Showing papers on "Sovereignty published in 2001"

The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960

Abstract: Introduction 1. 'The legal conscience of the civilized world' 2. Sovereignty: a gift of civilization 3. International law as philosophy: Germany 1871-1933 4. International law as sociology: French 'solidarism' 1871-1950 5. Lauterpacht: the Victorian tradition in international law 6. Out of Europe: Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau and the turn to 'international relations' Epilogue.

States of imagination : ethnographic explorations of the postcolonial state

Abstract: Contents: States of imagination Thomas Blom Hansen University of Edinburgh and Finn Stepputat Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen I State as governance "Demonic societies": Liberalism, bio-politics and sovereignty Mitchell Dean Macquarie University Governing population: The integrated child development services program in Indian Akhil Gupta Stanford University The battlefield and the prize: ANC's bid to reform the South African state Steffen Jensen Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen Imagining the state as a space: Territoriality and the formation of the state in Ecuador Sarah Radcliffe Univesity of Cambridge II State as justice The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A technique of nation-state formation Lars Buur Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen Reconstructing national identity and renegotiating memory: The work of the TRC Aletta Norval University of Essex Rethinking citizenship: Reforming the law in post-war Guatemala Rachel Sieder Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London Governance and state mythologies in Mumbai Thomas Blom Hansen University of Edinburgh III State and community Before history and prior to politics: Time, space and territory in the modern Peruvian nation state David Nugent Colby College Urbanizing the countryside: Armed conflict, state formation and the politics of place in contemporary Guatemala Finn Stepputat Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen In the name of the state? Schools and teachers in an Andean province Fiona Wilson Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen The captive state: Corruption, intelligence agencies and ethnicity in Pakistan Oskar Verkaaik Vrije University, Amsterdam Public secrets, conscious amnesia and the celebration of autonomy for Ladakh Martijn van Beek Aarhus University

Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth

Abstract: The 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in 1998 was largely ignored by the discipline of international relations (IR), despite the fact that it regards that event as the beginning of the international system with which it has traditionally dealt. By contrast, there has recently been much debate about whether the “Westphalian system” is about to end. This debate necessitates, or at least implies, historical comparisons. I contend that IR, unwittingly, in fact judges current trends against the backdrop of a past that is largely imaginary, a product of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century fixation on the concept of sovereignty. I discuss how what I call the ideology of sovereignty has hampered the development of IR theory. I suggest that the historical phenomena I analyze in this article—the Thirty Years' War and the 1648 peace treaties as well as the post–1648 Holy Roman Empire and the European system in which it was embedded—may help us to gain a better understanding of contemporary international politics.

Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations.

Abstract: TABLES AND FIGURES ix PREFACE xi PART ONE: REVOLUTIONS IN SOVEREIGNTY 1 ONE Introduction: Revolutions in Sovereignty 3 TWO The Constitution of International Society 11 THREE A Brief History of Constitutions of International Society in the West 28 FOUR How Revolutions in Ideas Bring Revolutions in Sovereignty 46 PART TWO: THE FOUNDING OF THE SOVEREIGN STATES SYSTEM AT WESTPHALIA 73 FIVE Westphalia as Origin 75 SIX The Origin of Westphalia 97 SEVEN The Power of Protestant Propositions 123 PART THREE: THE REVOLUTION OF COLONIAL INDEPENDENCE: THE GLOBAL EXPANSION OF WESTPHALIA 151 EIGHT Ideas and the End of Empire 153 NINE The End of the British Empire: Cashing Out the Promise of Self-Government 168 TEN Revolutionary Ideas in the British Colonies 190 ELEVEN Britain's Burden of Empire 203 TWELVE The Fall of Greater France 220 PART FOUR: THE REVOLUTIONS CONSIDERED TOGETHER 251 THIRTEEN Conclusion: Two Revolutions, One Movement 253 NOTES 263 BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 INDEX 331

