Week 4

Global Interstate
System
 “Global Interstate System” is a system of competing and allied
states around the world.
 The word “global” refers to the interaction networks in which
people live, whether these are spatially small or large around the
world. “Interstate” explains the connections and operations
between states, and “system” means that these policies and
settlements are interacting with one another in important ways;
interactions are two-way, necessary, structured, regularized, and
reproductive.
 Systemic interconnectedness exists when lives of
the people in the jurisdiction and of others are
significantly affected and influenced through the
interactions, this is pivotal for social continuity
and/or social change.
 This system imposes a check and balance of power such that no
state-system would be able to monopolize the world economy and
everyone would have a fair share of resources and opportunities,
this means that the economy, production in focus to the factors of
production cannot be constrained to a degree of political
monopoly.
Note:

Read the Article in Week 4 TCWD E-book as an Asynchronous Task

Week 5

Global Contemporary Governance

 The students are expected to:
• Identify the roles and functions of United Nations
• Discus the challenges of global governance in the 21 st
century
• Formulate a position paper to explain the relevance of the
state amid globalization
 Globalization is a rich and a broad concept and
may be defined in various perspectives. It cannot
be denied that globalization has made a
tremendous impact on the sovereign state. Fowler
and Bunck (1996) emphasized that a sovereign
state has a territory, the people, and a government.
 Any state admitted as a member of the United Nations will be
upon the decision of the General Assembly as recommended by the
Security Council. The United Nations membership requirements are
(1) the state must be a peace-loving state which accepts the
obligations contained in the present Charter, and
(2) in the judgment of the Organization, must be able and
willing to carry out these obligations.
 Chapter 2, Article 4 of the United Nations Charter
states that only sovereign states can become members of
the United Nations. Although all UN members are fully
sovereign states at the present, the Belarus, India,
Philippines, and Ukraine- four of the original members-
were not independent at the time of their admission in the
organization.
 Even from the seventeenth century, the legal framework of a sovereign state has served as
a definitive ground for political governance and economic system.
Sovereignty has been constitutionally used both on national and international levels. The
intercontinental spread of capital and the formation of global markets have eventually
substituted the fragmented national economies.
 Sovereign states are experiencing increased difficulties in supplying regulatory and
redistributive public goods and establishing and enforcing property rights in the face of
relatively open trade, rapid information-technology advances, and considerable financial
deregulation.
Moreover, both market relations and political discontent with economic policies have
virtually become “borderless.”
 The international system has now become less state-centric that makes a
way into the political constitution of domestic policies. Notably, the
advancements in technology and its innovations have increased the speed of the
migration and transplantation of legal rules and policies.
The transnational actors, which are non-state, such as the
intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental
organizations (INGOs), and transnational corporations (TNCs) have assumed
relevant roles in global governance. They have created transnational law that
runs many dimensions of the political economy that was once governed by the
sovereign states.
 The Rome statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) upholds the
principle of complementarities and recognizes that states do not have to
collaborate with the court unless they have ratified the statute. However, this is
only part of the picture.
The establishment of special hybrid courts in Cambodia, East Timor,
Lebanon, and Sierra Leone means that states no longer see sovereign state law
alone as a sufficient means of punishing serious war crimes.
The decisions of international judges and prosecutors now permeate and
shape the domestic criminal law of these countries. William Burke-White further
asserts that the ICC has become part of a system of multilevel global governance
through its alteration of state preferences and policies and its deterrence of future
crimes through judicial and prosecutorial pronouncements.
 International law has evolved into a central framework for the emergent
system of global governance. This system supplies the normative mechanisms
for the establishment of IGOs and the facilitation of the international response
to issues as diverse as nuclear proliferation, climate change, ocean use, and the
functioning of the world trade system.
Alexandra Khrebtukova insightfully points out, “[n]ational borders no
longer confine the diverse views that prioritize subjects of international law …
. different perspectives are often less identifiable with specific states than with
discrete branches of the law, each manifesting separate functional perceptions
of what that law should take as its primary focus.
 A sovereign state and its laws are changing; they are transforming
according to their relevance to the international system. A state may, in some
point in time, opt to comply with the international and transnational standards.
However, the adaptive power of the state law should not be underestimated.
Generally speaking, the laws that govern the sovereign state are strong
and flexible enough to endure the many challenges along the way. Even with
globalization around, the laws are here to stand firm on the political influence
over the lives of sovereign state’s people and the majority of peoples around the
globe.