Session 1

Geopolitics is the study of how geography and economics have an influence on politics and on the
relations between nations – Myriam Webster Dictionary.

But are todays global politics only determined by geographical and economic factors or do we need
to take other variables into consideration (demographics, migration, cultural globalization.

Space

Territories Inequalities

o Space and Territories are not identical because Space is a broader concept that means 3 things: -
Support of order: It is how we get from the notion of space to the notion of territory. Territory was
invented to allow individuals to order Space; it’s a political notion that organizes the space in which
we are living. - Support of mankind: It reveals a demographic dimension and how population is
dispersed geographically (7 billion people related to Space). - Support of resources: It reveals how
resources are dispersed unevenly energetic resources to feed these 7 billion people).

➢ 1st Problem: we have believed that it is possible to cut the Space into Territories and lead them in
order. But we are living in a world full of spatial inequalities where the Territory is artificial as men
and politicians construct it.

➢ 2nd Problem: when we create borders, we create tons of inequalities and hatred between the
people who lived together in peace -> very problematic and it is the key origins of many of our
problems in the world today.

Notion of territory = a Paradox (leads to inequalities).

o The Notion of Territory:

➢ Human Territoriality – Robert Sack

“ Territoriality in human is best understood as a spatial strategy to affect, influence or control

resources and people, by controlling area; and, as a strategy, territoriality can be turned on and off.
In geographical terms, it is a form of spatial behavior” – Sack, 1986. “Territory is a human strategy
to affect, influence and control people, phenomena, and relationships by delimiting and asserting
control over a geographic area“.

➢ Empires have fluctuating borders, they are not fixed, they move. ➢ In Europe, they accepted the
notion of territory because it brought peace (far from danger or war). Territorialization of Politics.

o The Notion of Nation:

➢ A nation is a community of people that share certain cultural values.

➢ Benedict Anderson’s definition of nation: a nation is a group of people having the same sentiment
of living = imaginary as people started to imagine this nation w/ the printing press.
➢ The French State pushed also to create a national sentiment with the national anthem, colors,
Marianne… → Territorialization of the Nation.

o Two models:

State + Territory = Nation (French Model) ➔ A strong governmental authority to rule the territory
and a sovereignty of people living in the territory.

Nation + Territory = State (German Model) ➔ Context: German romanticism argued that the nation
is naturally given Germany so to reunite the German population, they said they were “one” to
remove intruders.

➢ Problem: such an argumentation is regaining power today and especially in the Middle East,
homogeneous territory has never existed. – Japan is the closest but can’t resist the immigration
pressure.

Post-Territorial World (where territory and nation still exist)

o Globalization:

➢ Globalization has led to a world more and more on the move which leads to new principles:
Trans-versality: people do not longer just have strong national sentiments but also have
transnational solidarities.

Trans-scalarity: we no longer act on one level (locally) but in different levels at the same time
(regionally, nationally, internationally). Trans-locality: we are connected at the same time to
different places (multiple identities, multiple attachments to different places, multiple nationalities
so attached to both places). leads to the paradox that Putin took time to understand = the right of
people to dispose by themselves and the sovereignty of the people to govern.

o Demographic Disequilibria:

➢ Map: shows that the majority of the World’s population is located between Pakistan and Europe
(cities like Karachi where there is a big population density leads to irritation).

➢ Strong population density in the Middle East (Turkey) and Europe.

➢ Difference between Europe and these other zones: Europe has had enough time to adapt
whereas in Africa or India there is a rapid urbanization so the population has no time to adapt.

➢ It’s possible to understand the growth of Islamism with urbanization. With globalization, by
building skyscrapers and taking lands, all the reference left to the people is religion. Also, the rural
community is left: poverty and exclusion explains the growth of Islamism, which the government has
to understand.

o An Aging World:

➢ European and Western population is going to be extremely old: the current standard of living is
not going to be maintained.
- Most of the mega cities in the developed world are growing but around there are huge camps of
slums next to the skyscrapers: this trend will grow if we don’t do anything.

- Michel Agier: “The encampment of the world” - most of the people will live in camps.

➢ Retirement increasing: Europe has an immigration need - Japan is calling back their retired
people, as they don’t have enough people to care for the maintenance of living standards.

o Global Migration: Qatar & Dubai - biggest amount of immigrants.

➢ What is an immigrant? A person born abroad and non-citizen of the country of his/her current
residency.

➢ What’s the difference with an illegal immigrant? A person that has legally entered a host country,
but who has stayed beyond the agreed deadline of residency.

➢ What is the difference between immigrant and refugee?

- Immigrant: immigrates because believes it will have a better future somewhere else.

- Refugee: leaves forcibly its country because of political constraint, war… but our politicians don’t
see the difference.

➢ Immigration is not only a 21st century phenomena: it’s just because before they didn’t focus on it
- historically people were always on the move (migration of homosapiens), we have to be settled
and organized in a territory but our instinct wants us to move.

