Many people struggle to distinguish between the state, the nation, political parties, and the government because they often overlap in political life and are closely connected.
The state is a relatively enduring political community and institutional system. The government consists of the institutions and officials that govern it at a given time. Political parties are organizations that seek or exercise political power, while a nation is generally a group of people with a shared history, culture, or identity.
Governments can change and parties can lose power while the state continues to exist; a nation may also exist without a state of its own. In everyday language, “the state” or “the country” is often used to mean the government, so criticism of a government may be taken as opposition to the country itself, while opposition to a political party may be mistaken for rejection of the wider society or nation.