Summary Lecture and reading notes Actors in world politics
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Course
Actors In World Politcs
Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)
The documents contains the reading and lecture notes of the course Actors in World Politics in the BSc Political Science: International Relations and Organisations at Leiden University. On the exam I scored a 7.4/10.
LEC 1: Introduction of syllabus
LEC 2: International, global or transnational?
The World has become Global
1 Dimensions of globalisation
● People. People migrate. Biggest migration wave from south to south.
● Capital.
○ Flow of money; Bretton Woods. Closed economies had led to war, therefore
free trade and low tariffs would help prevent war.
○ Trump first to change rhetoric in 70 years.
○ 70-80s deregulation of financial markets
○ North/South trade globalisation. South-south trade increasing fast.
● Politics
○ Terror attack France. Matter becomes globally politicised.
○ Small incidents can acquire a huge audience.
● Culture
○ Emily in Paris. You have to produce a product that is attractive to rest of the
world
○ Pacific Rim. Bombed in the US but 6th successful film in China.
○ Extinction of languages. While English is becoming dominant means of
communication
2 Globalisation as a series of processes
● Deterritorialisation
○ “the process through which geographical territory becomes less of a
constraint on social interactions.”
○ eg this lecture. Broadband internet provides communication despite
pandemic. Despite distance that separates us
● Interdependence
○ “The process through which “security and force matter less and countries are
connected by multiple social and political relationships”
○ eg US can go into a trade war, but not too much since China owns a large
share of US public debt.
○ War in DRC 1998-2003. Resource for phones in DRC, fuelled civil war over
control of raw materials. 4m died
● Time-space compression
○ The set of processes that cause the relative distances between places to
contract, effectively making such places grow “closer”
Interpreting Globalisation
1 The “international relations” approach (realist approach)
● The domestic / international divide
● States as the main actors of IR
● Non-state actors negligible
The “Globalist” approach - less people willing to support this idea
● World divides are flattened
● World is undifferentiated investment surface
● States are not longer relevant
The transnational critique
● Analytical purchase. Question arbitrary divide between globalist and realist approach,
sovereignty is not either or nor its nuanced and in between.
● A problem of analytical purchase
○ relations develop between states and non-state actors
○ states adapt to globalisation: transgovernmentalism. States themselves are
becoming transnational: eg Moroccan migrants in western europe ending up
with financial services in moroccan.
○ A problem of conceptualisation: an either/or conception
, ● Conceptualisation
Directions for a transnational approach
● The territorial trap
○ States do not have exclusive power over territory
■ Sovereignty is not absolute but relational.
● Rule existed in other forms (city-states, monarchies etc.)
● Territorial states is a recent invention
● No strict division domestic / international
● Transnational elite networks / transgovernmentalism
○ Domestic and foreign realms are not separate, but networked
■ Unified territorial control has a history
■ Effective territorial sovereignty is a myth b
■ Power operates much more through networks
○ Boundaries of the state are not the boundaries of society
● Sovereignty as networked
● Spatiality as networked
Identities are not homogenous but multiple and hybrid
○ Nationalism is historically determined
○ Identities have ever entirely fit territorial borders
○ globalisation has reinforced discrepancy
○ Hybridity rather than homogeneity
Conclusion:
● Globalization means that the through people, capital, politics and culture and
increasingly interconnected across the globe
● Globalisaiton is not a simple, but a complex set of processes of deterritorialization,
interdependence and compression of time and space
● Academic theories have debated the disappearance or persistence of the
nation-state in the face of globalisation
● This debate is grounded in problematic premises summarized by the notion of the
territorial trap
● Three main concepts of international politics need to be examined:
○ Sovereignty as relational
○ spatiality as networked
○ identity as multiple and hybrid
, LEC 3: Sovereignty and the Nation-State
● Definition of the state
○ A set of institutions and their related personnel;
○ A degree of centrality, with political decisions emanating from this centre
point;
○ A defined boundary that demarcates the territorial limits of the state;
○ A monopoly of coercive power and law-making ability
■ both police and social norms; eg not throwing rubbish on the street on
Tuesday if rubbish is collected on wed
● A definition of the nation
○ as a ‘named human population sharing a historic territory, common myths and
historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common
legal rights and duties for all members.’ Anthony Smith 1991
● A definition of sovereignty
○ Domestic sovereignty - actual control over a state exercised by an authority
organised within this state
○ Interdependence sovereignty - actual control of movement across state’s
borders, assuming the borders exist. Ability to stop clandestine migration,
drug trafficking, stopping people from crossing your borders who you don’t
want within your borders.
○ International legal sovereignty - formal recognition by other sovereign states
○ Westphalian sovereignty - lack of other authority over state other than the
domestic authority (principle of non-interference)
The formation of States
1 People and institutions before the nation-state
● Political institutions. Kingdoms no borders or unified languages.
● Communities. Religion still defined community not nation
2 Why did states appear?
● Extracting resources for war; tax revenue
● Bureaucracies and political institutions
3 Why did territorial states appear?
● City states: economic powerhouses but vulnerable to military conflict
● Empire;
○ good at war. Aristocratic class with warrior culture, battle knowledge is
transmitted through generations. Easy to recruit a lot of people
○ Lack of centrality and interaction, not so good at being an economic power
● Territorial states
○ midway; strong wealthy cities, but also large areas and good at war
The Slow emergence of the Nation-state
Westphalia: the emergence of the principle of territorial states? (1648)
● How we got to Westphalia
● Cuius Regio eius Religio
● The westphalian myth and modern IR theory
● The permanence of transnational processes (17th-19th c.)
○ Transnational elites (European Royal Family Tree)
○ The European colonial domination
○ The circulation of people. Immigration control is a new idea, before peasants
were not allowed to move around.
The violent territorialisation of modern nations (19th c.)
● The territorial homogenisation of nations. Massacres, heavy repression.
● The invention of the passport
● The nationalisation of culture, knowledge and mentalities
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