➢ In 2030 = Canada, Russia, Argentina, South East Asia will take most of the migrants.

o The Global refugee situation:

➢ Key refugee countries are: Iran, Syria, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, and Somalia. ➢ People flee to
neighbouring states: central Africa. ➢ Where do they go? US, Canada, Europe… Question of
territoriality

Session 2

o What is inequality?

➢ 3 issues:

- Global inequities are difficult to grasp and to define - are global inequalities just a repetition of
national inequalities at a global scale?

- International System (and IR Theory for that matter) has remained insensitive to socio-economic
inequalities.

- How to target inequalities?

o Democratization:

➢ 3 ways of democratization: Europe, Latin America and southern countries.

➢ Democratization or democratic regime is thought of as a remedy to ➢ In a social democracy:

couple of policies exist and should tackle the socio-economical inequalities.

➢ We are no longer living in fixed determined territories (more globalized) so do we have a tool to
tackle global inequalities in a global scale?

o Socio-economic inequalities:

➢ Theories don’t allow the question of inequality:

- Realism: does not allow to think about socio-economic inequalities at a global scale: Thomas
Hobbes – international politics is a scene of gladiators; states fight with each other all the time, they
want to maximize their own interest, they don’t care about inequality that others might suffer.

- Liberalism: John Locke, Kant - we need global trade, trade makes people work and stick together,
and with that, inequalities are cared for, people will trade and inequalities will disappear. Other
story: global trade increases inequalities. Liberal idea: trade is the solution but not really convincing
today to erase inequality.

o So how do we target these inequalities that exist?

➢ 60s: increased number of institutions (United Nations Program for Development).

Socio-economic inequalities

➢ 90s: Human Development Index has been set up and number of reports published (by united
nations in 1994).

o Inequality is a social construction:

➢ We have to distinguish between 3 constructions of inequality:

- Financial inequality (economist point of view): 84% of the global financial resources are captured by
8% of the global population. If we see as an economist: inequalities in terms of salary are different -
Mali-250 dollars per year and Norway-90 000 US dollars a year - cleavage is extremely large here, we
can talk about Income disparities inequality (the GINI coefficient or the Human devel. Index).

- Natural Resource Inequality: inequalities exist in the distribution of resources - some countries are
resource rich and others are resource poor and can’t do anything about it.

- Perceived/Subjective inequalities: we can’t see the perceived inequality (book - Ted Gurr- Relative
Deprivation Theory) - people see that they have less as they can compare to someone else who has
more – increasing globalization has made people in Mali have a cellphone and they can see who lives
better elsewhere.

o Outline:
1.Energy insecurity

➢ Consommation Energétique Mondiale: - The use of global energy (petrol, coal, natural
gas) has steadily increased: in 1973 we were using 5 billion tones of petrol compared to 14
billion tones of petrol today. - Problem: the spectrum of petrol shortage doesn’t really
frighten us anymore, as we believe other energetic resources are present that we could use -
some other countries have encouraged to use coal and open coal mines as its cheaper and
we have it on the soil: but the green party is against it as it pollutes. In terms of life
expectancy: there is enough coal to be used for more than 100 years whereas petrol is
finishing.

➢ Unequal distribution of petrol: Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq, and Russia. So we
could argue that the dependency regime from the north to the south is reversing: the north depends
on the south, but Total, Chevron- multinational companies with headquarters in London, New York…
➢ To understand the Iran-Iraq war and the one of Kuwait: have to consider this question.

➢ Natural gas producers: Iran (1st) and in northern countries there are only two: Russia and US.

➢ Réserves Mondiale d’Energie: US are 1st in terms of coal (natural resources of energy).

➢ It is often said that US have been the biggest consumers in terms of energy, but China has
surpassed the US as the biggest energy consumer (2009) and the tendency is increasing as the
Chinese population is increasing and the country is developing.

2. Food insecurity

➢ What is food insecurity?

- does not necessarily mean hunger or famine.

- is an economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate & nutritious food.

➢ Malthus verus Amartya Sen:

- some point it will be wise to introduce a population control mechanism to reduce demographic
growth globally – China and its one child policy.

- Amartya Sen answers: food insecurity is not a problem of demography but an economic problem
which has to do with redistribution and poverty - people who do not have the necessary funds and
access to food would necessarily live in food insecure condition.

➢ Still a couple of countries are at extreme high risk when it comes to food insecurity: Afghanistan,
Ethiopia, the democratic republic of Congo…

➢ Global food security in an urbanizing world:

- By 2050, 2/3 of the world’s population will live in urban areas - Amartya Sen said that the person
who suffers from food security does not have the same social profile in the city and elsewhere as in
the city hunger can trigger social conflict - slums in the mega cities of India have social conflicts.

- In the next 20 years, 95% of the world’s pop growth will occur in developing nations – 80% of food
for cities comes from domestic sources while 400 000 children are fed with the help of soup kitchens
and food pantries.

➢ Food insecurity and climate change: Strong desertification or saltification of the land. Too much
rain for territories that can no longer use for agriculture which leads to food insecurity - in 2010,
Russia has faced a very tough raw period led to the fact that the agricultural production in terms of
crops wasn’t very high, Russia produced and exported less as prices of the crops skyrocketed so
people were buying less. Some of the countries that were dependent on Russia were the countries
from the Maghreb region (Egypt) where the prices went up (one of the key factors of the Arab

Revolution- population didn’t have enough money to buy bread). Global Index.

