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Apr 24, 2024
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POLI151 PO - PostWestphalia: Beyond the Nation StateWhen Offered: Last offered spring 2021.
Instructor(s): P. Englebert
Credit: 1
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ushered in the era the sovereign territorial nation state as the dominant mode of political organization across the world, a process expanded through colonization and post-colonial independences. Since the 1990s, however, more and more of these states have displayed significant weaknesses and fragility. While they retain formal control over people and territories, many face increased competition from alternative modes of social and political organizations, including “traditional” political systems, non-governmental organizations, religion-based groups, insurgencies and militias, decentralized entities, trafficking networks and internationally-sponsored trusteeship-like arrangements like quasi-permanent UN interventions. Scholars have tried to capture this increased institutional diversity with notions such as “hybrid effective governance,” “heterarchy,” “areas of limited statehood,” “oligopolies of violence,” and the like, calling attention to ongoing processes reminiscent of the birth of the nation state in competition with other forms of organization in late medieval Europe, for example. Relying on international-relations and comparative-politics literature, this class surveys the rapidly expanding scholarship on the topic, questions the future of the nation-state, and discusses policy implications for the international community. Letter grade only.
Satisfies the following General Education Requirement(s), subject to conditions explained in the Degree Requirements section of this Catalog:
Area 2
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