System Of Sovereign States Research Articles

Global Civil Society: The Progress of Post-Westphalian Politics

Despite lingering ambiguity surrounding the concept, global civil society is acclaimed by those who think they belong to it, and validated by international governmental organizations seeking legitimation for their activities. Its enthusiasts believe global civil society presages a more congenial kind of politics that transcends the system of sovereign states. Its critics deride its unrepresentativeness and complicity in established power relations. The critics can be answered by more subtle accounts of representation and by highlighting contestatory practices. Appreciation of the promise and perils of global civil society requires moving beyond preconceptions rooted in dated ideas about civil society and democracy as they allegedly function within states. Irrespective of the sophistication of such post-Westphalian moves, global civil society remains contested terrain, involving interconnected political and intellectual disputes. International relations theory proves less useful than it should be in clarifying what is at stake. Democratic theory can be brought to bear, and this encounter sheds new light on what democracy itself can entail.

A non-sovereign modernity: attempts to engineer stability in the Balkans 1820–90

AbstractSocial theory almost invariably equates modernity with the sovereign state. This equation must be nuanced because the modern era and modern strategies of international stability have contained non-sovereign units. In the nineteenth century, the Great Powers tried to create international stability by engineering forms of rule in Europe. These strategies built on distinctively modern ideas: the possibility of radically breaking with the past, redesigning political organisations, and actively controlling political events through rational planning. Throughout the century the Great Powers alternated between creating non-sovereign units and creating sovereign units as instruments in these stabilising strategies. The degree of trust between the Great Powers accounts for the shift between the two strategies: they tended to create non-sovereign units when mutual trust was high and sovereign ones when trust was low. This article analyses Great Power strategies of designing forms of rule in the Balkans between 1820 and 1878. Like in previous centuries, nineteenth-century Europe actually consisted of two parallel but connected systems: the egalitarian system of sovereign states and a system of non-sovereign entities. Non-sovereign units disappeared only late in the century and this process was affected by the increasing rivalry and mistrust between the sovereign states.

Uma nota sobre filosofia política, relações internacionais e filosofia da história

The main aim of this paper is to consider how the conceptual resources provided by modern political philosophy, by Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of the historical evolution of international right and by Kant’s philosophy of history may offer a better and deeper understanding of the logical and conceptual constraints which delimit the evolutional dynamic of international relationships. In its first part, the article tries to render the way in which the acute attention to the peculiar geometry of Earth’s space – its spherical form – constitutes a productive focal point of the analyses made by Hobbes, Pufendorf and Kant of the formal properties of human interactions, being those considered at the individual level or as relations amongst politically organized collectivities. The analysis highlights here mainly the difficulties to easily extend the solution provided by the theories of social contract for the overcoming of internal conflicts to international rivalries and contests. The paper’s second part presents a short résumé of Carl Schmitt’s analyses of the process in the course of which the agonic disputes among European states have been progressively submitted to normative principles. The point emphasized in this section is the fact that this move forward moral progress results from the most impudent cynicism of the great political powers actions, to which we owe the constitution of the jus publicum europaeum. The third and conclusive part of the paper suggests that the philosophy of history, namely in its Kantian version, is the theoretical instrument allowing the conciliation of the normative approach to the evolution of international politics and the positive, or as Schmitt would surely prefer, existencial analysis of the evolution of political foreign affairs inside the system of sovereign States.