Developments in intergovernmental relations: towards multi-level governance

Abstract: This issue of Policy & Politics features a series of articles addressing recent developments in intergovernmental relationships in the advanced Western democracies. There is today, we believe, sufficient uniformity in these developments across different jurisidictions to allow a discussion on the causes, mechanisms and consequences of a new or emerging type of relationship between institutions at different levels. While it is also true that intergovernmental relationships in each individual country are developing to some extent according to the trajectory of institutional relationships which is typical of that national context, we suggest that the triggering mechanisms have been, on the whole, fairly similar across the western world. What we are thus witnessing is a gradual institutional – and inter-institutional – change reflecting both similar problems facing countries in different parts of the world and, at the same time, the trajectory of institutional change in each national context. The emergence of multi-level governance challenges much of our traditional understanding of how the state operates, what determines its capacities, what its contingencies are, and ultimately of the organisation of democratic and accountable government. Acknowledging the risk of idealising times past in order to exaggerate changes over time, we could say that we are moving from a model of the state in a liberal– democratic perspective towards a state model characterised by complex patterns of contingencies and dependencies on external actors (Pierre, 2000). Political power and institutional capability is less and less derived from formal constitutional powers accorded the state but more from a capacity to wield and coordinate resources from public and private actors and interests. Put slightly differently, we have been witnessing a development from a ‘command and control’ type of state towards an ‘enabling’ state, a model in which the state is not proactively governing society but is more concerned with defining objectives and mustering resources from a wide variety of sources to pursue those goals (Pierre and Peters, 2000). These are obviously changes and developments which are of considerable magnitude and significance. The gradual shift from a government towards a governance perspective reflects the new role of the state which has become typical of western politics in the past decade or so. Multi-level governance is to some extent merely a logical extension of these developments. However, it also signals a growing awareness among elected officials of the decreasing meaningfulness of speaking about sovereignty and autonomy in a political and economic order increasingly characterised by international political, economic and administrative coordination, economic global isation and growing subnational assertiveness vis-a-vis the state in many countries. Multi-level governance is also manifested in a growing number of exchanges between subnational and transnational institutions, seemingly bypassing the state (see, for example, Beauregard and Pierre, 2000). The remainder of this introduction is organised as follows. First, we will discuss in closer detail the definition and meaning of the concept of multi-level governance and what might explain the emergence of such governance. Following that we will assess the impact of multilevel governance on traditional models of institut ional relationships and highligh t the strengths and weaknesses of such governance as compared to more traditional, hierarchical models of government. In the closing section of the introduction we briefly present the other articles in this issue.

Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900

Abstract: Acknowledgements 1. Legal regimes and colonial cultures 2. Law in diaspora: the legal regime of the Atlantic world 3. Order out of trouble: jurisdictional tensions in Catholic and Islamic empires 4. A place for the state: legal pluralism as a colonial project in Bengal and West Africa 5. Subjects and witnesses: cultural and legal hierarchies in the Cape Colony and New South Wales 6. Constructing sovereignty: extra-territoriality in the Oriental Republic of Uruguay 7. Culture and the rule(s) of law Bibliography Index.

Plurinational Democracy: Stateless Nations in a Post-Sovereignty Era

Abstract: 1. Nations and Sovereignty 2. In Search of the Ancient Constitution: Historiography of the Nation 3. What do the Nations Want? Nationalist Aspirations and Transnational Integration 4. Asymmetrical Government and the Plurinational State 5. Beyond Sovereignty: Nations in the European Commonwealth 6. Plurinational Democracy References Opinion Poll Data

Naturing the Nation: Aliens, Apocalypse and the Postcolonial State

Abstract: This paper examines the predicament of the postcolonial nation-state through the prism of environmental catastrophe. When are plant 'invaders' likely to become an urgent political issue? And, when they do, what might they reveal of the shifting relations among citizenship, community, and national sovereignty under neo-liberal conditions? Pursuing these questions in the 'new' South Africa, we posit three key features of postcolonial polities in the era of global capitalism: the reconfiguration of the subject-citizen, the crisis of sovereign borders, and the depoliticisation of politics. Under such conditions, we argue, aliens ‐ both plants and people ‐ come to embody core contradictions of boundedness and belonging. And alien-nature provides a language for voicing new forms of discrimination within a culture of 'post-racism' and civil rights.

Responsibility to protect : report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

Abstract: Library has French version: Responsabilite de proteger : rapport de la Commission international de l'intervention et de la souverainete des etats

Human rights and the social construction of sovereignty

Abstract: Sovereignty and human rights are generally considered separate, mutually contradictory regimes in international society. This article takes issue with this conventional assumption, and argues that only by treating sovereignty and human rights as two normative elements of a single, inherently contradictory modern discourse about legitimate statehood and rightful state action can we explain key moments in the expansion of the international system during the twentieth century. After developing a constructivist argument about communicative action, norm formation and sovereignty, the article focuses on post-1945 decolonization, showing how ‘first wave’ post-colonial states played a crucial role in constructing the ‘international bill of rights’, how they invoked those rights to justify the norm of self-determination, and how this norm in turn licensed the proliferation of new sovereign states in Asia and elsewhere.