➢ High illiteracy rates as if you are not food secure, you don’t send your children to school but to
work in order to buy food.

➢ Land-Grabbing: Western governments are considering this method in order to feed their own
population - it takes place when your government doesn’t have enough agricultural land in order to
feed the population, so takes lands in Africa but the individual human being who has this land is not
asked for that, so he is spoiled because the agricultural production produced in this land is directly
exported to the north so they are not given any of the harvest, they offer only the work and don’t
get anything else in return: it doesn’t encourage their development.

3. Water stress

➢ What does underwater stress mean?

- doesn’t have that, he is considered as suffering from water stress - some have only 1000 or 500 like
in Egypt or Lybia which is not enough. For drinkable water, the conditions have been increased in a
certain number of countries too.

- In many countries in Africa that suffer the most from water stress, women have to walk long
distances for water, which leads to violence against woman. Access to drinkable water has become
better but not great.

- Countries suffering from water stress are also in the Maghreb region, which lack sufficient
underground water in order to be sufficient for the next 30 years.

➢ Who consumes most?

- Countries of the OCDE (northern countries) are not the biggest water consumers, but the BRICS
where you have most of agricultural production (need water to irrigate the plantations). In 2050, we
can see a consumption of over 5000 liters.
➢ Consequences of these inequalities: - Leads to a very low human development: the prospect for
the future are not very good as the global inequalities will increase instead of narrowing down.

- Will see a number of conflicts and political crisis increasing - Political Stability Index 2012: political
instability comes from equality; a political regime is a regime which is capable of providing necessary
needs. A country without resources or energetic production is very likely to have political instability.

4. Unequal social integration at the global level

➢ Poverty is an important dimension of exclusion. Exclusion doesn’t limit to economic inequality but
social inequalities as well.

➢ A population suffering from inequalities doesn’t have the chance participate in the society as they
suffer disadvantages to enhance their opportunities, have access to resources and voice for rights.

CONCLUSION: UN Human Development Report, 1994: “A world free from fear”

Session 3
o What is regional integration?

➢ Regionalization: is a form of territorial re-composition and is often referred to as Regional

Integration:

- It is about overcoming barriers between countries and managing cross-border issues - European
Commission.

- It is the process by which two or more nation-states agree to cooperate and work closely together
to achieve peace, stability and wealth. The transformation of a territory can be studied through
regional integration.

➢ Regionalization = Regional Integration = smaller territories will integrate into something larger, a
national state territory will give way to something much bigger - the Union for the Mediterranean
States that merge to become something bigger.

o Differentiate Regionalization versus Regionalism:

➢ Regionalization = much more used for socio-economic integration process - ASEAN is not
regionalism but regionalization as it is the process of socio-economic integration.

➢ Regionalism = much more for political integration - EU referred as political regionalism as it is

driven by political factors and state policies.

o 4 issues come up with the process of regionalization:

➢ A curious abandoning of sovereignty: The Baltic States have been fighting to gain their
sovereignty and independence under the USSR. Once they became independent, they wanted to re-
abandon the sovereignty to engage their state into a Union.

➢ Problem of identity: What is the order that we are giving to the identities while Regional
Integration?

➢ Birth of a new political supra-national community: Is the EU a supranational community?

Intergovernmental construction of the European Union - “L’Europe des patries” – Charles De Gaulle.

➢ Is our international system moving towards an inter-regional system? Question of

interdependence - to what extent does regionalization render our states inter-dependent? France is
dependent

Regional Integration

on Germany and vice-versa. Furthermore, Erasmus creates interdependence on a social, cultural and
educative level. → Interdependence is the consequence of regional integration.

o Outline:

I) Classical Regionalism = Exceptionalism - a European exception?

1.1 Genesis of the European Regionalism.

➢ Context:

- In the aftermath WW II - 60 million deaths, totalitarian political regimes. The European integration
was a sort of consequence of WW2.

- Key objective: Political, linked to a need for the establishment of peace in Europe which is not an
economic objective but a political one - David Mitrany, A Working Peace System, 1943. The
European construction has been a political enterprise.

- Key argument: it is not to save the State - L’Etat n’est pas la finalité du politique – 1949 – key in
European politics. Need to overcome the state borders by renewing the notion of political solidarity
and privileging interdependence (as a protection shield) amongst nations in order to better achieve
what we are trying to achieve which is a working peace system: a new sense of peace that would
actively European Nation States are able to generate the feeling of political solidarity and be able to
allow interdependence by giving away some part of their protection.

- The subsidiarity principle: decisions should always be taken at the lowest possible level or closest
to where they will have their effect and act where the needs are - for example in a local area rather
than a whole country. Subsidiarity where both can act: member states and the European Union - It
safeguards the ability of member states to take decisions and action and authorizes intervention by
the Union when the objectives of an action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States
but can be better achieved at Union level. It is also to ensure that powers are exercised as close to
the citizen as possible.
➢ The 3 major paradoxes:

- State is the only actor that can lead the process which is thought for disappearance: At the time of
the European Construction process, the only political actor that we had in Europe who actually could
move on the European process were the States – it’s paradoxical because the European Integration
Process was in a way invented to out pass but if regional integration takes place, there would be a
disappearance of the State.