Human rights in a global ecumene

How should we understand the cultural politics that has surrounded the development of international human rights? Two perspectives frame contemporary debate. For ‘cultural particularists’, human rights are western artefacts; alien to other societies, and an inappropriate basis for international institutional development. For ‘negotiated universalists’, a widespread global consensus undergirds international human rights norms, with few states openly contesting their status as fundamental standards of political legitimacy. This article advances an alternative understanding, pursuing John Vincent's provocative, yet undeveloped, suggestion that while the notion of human rights has its origins in European culture, its spread internationally is best understood as the product of a ‘universal social process’. The international politics of individual/human rights is located within an evolving global ecumene, a field of dynamic cultural engagement, characterized over time by the development of multiple modernities. Within this field, individual/human rights have been at the heart of diverse forms of historically transformative contentious politics, not the least being the struggles for imperial reform and change waged by subject peoples of diverse cultural backgrounds; struggles that not only played a key role in the construction of the contemporary global system of sovereign states, but also transformed the idea of ‘human’ rights itself. In developing this alternative understanding, the article advances a different understanding of the relation between power and human rights, one in which rights are seen as neither simple expressions of, or vehicles for, western domination, nor robbed of all power-political content by simple notions of negotiation or consensus. The article concludes by considering, in a very preliminary fashion, the implications of this new account for normative theorizing about human rights. If a prima facie case exists for the normative justifiability of such rights, it lies first in their radical nature—in their role in historically transformative contentious politics—and second in their universalizability, in the fact that one cannot plausibly claim them for oneself while denying them to others.

On a Field Trip with Bourdieu

How can Bourdieu help us grasp international politics today? How can the concept of “field,” originally coined for analyzing relations within states, provide an understanding of emerging patterns of transnational governance? I argue that Bourdieu provides us with sophisticated analytical tools for exploring the strength and limits of state authority—also beyond the national territory. Moreover, I claim that sovereign state interaction—diplomacy—has developed into a metafield. If we are to understand emerging challenges to state authority, from private companies to international organizations and global media, we need to study everyday activities, which both reproduce and challenge the sovereign state system as a meaningful reality. I illustrate this idea of competing articulations of political authority by focusing on the EU's new diplomatic service, which challenges the very idea of national diplomatic representation. A Bourdieusian reading of “the international” turns traditional IR theory upside down. When neorealists claim that the international system is anarchical, Bourdieu insists that it is hierarchical. When the English School claims that “pariah states and failed states” can be seen as being somehow outside international society relegated to a more abstract international system “with less dense interaction” (Dunne 2010:148), a Bourdieu-inspired approach argues that processes of exclusion are intrinsic to international society. Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, for instance, only becomes a “pariah state” through interaction with the rest of the world. While this might sound like a constructivist argument about the social character of international politics, Bourdieu is not an IR constructivist. Anarchy is not what states make of it because the international is already structured. States come with a history. The marginalization of some states, groups, or individuals can be explained by the changing patterns of cultural and symbolic forms of domination and the competition for power and prestige. To Bourdieu, the particularity of the state as an organization, …

Struggles for Individual Rights and the Expansion of the International System

AbstractWe live today in the world's first universal, multicultural, and multiregional system of sovereign states. Five centuries ago, emergent sovereign states were confined to Europe and contained within the bounds of Latin Christendom. Through five great waves of expansion this nascent European system globalized. The Westphalian settlement, the independence of Latin America, the Versailles settlement, post-1945 decolonization, and the collapse of the Soviet Union each brought a host of new states into the system. How can we explain these great waves of expansion, each of which saw imperial systems of rule displaced by the now universal form of the sovereign state? After detailing the limits of existing explanations, this article presents a new account of the principal waves of systemic expansion that stresses the importance of subject peoples' struggles for the recognition of individual rights. Empires are hierarchies, the legitimacy of which has been sustained historically by traditional regimes of unequal entitlements—institutional frameworks that allocate individuals of different social status different social powers and entitlements. In the Westphalian, Latin American, and post-1945 waves of expansion, which together produced most of today's sovereign states and gave the system its principal regions, subject peoples embraced local interpretations of new, distinctly modern ideas about individual rights and challenged the traditional distribution of entitlements that undergirded imperial hierarchy. Each wave differed, not the least because different rights were at work: liberty of religious conscience, the right to equal political representation, and after 1945, a compendium of civil and political rights. But in each case a “tipping point” was reached when the imperial system in question proved incapable of accommodating the new rights claims and subject peoples turned from “voice” to “exit,” and each time the sovereign state was seen as the institutional alternative to empire.