The Zapatista Effect: The internet and the rise of an alternativa political fabric

Abstract: T'he primacy of the nation state is being challenged from both above and below. From above, after the Second World War, the growth in the power and scope of supranational institutions— from multinational corporations to the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund—have gradually usurped national sovereignty in both economic and political matters.1 More recently, from below, the increasingly active role of regional and city governments in foreign trade, immigration and political issues have challenged national governments' constitutional monopoly over foreign affairs.2 Simultaneously, there has been tremendous

Naming the Enemy : Anti-corporate movements confront globalization

Abstract: * Introduction * 1. Structure and Anti-Structure in the Face of Globalization * 2. Contestation and Reform * 3. Globalization from Below * 4. Delinking, Relocalization and Sovereignty * 5. PopCulture versus AgriCulture & Other Reflections on the Anti-Corporate Movement * A Partial List of Organizations * Sources * Index

Domestic Policies, National Sovereignty, and International Economic Institutions

Abstract: To what extent must nations cede control over their economic and social policies if global efe ciency is to be achieved in an interdependent world? This question is at the center of the debate over the future role of the WTO (formerly GATT) in the realm of labor and environmental standards. In this paper we establish that the market access focus of current WTO rules is well equipped to handle the problems associated with choices over labor and environmental standards. In principle, with relatively modest changes that grant governments more sovereignty, not less, these rules can deliver globally efe cient outcomes. I. INTRODUCTION To what extent must nations cede control over their economic and social policies if global efe ciency is to be achieved in an interdependent world? At a broad level, this question probes the limits of any international economic institution, whether geared toward real or e nancial concerns, that is designed to promote global efe ciency while respecting national sovereignty. Naturally, the answer depends upon the particular problem that the institution is meant to solve. In other words, the answer depends upon the inefe ciency that would arise under unilateral policy choices. At a more specie c level, this question is at the center of the debate concerning the appropriate scope of the World Trade Organization (WTO, formerly GATT). Recently, member countries have considered ways to broaden the WTO’s orientation beyond conventional trade policy measures to include labor and environmental standards. There are now initiatives to introduce the issue of labor standards directly onto the negotiating agenda of the WTO, with the purpose of creating a WTO “ social clause.” The social clause would specify a set of minimum international labor standards, and then permit restrictions to be placed against imports from countries not complying with these minimum standards. With regard to environmental policies, a WTO Committee on Trade and Environment has been established to identify the relationships between trade and environmental measures, and to

Understanding Melayu (Malay) as a source of diverse modern identities.

