Transcript States and International Politics, II

States and International Politics
II
1. Europe before the states system
2. the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648
3. The rise of modern nation-state system
4. the state as the central form of political organization
5. conclusions
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1. Europe before the states
system
a. Focus on Europe because this region is where the modern
nation-state ultimately developed first
i. long era of cultural, religious and princely interactions
ii. Renaissance and ancient Greek political history emphasizes
the role of the city or principality, not the state
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iii after fall of Rome in the late 5th century, Christian doctrine,
embodied in the Roman Catholic Church, provided a macrolevel
authority – kept Latin alive and provided a common language among
intellectuals and clerics
iv. at the microlevel there was overlapping authority among
principalities, dukedoms, walled cities, monasteries, guilds and other
small political units
v. all of these units had problems maintaining internal order and
preserving external autonomy
vi. the politics of disorder and fear – see Monty Python and the Holy
Grail!
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b.
The modern state, has relatively recent origins, 17th
century—in Europe!
c.
Prior to the modern era, world political interaction was
between units that were not ‘states’ in any conventional sense.
In other words, nation-states had many “competitors” as the basic
unit of the international system.
The Catholic Church
Empires, e.g., the Holy Roman Empire
Kingdoms, dukedoms
Principalities, City-states, city-leagues, e.g., Venice
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d: What is the interstate order of Middle Earth?
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2. the Thirty Years War, 16181648
a. The war
i. Mostly over religion, internal politics, and territory.
The Holy Roman Empire (House of Habsburg)
vs.
Protestant countries: Sweden, France, England, Denmark-Norway, etc.
ii. One of the most destructive and longest conflicts conflicts in
Europe
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b. Peace of Westphalia, 1648
i. each prince has the right to determine the religion of his own
state, and exclusive rights over the land, people, and agents
abroad
ii. Inception of international law; no more pretensions of
transnational, religious or political unity
iii. beginning of embassies, alliances and other elements of
modern diplomacy
iv. greater regularity and predictability in international relations –
better of sense of who the players are on an ongoing basis
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c. why did these developments occur?
i. increases in wealth in central treasuries from exploration and
exploitation of the New World, especially gold.
ii. improvements in military technology, especially artillery, which
rendered baron’s castles and walled towns vulnerable
iii. improvements in central administrative organization and
efficiency, reliable taxation
iv. impact of religious schism (i.e., Protestant breakaway from
Catholic Church), which enhanced the legitimacy of secular
versus religious authority
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3. Rise of the modern nation-state
system
a. sovereignty entails internal order and external autonomy
i. sovereignty suggests that political interaction must be perceived
in terms of a system of ordered, autonomous political actors
ii. Domestic order can be disrupted by domestic turmoil and
inter-state war
e.g., failed states like Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.
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b. The emergence of sovereignty signifies the advent of modern
state, but it did not end the era of empires overnight.
Feudal empires: Austria-Hungarian empire until 1918
Colonial empires: Britain, France, Portugal, etc.
c. The sovereign state did eventually win over its competitors,
survival of the fittest.
i. better at providing public goods,
e.g. standardization of measurements, regulation of trade, juridical hierarchy
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ii. A system of enforceable rules supported a uniform and
vigorous national policy
e.g., the prosecution of wars
iii. Identifiable sovereignty makes international negotiation
easier. One knows whom to talk to and what the decision is.
iv. Others learn to copy the institutional form--either because
they see the benefits or they have to.
e.g., China was forced to transform into a modern state until after the
European powers came along, because the sovereign state was already the
rule of the game.
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d. Sovereignty connotes equality among states and noninterference into domestic affairs, but some states are more
“equal” than others.
i. Power politics remains prevalent.
ii. The spectre of war lingers on, although the number of wars
has dwindled over the centuries.
ii. States do not just be there. They also appear and disappear.
e.g. Soviet Union 15 independent states
Yugoslavia 6-7 independent states
(Kosovo is recognized by 103 countries as a sovereign state but not yet
a member of the United Nations)
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e. Why do new states emerge from time to time? Aside from the
popularization of sovereignty, nationalism is another ideational
pillar that gave rise to the modern international system.
i. nationalism is a principle that “holds the political and the
national unit should be congruent” (Gellner, 1983). This is why
we often refer to countries as “nation-states”
e.g.,
The Shire for Hobbits
Gondor for Men
Rivendell for Elves
Fangorn for Ents
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ii. The alignment of nation and state is a modern phenomenon.
e.g., Up to 200 Germanic states at some point, but there was no real
“Germany” until 1871.
