State

Muhammad Saeed
Department of Humanities
COMSATS University Islamabad
Abbottabad Campus
Introduction
• We take existence of sovereign state as an extremely important
unit in our analysis of international relations but state has never
existed and cannot be supposed to exist in its present form.
• Rise of sovereign state in Europe and elsewhere is the result of a
long historical and often bloody process.
• Both in terms of allegiance of its citizens and services it performs,
state has evolved from a simple to a more complex organization. It
has evolved from personal fiefs to modern (welfare) states.
• Michael Cox describe this process in the following passage:
“Establishing the principle of sovereignty therefore involved a good deal of struggle
and bloodshed. What we now call the ‘wars of religion’ in Europe – conducted between
the newly formed Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic papacy – were in
part fought to determine which kind of political community would dominate Europe.
The burning question at the heart of this endemic warfare was to whom populations
and territories owed their loyalty: their local lord, the pope in Rome, the Holy Roman
Emperor or their state’s monarch.”
• Even in Sub-continent the situation was almost same, the Caliph, the king, the
governor, the local land lord were often competing centers that demanded people’s
loyalties.
• Both in Europe and Sub-continent and elsewhere the competition was between
religious authority and secular authority and finally modern sovereign secular
states became the important members of international system/international
society/international community.
Sovereignty
• Sovereignty is the most important characteristic of modern state that it
achieved through competition with other centers of power as discussed
above. What is sovereignty?
• Sovereignty consists of two main characteristics:
1. the idea that the state should not be subject to any foreign power
2. the idea that the state is the supreme authority within its territorial
jurisdiction
• It is both an aspiration and an institution– identifying both who can
legitimately act in international society (the sovereign state) and how
they should act towards one another (mutual non-intervention). As the
English School would say, it is both a rule of membership and a rule of
behaviour in international society.
Peace of Westphalia (1648)
• The principle of sovereignty (non-interference) was established at the end
of bloodiest wars of religion fought across Europe from 1618 to 1648.
• Peace of Westphalia established is important because:
• First, Westphalia reinforced a principle first enshrined in the Peace of
Augsburg (1555) that the religion of the sovereign would also be the religion
of his or her subjects – in Latin:cuius regio, eius religio .
• Second, Westphalia declared the legal equality of all sovereign political
communities. In doing so, it laid the foundations for a system of
international law based on formal treaty obligations between legally equal
states, replacing earlier forms of diplomacy based on rather vague
emanations from God or Nature. Finally, Westphalia enshrined its provisions
in a pair of multilateral treaties that received the consent of all the major
powers of Europe. In this sense, Westphalia was truly a watershed moment
Success of State
• Despite problems associated with sovereignty, for “organised hypocrisy,”
it has been successful form of political community. Why?
• In 1948 the number of recognized sovereign states was 58 which is now
around 200. State is successful simply:
• Compared to non-state actors, states can do things that others cannot.
• States and states alone have the power to raise taxes, issue passports,
print money, pass laws, wage war, put you in prison and – in some
jurisdictions – kill you legally.
• In competitive terms, no non-state actor can match the state in terms
of its competences and authority. For one thing, states remain the
most effective instrument for making foreign policy.
• Internationally, only states can formally declare war and make peace. Only
states are permitted to vote in the UN General Assembly and Security
Council.
• Only states can make treaties and recognise other states as sovereign. They
therefore hold a special place in international society as the only legitimate
representatives of territories and populations on the global stage.
• Sovereignty is particularly desirable because it affords some degree of legal
protection to weaker actors in the international system. Although, the
principle of non-intervention provides an imperfect guarantee against
invasion. However, sovereignty can at least be referred to by less powerful
states to protest the actions of their powerful neighbours on the grounds
that such actions undermine their independence and autonomy.
Problems With Sovereign States
• One problem regarding the state has already been mentioned – by looking
at states and states alone, one gets only a partial picture of the totality
of contemporary IR.
• Another obvious limit to statism is that many of the non-state actors can
be a good deal more influential than the states in which they operate.
Take, for instance, some of the giant oil companies or massive agri-
businesses that dominate world trade. When pitted against the economic
resources of poorer states, the transnational corporation (TNC) is likely
to win in a battle of influence. TNCs might not have the same legal
authority as small states, but they almost certainly have more influence
on global affairs. This is the sort of argument popularised by Susan
Strange in her work on international political economy in the 1980s and
1990s.
• Another critical argument against the state focuses on what they cannot do.
David Held does not think that our current international order based on a
system of sovereign states is really up to the job of managing international
crises.
• He argues that the post-1945 international order is threatened by ‘an
intersection and combination of humanitarian economic and environmental
crises’. Self-interested states, he argues, have neither the resources nor
the will nor the imagination to deal with these transnational problems.
• The world in which we live is deeply interconnected, but the tools that states
have at their disposal are locked into the Westphalian system of sovereign
states. Held calls this the paradox of our times. ‘The collective issues we
must grapple with are increasingly global’ he notes, yet the means for
addressing them are ‘national and local, weak and incomplete’.
• So, there is a long debate around state’s usefulness or other
wise. But states continue to be major players in international
relations.