Abstract: Anthony Reid (*) This article attempts to bring together recent literature about the typology of nationalism, with the ways in which 'Malay' or 'Melayu' have been used as the core of an ethnie or a nationalist project. Different meanings of 'Melayu' were salient at different times in Sumatra, in the Peninsula and in the eastern Archipelago, and the Dutch and British used their respective translations of it very differently Modern ethno-nationalist projects in Malaysia and Brunei made 'Melayu' a contested and often divisive concept, whereas its translation into the hitherto empty term 'Indonesia' might have provided an easier basis for territorial, or even ultimately civic, nationalism in that country. As the world stumbles hesitantly towards post-nationalist ways of understanding identity, it has at last become possible to discern what nationalism is, and the roles it has played in dominating the last century of our common history. (1) It no longer seems as 'natural' and uncontroversial as it did at its height before 1945. Yet the plethora of fine analyses which began to appear in the 1980s (2) has barely begun to be integrated into the study of Southeast or indeed East Asia, where nationalism is still new enough to arouse more excitement and sympathy than concern or serious analysis. The work of Benedict Anderson, global in reach but drawing more heavily than most on anti-colonial examples in the New World, is much the most influential of these theoretical models among writers on Southeast Asia. I wish to draw attention here however to a different strain of analysis well established in the European-focused writing -- the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalisms. Hans Kohn, writing at the depth of Germany's disastrous experiment with extreme nationalism, was the first to point out how differently nationalism developed east of the Rhine. 'French nationalism was born (as English and American had [been] before it) in a wave of generous enthusiasm for the cause of mankind; the opposing nationalisms ... were directed to laudable but narrower goals, self-centred but antagonistic.' (3) He showed how territorial nationalism developed earlier, gradually admitting more and more groups within the borders in question into citizenship in the nation, which was always territorially defined. Anthony Smith makes this disti0nction crucial to his discussion in The Ethnic Origins of Nations. (4) Where in the older territorial model the geographically bounded state eventually created the culturally coherent nation, the ethnic model was the other way around: an ethnic group with unclear borders attempted to acquire appropriate borders and political status. Liah Greenfeld's Nationalism is so far the most careful historical analysis of the relationship between these two models in the context of European history. She sees the concept of nation developing in sixteenth-century England in the sense of a sovereign people, entitled to representation in the body politic. It was thus a concept closely wedded to the emergence of democracy in early modern Europe. As it spread eastwards through Europe in the eighteenth century, however, the unique quality of the nation became more marked than its sovereign or democratic character. The sovereignty of this type of nation was held to lie in its distinctiveness, not its participatory civic character. While in the civic variant 'nationality is at least in principle open and voluntaristic', in the ethnic variant 'it is believed to be inherent - one can neither acquire it if one does not have it, nor change it if one does'. (5) Although the distinction on the ground cannot be as sharp as the one in abstract analysis, her study of 'five roads' shows Germany and Russia more influenced by this ethnic path, while England and the United States (in common with most anti-colonial New World nationalisms) can be characterised more by the civic path, and France by an ambivalent path eventually veering towards the civic. …

Popular Sovereignty and Nationalism

Abstract: This chapter shows that the assumption is mistaken on both fronts: the spread of popular sovereignty doctrine has altered our understanding of political community in ways that are anything but self–evident and it is by means of this altered understanding of political community that it has made its greatest contribution to the rise and spread of nationalism. The new doctrine of popular sovereignty replaces direct popular rule, or governmental sovereignty, with what has come to be called the "constituent sovereignty" of the people. The chapter discusses a new understanding of political community, one that tends both to nationalize our understanding of politics and to politicize our understanding of nationality. It suggests that the second strategy, the celebration of a purely cultural nationalism, faces similar difficulties. Attachment to particular territories almost always plays an important role in assertions of national community.

NGOs’ transnational advocacy networks: from ‘legitimacy’ to ‘political responsibility’?

Abstract: NGOs that operate as part of transnational advocacy networks face a number of ‘legitimacy challenges’ concerning their rights to participate in the shaping of global governance. Outlining the legitimacy claims that development NGOs make, the article argues that ‘legitimacy’ is a socially constructed quality that may be ascribed to an NGO by actors and stakeholders with different viewpoints. NGOs operating transnationally link disparate communities and conceptions of legitimacy, and undermine the discourse and practice of sovereignty. Therefore such NGOs will find it difficult to be universally regarded as legitimate, especially by states that hold a sovereignty-based conception of legitimacy. However, relationships are the building blocks of networks, and efforts to improve them should not be abandoned simply because ‘legitimacy’ is too closely connected with sovereignty. In particular, NGOs ought to improve their relationships with the poor and marginalized communities whose interests they claim to promote. To this end, the concept of ‘political responsibility’ is suggested as a pragmatic approach to understanding power relations as they arise in transnational advocacy networks and campaigns.

Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada

Abstract: There is a unique constitutional relationship between Aboriginal people and the Canadian state - a relationship that does not exist between other Canadians and the state. It's from this central premise that Patrick Macklem builds his argument in this outstanding and significant work. Why does this special relationship exist? What does it entail in terms of Canadian constitutional order? There are, Macklem argues, four complex social facts that lie at the heart of the relationship. First, Aboriginal people belong to distinctive cultures that were and continue to be threatened by non-Aboriginal beliefs, philosophies, and ways of life. Second, prior to European contact, Aboriginal people lived in and occupied North America. Third, prior to European contact, Aboriginal people not only occupied North America; they exercised sovereign authority over persons and territory. Fourth, Aboriginal people participated in and continue to participate in a treaty process with the Crown. Together, these four social conditions are exclusive to the Aboriginal people of North America and constitute what Macklem refers to as indigenous difference. Exploring the constitutional significance of indigenous difference in light of the challenges it poses to the ideal of equal citizenship, Macklem engages an interdisciplinary methodology that treats constitutional law as an enterprise that actively distributes power, primarily in the form of rights and jurisdiction, among a variety of legal actors, including individuals, groups, institutions, and governments. On this account, constitutional law refers to an ongoing project of aspiring to distributive justice, disciplined but not determined by text, structure, or precedent. Far from threatening equality, constitutional protection of indigenous difference promotes equal and therefore just distributions of constitutional power. The book details constitutional rights to Aboriginal people that protect interests associated with culture, territory, sovereignty, and the treaty process, and explores the circumstances in which these rights can be interfered with by the Canadian state. It also examines the relation between these rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Feedoms, and proposes extensive reform of existing treaty processes in order to protect and promote their exercise. Macklem's book offers a challenge to traditional understandings of the constitutional status of indigenous peoples, relevant not only to Canadian debates but also to those in other parts of the world where indigenous peoples are asserting greater autonomy over their collective futures.

Rethinking the Sovereign State Model

Abstract: The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648, is generally understood as a critical moment in the development of the modern international system composed of sovereign states each with exclusive authority within its own geographic boundaries. The Westphalian sovereign state model, based on the principles of autonomy, territory, mutual recognition and control, offers a simple, arresting, and elegant image. It orders the minds of policymakers. It is an analytic assumption for neo-realism and neo-liberal institutionalism. It is an empirical regularity for various sociological and constructivist theories of international politics. It is a benchmark for observers who claim an erosion of sovereignty in the contemporary world.

Africa's challenge to international relations theory

Abstract: Acknowledgements Foreword C.N.Murphy List of Acronyms Notes on the Contributors Introduction: Africa and IR Theory K.C.Dunn PART I: TROUBLING CONCEPTS Reformulating International Relations Theory: African Insights and Challenges A.Malquias Sovereignty in Africa: Quasi-Statehood and Other Myths in International Theory S.N.Grovogui MadLib #32: The ( blank ) African State: Rethinking the Sovereign State in IR Theory K.C.Dunn Marketing the 'Rainbow Nation': The Power of the South African Music, Film and Sport Industry J.Westhuizen PART II: THEORETICAL INTERVENTIONS Realism, Neo-Realism and Africa's International Relations in the Post-Cold War Era J.F.Clark The End of History? African Challenges to Liberalism in International Relations T.Nkiwane Re-Envisioning Sovereignty: Marcus Garvey and the Making of a Transnational Identity R.B.Persaud Controlling African States' Behaviour: IR Theory and International Sanctions Against Libya and Nigeria S.Mahmud Challenging Westphalia: Issues of Sovereignty and Identity in Southern Africa S.J.MacLean The Brothers Grim: Modernity and 'International' Relations in Southern Africa L.Swatuk PART III: IMPLICATIONS AND POLICY RAMIFICATIONS Reconceptualizing United States' Foreign Policy: Regionalism, Economic Development and Instability in Southern Africa J.J.Hentz African Foreign Policy in the New Millennium: From Coming Anarchies to Security Communities? From New Regionalism to New Realism? T.M.Shaw Bibliography Index

Intervention and transnationalism in Africa : global-local networks of power

Abstract: 1 Introduction Robert Latham, Ronald Kassimir and Thomas Callaghy Part I Historical Dimensions and Conceptual Frameworks: 2 Networks, moral discourse and history Frederick Cooper 3 Defining transboundary connections: international arenas, translocal networks and transterritorial deployments Robert Latham 4 Producing local politics: governance, representation and non-state organization in Africa Ronald Kassimir Part II Transboundary Networks, States and Civil Societies: 5 Networks and governance in Africa: innovation in debt regime Thomas Callaghy 6 When networks blind: human rights and politics in Kenya Hans Peter Schmitz 7 Global, state and local intersections: a study of power, authority and conflict in the Niger Delta oil communities CyrilI Obi Part III Political Economies of Violence and Authority: 8 How sovereignty matters: global markets and political economy of local politics in weak studies William Reno 9 Post-modern warfare in Sierra Leone? Recovering the local and social in global-local constructions of violence Paul Richards and Caspar Fithen 10 New sovereigns? The frontiers of wealth creation and regulatory authority in the Chad Basin Janet Roitman 11 Out of the shadows Carolyn Nordstrom Part IV Reflections: 12 Authority and interventions in world politics Michael Barnett 13 Toward a new research agenda Ronald Kassimir and Robert Latham

European Union Law

Abstract: The European Union is the result of a unique attempt at international integration. While other integration movements have always relied on a continuous political affirmation of integration by the participating states, the European Union is characterized by a transfer of sovereign rights of legislation, execution, and adjudication to central institutions. At the same time, the Treaty of Rome has introduced the legal framework of a common market, providing for individual rights and obligations of citizens in the whole Union. This article sets out the basic legal structures of the Union and the Common Market, the types of legal instruments and their essential effects, and the efforts undertaken to harmonize national legal systems.

Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law

Abstract: In the early 1970s, the federal government began recognizing self-determination for American Indian nations. As sovereign entities, Indian nations have been able to establish policies concerning health care, education, religious freedom, law enforcement, gaming, and taxation. Yet these gains have not gone unchallenged. Starting in the late 1980s, states have tried to regulate and profit from casino gambling on Indian lands. Treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather remain hotly contested, and traditional religious practices have been denied protection. Tribal courts struggle with state and federal courts for jurisdiction. David E. Wilkins and K. Tsianina Lomawaima discuss how the political rights and sovereign status of Indian nations have variously been respected, ignored, terminated, and unilaterally modified by federal lawmakers as a result of the ambivalent political and legal status of tribes under western law.

International Integration and Democracy: No Love at First Sight

Abstract: With an eye on the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), NAFTA and the European Union (EU), I propose to show the intuitively predictable correlation between, on one hand, the level of integration of each and, on the other hand, the nature and intensity of the discourse about the democracy-legitimacy deficit surrounding them. I offer a grid of the normative-institutional as well as social-empirical factors that may help to estimate the respective levels of integration, and I suggest operative definitions of the principal concepts employed. A tension prevails between the currently expanding acceptance of the idea of democracy and the growth of diverse international organizations and regimes. These institutions are seen as unsupervised by national parliaments and undemocratic in their structure and functioning. Having noted briefly the essential characteristics of the four organizations which relate to the discourse, I ask whether?if indeed there is "a democratic deficit"?the modern representative democracy could serve as a model for amelioration? Is a "participatory," civic republican version an option? Or are idiosyncratic solutions called for, tailored to the level of integration and specific goals of the particular institutions? In this context, I take note not only of the evolution and many variants of the state-based practice of democracy and constitutionalism, but also of the changing face of state "sovereignty" and of the international system, all three in the process of interaction with each other. I explore ideas for the reduction of the democracy-legitimacy deficit by measures to be taken both in the national legal orders and at the level of the four institutions. In the case of WTO and EU, these suggestions have become linked to proposals for more or less radical structural reforms, which broaden significantly the scope and tenor of the discourse. I end with some generalizations about both possible "palliative" measures and "grand and desperate cures" for international institutions at large.

Race, Amnesia, and the Education of International Relations:

