Nation-state System Research Articles

Exemplary Ethical Communities. A New Concept for a Livable Anthropocene

This article argues that we need to look at living examples provided by non-state communities in various regions of the world that are, perhaps unwittingly, contributing to the maintenance of the Earth’s optimal thermal balance. These fully sustainable communities have been living outside the mainstream for centuries, even millennia, providing examples in the global struggle against the degradation of social–ecological systems. They have all, to varying degrees, embraced simple forms of living that make them ‘exemplary ethical communities’ (EECs)—human communities with a track record of sustainability related to forms of traditional knowledge and the capacity to survive outside the capitalist market and nation-state system. The article proceeds in three steps: First, it condenses a large body of research on the limits of the existing nation-state system and its accompanying ideology, nationalism, identifying this institutional–ideological complex as the major obstacle to tackling climate change. Second, alternative social formations that could offer viable micro-level and micro-scale alternatives are suggested. These are unlikely to identify with existing nation-states as they often form distinct types of social communities. Taking examples from hunter-gatherer societies and simple-living religious groups, it is shown how the protection and maintenance of these EECs could become the keystone in the struggle for survival of humankind and other forms of life. Finally, further investigation is called for, into how researchers can come forward with more examples of actually existing communities that might provide pathways to sustainability and resistance to the looming global environmental catastrophe.

Mass Violence and the Kurds: Introduction to the Special Issue

The Kurds’ experience with modern mass violence is long and complex. Whereas Kurds lived under the Kurdish Emirates for centuries in pre-national conditions in the Ottoman and Persian empires, the advent of nationalism and colonialism in the Middle East radically changed the situation. World War I was a watershed for most ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire, such as the Kurds, and some political minorities such as Armenians and Assyrians suffered genocide – including at the hands of Kurds. Moreover, the post-Ottoman order precluded the Kurds from building a nation-state of their own. Kurds were either relegated to cultural and political subordination under the Turkish and Persian nation states, or a precarious existence under alternative orders (colonialism in Syria and Iraq, and communism in the Soviet Union). The nation-state system changed the pre-national, Ottoman imperial order with culturally heterogeneous territories into a system of nation-states which began to produce nationalist homogenisation by virtue of various forms of population policies.

Redrawing the boundary of “speech community”: how and why the historicity and materiality of language and the space/place distinction matter to its reconceptualization

Abstract This essay contemplates how we adapt existing sociolinguistic theoretical concepts, methodologies, and analytical units to the world we live in today. Regardless of one’s location on the globe, our lives are profoundly affected by increasingly intense global interconnections and, at the same time, equally intense differentiation of space attending late global capitalism and the evolving nation-state system. While sociolinguistics has attended the heterogeneity within the speech community, in the world today as such, the idea of speech community as bounded is no longer tenable. In envisioning the future direction of IJSL and its leadership in the field, this essay suggests that speech community as an analytical concept would be significantly advanced through the theoretical integration of the space/place distinction and the historicity and materiality of language into its architectonics. By drawing on some of the recent works for guiding models, the essay argues that the reconceptualization of speech community would also demand radical openness to interdisciplinary approaches.

Transnational welfare within and beyond the nation-state: civil society responses to the migration crisis in Greece

ABSTRACT This article advances understanding of how transnational welfare has emerged in practice within and in relation to the nation-state framework, focusing on the responses of civil society actors to the European migration crisis in Greece. It draws on in-depth interviews with different types of civil society actors engaged in activities in Greece during and since the 2015 period of the migration crisis, including national and international NGOs, local solidarity groups, and international volunteers. The findings point to the ways in which transnational welfare through civil society actions arose in relation to the perceived crisis of the national state and inter-state system, in failing to address the needs of migrants and refugees but also Greek residents. However, transnational welfare also emerged through forms of collective action and identification that sought to counter the social boundaries of nation-state systems in relation to migration and welfare. It is argued that analyses of transnational welfare require attention to both those dimensions – that is, how civil society actions forge new meanings and ways of ‘doing’ welfare that may be trans-national in contesting the boundaries of nation-state systems, but also the limits to those actions in relation to the state.

