States and International Politics II

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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 centuryin 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, 1618-1648

• 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
barons 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 non-interference 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
• 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/wa
  tch?v_2XvdaYn2Mw
• The Taliban
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vi4NDVBydkls
• 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 neo-fascism 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 Pens
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 worlds 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 its unleashed a
Pandoras 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