Asabiya (group solidarity) is Ibn Khaldun's concept of the social cohesion and collective will that binds a group together and enables it to establish and sustain political power. In his cyclical theory of history, strong asabiya drives nomadic or marginal groups to overthrow complacent dynasties, but the luxuries of settled rule gradually erode this solidarity, setting the stage for a new cycle of conquest.

Civil disobedience is the deliberate, public, and non-violent refusal to obey a law or policy that one considers unjust, undertaken to bring about a change in government policy. Theorised by Thoreau and practised by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., it was defended by Rawls as a legitimate act within a nearly just society.

A government is the set of institutions and individuals that make, enforce, and interpret laws within a state, exercising authority over a defined territory and population. Political philosophers from Hobbes to Locke have debated whether government originates in a social contract, divine mandate, or the practical need to escape a lawless state of nature.

Legitimacy in political philosophy refers to the moral right of a government to exercise authority and the corresponding obligation of citizens to obey its laws. Theories of legitimacy range from consent-based accounts, which ground authority in the agreement of the governed, to procedural accounts that locate it in fair institutional processes, and substantive accounts that tie it to the government's delivery of justice and the common good.

Social contract theory is a tradition in political philosophy, associated with Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, that grounds political authority and justice in a real or hypothetical agreement among individuals to leave a state of nature and form a governed society. Classical versions assume parties are roughly equal in power, which critics such as Nussbaum argue excludes people with disabilities, non-human animals, and citizens of less powerful nations.

the supreme authority within a territory, the final, unchallengeable power to make and enforce law. In political philosophy, debates centre on where sovereignty resides (the monarch, the people, the constitution) and whether it can be divided or shared, as in federal systems.

The state of nature is the hypothetical condition of human life without government or political authority, used by social-contract theorists as a thought experiment to justify the existence of the state.