1. States and International Politics II
1. Europe before the states system
2. the Thirty Years War,
3. The rise of modern nation-state system
4. the state as the central form of political organization
5. conclusions

2. 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

3. 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!

4. 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

5. d: What is the interstate order of Middle Earth?

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. Feudal empires: Austria-Hungarian empire until 1918
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

11. 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.

12. i. Power politics remains prevalent.
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)

13. e. Why do new states emerge from time to time
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

14. 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

15. 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??

16. 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

17. 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
The Taliban
Can they live with democracy?
Can democracy be real without them?

18. 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?

19. 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 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)

20. 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.

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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?

25. 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