To explain how globalization rebuilt public policy and social behavior, we study the different political, economic, and social actors - public or private, individual or collective - and the exchanges and interactions between them that are remaking international relations. This course is inspired by a French sociological and historical approach to international relations. This course is also available in french version: www.coursera.org/learn/espace-mondial-fr/
A Variety of Conflicting Incarnations
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Espace mondial, a French vision of Global studies
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Nation State
Is traditional nation-state still working everywhere around the world?
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Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
How can the international system be homogenous
when there are so many tensions,
so many contradictions
and so many failures in extending
the state model on the world,
overall the world?
And this is probably
one of the main features
of our <i>Espace mondial</i>,
the international system
is obviously heterogeneous.
It’s heterogeneous not only in the meaning
gave by Raymond Aron
when he said that different kinds of regimes
were coexisting during the cold war
and the bipolar system.
Of course USSR and the US,
Eastern Europe and Western Europe
were not made of the same regimes,
but all of them were states,
were frankly states,
rooted in the Western tradition.
USSR, even USSR if it was also an Empire,
was profoundly affected
by the state tradition
which grew up in Europe.
Now, in a global order,
the things are quite different,
that’s to say it’s not only
a question of difference of regimes,
but it’s a question of coexistence
of different kinds of political systems.
And among those political systems,
we have to notice so many
collapsing states,
and this global order so heterogeneous
is of course very difficult to rule.
How can we rule an international order,
which is made of so many contradictions,
of so many different cultures of politics
and which is so deeply affected
by the crisis and the failure
of the western state exportation?
So that’s why, if we want to have access
to this international order,
we have to point out
four kinds of deviant political systems,
I would take into account: virtual states,
microstates, failed states and rogue states.
These different categories
are now frequently used by analysts
but also by political actors,
so we have to create a kind of order
in this very anarchical use
of these different concepts.
First, virtual states.
You know that “virtual states” was coined
by the great American political scientist
and economist: Richard Rosecrance,
and Richard Rosecrance pointed
the case of those states,
which have a capacity, which is not based
on territory and material resources,
but which is based on non-material resources.
Richard Rosecrance
takes the example of Singapore.
Singapore doesn’t find
its capacity in its territory,
which is very small, very tight,
but from the informal relationship,
the virtual relationship which made it
as one of the main trade actors
in our present global world.
This is a break,
because if we take into account
the European history,
European history is exclusively based
on territorial construction,
is exclusively based on material power.
And these new kind of state
is probably initiating
another vision of politics.
And here, the main question is:
how to make coexist
these different kinds of powers?
Those which are rooted in material resources
and those which are mobilizing
nonmaterial resources.
The second category,
which is a little bit puzzling,
is the microstate.
Microstate is defined by UN
as a state, which has less than
1 million ad half inhabitants,
that’s to say many states
in our present world.
Those states are sometimes very very small,
if you take into account for instance Tuvalu,
in Oceania, Tuvalu has only 10 000 inhabitants.
Imagine if we compare Tuvalu with China
and its 1.4 billion inhabitants,
Monaco has 33 000 inhabitants.
Tuvalu, Monaco but also
Kiribati, Nauru, Lichtenstein
are members of the United Nations
and are considered legally as equal
to China, India, Russia or United States.
We can easily understand that this equality
can be nothing but formal.
And the issue of sovereignty
is clearly at the center of the reflection
which is triggered by this new category.
How these states can be sovereign?
How can they have a minimal chance
of being sovereign?
But also another question:
how these states are able to survive
with very poor resources?
And that’s why
those states are sometimes moving
to other activities, as tax paradise,
or even some illegal activities.
We can understand then
how this discrepancy generating some deviance
and pathology of our international order,
and this is important
as we know that the trend
of the fragmentation of the world order,
of the inter-sate order,
is now growing and growing.
Some fragmentations taking place
in Africa, Asia, Europe and so on.
The third category is probably
the most important one,
it is the category of failed states.
What is a failed state?
A failed state is a state, which is not able
to achieve its main functions,
that’s to say which is not able
to protect its own population,
which is not able to be committed
to the Hobbes pact,
to the Hobbes social pact,
that’s to say not able to provide security
to all the citizens.
These failed states sometimes
have no social contract,
that’s to say even nation is questioned,
some of them are not able to dispense
the minimal security
that people are expecting.
And this is particularly true in war societies
like Democratic Republic of Congo
or in Somalia or in Central Africa today.
These states have not
the minimal infrastructure
which is needed by a state for being active
and for protecting its population.
If we take into account the example
of the Central African Republic,
some places like for instance Birao
at the north east of Central Africa
are not accessible from the capital
of the state, and so,
this lack of infrastructure
is of course decreasing
the protection capacity of the state
which is not able to penetrate its own society.
But, on the contrary, a failed state is,
for the same reason,
a state which is more and more
penetrated by outside,
by powers from abroad,
from neighbor states and, for Center Africa,
those neighbor states are Chad,
Soudan or Democratic Republic of Congo,
but also from powers
coming from other continents.
And that’s particularly obvious
in the behavior of economic entrepreneurs
coming from Europe for using, extracting
and using the material resources
of the failed state.
This concept was creating in 1991
for legitimizing the intervention,
the American intervention in Somalia,
but the question was: how can we intervene
in a sovereign political system?
It’s contrary to the rule,
it’s contrary to the international law.
And so, the solution was to imagine,
to coin this concept of collapsed state,
failed state, because if a state is collapsed,
if a state doesn’t work
there is no more sovereignty,
and so it’s not transgressing sovereignty
when we intervene inside these countries.
Now what is the criterion?
And which kind of international institution
is able to define in which condition
one state can be properly considered,
as a failed state.
This is a blurred aspect of the question
and that’s why this concept
is not really operational by now.
And the last category would be rogue state.
Rogue state was a political concept coined
by political actors during the 90s,
and during the Clinton administration,
when US was short of enemies
and was trying to rediscover enmity
among some less powerful states,
or even powerless states
but states considered as deviant.
A state which is considered as rogue,
as deviant, is a state in which
it would be legitimate to getting involved
and that’s why this concept
is also very dangerous.
When you coin a state as a rogue state,
you get the right to intervene
inside its domestic affairs.
That’s why this concept is very political
and is poorly scientific,
for a very simple reason,
which is the same that we pointed
for the concept of collapsed state.
What are the good criteria of a rogue state?
Is a rogue state a state,
which is not really committed to human rights?
But so many countries are in this case.
Is it a state, which is authoritarian
and not democratic?
Is it a state, which is using a kind of violence?
But in all these possibilities
we can discover that so many examples
are fitting these definitions.
So, that’s why this new typology
of political systems inside our present world
is difficult to build up,
we know only something very important:
heterogeneity of the international order
and difficulties to handle this complexity.
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