The New Regional Order and Transnational Civil Society in Southeast Asia: Focusing on Alternative Regionalism from below in the Process of Building the ASEAN Community

Since the end of the Cold War and in the context of the recent spread of economic globalization, Southeast Asian regionalism has steadily deepened and expanded, centering on ASEAN. The concept of the ASEAN Community is one of the most important aspects of this regionalism, and there have been hopes that this will be realized by 2015. The mainstream theories such as neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, and social constructivism have offered competing explanations of this transformation. However, recently, a new phenomenon that cannot be fully explained by these state-centric theories has arisen—the movement toward constructing a regional order from below by transnational civil society actors. By adopting the analytical viewpoint of the New Regionalism Approach, which has maintained a keen interest in civil society in the process of regionalization, this study attempts to empirically analyze still largely unexplored activities undertaken by transnational civil society actors, in particular who has promoted the “alternative regionalism” against the “neoliberal regionalism” in the course of the formation of the ASEAN Community. It also seeks to examine the embryonic change toward the establishment of a new regional order in Southeast Asia from the bottom-up perspective. In conclusion, the article proves that by engaging with transnational civil society actors, ASEAN is gradually moving from an “elite club” to a “people-centered” organization. However, given the predominance of neoliberal discourse, “alternative regionalism” has not had enough influence for this to be fully realized. Nevertheless, the growing number of transnational civil society actors is resulting in improved potential to transform the persistent sovereign state system.

O baile do monstro: o mito da paz de vestfália na história das relações internacionais modernas

O objetivo deste artigo é problematizar o mito da Paz de Vestfália nas relações internacionais modernas, trazendo interpretações alternativas para tal evento e para seus impactos no estudo da história das relações internacionais e nas relações internacionais contemporâneas. Problematizando, primeiramente o marco histórico, o argumento central aponta que a Paz de Vestfália não promoveu profunda inovação nem ruptura em relação à perspectiva anterior à Guerra dos Trinta Anos no que diz respeito aos aspectos essenciais das unidades constitutivas do Sacro Império Romano e das prerrogativas do imperador, apenas confirmou uma ordem cooperativa legal de entidades autônomas não-soberanas. O questionamento da existência empírica de um sistema inviolável de Estados soberanos evidencia, a seguir, as brechas nos princípios de autonomia e de territorialidade do modelo vestfaliano de relações internacionais. Finalmente, as interpretações alternativas do impacto da Paz de Vestfália para as relações internacionais e para seu estudo indicam que a igualdade formal entre os Estados intensifica dificuldades na resposta às diferenças na cultura, na religião e no modo de vida.

Humanitarian Intervention: Moralism versus Realism?

Justice, Intervention, and Force in International Relations: Reassessing Just War Theory in the 21st Century. By Kimberly A. Hudson. New York: Routledge, 2009. 192 pp., $140.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-415-49025-2). Waging Humanitarian War: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Humanitarian Intervention. By Eric A. Heinze. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009. 207 pp., $65.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-791-47695-6). How Do I Save My Honor? War, Moral Integrity, and Principled Resignation. By William F. Felice. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009. 223 pp., $44.95 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-742-56666-8). First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. By David N. Gibbs. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009. 346 pp., $27.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-826-51644-2). The unifying theme of these four books is humanitarian intervention—a paradigm that permits a state to intervene into the territory of another state, by employing military force, for humanitarian reasons: to stop large-scale atrocities committed against innocent human beings—the citizens of the target state.1 But this paradigm is not to be confused with the practice of intervention which violates the non-intervention principle foundational to the modern system of sovereign states. Non-intervention is of crucial concern because it constitutes the flipside of the principle of sovereign autonomy and territorial integrity embraced by realists and by legalists favoring international law—both asserting the stability of the international system and its standing territorial arrangements as a baseline. Non-intervention on these premises is the norm while intervention is the exception that calls for justification (Realists justify intervention as a foreign policy tool by claiming that it serves the national interest). Humanitarian intervention is an altogether different concept. Its ground is neither international law nor realpolitik but ethics. Its raison d’etre is protecting the innocent from unjustified violence and its logic is characteristically prescriptive: we ought to intervene in Sudan to alleviate on-going human suffering or we ought to have intervened in Rwanda to prevent the 1994 genocide. Mastering the humanitarian intervention debate is a demanding task because it presupposes familiarity with theories of ethics that transcend the immediate concerns of International Relations (IR). All four books under review contribute to this debate by elucidating how matters of right and wrong bear on the question of what states and governments do, or ought to do, in their mutual relations in the international realm. They are likely to attract the attention of advanced graduate students, IR theorists, and all those interested in the relationship between intervention, ethical constraints on foreign policy, and interstate war. My discussion …