Border dialectics and the border multiple

Questions related to hybridity, creolization, and the porosity of cultural forms have long concerned anthropologists. More often than not, these issues have been explored at sites within the boundaries of national cultural spaces even when those sites are multiplied to achieve a transnational scope that spills over nation-state borders. Looking at the clash of American migrant interdiction agents and Haitian smugglers in the northern Caribbean, this article shifts focus away from the insides of territorial units and aims to illuminate the entanglements that emerge in the often hyperregimented spaces of the sovereign border itself—as distinguishable from the more amorphous spaces of the borderlands. In these interstitial seams of the global system of nation-states, one finds an ontological multiplicity but also an oppositional dynamism that sheds light on the possibility of emergent formations within this and other sites of highly contentious border confrontations.

Appointment of the European Commission as an indicator of European integration development

The article examines the evolution of the European Commission appointment procedure in the context of the institutional balance between the Council of the EU, the European Parliament and the European Commission. The growing influence of the European Parliament on the appointment of the Commission and the nomination of its President is described as an indicator of the development of integration because it demonstrates how the EU supranational institutional system moves closer to the institutional systems of nation states. The European Parliament has gained power similar to national parliaments. The European elections’ results are taken into account during appointment of the European Commission. Despite remaining existing differences between the EU institutional system and national institutions, the author attempts to apply the Sartori concept in order to examine the dynamics of the EU institutional balance. As Sartori described, interaction between parties in national parliaments and governments and gradual transformation towards party government, similar tendencies could be found on the European level. The analysis of the theoretical interpretations, legal basis and practical experience of the European Commission’s appointment enables the author to determine the increased role of the European Parliament vis-à-vis other institutions and the growing importance of the European parties. The current procedure demonstrates a shift from the technocratic functional approach to an ideological approach leading to a growing importance of European politics.

The State's Imperial Shadows

AbstractThis essay seeks to consider Anna Stilz's Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration in light of settler and nonsettler colonialism and their contemporary legacies. In particular, it examines the intergenerational claims of Indigenous communities and the extraterritorial claims of colonial and neocolonial subjects. The broad aim of this effort is to consider how centering the imperial roots of our contemporary nation-state system transforms our understanding and justifications of territorial sovereignty.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF NATION-STATE IN CHINA IN THE 20TH CENTURY

At the transition of the new century and the old, China faced the gunboat diplomacy of Western powers. The traditional Chinese «Tianxia» (天下) order was destroyed and disintegrated. China began to realize the existence of an international political order composed of nation states. In the face of imperialism devouring the land of China, Chinese intellectuals realized that the reason why China was invaded is because China had not completed its modernization, and political modernization was the establishment of a nation-state system to participate in the fierce national competition in modern times. Only the establishment of a nation-state could maintain China’s independence and territorial integrity. In this context, Liang Qichao, as a representative of constitutional monarchy, proposed the notion of «the Chinese Nation» (中华民族), with the effort to unite all ethnic groups in China against imperialist aggression and save Qing Dynasty from peril. Sun Yatsen put forward the idea of «Five Races Under One Union» (五族共和), and under this calling, the political forces of the North and South reached a consensus and finally a multi-ethnic bourgeois republic of China was established in 1912. Fei Xiaotong’s concept of «The Pattern of the Chinese Nation's Pluralistic Unity» (中华民族多元一体格局) was proposed after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, emphasized national diversity, unity and equality. This article takes these three political activists’ national theories as analysis objects to sort out the process of how China transitioned from the old empire into a modern nation-state. Through this analysis, I hope to understand the emergence and nature of modern China as an independent subject in international relations.

Global Elderly Migrations and Their Impact on Health Care Systems.

Demographic transitions that occur in decreased dynamics of natality and rising number of elderly in population structures constitute a challenge for all national economies. Another global phenomena are large-scale migration processes driven by intensification of globalization process, development of technologies, and telecommunications. Although both these phenomena were vastly addressed in many ways in scientific literature, a notifiable fact is that there are only few researches that would investigate them in connection and consider migration of older people and its consequences, especially for health systems. Despite the fact that generally the likelihood of migrations reduces along with age, in some countries a higher share of migrants older than 65 years in reference to the entire group of migrants are being observed. It is the more essential that groups of seniors represent an increasing percentage of people. There are also differences in between standard reasons for migrations in young people and the factors affecting migrations in elderly ones. Many variables can influence migration decisions among older people, and they can be affected by seniors' health conditions, levels of health care within the target countries they migrate to, and the living standards. Such factors as population aging, reduced fertility, and international migration have affected the changes in demographic profiles of many countries. The consequence of migration decisions in the group of seniors is, among others, the impact on health care systems of single nation states, which are more and more important elements of economic, social, and financial systems.

