[isilofi]

It pretty much is. A government does govern two things, a population and a corresponding land area. You may try to have one without the other, but that would lead to massive problems because of the way humans and their home area interact.

If you govern a population without a land, you are practically instantly at war with some other population because both populations will want their way of life as well as their property rights enforced around the place they call "home". For a current example, see the palestinian exile population, who have a government but no land of their own, thus leading to constant conflict with their host countries.

If you govern a land without a population, you are lacking any kind of compass and attachment to values. Land alone is a dead thing, and a government cannot just be recruited from land, it has to be people doing the governing. Basically, there is nothing to govern without a society.

Citizenship can have a number of definitions, but the loosest one is something like "currently inhabiting the land area of that corresponding government". You may change those definitions, introduce various classes of citizenships, modify the ways in which it can be obtained. But for the aforementioned reasons, any definition that doesn't involve something like "a citizen is strongly associated with a land area and comes from a corresponding populace (governed by a corresponding government)" is a weak and fragile definition that will not last the test of time and human interactions. Note that the government part is in parentheses, because actually governments are far more interchangeable than population and land area.

[ethbr1]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_...

[smaudet]

"Its two headquarters buildings in Rome enjoy extraterritoriality".

The article claims they have no territory, but what they mean is there is no territory capable of supporting a military + institution. I don't know this is a practical counterexample.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that clubs and private militaries, and independent autonomous intelligence agencies exist, even if they are on the extreme end of what could be considered a "government".

[isilofi]

The catholic church in general is kind of a counterexample in certain aspects, but only because of reasons. The Maltese Order is just one aspect of the general weirdness of the church organisation overall, there are also the separate international legal entities "Holy See" and the Vatican state. Of those three, only the Vatican state actually has any sovereign land area, but of a rather symbolic size. The Vatican also has a kind of citizenship, but it is only awarded for the duration of being part of the churches government. But in all those things you only see shadows and fragments of the past that are in slow and steady dissolution. The dissolution would be far quicker if e.g. Italy were hostile to them, but the opposite is true, probably because of the popular support and gain in international influence for Italy.