Unification of Italy in 1866
Kurds are still pursuing their Kurdistan
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iii. The de-colonization movement from 1940s to 1970s gave
birth to a great number of new states, mostly Asia, Africa.
iv. Some countries will be splintered into pieces by
nationalism, but some not
e.g. Switzerland
Britain?
Afghanistan? Iraq??
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4. the state as the central form
of political organization
a. two basic theories of governance for states: authoritarian and
democratic
i. broad categories defined on degree of effective participation in
decision making
ii. will explore these varieties so they can be understood in later
analysis of foreign policy and other subjects
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b. autocratic theories of governance
i.theocratic rule
1. “rule of God”, no separation of church and state
e.g., Iran: the Supreme Leader, Khamenei
2. practice of sharia law, rejection of “man-made laws”
e.g. Muslim Brotherhood http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2XvdaYn2Mw
The Taliban
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4NDVBydkls
Can they live with democracy?
Can democracy be real without them?
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b. autocratic theories of governance
ii. communist rule
e.g. China, Vietnam, Cuba and North in nominal terms only
iii. fascism – dictatorship based on ethnocentrism
e.g., Nazi Germany
Germany for Germans only, lebensbraum
Why did he invade Austria first?
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c. final variant seems to be coming back in as neofascism
i. neo-fascists hold about 20 seats in the
admittedly large European Parliament, disturbing
ii. Jorg Heider's Freedom Party in Austria; Jean-Marie
Le Pen’s Front National in France.
“If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps
take up only two pages and the gas chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what
one calls a detail.”(Le Pen)
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Le Pen came in the fourth rank
in the latest presidential election in
2007, his party still holds significant
number of seats in the parliament and
Local governments, and has support
particularly among older voters.
He advocates immigration
restrictions, the death penalty,
and euro-scepticism. He has been
charged with Holocaust denial
several times.
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iii. Vladimir Zhironovsky of Russia is an important and
frightening political figure in a very unstable country: “I
may have to shoot 100,000 people, but the other 300 million
will live peacefully”
iv. resurgence of fascism
and hyper-nationalism is
Significant because it tends to be
Correlated with aggressive foreign
policy and even wars of
extermination
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d. democratic theories of governance
i. from the Greek demos, meaning ‘the citizenry’, the idea of
democracy dates back to the Greek city-states 2500 years ago
ii. about 41% of the world’s countries are democratic now, an
all-time high
iii. recent interest in the idea of a ‘democratic peace’ will be a
separate subject for later in the course
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iv. democracy without a tradition of civil society may be a mixed
blessing at best: democratization in the Congo resulted in civil
strife among distrustful, even hate-filled ethnic factions
v. quote from a Congolese economist: “Democratic elections are
the worst thing that ever happened to this country; it’s unleashed
a Pandora’s box of tribal hatreds that may take generations to
heal”
vi. important to see form of governance, democratic versus
autocratic, in the context of the other dimensions that make up a
state – reality is likely to be something too complex to be
predicted or understood by focusing exclusively on any one
dimension
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vii. Economic cooperation among states with different forms
of governance is very common today. Has the economic
globalization reduced their probability of conflict?
LOTR: How do the different forms of governance affect the way
states of Middle Earth interact with each other?
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5. conclusions
a. world before the modern state was one of disorder, which was
transformed into the patterned interstate anarchy we know today
anarchy: the absence of supernational government
b. forms of governance for states become a central consideration –
these principal units of the system may be either autocratic or
democratic, which in turn will have important implications for how
they interact with each other
c. ‘big picture’: the modern state has evolved over centuries, with
sovereignty as the key attribute, and a basic point of origin with
the Treaty of Westphalia c. 1648
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