Regional policy on sustainable development of Ukraine in the context of European integration

The article analyzes the issues of regional development in the context of modern public administration. The study of regional development is actualized by the presence of the social order and the peculiarities of development in Ukraine. The experience of realization of social and economic development of regions is generalized on an example.
 The world experience of state regulation of regional development is largely differentiated due to the peculiarities and development of national economies, state system, political traditions and forms of international integration, and therefore it is almost impossible to identify the dominant model of regional development policy.
 The global trend of the modern world is the growing role of regions as units of the regional level of government, which can, on the one hand, reduce the burden on central government, taking over some of their powers, and on the other - take into account the needs of local decision-making. This process is the result of decentralization, regionalization, democratization and globalization.
 The long crisis period in Ukraine and the proclaimed European integration vector objectively require the implementation of a scientifically sound integrated state policy aimed at restoring economic growth and the economy to the level of global competitiveness. The regional aspect of the economic growth strategy has an exclusive role for Ukraine.
 Today it is necessary to implement its own scientifically sound and balanced regional policy, harmonization of the principles of interaction of the center with the regions in order to ensure the optimal combination of national and regional interests. According to the levels of economic, technological and social development, the regions of Ukraine are significantly differentiated and the problem of leveling these disparities remains relevant.

Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants

Reviewer: Gregory J. Goalwin, Aurora University In Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants, Nandita Sharma develops a theory of international migration that situates current political debates within a deep postcolonial history of biopolitics, population control, and citizenship policies. Tracing patterns of colonial relations, Sharma emphasizes the postcolonial nature of the modern world system. Nations, she argues, are the core of a Postcolonial New World Order that have turned us all into National-Natives of some place, creating an expectation that each person belongs to a sovereign separated nation state. Such a system necessarily draws borderlines between members of the nation and everyone else, a distinction that is of critical interest to Sharma. By limiting national membership and creating “people of a place,” Sharma argues that the nation state system creates a new class of people as well, those “out of place” who lack their own sense of national membership or who can be found outside of their “natural” territory. It is this new form of governmentality and biopolitics that forms the core of Sharma’s argument. In tracing how these processes function in the postcolonial world, Sharma identifies a discourse of autochthony that restricts national membership even further: the only “true” nationals are what Sharma calls “National-Natives”: those who can in some way show they are Native to the nation. But this National-Nativity is native in a very specific way, that is, native to the postcolonial nation state itself, not the territory it occupies. This thus creates two other categories of humanity “Indigenous-Natives,” those who predated the nation state and thus do not share fully in its community, and “Migrant-Natives” subsequent settlers from outside the nation state’s territory. This distinction, Sharma argues, is central to modern discourses of migration. By reconceptualizing national communities in this way, indigenous peoples are set aside in favor of new National-Natives who themselves often argue that Migrants represent a new form of colonialism, one that threatens their “rightful” claim to national sovereignty.

Konstitusi dan Arah Kebijakan Pembangunan Hukum; Sebelum dan Sesudah Amendemen

This study aims to find out (1) the relevance of the mandate of the 1945 Constitution of the policy and legal development in GBHN RPJPN, (2) to the normative strategies of national development planning process in the period of the state system before and after amendment to the Constitution of 1945. This study used a qualitative approach with a descriptive-comparative method. The results showed that (1) the formulation of policy towards development of the law, both the artifacts in the Guidelines of State Policy and RPJPN models, can be said to be substantially relevant to mandate of the Constitution, which applies in the context of each period; (2) there are fundamental differences in strategy formulation nomatif RPJPN GBHN with the preparation. This fundamental difference is the logical consequence of the amendments made to the Constitution of 1945 in the history of the Indonesian nation state system.

Irregular migration, borders, and the moral geographies of migration management

Migration management expresses the idealizations of policymakers: how they view the world’s ideal biopolitical and geopolitical organization. This article presents an analysis of an anti-irregular migration campaign funded by Australia and administered by the International Organization for Migration to deter “potential people smugglers” in Indonesia. The article demonstrates that the campaign attempted to normalize the idea that transporting irregular migrants was immoral and a sin. The Indonesia–Australia border and the Westphalian nation-state system were structured as moral geographies. The campaign framed immigration law as the ultimate determinant of moral and immoral migration, proclaiming a righteousness in immobilizing irregular migrants, regardless of circumstance. Per the campaign, moral migration is to be managed, and borders to be guarded, by unaccountable consultants for hire like the International Organization for Migration—states’ deputized migration managers. The article analyzes how irregular migration was structured as subverting and exploiting territorialized nations, how the campaign associated emplacement and boundedness with safety and irregular migration with a threatening, foreign, immorality. Finally, the article investigates how everyday spaces were infiltrated by bordering practices designed to normalize the campaign’s purported “truths” about morality and migration, showing the varying temporalities and scales of border-making and migration management.

