Week Two: Sovereignty and the Modern State System

What is anarchy?

• The opposite of hierarchy, where all entities are functionally equal in terms of the system. This is because all entities are sovereign, there is no interfering in other state’s affairs. The state is sovereign and system anarchic.

What does Waltz (neorealist) have to say about anarchy?

It is a precursor to war because there is nobody to tell them what to do.

Two main critiques of the theory of Westphalia:

• 1. It oversimplifies (a fixation on the concept of sovereignty) -Osiander

  • 2. ‘Imperialist imaginary’.. Eurocentric identity -de Carvalho

  • 3. Feminist critique because it enshrines patriarchal roles and creates dynamics of power (postcolonial and feminist)

‘Avatars’ of Eurocentrism?

• Culturalist

• Historical

  • Epistemic

What’s wrong with purporting Westphalia?

• We get a distorted view of sovereignty and will keep marginalising.

  • - it distorts our understanding of the emergence of the modern IR system

  • -it misdiagnoses other major aspects of contemporary IR

  • -Prevents IR scholars theorising cross-civilisational and cross-regional interdependencies

  • -thwarts the accomodation of pluralism in an increasingly globalised world.

Which actor in world politics is widely recognised as the one with greatest impact in people’s lives?

The state

Does the state live of die?

The state continues to live, ‘a continuing structure of government, decision making, legal interpretation and enforcement’

What does the modern state (new concept) refer to?

An abstract identity comprising a government, population and territories

State definition:

Government, population and territory

Modern state definition:

State, sovereignty and nation

Sovereignty definition

Single, supreme, decision making authority

Four criteria of statehood:

1. population

2. territory

3. government

4. recognition by other states

States are political associations where:

politicians and beaurocrats establish and implement laws regulating social life within a partikcular territory in pursuit of various policies and doctrines.

For academics like Weber, the primary concern of states is

the means government rule is sustained; ie coercion

Weber’s use of the word ‘legitimate’ in reference to states:

• while states may exercise power and seek control, it is authority rather than power that defines the sovereignty.

  • The assumption is that a sovereign power claims supreme and exclusive authority to rule over a clearly bounded territory and population

Joseph Strayer’s Three Characteristics of Feudalism:

1. Fragmentation of political power

2. Public power in private possession

   1. Armed forces secured through private agreement

Hobbes argues that before a state is formed, individuals live in a

‘state of nature’ with ‘no common power to keep them in awe’

Hobbes’ key features of the leader of the state:

1. sovereign is supreme and absolute, standing over and above legal people and territory

2. sovereign monopolises law through its enforcement capacity and there is no higher earthly power than the state, including the church

3. masculine

States claim to be ;constitutionally insular’ and ‘free, independent and equal’

• deny being subject to any superior authority and external influence

• right to define their own interests and policies

Historical origins of the sovereign state:

1. Bodin and Hobbes: solution to religious sects tearing eachother apart. Ultimate authority is the Church

The jurisdiction of a political authority, and its claim on the legitimate instruments of violence, was coextensive with the geographical limits of society

Academic Tilly on the rise of the modern state and its links to violence

“War made the state, and the state made war”

Spryt on why alternatives to the sovereign state failed to become the dominant form of political organisations?

1. scale afforded greater administrative and organizational efficiency than small city states and loosely integrated empires

2. more effective means of organising the external relations of states

3. successfully eliminated non-territorial, feudal systems of government

Hence, by virtue of war and monopolisation of legitimate violence

Also note the social contract:

The modern state is built on a series of monopolies where they claim a monopoly right to:

• instruments of legitimate force

• national economic management

• law making

• international representation

• border control

• political loyalty.

The rise of the modern state;

The late 17th century - European wars could not avoid war, states were increasingly fashioned as ‘war machines’ to respond to the geopolitical situation

What were the key factors in the formation and the rule of absolutist states?

The balance of power, alliance formation, diplomacy and military buildups that were essential conditions in the rise of the absolutist state.

In the 16th Century, there was consolidation of book-keeping systems, centralised taxation, steady funding of the state military which meant states were thus able to “monitor, control and monopolise the effective means of violence” through:

• Systematic revenue raising

• Administrative capabilities