Lec 3
Lec 3
Lec 3
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Citation: Abinales, P. & Claudio, L. (2018). The Contemporary World. C & E Publishing, Inc.
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Lesson 3: Global Interstate System
IMPORTANT TERMINOLOGIES:
Required Reading(s):
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A HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS: CREATING AN INTERNATIONAL ORDER
Not all states are nations and not all nations are states
In the Philippines, many believed that the Bangsamoro is a separate nation existing
within the Philippines, but recognizes the authority of the state through its elites.
2. If there are states with multiple nations, there are also a single nation with multiple
states.
Examples:
The ‘Chinese nation’ may refer to both the People’s Republic of China (the
mainland) and Taiwan.
State
In layman’s term, state refers to a country and its government i.e. the government of the Philippines
It is an ‘imagined community’ (Benedict Anderson). The nation allows one to feel a connection with a
community of people even if he/she will never meet all of them in his/her lifetime.
It is limited, which means that the nation has boundaries. E.g. Christendom, Filipino
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The Interstate System
1. Treaty of Westphalia (1648) - -Sets of agreement signed to end the Thirty Year’s War
between the major continental powers.
- (Westpahlian Sovereignty) It is a system designed to avert wars in the future by
recognizing that the treaty signers exercise complete control over their domestic affairs
and swear not to meddle in other’s affairs.
2. Napoleonic Code.
- He ruled most of Europe destroying the (early sovereignty) of these countries.
- Napoleon Bonaparte believed in spreading the principles of the French Revolution –and
challenged the powers of kings, nobility, and religion in Europe.
- Napoleonic Code
1. Forbade birth privileges
2. Encourage freedom of religion
3. Promoted meritocracy in government service
3. Concert of Europe –
o Bonaparte was defeated in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
o The concert of Europe was an alliance of “great powers” – the UK, Austria, Russia –
that sought to restore the world of monarchial, hereditary, and religious privileges
before the French revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
o It was an alliance that sought to restore the sovereignty of states.
o This alliance was then called Metternich system, which lasted from 1815 to 1914,
at the dawn of WW1.
Internationalism
The westphalian and concert system wanted to divide the world, into separate, sovereign entities.
There are some attempts to transcend it.
The desire to create a system of heightened interaction between various sovereign states, particularly
the desire for greater cooperation and unity among states and peoples is called internationalism.
Motivation Questions:
Would not a world government, in effect, become supreme?
Would not its laws overwhelm the sovereignty of individual states?
c. Giuseppe Mazzini - Proposed a system of free nations that cooperated with each other
to create an international system. A Nationalist-internationalist who believed that free,
unified nations-states (Republican system) should be the basis of global cooperation.
d. Woodrow Wilson - He saw nationalism as a pre-requisite for internationalism. He
advocated for the Principle of self-determination, a belief that world nations had the right
to a free and sovereign government.
2. Socialist internationalism
a. Karl Marx – internationalist but did not believed in nationalism. He believed that any
true form of internationalism should deliberately reject nationalism, which rooted people
in domestic concerns instead of global ones.
b. Vladimir Lenin – encouraged global revolutions and created the USSR which exhorted
the revolutionary “vanguard” parties to lead the revolutions across the world using
methods of terror if necessary.
c. Joseph Stalin – established the Communist Information Bureau and helped direct the
various communist parties that had taken power in Eastern Europe.