Decolonizing International Relations: A Re-Memory of Indentured Servitude in Fiji and How it Impacts Our Present and Future

In response to the fourth coup in the Fiji Islands in as many as seventeen years, the international community demanded the restoration of democracy and order in the country. Historical memories of a British colonialism that brought Indians to Fiji as indentured laborers and proceeded to construct a ‘museum’ for the Euro-American imagination that resulted in such tumultuous conditions in Fiji are conveniently cast aside in a colonial globality masquerading as “liberal international order.” These memories, histories beyond the Western construct of the nation-state, histories of colonialism, are also missing from dominant discourses of realism, liberalism, constructivism and historical materialism. The case of Fiji serves as an example of a ‘postcolonial’ nation-state that current academic IR theory cannot offer much support to since it has a colonial epistemology, shackled and bounded within the confines of the Western-constructed nation-state system. Hence, this paper will shed the secure and comfortable land of the Euro-American, travel down the kala pani (Pacific) waters, and shipwreck on Vanua Levu, one of the many islands in the archipelago of Fiji, as the first Indian indentured laborers did when they were taken from one part of the British empire to another. In a place that is romanticized as paradise in the Euro-American imagination, we will pull back the curtains of the imagined museum and reveal a ‘post-colonial’ nation struggling with export-oriented dependent development while burning in the flames of ethnic-tensions created by the then British Empire and sustained today by a colonial globality. This colonial globality is emulated by the modern nation-state, in which differences are created and otherized, sustained within national spaces and across the inter-national. It is the crucial intervention of historical memory pertaining to the construction of the nation-state and the inter-national that makes possible this Discovery. We propose decolonizing IR through critique where the voices and histories subaltern to IR, but so crucial to the production of the local, the national and therefore, global, are put back on the agenda, which should ultimately provide for more honest and responsible scholarship.

The right to have rights of undocumented migrants: inadequacy and rigidity of legal categories of migrants and minorities in international law of human rights

ABSTRACT This article engages with the legal and political discourses aiming to respond to the increasing presence of undocumented migrants in the European Union. It focuses on legal consequences of the discursive framing often portraying undocumented migrants as a group ‘unworthy of social, economic, and political rights’ as opposed to those considered genuine refugees. The article explores the opening brought by the group approach to undocumented migrants and asks whether such a group perspective could be used as a basis for recognition of group-based rights of undocumented migrants. With reference to Jacques Rancière’s conception of dissensus the article discusses the arbitrariness, inadequacy and historical contingency of legal categories of migrants and minorities in international human rights law and focuses on the existing openings in the minority protection standards in international and regional instruments. These include the strong non-discrimination focus of minority protection; the ongoing process of broadening of the minority protection encompassing also non-citizens; and the alternative theories of minority protection. Such an approach allows for experimenting with existing legal categories approaching the rights of undocumented migrants from the minority protection perspective, revealing their rigidity and dependence on the nation-state system.

Processes of Sub-Citizenship: Neoliberal Statecrafting ‘Citizens,’ ‘Non-Citizens,’ and Detainable ‘Others’

Increasingly, scholars are exploring the politics of migration and the shifting terrain of citizenship from a critical mobilities perspective. To contribute to these discussions, in this paper, I explore how processes of sub-citizenship occur as nation-states craft immigration, citizenship, and border securitization policies and practices. I argue that complex and shifting processes of sub-citizenship largely occur through the nation-state’s production of ‘insiders’ (‘citizens’) and ‘outsiders’ (‘non-citizens’). As a nascent attempt to introduce sub-citizenship, I draw upon recent high-profile cases of family separation, abuse, and neglect experienced by children with ‘illegal migrant’ status in the United States and Australia. Under the international nation-state system and the neoliberal globalization paradigm, the border policing powers of nation-states are primed to expand and intensify processes of sub-citizenship. Those at lower levels of the sub-citizen hierarchy are at risk of experiencing various forms of state-led violence, including deportation, detention, and torture.

