Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival

Author(s):  
Chris Brown ◽  
Christopher Clapham
1998 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Gail M. Gerhart ◽  
Christopher Clapham

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAREL PAUL

That states are sovereign units interacting under conditions of anarchy has long been the core assumption of the discipline of International Relations. Operating largely with an anthropomorphic conceptualization of the state, 'statists' create a stunted ontology of the international system dominated by the concepts of state survival and an assumed state survival interest. By constituting sharp lines of demarcation between being and non-being, between 'life' and 'death', statists ignore a host of more subtle changes in the ontological status of states which are ill-treated by reference to 'survival'. This Westphalian ontology leads ultimately to a dead end, for such a definition rejects from the outset an ontology of overlapping political authorities in a single territory but at distinct scales which is characteristic not only of the present international system but of the so-called Westphalian era as well.


2020 ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
M. I. Kalinin ◽  
L. K. Isaev ◽  
F. V. Bulygin

The situation that has developed in the International System of Units (SI) as a result of adopting the recommendation of the International Committee of Weights and Measures (CIPM) in 1980, which proposed to consider plane and solid angles as dimensionless derived quantities, is analyzed. It is shown that the basis for such a solution was a misunderstanding of the mathematical formula relating the arc length of a circle with its radius and corresponding central angle, as well as of the expansions of trigonometric functions in series. From the analysis presented in the article, it follows that a plane angle does not depend on any of the SI quantities and should be assigned to the base quantities, and its unit, the radian, should be added to the base SI units. A solid angle, in this case, turns out to be a derived quantity of a plane angle. Its unit, the steradian, is a coherent derived unit equal to the square radian.


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