In a 1927 article by Edward A. Harriman on the League of Nations, a superstate was defined as merely "an organisation, of which a state is a member, which is superior to the member themselves", in that "[a] complete superstate has legislative, executive and judicial organs to make, to execute and to interpret its laws".
In this context, the term was applied to Japan,[7][8] as contemporary academics suggested that Japan could displace the U.S. as the world's sole superpower, becoming the world's foremost economic power in the (then) near future because of its economic growth in recent decades.
The term was famously used by Margaret Thatcher in her 1988 Bruges speech, when she decried the perspective of "a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels",[12] and has since entered the eurosceptic lexicon.
[13] In a 2022 study, Alasdair Roberts argues that superstates should be construed as hybrid forms of political organization: "Every superstate carries the burdens of statehood, that is, the duties of intensive governance and respect for human rights that are carried by all modern states.
Superstates are distinguished from ordinary states by problems of governance that are intensified by scale, diversity, and complexity".