- De Gaulle - “L’Europe des Patries” – an addition of states? De Gaulle has seized this tension when
he talked about “L’Europe des Patries”: patriotism is too strong to get into something bigger. But for
Mitrany, Schuman or Adenauer, Europe was not a “Europe des Patries” but a political regionalism,
that in the long run it should become a supranational entity that would replace the national
government (1950s: it was what they had in mind). Patriotism is too big to let go of one’s identity.

- Interdependence: They achieved that but quickly realized that only peace building wouldn’t last,
and that interdependence should be constructed in other levels (economic interdependence…). This
is why you don’t only have one Europe constructed: a European interdependence and a more
economic integration version of Europe.

➢ States want to protect their sovereignty: protect their national territory and politics - with the
inter-governmentalist approach; government should transfer their political power at a supranational
level - State (national) and EU (supranational).

1.2 First steps of European construction.

➢ Two Europe (s) - A communitarian/political Europe. - A Europe that transcends the frame of its
own union.

➢ Schuman Plan (9 mai 1950): put together the resources of steel and coal between Germany and
France. Hoped to grow into 6 countries – CECA (set up with the Treaty of Paris on 6th April 1951)
Germany, French, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

➢ One year later, 1952: 7 years after the end of the war, creation of the EDC European Defense
Community, a forerunner of the European army. Mostly wanted by France as France was militarily
superior so it was a good deal to control the other countries that were part of the Union. ➢ 30th
august 1954: France refuses to ratify the Treaty of Paris which lanced the EDC, blocking the creation
of EDC and the process of the politic integration of the EU because it could not be possible if you
don’t have a common army and they would not have had the overhand at the political level if they
signed the EDC. Outcome: the two Roma Treaties in 1957 → one is the Treaty of the CEE (European
Economic Community and the other Treaty that formed the EURATOM (European Nuclear Energy).

➢ Development becomes less and less political: in 1962 - Green Europe which didn’t work very well
and in 1963 – the first sovereinist resistance movements ➢ In the 1970s: people started to believe
that the identity of the EU is not political but economical because there was the appearance of the
Werner Plan – in the EU, people should have a common currency. It was a total failure and took a
couple of years to convince EU to have a common currency as it would help at the international
level.
➢ Only in 1979: the first European Currency - Monetary Integration.

➢ Since the 1980s: with the creation of monetary union, the old classical regionalism is dead and
out passed by the integrations, which are much more influenced by neo-regionalism of other
continents like Asia.

II) Toward a Neo-Regionalism

2.1 A global regionalism?

➢ 1973: World economic crisis

- Answer: New Forms of Regional Integration to protect States from economic crisis. Karl Deutsch
talks about this phenomenon, as Security Communities: for many states, joining a regional
integration process was a way to protect themselves.

➢ Concept of “Glocalization”: practice of conducting business according to both local and global
considerations.

➢ Neo-Regionalism = victory of non-state actors. In the context of NeoRegionalism, which is mostly

in Asia, regionalization is understood as the result of an intensification of exchanges of all kind
(economic, social, cultural etc.) inside and across the boundaries of Nation-States. But State
governments have difficulties to control these exchanges.

2.2 Characteristics of Neo-Regionalism

- Focus on specific territories and spatial planning. - Response to the problems of postmodern
regions. - Environmental, equity and economic goals. - Renewed emphasis on physical planning,
urban design and sens of place.

2.3 Example of Asian Regionalism

➢ 1st concept to understand neo-regionalism:

- Technical and Economic cooperation - no political cooperation involved.

- ASEAN – economically driven regional integration process (Japan – Korea – China)

- Neo-regionalism born in Asia - Book “The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies
– 1995 by a Japanese economist Kenichi Ohmae 1943 a specialist in global economy.

- He comes up with a new concept, which revolutionizes how the Asian world looks at integration: a
“region-state”. His argument is that region-states are natural economic - The intensification of
economic and social exchanges and zones emerging where there are real hubs of commercial
exchanges.

➢ 2nd concept to understand neo-regionalism:

- Robert Scalapino, American Political Scientist (1919-2011)

- Article (1995) – invented the concept of NET’s - Natural Economic Territories in East Asia - he
argues that these are hubs created by interactivity of individuals and that extend across national
state boundaries.

2.4 Updating Europe.

- Should Europe copy the Asian example? - Is it possible to copy the Asian example or is it a regional
exceptionalism? - What current strategy does Europe follow in terms of regional integration?

➢ Europe has been very much impacted by the neo regionalism coming from Asia on several levels:

- Awakening of social and economic actors in Europe: Multinational companies figured out that
there was much more trade to do and much more to gain by integrating other economic and
regional actors in order to trade with far distant people.

