Alternative Examples of States (Week 7 Pre-class Blog)



I wanted to offer some of the things I found during my research for the coming mid-term. I think that this was an interesting part of my research which demonstrated that alternative versions of state-like actors have existed anciently. It also points us to the conclusion that the current Westphalian system of autonomous and impermeable actors seems to be more closely aligned with Western value systems than an unchangeable state of nature.

A brief analysis of the past helps to frame possible alternative international systems which have existed and how they created fundamentally unique actors. However, once analyzed the majority of further examination will focus on how the current international environment has key characteristics which will help to transform statehood from impermeable actors to possibly porous centers of decentralized power.
Erik Ringmar illustrates that the current international system is more associated with western mentality than it is with realism’s universality of hard-shelled states. He provides two historical examples which provide alternative state models. The Qing dynasty of 17th Century China developed a distinctly associative nation state. “Here the geographical area a state occupied was less important than its relationship to the state in the center of the system” (13). This is in stark contrast to the Westphalian order of territorial-based states. He then uses the Tokugawa Japan era to demonstrate a mélange of Sino-Westphalian structures. This structure consisted of territorial based “hans”, but which simultaneously existed within a social order (13). Here we see three possible state representations based upon several central themes: culture, norms, and institutions.
It appears that Ringmar and Alexander Wendt agree on the reason for the differences in 17th century statehood. Wendt’s ideational and norm centric theory lends credibility to Ringmar’s observation that China and Japan were able to effectively build variations of permeable states because of the unique institutions their corresponding cultures endear. More specifically, their identities provide “role-specific understandings and expectations about self” (397). Ringmar continues that the Westphalian system’s perception of sovereignty originated from its spacial concept of territoriality. Western states were defined by their hard boundaries. This same ideal is absent in Qing-era China and led to the hierarchical form of governance and foreign relations. It is now apparent that alternative state structures have existed in the past, but can the current Westphalian model be changed or overcome? 
Works Cited




Erik Ringmar, Performing International Systems: Two East-Asian Alternatives to the Westphalian Order, (Cambridge, Cambridge University 2012), 13.






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