an argument that directly shaped the United States Declaration of Independence."

This source names United States directly: "Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) each holding a veto over substantive resolutions, and ten elected for two-year terms."

Governed By

Part Of

As the Thirteen Colonies, prior to the 1776 to 1783 War of Independence.

Practices

Shaped By

In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. United States (Britannica)
Encyclopaedia BritannicaView the Source
Confederation (Britannica)
Encyclopaedia BritannicaAssociated With: ConfederationView the Source
Impeachment (Britannica)
Encyclopaedia BritannicaAssociated With: ImpeachmentView the Source
Judicial Review (Britannica)
Encyclopaedia BritannicaAssociated With: Judicial ReviewView the Source
British Empire (Britannica)
Part Of: British Empire
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