- Europe has re-centered its focus on local regions: by taking at heart that inside European member
states there are regions that could be potentially economically attractive and it would be interesting
for Europe to exploit them as some Asian cities have done – Singapore.

by revalorizing regions - Europe has to re-center in a local level. Same context - EU has introduced
also the famous “Charte des Langues Regionales”.

The Karlsruhe Convention, 1996: which stipulates the cooperation of different region members of
the EU.

III) Typology of regional organizations.

Variations of regional construction…

1. Tentative Typology

a) Traditional Inter-State Cooperation: Council of Europe, Organization of American States, African

Union, Arab League, and ASEAN.

b) Strictly Economic-driven Integration: NAFTA, SARC (South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation), SADC (South African Development Community), CEDEAO (Economic Community of
Western African States).

c) Regional Organizations with economic pretensions: European Union, MERCOSUR.

d) Open Regionalism: APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation).

Division into multiple regions which were before “one”.

Regionalism: A new world order or a global disorder?

Session 4:
➢ The classical answer is the States, which founded the conception of International Relations and is
a vision, which stems from the classical philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (International Relations as an
“arena of gladiators”). But this classical vision is outdated.

➢ Network and club diplomacies make their way into international relations, as well as non-state
actors.

o Non-state actors:

➢ Non-state actors are: “sovereignty-free” entities that exercise significant economic, political or
social power and influence at a national and international level.

➢ religious organizations, MNCs, ethnic groupings, universities, etc.

➢ There is a shift from the State towards the Individual as an actor of International Relations.
Terminology: from the “international” politics to “global” politics.

o Has the State the capacity to reaffirm itself again?

➢ Two schools with opposing opinions:

- The State will keep the overhand. - The State will loose its influence - International regulation will
happen only with new non-state actors.

➢ James Roseneau, Turbulence in World Politics (1994)

- Introduces: the concept of “sovereignty-free actor”. - Argues: we will assist the emergence of “two
parallel worlds” → the post-Cold War World Order was constituted out of a world of States, but the
Parallel Worlds that he saw was a World of Sovereignty-free actors. - There is a necessity to change
our approach to global political matters that requires a more sociological understanding rather than
a simple political understanding. - Urbanization has changed the social psychological behavior of
individuals. Individuals that lived in urbanized environment will have more transnational relations,
more sovereignty free actors.

I) Transnational actors:

1.1 Definitions: Actors, relations, Transnational Flows, Networks.

Who is an actor in International Relations?

o Transnational actors: every acts that, by its own will or by destination, acts in global politics. Every
actor, that by transgressing the national borders, escapes, at least partially, from state control or
mediating power.

➢ “By its own will or destination” reveals that the transnational strategy is a deliberate choice of
the actors. ➢ NGOs or religious organizations transgress state boundaries by their own will and
journalists or researchers do so by their job (destination).
o But acting transnationally requires a number of means: - Technology - communication technology -
> propaganda - Economic resources (MNCs) - Militancy (e.g. Greenpeace)

o All companies are acting transnationally, in terms of militants, they are also transnational - Daech
uses well social networks.

✓ Transnational relations: any form of political relations that are built up in the world space by
inadvertence. Example: Internet, collective actions, etc.

✓ Transnational Flows: when transnational relations have a recurrence. Example: Migration flows,
trade.

✓ Network: interconnected transnational relations. The sociologist, Mark Granovetter, has said
that the network evokes “the strength of the create other contacts with others. On the Internet, you
have the possibility to maintain the invisibility that makes networks interesting. Example: Facebook,
Twitter and their role in the Arab Spring.

Club diplomacies: G20, G7 Network diplomacy: related to non-state actors

1.2 Origin and development:

1. ITC Revolution: helped the evolution of transnational actors.

2. Shrinking distance: people are feeling connected - what is happening in Syria touches us and we
feel concerned. We are not only defining ourselves in the territory that we are living in, but in the
ongoing global environment we are living on. There are more transnational solidarities.

3. Urbanization: the growing urbanization makes transnational flows constant - people are in contact
quickly and have access to communication tools to connect.

4. Liberalization: transnational non-state actors have given autonomy and control mechanisms to
the market, not really to the government. There is no more state or political decision.

5. Interdependence: Logical consequence of transnational relations - built with relations and is a

must if you want to survive as a state in international politics today.

6. companies will ask these questions as well as rich French people. How am I able to keep the
money that I make? (Fiscal paradise)

1.3 Characteristics:

1. Problem of scale Positioning yourself at the level of the state, the world or at the individual level.
Are you positioning yourself as interstate relations?

2. Problem of shifting stakes ➢ Before and during the Cold War period, the key goal of state politics
was security. ➢ Henry Kissinger said that States are security maximizers (try to increase their
security). ➢ Transnational actors are no longer security maximisers but autonomy seekers: they
don’t care if they don’t know much about security as it isn’t their primary goal, the first thing they
want is autonomy and the freedom to act. ➢ How are you going to act? States act by using force,
individuals don’t necessarily have the same means which doesn’t mean they are not as loud as the
state army in international relations and can’t cause as much harm: terrorists are individuals, they
still impact heavily in the international game and have influenced on diplomatic relations -> most
transnational activists are not institutionalized.

