Early state formation

Studies of early state formation focus on primary states (of which there may be few) and early states (which formed in different parts of the world throughout history). Primary states are defined as those states that developed in a context with no contact or prior development of a state in the area. These examples are those situations where states developed for the first time in that social environment. The exact number of cases, which qualify as primary states, is not clearly known because of limited information about political organization before writing in many places; however, the list typically includes the first states to develop in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus river valley, North China, Peru, and Mesoamerica. Similarly, Cohen identifies six zones of independent state development: 1. a connected zone including Europe, North Africa, the Nile river valley, East and South Asia, 2. Mesoamerica, 3. Peru, 4. West Africa, 5. East Africa, and 6. Polynesia.

Early state formation focuses on processes that create and institutionalize a state in a situation where a state did not exist before. Examples of these states that developed in interaction with other states include states like the Aegean Bronze Age Greek civilizations and the Malagasy civilization in Madagascar. Unlike primary state formation, this does not require the creation of the first state in that cultural context or to be developed autonomous from state development nearby. Early state formation causation can thus include borrowing, imposition, and other forms of interaction with already existing states.

Modern state formation

Modern state formation theories focus on the processes that support the development of modern states, particularly those that formed in late-medieval Europe and then spread around the world with colonialism. Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, with decolonization processes, attention began to focus on the formation and construction of modern states with significant bureaucracies, ability to tax, and territorial sovereignty around the world. However, many scholars hold that the modern state formed in other parts of the world prior to colonialism, but that it was replaced by colonial structures.

2 Culture and identity based conflicts.

The Clash of Civilizations is a theory, proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world.

The theory was originally formulated in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future would be along cultural and religious lines. As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict.

 

Exam Card#16

1. Politics and International Relations is about the world in which we live collectively and the ways in which it became what it is today and continues to change. It considers the choices that political actors – from governments to citizens to international institutions – make and the structures and constraints under which they make them. It examines the ways that people conceive the world as they believe it might be and the realities with which they struggle in trying to make it so. It analyses the ways in which people have tried abstractly to make sense of the political and international worlds and the political contexts in which they have done so. Minor in IR: Individuals: those who are able to influence politics in someone’s country: presidents, business entrepreneurs, mass media entrepreneurs

Nongovernmental Organizations: The International Red Cross is a good example. Many professional organizations fall into this category, everything from medical associations to the International Chamber of Commerce.

Multinational Corporations: These have become particularly important and increasingly studied since World War II. Huge corporations may have branches in the United States, Germany, France, Japan, Brazil, and a host of other countries. Each branch is obliged to follow the laws of each country in which it operates.

Elites: are select groups of people that come to the fore in certain areas. In international relations, there is a group of individuals both in and out of governments who are so active, powerful, and important that they form a communications network that can influence many aspects of the international system.

Major actors in

IR:

States (or Countries): are still the most important actors in the international system.

It is through states that most international relations are structured, ordered, and controlled.

Under international law, states are assumed to be sovereign and equal, that is, each of the approximately 200 independent states of the world is assumed to have control of its own destiny and have the same rights and duties as every other state. This idea of the equality of states flies in the face of objective reality.

2. The term ethnicity is usually used to define a group of persons sharing a common cultural heritage. The latter is made by common history,environment,territory,language,customs,habits,beliefs, in short, by a common way of life. Undoubtedly, religion is an important component of any cultural heritage. In some cases it is even presented as the most crucial factor in the formation of an ethnicity and consequently of a nation. Yet, the case of Islam, for example, proves that the interconnection between sharing the same religious beliefs and ethnicity or nationhood is not one dimensioned,it could be quiete diverse and even contrary to stereotyped expectations.

Exam card #17

1. Political realism is the international relations contending general theories or theoreticalperspectives. This is a view of the international politics that stresses it conflictual and competitive side. Political idealism is the theory of international relations rooted in liberal traditions in the belief in the inherit good in human nature.

2. three pure types of political culture based on level and type of political participation and the nature of people's attitudes toward politics:

• Parochial - Where citizens are only remotely aware of the presence of central government, and live their lives near enough regardless of the decisions taken by the state. Distant and unaware of political phenomena. He has neither knowledge or interest in politics. Ingeneralcongruentwith a traditionalpoliticalstructure.
• Subject - Where citizens are aware of central government, and are heavily subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. The individual is aware of politics, its actors and institutions. It is affectively oriented towards politics, yet he is on the "downward flow" side of the politics. Ingeneralcongruentwith a centralizedauthoritarianstructure.
• Participant - Citizens are able to influence the government in various ways and they are affected by it. The individual is oriented toward the system as a whole, to both the political and administrative structures and processes (to both the input and output aspects). Ingeneralcongruentwith a democraticpoliticalstructure.

Exam Card #18

1. The modern state arose between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, and it spread to the rest of the world via conquest and colonialism. By the time the last African colonies became independent in the 1960s, the modern state ideal had become universal. This ideal comprises four defining characteristics: (1) territory, (2) sovereignty (external and internal), (3) legitimacy, and (4) bureaucracy. No state enjoys complete sovereignty or a completely effective and efficient bureaucracy, but some states are closer to this ideal than others. Legitimacy may come in various forms—from traditional, to charismatic, to rational-legal, the latter of which requires a highly effective bureaucracy and some semblance of the rule of law. The

modern state arises at a stage in social evolution when human society becomes bigger, more complex,more productive, more divided by private property – and when the very existence of society begins to require a special mechanism for coordination and use of social power to achieve the too ultimate goals of Security Welfare and Human Rights.

2.Gender: the terms “gender” and “sex” are interchangeable. This idea has become so common, particularly in western societies, that it is rarely questioned. Yet biological sex and gender are different; gender is not inherently connected to one’s physical anatomy. Sex is biological and includes physical attributes such as sex chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, internal reproductive structures, and external genitalia. At birth, it is used to identify individuals as male or female. Gender on the other hand is far more complicated. Along with one’s physical traits, it is the complex interrelationship between those traits and one’s internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither as well as one’s outward presentations and behaviors related to that perception.

Exam Card # 19