National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of History in Japan, France, and the United States (review)

Reviewed by: National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of History in Japan, France, and the United States Sheldon Garon (bio) National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of History in Japan, France, and the United States. By Christopher L. Hill. Duke University Press, Durham, N.C., 2008. xvi, 351 pages. $89.95, cloth; $24.95, paper. This is an extraordinary book. One of the hottest fields of history recently has been global or transnational history. Scholars are keen to transcend national histories to chart the movements of peoples, ideas, and institutions across national boundaries. For the most part, these efforts have yet to realize their promise. In particular, attempts to insert the United States into global history generally suffer from the unwillingness to master the [End Page 427] languages and historiographies necessary to study interactions with other peoples and countries. Spatially, transnational history remains centered on the world of the North Atlantic, with some additional work on relationships between Western nations and their colonies. The exclusion of East Asia, especially Japan, from most global histories has been a glaring gap. Japan, after all, emerged as one of the world's most dynamic nation-states during the late nineteenth century and achieved great-power status after 1900. Japanese moreover became transnational learners par excellence, energetically engaging in the study of Western texts and practices—and, after the Russo-Japanese War, furnishing models of "national efficiency" to Westerners and Asians alike. If we wish the field of transnational history to be truly global, scholars of Japan should not wait for historians of the West to include Japan. We should exploit our "comparative advantage"—our mastery of a difficult language and a lesser-known history—while utilizing our native tongue and knowledge of at least one European language to broaden discussions of global interactions and other histories. Christopher Hill has done just that in this magisterial study of the emergence of national histories in nineteenth-century Japan, France, and the United States. It is worth noting that he is not a historian by training but a scholar of Japanese and comparative literature. Hill relies not only on Japanese sources but also on French-language tracts and writings from the United States. The book stands at the intersection of textual analysis and history, to the enrichment of both. Hill builds on a small yet growing body of transnational history that examines the simultaneous emergence of nationalism and internationalism toward the end of the nineteenth century.1 The concurrence of these developments is no paradox, he argues. This was the moment when thinkers and leaders in a number of countries sought to construct strong nation-states. They necessarily drew on international relations—cultural, political, and economic—to envision how to mobilize resources and people. That is, each aspiring power adopted common elements from transnational discourses on nation building. These included universal elementary education, national anthems, pledges of allegiance, and standardized political institutions that would facilitate diplomatic relations between nations. As Hill explains, each country participated in a "single modernity" embedded in "global capitalism and the system of sovereign states" (p. ix). National history, the focus of Hill's study, serves as a stimulating example of this transnational imagining of the modern nation-state. Publicists and officials found it necessary to write histories that would situate their respective nation within the emerging international order. These histories [End Page 428] aimed to give each nation distinct identities that would impress other powers while "enlightening" one's own people to work and sacrifice for the nation as a whole. At the same time, national history was harnessed to justify the domination of weaker countries. Contemporary European discourses influenced the Meiji era's Fukuzawa Yukichi and others to re-present Japanese history as the rise of "civilization" and progress, and conversely to depict China and Korea as in decline. Like other fine books, this one lends itself to being read in various ways by various disciplines. Transnational historians may be most interested in the first chapter on "National History and the Shape of the Nineteenth-Century World." Hill makes a compelling case for including the United States and...