Abstract: Sankaran Krishna (*) Aren't all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves they want to preserve? Richard Wright This article argues that the discipline of international relations was and is predicated on a systematic politics of forgetting, a willful amnesia, on the question of race. Historically, the emergence of a modern, territorially sovereign state system in Europe was coterminous with, and indissociable from, the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the "new" world, the enslavement of the natives of the African continent, and the colonization of the societies of Asia. Specifically, I will argue that the discipline of international relations maintains its ideological coherence via two crucial strategies of containment that normalize the coeval emergence of modern sovereignty and dispossession on a global scale: these strategies are "abstraction" and "redemption." In this article, I flesh out the argument vis-a-vis "abstraction"; for, reasons of space, however, I can have no more than an adumbrated discussion of "redemption." First, IR discourse's valorization, indeed fetishization, of abstraction is premised on a desire to escape history, to efface the violence, genocide, and theft that marked the encounter between the rest and the West in the post-Columbian era. Abstraction, usually presented as the desire of the discipline to engage in theory-building rather than in descriptive or historical analysis, is a screen that simultaneously rationalizes and elides the details of these encounters. By encouraging students to display their virtuosity in abstraction, the discipline brackets questions of theft of land, violence, and slavery--the three processes that have historically underlain the unequal global order we now find ourselves in. Overattention to these details is disciplined by professional practices that work as taboo: such-and-such an approach is deemed too historical or descriptive; that student is not adequately theoretical and consequently is lacking in intellectual rigor; so-and-so might be better off specializing in com parative politics or history or anthropology; such-and-such a question does not have any direct policy relevance; and so on. A second strategy of containment in IR discourse is the idea of deferred redemption. This operates by an eternal deferment of the possibility of overcoming the alienation of international society that commenced in 1492. While "realistically" such overcoming is regarded as well-nigh impossible, its promise serves as the principle by which contemporary and historical violence and inequality can be justified and lived with. Redemptive strategies of containment are reflected in a wide variety of IR discourses: Kant's idea of perpetual peace as consequent upon international war and dispersion; the possibility of an international community epitomized in organizations such as the United Nations; the promise of international socialism; the discourse of capitalist modernization on the Rostowian model; and more recently, the "end of history" under the regime of globalization. All these strategies hinge on the prospect of deferred redemption: the present is inscribed as a transitional phase whose violent and unequal cha racter is expiated on the altar of that which is to come. In the first section of my article, I illustrate an exemplary act of abstraction that is central to the self-construction of the discipline of international relations--the depiction of nineteenth-century Europe as a pacific zone (the Hundred Years' Peace) orchestrated by diplomatic virtuosity. I offer a brief reading of this same century from the vantage of outside the imperium to illustrate the possibilities of contrapuntal readings of international-relations discourse. In this section, I further elaborate what I mean by "strategies of containment" and how they have worked to constitute IR discourse as a "political unconscious. …

Identities, Borders, Orders: Rethinking International Relations Theory

Abstract: Informed by current debates in social theory, Identities, Borders, Orders brings together a multinational group of respected scholars to seek and encourage imaginative adaptations and recombinations of concepts, theories, and perspectives across disciplinary lines These contributors take up a variety of substantive, theoretical, and normative issues such as migration, nationalism, citizenship, human rights, democracy, and security Together, their essays contribute significantly to our understanding of sovereignty, national identity, and borders

Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities

Abstract: Preface, by Stephen D. KrasnerProblematic Sovereignty, by Stephen D. KrasnerSovereignty: The Practitioner's Perspective, by Abraham D. Sofaer and Thomas C. HellerSovereignty from a World Polity Perspective, by John BoliThe Issue of Sovereignty in the Asian Historical Context, by Mchel OksenbergOne Sovereign, Two Legal Systems: China and the Problem of Commitment in Hong Kong, by James McCall SmithThe Struggle for Sovereignty between China and Taiwan, by Robert MadsenThe Sovereignty Script: Red Book for Russian Revolutionaries, by Michael McFaulBelarus and the Flight from Sovereignty, by Coit Blacker and Condoleezza RiceCompromised Sovreignty to Create Sovereignty: Is Dayton Bosnia Futile Exercise or an Emerging Model?, by Susan L. WoodwardThe Road to Palestinian Sovereignty: Problematic Structures or Conventional Obstacles?, by Shibley TelhamiExplaining Variation: Defaults, Coercion, Commitments, by Stephen D. Krasner

Minority nationalism and the changing international order

Abstract: 1. Introduction. Minority Nationalism and the Changing International Order PART ONE. MINORITY NATIONALISM AND THE CHANGING INTERNATIONAL ORDER: COMPARATIVE AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES 2. Nations without States. The accommodation of nationalism in the new state order 3. Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, and Minority Nationalism 4. Immigrant Integration and Minority Nationalism 5. National Identities in the Emerging European State 6. From a theory of Relative Economic Deprivation Toward a Theory of Relative Political Deprivation PART TWO: MINORITY NATIONALISM AND THE CHANGING INTERNATIONAL ORDER: CASE-STUDIES 7. Switzerland and the European Union - a Puzzle 8. Civil Society, Media and Globalization in Catalonia 9. Quebec Nationalism and Globalization 10. Missing the European Train? Turkish Cypriots, the European Union Option, and the resolution of the conflict in Cyprus 11. Nationalism and a Critique of European Integration: Questions from the Flemish Parties 12. Context and Contingency: Constitutional Nationalists and Europe 13. Sharing Sovereignty: Tatarstan and the Russian Federation 14. . European Integration, Globalization and the Northern Ireland Conflict 15. Minority Nationalism in Eastern Europe 16. Nationalism in Transition: Nationalizing Impulses and International Counterweights in Latvia and Estonia