The Interstate System

https://gregoryabbott.bandcamp.com/track/supporting-global-cooperation-day
 Definition of nation – state
• According to Scholte (2000), a nation has
four (4) general features
1) a large population;
2) a specific territorial homeland;
3) unique cultural attributes;
4) constitutive
• To Benedict Anderson (1983)
• a nation is an imagined community. https://www.atg.world/view-article/MODERN%20NATION%20STATE-28231

• limited by a given boundary

• Citizens have rights and responsibilities
To James Wilford Garner
Four (4) elements of state
• a specific population or citizens
• a specific territory
• an organized government
• internal and external sovereignty
• Sovereignty is not absolute in
practice because of the
development of international http://sovereignty.net/

relations and consequently, of

international law
 • Nation and state are closely related. It is
the state that rules over a nation
(Claudio, 2018).

• World politics today has four (4) key

attributes.
• there are countries or nation - states that
are independent and govern themselves
• these countries interact with each other
through diplomacy (negotiations)
• there are international organizations like
the United Nations that facilitate these
interactions
• international organizations take on lives on
their own. The UN, for example, has task-
specific agencies like the World Health
http://outlookafghanistan.net/topics.php?post_id=5451

Organization (WHO) and the International

Labor Organization (Claudio, 2018).
 The Interstate System

https://www.worldhistorys.com/2018/12/treaty-of-westphalia-1648.html

• The Peace Treaty of Westphalia (Germany)

• This was a package of treaties that ended the 30 years European wars of religion (1618-1648).
European states – the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden and the Dutch Republic –
agreed to respect one another's territorial integrity.
• The three (3) core points of the Westphalian Treaty are the following:
a. the principle of state sovereignty;
b. the principle of legal equality of states; and
c. the principle of non-intervention of one state in the internal affairs of another.
 www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2015/3/19/what-if-napoleon-bonaparte-had-won-the-battle-of-waterloo#.XNy1G_ZuLIU=

• The earliest challenge to Westphalian system was Napoleon Bonaparte,

Emperor of the French Empire. He sought to spread the principles of the
French Revolution across Europe by launching the Napoleonic Wars between
1803 to 1815. The Napoleonic code forbade birth privileges, upheld freedom
of religion and meritocracy in government service.
2. The Concert of Europe (1815-1914)

• The main aim was to restore the

Westphalian system. Alliances of “great
powers” of Austria, Prussia, Russian Empire,
United Kingdom agreed to maintain
“balance of power” (no one state is strong
enough to dominate all others) and would
support each other if any revolutions broke
out.
• Sir Klemens von Metternich Austrian
diplomat was the architect of the Concert
of Europe.
• These two interstate systems divided the
world into separate, sovereign nation-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemens_von_Metternich states.
 Internationalism

• Internationalism has been brought by the Peace Treaty of Westphalia

and the Concert of Europe Various sovereign states and people desire
for greater global cooperation and unity.

• Internationalism is divided into the following categories :

 LIBERAL
INTERNATIONALISM
The well-known
liberal-
internationalists
Woodrow Wilson
(USA) forwarded the
“principle of self-
determination”. He
became the notable
advocate of the
LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson
 Immanuel Kant (German) imagined a form of “global
government”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
 Jeremy Bentham
(British) advocated the creation of “international
law” that would govern the inter-state relations.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jeremy-Bentham
 general-history.com/giuseppe-mazzini/

Giuseppe Mazzini
(Italian)believed that a free, unified nation-states
should be the basis of an equally free, and
cooperative international system.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations

• The League of Nations was founded after WW1 in 1919. There were
58 members. Its main objective was to maintain world peace through
international arbitration. Its primary achievement is the birth of task-
specific international organizations like the World Health Organization
(WHO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO).  
 SOCIALIST
INTERNATIONALISM
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

• The main proponent of Socialist Internationalism was Karl Marx. He did not believe in
nationalism (rooted people on domestic concerns). He placed a premium concern on
economic equality. He argued that the world is divided into classes. First, the capitalist class
or the owners of the factories and other means of production. Second, the proletariat class or
those who worked for the capitalists.
• To Marx, the proletariat had no nation. Its battle- cry is “WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE”.
He opposed nationalism because it prevented the unification of world’s workers.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_International

• The Socialist International (1889-1916) was an organization of labor and socialist

parties, mainly in Europe. Among its achievement are the 8-hour working day,
International Women’s Day, and International Labor Day on May 1. Its parties
became major players in the electoral politics of Europe. In 1916, it collapsed when
its member- parties supported the war efforts of their respective states.
 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin

• The Communist International (Comintern) was established in 1919 until 1943. It was a
product of the Bolshevik victory in Russia (USSR) under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin.
It became a tool to promote revolution, a central body for all Communist Parties across
the world. It dissolved in 1943 to appease Allied Powers.
• Communist internationalism has weakened since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
 
• The United Nations (UN) has propagated liberal internationalism since the
end of World War II to this today.
 
• During the period of Cold War, the French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined
the term Third World to describe the economically less-developed states
that tended to share colonial past. They adopted foreign policies based on
nonalignment. In 1955, the Bandung Conference was attended by 29
countries which agreed to combat colonialism and neocolonialism by either
the US or the USSR. This formally gave birth to the non-aligned movement,
a Mazinnian internationalism for decolonizing countries.
• Today, the communist countries have almost totally vanished, thus
making the term Third World obsolete. Now the terms Global North
(the wealthy countries previously known as the First World) and the
Global South (the less-developed countries along the equator and in
the Southern Hemisphere) are popular (Kegley and Raymond, 2012).
 T h e state as th e p rim ary acto r in wo rld p o litics
 

• According to Scholte (2000), the sovereign, territorial state has been the lead actor
on the world stage for nearly four centuries. In some respects, it is still flourishing
because many people look to the state as a source of security, welfare and
identity. Yet numerous states are failing to fulfill these traditional purposes,
leading scholars to ask whether the nation-state will remain capable of addressing
once considered its sole prerogative. With national boundaries becoming
increasingly porous and policy problems transcending political frontiers, the
managerial capabilities of states have been severely strained, regardless of form of
government. Auguste Comte, a 19th century Sociologist, argued that human beings
create institutions to deal with serious problems. When they are no longer able to
perform this vital function, they are replaced by other institutions. Today, as the
Westphalian state seems unable to cope with the many transnational problems, is
the nation -state becoming obsolete?
• To Dhonte and Kapur (1997), the Bretton Woods institutions have
recognized the importance of the state for an effectively functioning
global market.

• To Scholte (2000), the rise of supra-territoriality has encouraged

changes in the character of the state without undermining the state
itself. Whatever new world order might be emerging in the course of
contemporary accelerated globalization, the state has remained a
major part of it.