Cyclical Globalization and China’s Strategic Options

As the backdrop for contemporary international relations, globalization reflects the way economic and political power are distributed, and provides the grand context for China’s strategic planning. The history and logic of globalization have shown that underpinned by a system of nation-states, globalization proceeds according to an inescapable cyclical pattern. Globalization suffered major setbacks in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and is likely to further lose steam amid an evolving Covid-19 pandemic. A low-ebb phase of globalization will present an increasingly complicated strategic environment featuring intensifying great power rivalry, regionalized supply chains, and growing technology competition. Beijing remains determined to integrate further into the world, but to adapt to a new strategic environment, will vigorously implement the newly unveiled dual circulation strategy. As China sees it, despite all the major setbacks, globalization is an irreversible mega-trend but it will be driven by a new underlying logic.

Muslim State in a World of Nation-State

Muslim views on the polity represent the paradigmatic understandings of how Muslims relate citizenry, authority, territoriality, and sovereignty to the overarching influence of the Western nation-state system. For instance, the meaning of citizenry in the modern state system was adopted by several Muslim societies during the decolonisation period. Faith or submission to the will of Allah was the main criterion to become part of the group (usually referred to as the ummah). However, orientalists regarded ummah as a synonym for tribe, while Arab linguists insisted on a religious connotation. Authority, on the other hand, is ultimately enshrined in the personhood of the Prophetﷺ who is the spiritual leader, executor, legislator, and judicial interpreter of Allah’s message. Since in reality the Prophetﷺ is no longer existing, leadership is bestowed on the subsequent followers, and sometimes the ummah may possess leadership status through a social contract between the ruler and the ruled. The manifestation of operationalised authority needs a political space, domain, or place, which is attainable via the notion of territoriality. This is loosely conceptualised as an ummah that has geographical aspects, cultural traits, and a lingua franca. In the 8th century, jurists divided Muslim territoriality into two analytical terms, the abode of Islam (dār al-Islam) and the abode of war/the enemy (dār al-Harb), while the Shia version of abodes rests in the Qur’ānic dichotomy of “oppressed–oppressor.” The last concept pertains to sovereignty (hakimiyyah), commonly understood as “the will of God” and advanced by Islamists in the 20th century. In medieval times, it was understood as the promotion of public welfare envisaged in Sharī’ah, while in modern times, Islamic modernists argued that Islamists wrongfully understood sovereignty and that the root word used in the Qur’ān meant “to govern.” Nowadays, the assertion that symbolises Allah’s sovereignty can be found in some modern Muslim states.

"Loathsome and Dangerous": Health Screening in a Globalized World

Note: In lieu of an abstract, this is the article's first paragraph. "As the world has become steadily more interdependent over the last century, disease has been able to spread with increasing ease. As a consequence of this new danger, the international community has changed the way that it understands contagion, and public health has taken on new roles and new meanings around the world. I argue that the globalization of public health and the relatively new perception of diseases as “global” threats have dramatically altered practices of health screening, both at the border and beyond. Above all, these changes also reveal the importance of public health systems in supporting the nation-state system as a whole. Using a brief history of the WHO, Part I discusses how globalization has facilitated a shift in thinking about disease as a “global” threat rather than as an “international” problem. Part II examines the historical significance of public health policies in defining national identities, as well as the extent to which globalization has made this difficult. Finally, Part III uses three case studies to suggest that the new “global health” paradigm has provided nation-states with the tools to reassert claims to national sovereignty and identity-building in an increasingly globalized world."

"Loathsome and Dangerous": Health Screening in a Globalized World

Note: In lieu of an abstract, this is the article's first paragraph. "As the world has become steadily more interdependent over the last century, disease has been able to spread with increasing ease. As a consequence of this new danger, the international community has changed the way that it understands contagion, and public health has taken on new roles and new meanings around the world. I argue that the globalization of public health and the relatively new perception of diseases as “global” threats have dramatically altered practices of health screening, both at the border and beyond. Above all, these changes also reveal the importance of public health systems in supporting the nation-state system as a whole. Using a brief history of the WHO, Part I discusses how globalization has facilitated a shift in thinking about disease as a “global” threat rather than as an “international” problem. Part II examines the historical significance of public health policies in defining national identities, as well as the extent to which globalization has made this difficult. Finally, Part III uses three case studies to suggest that the new “global health” paradigm has provided nation-states with the tools to reassert claims to national sovereignty and identity-building in an increasingly globalized world."