A Nation of Emigrants: How Mexico Manages Its Migration

The field of migration studies is dominated by examinations into how immigrant-receiving countries grapple with social problems ranging from border control to immigrant incorporation. David Fitzgerald challenges this tendency and offers what is, to date, one of the most comprehensive looks into the politics and administration of emigration.A Nation of Emigrants is about the consequences and opportunities that mass labor emigration poses to emigrant-sending nations and how such nations attempt to limit the negative consequences and leverage the opportunities of emigration. Focusing on Arandas, a small rural county in Jalisco, Mexico, the book tells the story of how state, civic, and religious institutions within Arandas and greater Mexico attempted to maintain ties with migrants from Arandas living in the United States. Fitzgerald uses this locale to examine the evolution of local experiences with absent community members, the national tensions between administering a territory and managing citizens, and the international dimensions of labor migration. The three primary content chapters are organized according to systems of emigration control and management. Chapter 2 examines federal efforts to manage mass labor migration to the United States. Chapter 3 focuses on how the Catholic Church adjusted to the rise of mass migration to a Protestant nation. Chapter 4 discusses how hometown associations emerged to encourage and coordinate emigrant investment in municipal projects within Mexico. Each of the chapters follows a similar historical arc by examining how institutions opposed to mass labor emigration during the early twentieth century had, by the early 1990s, actively embraced Mexican nationals living in the United States. Municipal governments, parish churches, and the federal government all balanced courting emigrant workers’ earnings with anxieties regarding the reincorporation of emigrant citizens. Each of these chapters serves as evidence for Fitzgerald’s primary intellectual objective, which is to critique theories regarding the erosion of nation-states and the rise of transnational subjects. “The Westphalian system of sovereign states is not in decline,” argues Fitzgerald. “In fact, it is so robust even when confronted by mass international migration that it has shaped a new social contract between emigrants and their home country that I call citizenship a la carte” (p. 154).Fitzgerald’s concept of “citizenship a la carte” suggests that Mexico — a nation of emigrants — has adjusted to the rise of mass emigration by extending to citizens abroad opportunities for ongoing economic, cultural, social, and even political engagement with Mexico. Citizens abroad, in other words, may leave Mexican territory but remain Mexican subjects. Yet, argues Fitzgerald, citizenship a la carte limits how governments can exercise authority over citizens outside the national territory and the ways in which emigrant citizens can pick and choose benefits of citizenship without obligations. In particular, explains Fitzgerald, states lose the option of coercive force when citizens exit the national territory, and emigrants participate from afar in Mexican politics, culture, and society but are exempt from living according to conditions that they help to create. A Nation of Emigrants raises important questions regarding the reach of national authority, the substance of citizenship, and the everyday physical realities of life in an era of mass migration.The book sharply outlines its theoretical framework and will prove useful in graduate courses on state power, transnationalism, and citizenship. Fitzgerald’s historical approach promises a provocative analysis of changes that have taken place in Arandas since economist Paul Schuster Taylor conducted interviews there for his 1933 book A Spanish-Mexican Peasant Community: Arandas in Jalisco, Mexico, but it provides merely a general tour that lacks empirical and analytical substance. For example, archival resources are not always contextualized, and Fitzgerald tends to deploy single primary sources without considering contradictions and contingencies. Further, he misses opportunities for deeper analysis. For example, Fitzgerald provides new information on the Catholic Church and its role in managing Mexican emigration, but he discusses religion, families, and migration without attention to the gendered dimensions of work, mobility, and authority, and without any significant analysis of how the rising number of female migrants might have impacted the Mexican state’s assumption of a more protectionist stance toward its citizens abroad during the 1990s. Still, with these quibbles aside, A Nation of Emigrants raises critical new questions that will lead migration scholars to more thoughtfully consider the emigration story that unfolds alongside immigration history.

Sovereignty and statelessness in the border enclaves of India and Bangladesh

This article investigates the 198 political enclaves along the northern section of the border between India and Bangladesh. The enclaves are a remnant of the partition of British India in 1947 and are effectively stateless spaces because most are small and located several kilometers within their host country, which has prevented any administrative contact with their home country. Drawing on interviews with current enclave residents, this article describes the creation of the enclaves and analyzes the disputes that prevented their normalization over the past 60 years. The enclaves provide an important site for scrutinizing the connections between bordering practices and sovereignty claims. They also demonstrate both the social benefits the sovereign state system has brought through the establishment of law and order and the devastating consequences it has caused by territorializing those basic social protections. The article concludes that the failure to exchange the enclaves displays the powerful role nationalist homeland narratives play in institutionalizing the concepts of sovereignty and territorial integrity, often at the expense of human rights.

