From an article quoted in Mark Shepherd's Mastering the National Admissions Test for Law, p.181:
The totalitarian state is easy to define, easy to identify, and thus offers a recognisable target at which the archers of human freedom can direct their darts. Not so obliging is what I have referred to as the quasi-state, that elusive entity that may cover the full gamut of ideologies and religions, contends for power but is not defined by physical boundaries that identify the sovereign state. Especially frustrating is the fact that the quasi-state often commences with a position whose basic aim – a challenge to an unjust status quo – makes it difficult to separate from progressive movements of dissent, with which, too, it sometimes forms alliances of common purpose. At the same time, however, there lurks within its social intent an equally deep contempt for those virtues that constitute the goals of other lovers of freedom. Thus, to grasp fully the essence of power, we must look beyond the open ‘show of force’, the demonstration of overt power whose purpose is to instruct a people just who is master. ...
The formal state, in its dictatorial or belligerent mutation, represents power at its crudest – African nations, caught in an unending spiral of dictatorships and civil wars, are only too familiar with this exegesis of power. Equally familiar, to many, are the daylight or night- time shock troops of state, storming the homes and offices of dissidents of a political order, carting away their victims in total contempt of open or hidden resentment....
According to the book, it can be gathered from the article that "formal states tend to be better defined than quasi-states". The answer key (p.257) explains it this way:
The article starts by saying that the ‘totalitarian state is easy to define’ and that ‘not so obliging is what I have referred to as the quasi-state, that elusive entity’. On the basis of this comparison, it can be gathered that formal states tend to be better defined than quasi-states.
Does this equate "formal" with "totalitarian"? Which definition of formal applies here?