3. Changing methods 4. Shift from a formalized world to an informal one

II) Categories of non-state actors:

2.1 Individual non-state actors:

Transnational actions which are promoted by individuals and which do not obey to any strategy of
enterprise.

- Choice of allegiance: In Irak, after the US intervention, the debate was about how should I define
myself (an iraki, an arab, should I aggregate with sunnis?...) Very clear in the Iran-Irak war, can see
how the game had changed. Again today, a question of allegiance, in the case of Kurdistan.

- International Public Opinion: Requires an opinion on the international, what happens and requires
an international mobilization, and if it doesn’t happen, there will be no international public opinion.
IPO appeared in 2003 when USA decided to intervene in Irak -> various movements combined to
defend the opinion that this intervention was illegal. Since then, this IPO was maintained. People
living in difference countries should have the same opinion, when there is a difference of opinions,

2.2 Collective non-state actors:

A/ Multinational companies:

➔ 3 waves:

- Supply or extraction mission (energetic resources, food supply, etc.)

- International de- and re-composition of labor (multinational companies that have relocated their
businesses because it was economically interesting for them as labor was cheaper but contributed to
the social dumping (price dumping), to capitalization, and to the spread of inequalities.

- Emergence of “Network” companies (multinational companies like McDonalds).

B/ Communication companies:

- CNN: capacity to reach more than 1 million people that connect every morning on CNN.

- The explosion of Internet users: China is, more than US, India and Brazil, growing in

C/ NGOs:

The number of NGOs that occupy a special status show the importance of transnational actors:
NGOs play an important role today and diplomats need to know what the needs are and NGOs need
to operate. Idea of two parallel worlds: the State alone cannot do everything, they need NGOs.
Example: Médecins Sans Frontières.

2.3 Privatization of the State and of Diplomacy:

Privatization of the state: refers to privatization of the State’s regulatory functions (e.g. privatization
of security -> private security companies).

Privatization of Diplomacy: refers to the fact that the biggest MNC and transnational actors have
their own diplomatic networks. → Parallel-Diplomacy The question that remains is how private and
public diplomacy are going to combine.

III) Strategies of non-state actors:

3.1 Strategy of autonomy 3.2 Strategy of cooperation 3.3 Triangular game

Session 5
Intro:

Identity: not able to have a definition. It’s a complex subject. Multiple definition. Part and parcel of
the globalization process.

. Globalizationis a multidimensional process. Although often understood in economic and political

terms, its social and cultural implications are no less important.

. What is cultural globalization? It leads in the long run to cultural uniformity.

- A process whereby cultural differences between nations and regions are tending to be
flattened out”.
- Globalization becomes linked to cultural homogenization
- We all buy the same commodities (smartphones, jeans, sneakers, etc.)
- We all eat the same food (McDo, Starbycks, KFC, etc.)
- We watch all the same movies (Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, etc.)
- We follow the same celebrities, etc.

. This is why the term of “culture” goes hand in hand with a second term, “identity”.

. The question of identity represents the essence of the “culture concept”, which should not be
regarded as something natural and static, but rather as something that evolves with the social and
economic and political context.

. The “identity question” is composed of multiple facets, such as:

- The actor/individual
- The political system
- The clash of identities
- The place of culture
 - The public freedoms

[MNCs forced this cultural homogeneity by transgressing the borders.

National sentiment emerged of printing press.

Cultural globalization should not mean to outdo the other civilizations.]

[Each political system is constructed according to an identity. It can be constructed in a simple way, or in a complex way
such as the “Eastern identity”.

Identity is also a question of minority

1/7 person is suffering today because of his/her identity (United Nation Development report), and the tendency is growing.
Because globalization leads more and more to the mix of identities.]

1/ The definition problem: Identity

2/ Culture Concept

3/ The political construction of the identity crisis: The Pakistani case study

4/ Ethnicisation

5/ Aporias of ethnicisation

1. The definition problem

. There is no “one-size-fits-all” definition for identity.

. There are different types of looking at identity:

- An individual’s self-perceived identity or individual identity

- Collective identity
- Ascribed identity(the identity people give you)
- Etc. =>We all have multiple identities

. Example: The city has an identity problem

- The city produces a collective identity to distinguish itself from other cities (projected
identity)
- But, at the same time the city and its society remains plural (effective identity)
- The challenge for politics is to govern both
. There is no “one-size-fits-all” definition for identity… because identity is essentially “a strategy to distinguish
oneself or a group from another individual or group”.

. In other words, it’s the “mirror game” or the “alterity” that creates your identity.
. Identity is a “strategy” with two subjects: the individual and the collectivity.

. We can distinguish 3 strategies:

- Desire
- Interest
- Constraint/force (ex- in some cases, you hide your religious identity)

2. The culture concept

. Identity goes hand in hand with the “culture concept” that is equally difficult to grasp and to define.

- Yet, culture is the substantial aspect of every identity

. The culture poses the question of “the content of identity”

- What does it mean to be French, Syrian, Chinese, Cuban, American ?

- What does it mean to be a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Sikh, a Hindu ?

