International Relations as a Prismatic System

1961 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred W. Riggs
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
Well Being ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
State System ◽  
American Society ◽  
State 1 ◽  
Executive Body ◽  
Inter State

Conventional theories of international relations assume, implicitly, the model of an “inter-state system.” According to this model, individually states possess a set of characteristics which differ fundamentally from the characteristics of a system of those states interacting with each other. On this basis we can construct theories about the behavior of component states in the system, and more general propositions about the nature of the inter-state system viewed as a whole. Some of the difficulties of this model will be noted here, and an alternative model proposed.Before pointing to these difficulties, however, we need a clear image of the inter-state model. A classic formulation is contained in a speech given by former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at a meeting of the American Society for International Law. In it Mr. Dulles identified six characteristics of the nation-state: (1) laws which “reflect the moral judgment of the community”; (2) political machinery to revise these laws as needed; (3) an executive body able to administer the laws; (4) judicial machinery to settle disputes in accord with the laws; (5) superior force to deter violence by enforcing the law upon those who defy it; and (6) sufficient well-being so that people are not driven by desperation to ways of violence. The international system, Mr. Dulles pointed out, in large part lacks these characteristics. He went on to assess the limited success of attempts, ranging from the League of Nations and Kellogg-Briand Pact through the United Nations, to create such a “state system” or “order” at the international level. Mr. Dulles sadly reported that, despite notable progress in the development of international law and judicial machinery, the desired international order does not, as yet, exist.

Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The World ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

scholarly journals The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
New States ◽  
History Of

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.

scholarly journals International Law and International Relations Theory: A New Generation of Interdisciplinary Scholarship

1998 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Slaughter ◽  
Andrew S. Tulumello ◽  
Stepan Wood
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
American Society ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
Year 2000

Nine years ago, Kenneth Abbott published an article exhorting international lawyers to read and master regime theory, arguing that it had multiple uses for the study of international law. He went as far as to call for a “joint discipline” that would bridge the gap between international relations theory (IR) and international law (IL). Several years later, one of us followed suit with an article mapping the history of the two fields and setting forth an agenda for joint research. Since then, political scientists and international lawyers have been reading and drawing on one another’s work with increasing frequency and for a wide range of purposes. Explicitly interdisciplinary articles have won the Francis Deák Prize, awarded for the best work by a younger scholar in this Journal, for the past two years running; the publication of an interdisciplinary analysis of treaty law in the Harvard International Law Journal prompted a lively exchange on the need to pay attention to legal as well as political details; and the Hague Academy of International Law has scheduled a short course on international law and international relations for its millennial lectures in the year 2000. Further, the American Society of International Law and the Academic Council on the United Nations System sponsor joint summer workshops explicidy designed to bring young IR and IL scholars together to explore the overlap between their disciplines.

scholarly journals ‘The Life of Individuals as well as of Nations’: International Law and the League of Nations’ Anti-Trafficking Governmentalities

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 647-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN LEGG
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
General Public ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Voluntary Organizations ◽  
International Mobility ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Trafficking In Women ◽  
Legal Model ◽  
Women And Children

AbstractThis paper will address an often-neglected agenda of the much-derided League of Nations: its ‘social’ and ‘technical’ works. These targeted human security through regulating different forms of international mobility, including the fight against trafficking in women and children. The League used conventions and conferences to commit nation-states, in a legal model, to standardized anti-trafficking measures. It also, however, worked to educate and inform states, voluntary organizations, and the general public about the nature of trafficking and the ways of combating it. The latter techniques are here interpreted using Foucault's governmentality writings, which encourage us to look beyond the juridical epistemologies of international relations and international law, but not beyond the interlacing of laws and norms, here explored through interwar League governmentalities.

Europe after the Cold War: interstate order or post-sovereign regional system?

