Sovereignty and the State in International Relations M1

Code Cours
2223-ESPOL-EIS-EN-4018
Langue d'enseignement
FR, EN
Ce cours apparaît dans les formation(s) suivante(s)
Responsable(s)
JANIS GRZYBOWSKI
Période

Présentation

Prérequis

Please note that this is an intense course based on significant reading efforts, regular class participation, and several assignments. A general knowledge of IR and adjacent disciplines is required.

Présentation

This course engages with two of the most basic and yet most elusive concepts of modern international relations: Sovereignty and the state. Conventionally, the field of International Relations (IR) and neighboring academic disciplines assume the existence of individual states, treating them as actors in an international landscape in which, to paraphrase Max Weber, politics within and politics between states play out. Yet where do states come from in the first place, how do new states emerge, and what does sovereignty entail? Are states ultimately characterized by their means of violence and capital, by bureaucratic procedures, the majesty of rulers, the representation of national communities, the delineation of distinct territories, or the recognition of their legal status under international law? Taking an interdisciplinary journey to the foundations of the modern international order, in history, theory, and practice, the course helps students reflect on the multi-sited enactment of the state and sovereignty, and their ambiguous but central role.

Modalités

Modalités d'enseignement

In order to pass the course, each student has to fulfill four requirements. The final grade of the course is composed of the following assignments:

(1) Participation (20%): This is a very reading-heavy class. Each student is expected to read all assigned texts before each class and participate actively in class discussions. Students may miss one session without justification, any other absence must be justified.

(2) Paper (30%): Each student writes a short discussion paper of about 1000 (+/- 100) words in one week of the course in sessions 3-7, in which (s)he critically engages with all the compulsory readings for that session. The paper should not simply summarize the readings but rather make an independent argument. Papers must be submitted by 2pm the day before class. Every hour of delayed submission leads to a reduction of a full point in the grade.

(3) Authors’ attorney (15%): Students pick one session (from sessions 3-7, but different from the one chosen for writing the paper) to defend the authors against any and all critique that might come up in the class discussion, irrespective of differences between the authors.

(4) Group debates (35%): Students will be subdivided into groups for sessions 8-11 to debate specific questions in a moderated format. Details will be discussed in the course.

Évaluation
Examen : coeff. 100

Ressources

Bibliographie

PART I: STARTING POINTS|| <b>1 Introduction (10/01)</b>|| <i>No readings.</i>|| <i>, </i>|| <b>2 The pledge: The elusive ubiquity of the state and sovereignty (17/01)</b>|| Kissinger, Henry. <i>Diplomacy</i>. New York: Simon and Schuster, chapter 4 (“The Concert of Europe: Great Britain, Austria, and Russia”), pp. 78-102.|| Skocpol, Theda, and Kenneth Finegold. 1982. “State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal.” <i>Political Science Quarterly</i> 97(2): 255-278.|| Gupta, Akhil. 1995. “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State.” <i>American Ethnologist</i> 22 (2): 375-402.|| McConnell, Fiona. 2009. “De Facto, Displaced, Tacit: The Sovereign Articulations of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.” <i>Political Geography</i> 28(6): 343-352.|||| PART II: HISTORIES OF THE STATE AND SOVEREIGNTY|| <b> </b>|| <b>3 Origins? Violence, majesty, and myth (20/01)</b>|| Bourdieu, Pierre. 1994. “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field.” <i>Sociological Theory</i> 12(1), 1-18.|| Scott, James. 2017. <i>Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States</i>. New Haven: Yale University Press, introduction, 1-35.|| Clastres, Pierre. 1989 [1974]. <i>Society against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology,</i> New Jersey: Princeton University Press (chapter 11: “Society against the State”), 189-218.|| Costa Lopez, Julia. 2020. “Political Authority in International Relations: Revisiting the Medieval Debate” <i>International Organization</i>, 74(2), 222-252.|||| <b>4 From authority to bureaucratization and (self-)discipline (27/01)</b>|| Bloch, Marc. 1973 [1924]. <i>Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France</i>. London: Routledge, introduction, 1-8.|| Hobbes, Thomas. 1968 [1651]. <i>Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil</i>. Harmondsworth: Penguin, chapter XVII (“Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Commonwealth”), 111-115.|| Scott, James. 1998. <i>Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed</i>. New Haven: Yale University Press, chapter 2 (“Cities, People, Language”), 53-83.|| Hull, Matthew S. 2008. “Ruled by Records: The Expropriation of Land and the Misappropriation of Lists in Islamabad.” <i>American Ethnologist</i> 35(4): 501-518.|| Wedeen, Lisa. 1998. “Acting ‘as if’: Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria.” <i>Comparative Studies in Society and History</i>, 40(3), 503-523.|||| <b>5 Sovereign foundations? <i>Pouvoir constituant</i>, revolutions, and states of exception (03/02)</b>|| Arendt, Hanna. 1963. <i>On Revolution</i>. London: Penguin, chapter 2 (“The Meaning of Revolution”), 21-58.|| Schmitt, Carl. 2005 [1922]. <i>Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty</i>. Chicago: Chicago University Press, chapter 1 (“The Definition of Sovereignty”), 5-15, and 4 (“On the Counterrevolutionary Philosophy of the State: de Maistre, Bonald, Donoso Cortés”), 53-66.|| Trotsky, Leon. 1937. <i>Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?</i> Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, and co., chapter 5 (“The Soviet Thermidor”), 86-114.|| Humphreys, Stephen. 2006. “Legalizing Lawlessness: On Giorgio Agamben’s State of Exception.” <i>European Journal of International Law</i> 17(3): 677-687.|||| PART III: THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE WORLD|| <b>6 Empire, colonies, and the state form (10/02)</b>|| Benton, Lauren. 2009. <i>A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapter 1 (“Anomalies of empire”), 1-39.|| Adelman, Jeremy. 2008. “An Age of Imperial Revolutions.” <i>The American Historical Review </i>113(2), 319-340.|| Armitage, David. 2004. “The Declaration of Independence in World Context.” <i>OAH Magazine of