WORLD POLITICS:

The Interstate
System and
Internationalism
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The Interstate System
The modern world-system is
structured politically as an interstate
system – a system of competing and
allying states. Political Scientists
commonly call this the international
system, and it is the main focus of the
field of International Relations

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The Origin

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Treaty of Westphalia
• a set of agreements signed in 1648
to end the Thirty Years’ War
between the major continental
powers of Europe
• treaty signers exercise complete
control over their domestic affairs
and swear not to meddle in each
other’s affairs
• Believed in spreading the principles of the French Revolution – liberty, equality and fraternity – to
the rest of Europe via Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815)

• Napoleonic Code –forbade birth privileges, encouraged freedom or religion and promoted
meritocracy to the shock of the monarchies

• Was defeated in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815

• This restored the “Westphalian System” via “Concert of Europe” – alliance of “great powers”
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Internationalism
• refers to a system of heightened
interaction between various sovereign
states.
• the desire for greater cooperation and
unity among states and people.
Broad Categories
liberal internationalism
socialist internationalism

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Liberal
Internationalism
- is a cluster of ideas derived from
the belief that international
progress is possible, where
progress is defined as movement
toward increasing levels of
harmonious cooperation between
political communities
Liberal Internationalism
Immanuel Kant
States, like citizens,
must give up some
freedom and establish a
form of global government
Jeremy Bentham Giuseppe Mazzini Woodrow Wilson
• saw nationalism as a
• coined the word believes that free, prerequisite to
“international” in 1870) unified nation-states internationalism
• advocated the creation should be the basis of
global cooperation • advocated for the creation
of international law that of League of Nations that
would govern inter- will become a venue for
state relations conciliation and arbitration
to prevent war
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Socialist
Internationalism
Socialist Internationalism

Karl Marx (German socialist

philosopher)
• True form of internationalism should reject
nationalism
• Nationalism prevented the unification of
world’s workers; placed premium on
economic inequality
• The world is not divided into countries but
into classes: Capitalist class (owners of
production) and Proletariat class (workers for
the capitalists)

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