Japan's Contribution to Global Constitutionalism

In this paper I want to approach the theme of “globalization and Japan” from the standpoint of constitutional studies. Constitutions and constitutionalism are important means of reining in political power, and in the modern sovereign state system, constitutions and constitutionalism have been conceived on the level of single states. However, as many scholars have observed, one can see the global spread of power in, for example, the worldwide deployment of the US military using overseas bases throughout the world, and the worldwide activities of transnational corporations based in the US, Europe, and Japan. In sum, this is the global spread of military and social power. It is urgent that we rein in this global power. Although controlling power through single-state-level constitutions and constitutionalism is perhaps still the most important priority, we must also consider the possibilities of global constitutionalism or regional constitutionalism now when power is spreading globally. This paper will explore global constitutionalism, which is now the subject of vigorous discussion for those concerned with global governance. Finally, the paper will link global constitutionalism with the pacifism in Japan's constitution.

The Political Discourse of International Order in Modern Japan: 1868–1945

This article discusses what constituted Japan's conception of the world order, by analyzing political discourse of international order in modern Japan. It has been generally assumed that the Japanese vision of international order in the pre-World War II years was dominated by a belief in the supremacy of the sovereign state. Contrary to the conventional supposition, this paper will argue that modern Japan actually abounded in discourses of transnationalism, and that most of them cannot be seen as the product of liberal ideas but rather the result of an unstable image of the sovereign state system. Surveying the historical development of political discourse of sovereignty and colonial administration in modern Japan, the way in which the ambivalence of Japanese transnationalism had affected the theoretical construction of the international order will be elucidated. Keeping in mind that previous studies on the genealogy of international relations have focused exclusively on the paradigmatic debate over the League of Nations, this article will also pay more attentions to the fact that rearrangement of empire had occupied the significant place in building the image of the world order. Based on the historical considerations mentioned above, the conclusion will offer generalized consideration of what constituteｄ Japan's conception of the world order.

The Peace of Westphalia as a Secular Constitution

“Westphalia” is often used as shorthand for a system of equal and sovereign states; and the peace treaties of Westphalia, concluded in 1648 at Munster and Osnabruck and ending the Thirty Years’ War, are sometimes said to have established the modern concept of sovereign statehood. The distinguished international relations scholar Stephen Krasner, while commenting that this model “had virtually nothing to do with the Peace of Westphalia,” nonetheless defines as “Westphalian” an “institutional arrangement for organizing political life that is based on two principles: territoriality and the exclusion of external actors from domestic authority structures.” According to Krasner, “Westphalian sovereignty is violated when external actors influence or determine domestic authority structures.” Krasner explains that he chooses to use this terminology because the “Westphalian model has so much entered into common usage, even if it is historically inaccurate.”1 As Krasner notes, among the possible meanings of “sovereignty” there is a further, closely connected yet slightly different meaning he refers to as the “international law definition” of sovereignty. International legal sovereignty is concerned with “establishing the status of a political entity in the international system,” i.e. a state is regarded as sovereign when it possesses international legal personality and is a subject of international law, a necessary condition for entering into treaty agreements with other entities.2 This is a notion of sovereignty that is based on an analogy between states and individuals, deriving its force from the application of liberal political theory to the international realm. It is obvious that “Westphalian” sovereignty and international legal sovereignty are conceptually independent from each other – it is conceivable that one can be had without the other. Indeed, sovereigns in the international law sense can voluntarily compromise features of their “Westphalian” domestic sovereignty, and sovereigns in the so-called Westphalian sense need not necessarily have international legal personality.3 However, much scholarly literature on the history of international law and international relations claims that both the “Westphalian” and the international law notion of sovereignty have their origin in the Peace of Westphalia.4 In this paper I seek to shift the focus from this popular conception of the peace treaties of Osnabruck and Munster, and instead treat them as constitutional documents, relevant to the historiography of international law and international affairs in a different way from the more established usage. In this I join a small but growing body of work on constitutional aspects of the Peace of Westphalia, research thus far conducted more by lawyers and political scientists than by historians.5 A significant example of recent public law scholarship in this vein is Roderick Hills’ stimulating essay “Federalism as Westphalian Liberalism.”6 Hills, a prominent American public law scholar, sets out to claim the constitutional arrangements of the Peace of Westphalia for the liberal tradition. His essay adduces Westphalia as a model and successful historical example for one particular kind of federalist constitutional structure. There is a normative implication in Hills’ argument, namely that Westphalia serves as an experiment well worth emulating.