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 201-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM WALLACE
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
World Politics ◽  
State System ◽  
Global State ◽  
European State ◽  
Religious Wars ◽  
Regional System ◽  
The Cold War

The changing structure of European order poses, for any student of international relations, some fundamental questions about the evolution of world politics. Concepts of European order and of the European state system are, after all, central to accepted ideas of international relations. Out of the series of conflicts and negotiations—religious wars, coalitions to resist first the Hapsburg and then the Bourbon attempt at European hegemony—developed ideas and practices which still structure the contemporary global state system: the equality of states; international law as regulating relations among sovereign and equal states; domestic sovereignty as exclusive, without external oversight of the rules of domestic order. The ‘modern’ state system, modern scholars now agree, did not spring fully-clothed from the Treaty of Westphalia at the close of the Thirty Years' War; it evolved through a succession of treaties and conferences, from 1555 to 1714. It remains acceptable, nevertheless, to describe the European state order as built around the Westphalian system.

Theorising the international system: perspectives from Historical Sociology

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN HOBDEN
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
State Formation ◽  
International System ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
International Context ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
State Context ◽  
Inter State

Recent interest in the work of Historical Sociologists has concentrated on their renewed interest in the state. There is considerable regard for the historical account of state formation and development produced by writers such as Mann, Skocpol and Tilly. Surprisingly there has been less attention paid to another feature of their writings—the locating of states in an inter-state context. This article examines the international context envisioned by four historical sociologists. It argues that, although these writers have been successful at historicising state formations, this powerful account has not been matched with a historical account of international relations. If this project is to move forward, a complementary historical account of international contexts, or global structures, is required.

The Palestine Liberation Organization in the United Nations: Implications for International Law and Relations

1977 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanford R. Silverburg
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
World Order ◽  
Palestine Liberation Organization ◽  
New Era ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Political Units

The end of the Second World War seemed to signal to many observers the onset of a new era of international relations and international law. The appearance of former colonial entities as independent and sovereign political units led both diplomats and academicians to divine a new world order for international relations. At the same time the consequent significant increase in the number of political actors in the international system changed not only its complexion but also its manner of interaction. It appears that there are still further developments in the offing whose full significance cannot as yet be fully documented. One aspect, however, which we can examine is the increasing importance of the transnational actor in international forums. Our intention in this paper is to examine several features of this development in international relations, law and organization as evidenced by the continually increasing participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the chambers of the United Nations.

Kant and the Kantian paradigm in international relations

1990 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hurrell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
State System ◽  
Interstate Relations ◽  
World Government ◽  
Perpetual Peace ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
International Anarchy ◽  
Lasting Influence

Although few in number and limited in scope, Kant's writings on international relations have had a lasting influence and have given rise to a wide range of interpretations. Kant's famous pamphlet, Perpetual Peace, has been seen as advocating federalism, world government, a League of Nations-type security system and outright pacifism. Underlying much of the debate on Kant lies a divergence over the relationship between what might broadly be called the ‘statist’ and the ‘cosmopolitan’ sides of Kant's writings. On one side, there are those who argue that Kant is primarily concerned with order at the level of interstate relations. Kant, it is argued, did not want to transcend the state system but to improve it. He wanted to subject the international anarchy to law and to find a solution to the problem of war but in a way which would not sacrifice the essential autonomy and independence of states.

The American Society of International Law 1906–1956

1956 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
George A. Finch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Jay Treaty ◽  
American Society

The founding fifty years ago of a society to promote the establishment of international relations on the basis of law and justice was a step marking the progress that had been made at the beginning of the century in the age-long efforts to find a means of substituting reason for force in the settlement of international controversies. At that time arbitration was generally regarded as the most suitable and acceptable substitute for war. Great Britain and the United States had both heavily contributed to that conviction first by submitting to arbitration under the Jay Treaty of 1794 the numerous misunderstandings that developed in carrying out the provisions of the Peace Treaty of 1783, and then three-quarters of a century later in submitting to arbitration by the Treaty of Washington of 1871 the dangerous Alabama Claims dispute following the American Civil War.

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