Empires and Nations in the Modern World: Shifting Political Orders

2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Patrick Manning

Abstract This essay traces the path of empires and nations as forms of governance, the eventual predominance of nations and disappearance of empires, and the contemporary interplay of large and small nations as the dominant form of global governance. It also gives attention to the rise of capitalist economic organization as a factor expanding empires and later encouraging nationhood. The essay emphasizes two stages in the emergence of nations: the emergence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of nations and eventually of the great powers, and the post-1945 emergence of nations as the universal form of government, consisting mostly of small powers, linked by the United Nations.

1947 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Det. Glazebrook

The term “middle power” is a convenient one that has come into general use as a means of avoiding the unreality of a simple division of states into “great” and “small”. While attempts to find a yardstick for the measurement of states have been fruitless, there can be some agreement on the categories. For practical purposes the great powers at the present time are those which hold permanent seats on the Security Council, just as during the war they were those which participated in the meetings of heads of government on high policial and military policy. There are clearly also a number of smaller states which, because of limited resources or small population, or both, are commonly ranked as small powers. In between lie a number of countries which make no claim to the title of great power, but have been shown to be capable of exerting a degree of strength and influence not found in the small powers. These are the middle powers. There is no agreed list because, while there is a fixed, if arbitrary, boundary between them and the great powers, there are, as it were, marginal powers which might be classified as “middle” or “small”. Probably, however, the following members of the United Nations would generally be recognized as middle powers: in Europe — Belgium, the Netherlands, and Poland; in the Americas — Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico; in the Pacific — Australia, and India.


1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ross Fowler ◽  
Julie Marie Bunck

One might try to determine just what constitutes a sovereign state empirically, by examining the characteristics of states whose sovereignty is indisputable. All sovereign states, it might be observed, have territory, people, and a government. Curiously, however, cogent standards do not seem to exist either in law or in practice for the dimensions, number of people, or form of government that might be required of a sovereign state. Indeed, a United Nations General Assembly Resolution declared that neither small size, nor remote geographical location, nor limited resources constitutes a valid objection to sovereign statehood.


2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Chase-Dunn ◽  
Hiroko Inoue

This article discusses the evolution of the international system and global governance within the Europe-centred modern world-system since the 15th century in the context of a comparative framework that includes interpolity systems since the Stone Age. The evolution of the modern system includes the emergence of the European system of sovereign national states and colonial empires, the extension of the Westphalian system to the non-core by succeeding waves of decolonization, the rise and fall of successively larger hegemons, the deepening of global capitalism in waves of globalization, the emergence of weak international regulatory institutions and the prospects for and the rapid emergence of global democracy. It is not claimed that a global state has already emerged, but the authors see the long-term processes as the early stages of the emergence of a world state, and consider how these processes might be accelerated within the next few decades. The need for democratization of the institutions of global governance is also discussed. However, in this article, the focus is more on real geo-historical processes than normative questions, outlining the evolution of interpolity institutional orders, describing the challenges in thinking about global state formation, and discussing some of the technological and political forces that might accelerate the long-term trend toward global state formation.


1957 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-661

The Sub-Committee (Canada, France, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States) of the Disarmament Commission held its 87th–157th meetings in London, March 18—September 6, 1957. On March 18, the Soviet representative presented a proposal for an international convention on the reduction of armaments and armed forces and the prohibition of atomic and hydrogen weapons, in accordance with a resolution passed by the General Assembly at its ninth session. He outlined two stages, one to be carried out in 1957–58 and one in 1959, and stated that it would be desirable to establish control posts at such places as large ports and railway junctions and to establish zones of limitation and inspection in Europe, including the territory of both parts of Germany and that of the states adjoining them. During the first stage, the five great powers were to reduce their armed forces to levels not higher than those suggested in the Anglo-French memorandum of March 29, 1955, and the Soviet proposals of May 10, 1955. During the second stage, inter alia, the production of atomic and hydrogen weapons was to becompletely discontinued and provision was to be made for the elimination of those weapons from armaments and the destruction of stockpiles of them.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Faranak Delshad Sani ◽  
Leila Mohammadzadeh

<p class="zhengwen">Governance can be determined as guided penetration in various procedures by great powers that is involved with sophisticated and various mechanisms; in other words, global governance is a procedure which governor state makes and determines its important decisions about who are involved with procedure and  how to do their responsibilities. International regimes are one of the most important and penetrator executive arms of governments in global governance era which can play the most key role in this issue and bring the highest benefit for their subordinate governments.</p>Actually, regimes make regulations and beliefs to guide and set international actors, they are proposed as corporation mechanism among governments, makereliance and security, and help to international stability.


Author(s):  
Frank Biermann

The concept of an Anthropocene is now widely used in a variety of contexts, communities, and connotations. This chapter explores the possible consequences of this paradigmatic turn for the field of International Political Theory (IPT), arguing that the notion of an Anthropocene is likely to change the way we understand political systems both analytically and normatively, from the village level up to the United Nations. This makes the Anthropocene one of the most demanding, and most interesting, research topics for the field of IPT. The chapter first lays out the manifold new challenges for IPT that have been brought about by the concept of the Anthropocene, and then illustrates these challenges with an example: the increasing need of governments to define and agree upon “desirable” futures for planetary evolution.


1947 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-377
Author(s):  
E. Wilder Spaulding

An expert on foreign affairs has summarized the limitation upon the right of a government to make public the diplomatic papers which it has received from another government as follows: “ … one party to a negotiation cannot, in honor and in courtesy, publish the negotiation without the consent of the other party, on pain of forfeiting that good-will upon which … ‘the peace of the world ultimately depends.’ ” This principle of consent to publication is accepted, with some reservations and exceptions, by American practice. But American practice in this matter is not generally accepted by all foreign offices and it is not precisely and definitely written into international law. It has been generally observed in normal times by the Great Powers, which have had most to gain by its application, and it has frequently been disregarded by small powers and by Great Powers in times of stress. It rests upon comity and reciprocity, not upon international legislation.


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