Formation/Cours

Note: Open only to students who did not take the same course in their 2nd year.

This is an optional course for highly motivated students with a background in International Relations (IR) and the willingness to read several academic articles per week and engage in active class discussions. It is focused on the system of sovereign states that is the basic starting point for international relations. The states constituting ‘the international’ as well as their sovereignty are usually taken for granted in IR, international law, and, more implicitly, other social sciences. But where do states come from in the first place, how has the model of the modern territorial state spread across the world, and how do new states still emerge today? The course helps students reflect on the multi-sited enactment of the state and sovereignty, and their ambiguous but central role. It then turns to contemporary challenges, including of state creation and recognition, military interventions, jihadist counter-polities, and the supposed crisis of the liberal international order.