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a Secular Constitution

is often used as shorthand for a system of equal and sovereign states; and the peace treaties of Westphalia are sometimes said to have established the modern concept of sovereign statehood. This paper seeks to shift the focus from this popular conception of the Westphalian treaties, and instead to treat them as constitutional documents. I argue that the Westphalian constitutional treaties successfully solved the problem of deep religious disagreement by imposing proto-liberal religious liberties on the estates of the Holy Roman Empire, which left the subjects with exclusively secular duties towards their authorities. The Westphalian constitution also addressed the issue of compliance with its religious provisions by establishing a secular procedure to adjudicate religious disputes that excluded religious reasoning from the courts. This account of Westphalia yields important implications for our view of sovereignty in the Holy Roman Empire. It is argued that Westphalia established a secular order by taking sovereignty over religious affairs away from the discretion of territorial princes and by establishing a proto-liberal legal distinction between private and public affairs. Westphalia must thus be seen as a very successful constitutional experiment in dealing with deep religious disagreements.

Sovereignty under Siege? Globalization and New Zealand (review)

Reviewed by: Sovereignty under Siege? Globalization and New Zealand Roderic Alley Sovereignty under Siege? Globalization and New Zealand, edited by Robert Patman and Chris Rudd. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. ISBN 0-7546-3064-1; ix + 247 pages, table, figures, notes, bibliographies, index. Cloth, US$99.95. In their introduction, and following an identification of the properties of globalization, this collection's editors treat the phenomenon as terrain where some view the erosion and shrinkage of state sovereignty as irrevocable; where others are convinced that the "Westphalian temple" (the international system of sovereign states) is largely intact; and where a smaller, though important contingent look to globalization as a transformational process shaped by the perceptions, interpretations, and responses of its diverse actors. However, the editors claim, facing all is a key question about the actual nature of the sovereignty and globalization relationship. The challenge is pertinent given that New Zealand, as focus for this collection, joins other small, well-developed, and sovereign-sensitive states such as Singapore, Switzerland, and Finland for inclusion among the ten most globalized of states, societies, and economies. Part One, "Political and Economic [End Page 447] Engagement," comprises four chapters assessing globalization as a shift from Keynes to neoliberalism (Roper); New Zealand and the world economy (Richardson); globalization, sovereignty, human rights, and New Zealand (Roth); and globalization and Parliament (Wood). Read as a set, these papers offer ample background about New Zealand's 1980s "big bang" into privatization, deregulation, and liberalization of an economy formerly so shackled as to see late Prime Minister David Lange once term it a "Polish shipyard." However, more was needed here about the impacts of capital mobility, exchange rate movements, and financial market integration on the New Zealand economy. Deserving debate was a point raised by the editors in their conclusion, suggesting that New Zealand has responded to globalization as yetanother international constraint requiring navigation. Largely unaddressed is the debate over public goods versus rational self-interest thatglobalization has stoked in New Zealand, seen, for example, in serious divisions regarding the Kyoto Protocol's local implementation requirements. Part Two, "National Identity," comprises four chapters dealing with Päkehä identity (Spoonley); the implications of globalization for indigenous communities (Henare); migration and New Zealand (Bedford); and republicanism and the Treaty of Waitangi (Hayward). Spoonley sees transnational and global forces moving New Zealand's predominant cultural Päkehä identity beyond its previously negative, unsettled non-Mäori status into something more confident as an asserted participation in cultural partnerships. In his contribution, Henare identifies values traditionally viewed by Mäori as complementary, sustainable, holistic, and constituting what he terms a "matrix of ethical pluralism" (121). Yet his listing's omission of entrepreneurship is puzzling, particularly given the agility with which Mäori have exploited globalization's opportunities. Unmentioned is the remarkable record of the South Island's Ngai Tahu tribe, led by that local scion of tribal capitalism, Sir Tipene O'Regan, and delivering substantial material returns through transnational corporate activities in fishing, venture tourism, and land development. Bedford's thorough, well-documented paper on migration into New Zealand traces significant moves, begun under a points system designed in the 1980s, to attract high-quality human capital capable of contributing to wealth and job creation within what is now one of the most open economies in the world. Although a now more diverse multicultural society, the county's unsettled debate about immigration remains subject toelectoral politicization. Hayward questions New Zealand's discontinuance of legal appeals to the United Kingdom Privy Council on grounds that this has weakened traditional Mäori linkages to the Crown. She further believes that republicanism in New Zealand, a steadily growing sentiment, will not strengthen national identity once the implications of removing former colonial links are considered, but without indicating thenature of such implications. The final section, "Security and [End Page 448] Foreign Policy Directions," includes three papers on New Zealand's regional orientation (Macdonald); multilateralism (Jackson); and New Zealand's relations with the United States (McCormick). Macdonald's survey will assist the uninformed, but needs corrections (the Southeast-Asia Treaty Organization was formed in 1954; the South Pacific Nuclear Weapons Free Zone has been ratified by the nuclear...