. There are multiple ways of constructing this content.

. This identity discourse is a discourse about culture

- Being French => I refer to a culture that I share with the other French people.

. So what is culture?

- More than 150 years of debate over this question, which has been introduced into the
social science debate in the 1870s as a consequence of colonialism and the discovery of
indigenous cultures

. Edward Burnett Tylor gives an enumerative definition of culture

- Culture as an aggregation of customs?

- It’s a weak definition of culture
Culture is not only eating baguettes, talk in French … It’s that + all in between

. Clifford Geertz proposes a semiotic definition of culture.

- Culture as a system of meaning

- A culture can host multiple value systems
- Individuals can adhere to different value systems simultaneously
. Geertz is telling us one important thing:
 -
The essence of culture is “understanding” // the “common ground” that all people that
share a culture can relate to and understand.
- Example: sociology of the insult
“L’Hommeest un animal suspendudans les toiles de significations qu’il a lui-mêmetissé”

On se perddans des toiles de significations non naturellesqu’on a fait nous-même.

Religion emerged when people wanted to explain something they couldn’t in another way.

. If you try to transpose this now on International Relations, you understand how not sharing the
same understanding of rules, norms, institutions, etc. leads to huge dissonances and possibly
conflicts

[In a democracy, we have different value systems. Democracy means diversity of politic values. If we don’t
have a common understanding, it leads to tensions.

At an international level, if we don’t have the same understanding, it will lead to conflicts etc.]

3. The political construction of the identity crisis

You need to have a part of the population that feels already dominated or excluded and who
become sensitive to identity talks.

.What happens if there exists not a sufficient correspondence between the proclaimed identity of a
State and the identities of individuals that live in that state?

- When people do not adhere to the identity of their State, we are facing an “identity crisis”.
Understanding the identity crisis means understanding two things.

- An identity crisis is always the result of a political enterprise

- An identity crisis requires a successful mobilization and the questioning of identity (because an
individual is not obliged to adhere to the call of the identity entrepreneur)

=== We will study the construction of the Pakistani state in 4 steps

Step 1: Birth of a political separatist enterprise

. 1906: Birth of the India Muslim League as a political party in the British Raj
. Party was founded in Dacca (now Dhaka, Bangladesh)

. A party with Muslim Identity as primary identity marquer, program and project

. Ideology: Pan-Islamism, Conservatism, Human Rights for Muslims in India

.1909: The British Government introduces an electoral law that proposes to separate the electoral
colleges (muslim/hindu)first governmentally contracted separation between two identity groups

.1937: Presidential election with two major political parties

- Congress Party (inter-confessional): claimed to represent all Indians; goal was one united Indian
nation

- The Muslim League: claimed to protect Muslim interests; rejected the idea of an Indian nation
controlled solely by the Congress Party

. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League proposed the two-nation theory. He was a
secularist, opted for the territorial approach. He was very much criticized by Islamist scholars, who
argued that the Islamic nation is a-territorial and that the objective should be to bring India into the
“Dar al-Islam” (House of Islam). But Ali Jinnah is not impressed and pursues with his idea.

. What helps Jinnah to foster the identity mobilization?

- Situation of the Muslim community in the Ganges Delta

- 1946: Calcutta Riots  Mass killings of the Muslim population

.1947: Tells toNehru “if you don’t want to cooperate, you better allow us to have our own territory
because we would live hell in your country”. Because his party grew politically, Nehru accepted and
it led to Division of India and Pakistan

Step 2: Pakistan and its two regions

. Difficulty to think its unity:

- The existing linguistic cleavage between the two regions (Bengali vs Urdu)

- The geographical distance with the political center in Karachi

- Political leaders were mostly “Muhajirs” (refugees of Urdu language)

Result: Oriental Pakistanis felt dominated by and excluded from the Pakistani nation

. Mujibur Rahman (1920-1975): leader of the Bengali political party, wins the election of 1970,
proclaims the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan

He mobilized very much for the split of Bangladesh away from Occidental Pakistan by playing on the
Bengali’s identity population, by playing on their social characteristics (most of them were farmers).
Step 3: Violent Islamisation of Pakistan

. Military regime of Yayah Khan was a bloody one with strong dictatorial rules.

. Pakistan has no common history to build a national feeling of belonging on >> the state did not
exist before 1947.

. Society is strongly divided >>different linguistic and ethnic groups

- Muhajirs: rule over the administration

- Punjabis: rule over the army

- Minority groups, such as the Sindhs and the Pathans

. Such a leadership in general doesn’t last. He was overthrown by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1971: he is a
“minority president”

. He found the Pakistan’s People Party

. How, as a minority president, is he going to legitimize his rule?

- By looking for a common denominator: Islam

- He uses Islam to consolidate and legitimize his political power

- He wants to turn Pakistan into an Islamic Republic

.  This had nothing religious or cultural!! It’s a pure political strategy!

Step 4: Validation of the military regime

. Ali Bhutto was overthrown and jailed by the army general, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977

. Ul-Haq enacted a new martial law in 1977, under which Ali Bhutto was accused of “conspiracy for
murder” and hung in 1979.