Lines of Insecurity: International, Imperial, Exceptional

Recent literatures have become sceptical about the concept of an international, preferring to make claims about new forms of imperial or exceptional politics. This article examines the relation between these three concepts as conventionally understood within discourses of internationalism; expresses scepticism about the use of the term ‘imperial’ for capturing what is at stake in challenges to international order; and seeks to clarify what is at stake in contemporary practices of exceptionalism. Where exceptions were conventionally declared at the limits of the sovereign state, qualified by the ordering capacities of a system of sovereign states, enabled by a theory of history marking the modernity of sovereign authorities and inhibited by resistance to imperial and theological order, exceptions are now enacted in ways that exceed official cartographies of sovereign authorization. Consequently, traditions and debates about what it means to secure the modern subject that have largely reproduced options laid out by Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen in the 1920s and 1930s must become engaged with questions about the limits of specifically modern forms of political life. If exceptions are not being made where they are supposed to be made, subjects will not be secured where they are supposed to be secured.

Globalization Theory: A Post Mortem

‘Globalization’ was the Zeitgeist of the 1990s. In the social sciences, it gave rise to the claim that deepening interconnectedness was fundamentally transforming the nature of human society, and was replacing the sovereign state system with a multi-layered, multilateral system of ‘global governance’. A decade later, however, these expectations appear already falsified by the course of world affairs. The idea of ‘globalization’ no longer captures the ‘spirit of the times’: the ‘age of globalization’ is unexpectedly over. Why has this happened? This article argues that ‘Globalization Theory’ always suffered from basic flaws: as a general social theory; as a historical sociological argument about the nature of modern international relations; and as a guide to the interpretation of empirical events. However, it also offers an alternative, ‘conjunctural analysis’ of the 1990s, in order both to explain the rise and fall of ‘globalization’ itself, and to illustrate the enduring potential for International Relations of those classical approaches which Globalization Theory had sought to displace.

Visa Diplomacy

The consular element of national diplomatic power plays an essential, but often overlooked role in international relations. This is unfortunate, since the process of globalization places increasing importance on so-called “low politics”—trade, commerce, tourism, migration—all traditional consular areas of interest. This study examines the visa component of consular diplomacy as an integral device in the conduct of international relations. The simple visa serves an important purpose in international relations and is a well-used, but little studied, instrument of foreign policy in today’s system of sovereign states. In this article, “visa diplomacy” is defined as the use of visa issuance or denial at an individual, group, and interstate level, to influence another state’s policies. Although possessing limitations, visa diplomacy is an available signaling and retorsion instrument which makes it a viable policy option in the arena of international affairs. At the operative level, it links an individual or group to its sovereign country and respective national policies. Denial or issuance at the individual or group level can have outcomes on overall interstate interactions as illustrated in the cases selected for this study. The conclusion assesses where the use of visa diplomacy seems most effective in international relations.