. The new military regime will continue the Islamization of Pakistan and play on the nationalist string
>>finding an external enemy to create internal cohesion

. This explains Pakistan’s strategy during the Cold War.

. India was a long-term USSR ally, while Pakistan was backed by the USA and also Chine (given the
tension between China and India).

. In December 1979, the Soviets took over Kabul >> it was a good opportunity for Zia-Ul-Haq to show
the Pakistani superiority vis-à-vis India and the USSR  The Pakistanis naturally played the
protectors of the Afghan revolt
. Pakistanis mobilized young Afghan people in the tribal zones, where they attended the Koranic
schools. These young people are students (“talab”) from where derives the term “Taliban”.

. In other words, the Taliban have been a means for the Pakistani military regime to extend their
diplomacy across the borders into Afghanistan

4. Ethnicisation
. What is ethnicisation?

- It is a process that consists in attributing real or perceived ethnic differences, rightly or

wrongly, to a social phenomenon.

. Invalids the territorial order, the Westphalian order of states

. What counts is not the territory or the State, but the belonging to a common culture.

. Crucial moment: this signifies the obsolescence of the territory, because identities are not
enshrined in a territorial order.

. If we territorialize identities, we risk falling into: - ethnic cleansing / genocide

The Kurdish example:

Ethnicisation ongoing, we still ignore that the cities that has the biggest Kurdish population is
Istanbul.

Do they really want to leave Istanbul to go to a Kurdish state?

If a Kurdish state is created, the Turkish state will do all of his possible to make them leave.

. The danger of the ethnicisation is that faced with the “identity politics” we will come back to the
Westphalian logic  ethnic clusters or states

. Tendency to replace citizenship rights with ethnic rights/claims leads to changing the legitimization
of the state and of politics.

. It derives authority not from a requirement of co-existence, but from a requirement of uniformity

5. Aporias of ethnicism
Causes

- Collapse of ideologies

- Crisis of the state

- Collapse of Empires

- Failure of regional integration

- Effects of humiliation and domination

Consequences

- Ethnicism is not nationalism

- Has no social contract

- Is based on an imagined territory

- Is a contestation strategy

- Has no international relation

The dangerous ethnicisation of the international system

- Primordialist mobilizations (ex: Rwanda)

- Ghetto politics (ex: Gaza)

- Rise of populism (ex: Europe, Myanmar)

- Rise of fundamentalism

Session 6:
In global politics are we really assisting the return of the sacred? -> Sacred and religious is not the
same thing.

o The question invites us to reflect upon several points: - The actor (who is the religious or the
sacred?) - The system (because religious institutions are institutionalized and take the form of
political systems) - The mobilization capital (religion is or can be used as a tool to mobilize individuals
for example the Iranian Revolution where religion has been used by political leaders as a tool to
mobilize human beings, or the same in The Muslim Brotherhood where religion was used as a
mobilization) - The question of culture and identity (session 5)

I) Semantics

1/ The profane, the sacred and the religious.

o French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) in “Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse”:
distinguished the human (what is inherent to the human being) and the sacred (what goes beyond
the human) and according to him, what what was going around him: we reach as Nietzsche would
say the “superhuman”.
o Consequence: if the sacred is defined as something that the human being cannot fully grasp or
control, it becomes a very strong political control tool. Sacred is the opposition of the human, the
transcendent.

o But Durkheim takes his thought a step further by adding that sacred is not only what goes beyond
the control of the human beings, but encompasses also what human beings invent to cover all the
fields to which their action and knowledge do not have access.

o For Durkheim, the religious is thus just a part of the sacred. Religious = rituals and beliefs that
substantialize the sacred. The sacred is composed of the religious and the meaning making of
individuals.

o For Durkheim, the sacred is the expression of a collective consciousness of a society. And religion
is the core of the collective consciousness. To Durkheim, religion is the social glue. o Paradoxically,
this is what renders the religious agnostic, because the religious becomes a creation of society to
express and illustrate its own limits.

2/ Some hypothesis on the return of the sacred.

Religion

o The sacred will: Durkheim argues the sacred reemerges in periods of uncertainty, turbulence or
disorder (also André Malraux arguing that the 21st situation).

o It’s a fallacious hypothesis, it’s wrong because religion has never disappeared from politics in our
world; it has always existed so we cannot talk about a return.

o The sacred benefits from modernity and takes over where political institutions fail.

o The “return of the sacred” is not just a question of increasing belief but it is first and foremost a
question of “void”.

o Lacking access to education plays a role in maintaining religion and that’s why religion is more
present in the southern countries than in the northern countries where the majority is not affiliated
to religion.

3/ What is a religious actor?

o Weber’s focus: on the subjective meaning that human actors attack to their In other words:
everyone is a religious actor because we all “manipulate” religious symbols.

II) Religious Actors

1/ Statistical and historical landmarks: Plurality of religions but their social extensions differ
considerably so their insertion into international politics will not be the same.
a) Christianity: the map of Christianity is changing…

➢ Roman Catholicism, which is a very centralized, structured, hierarchical and institutionalized

religious system is going more on the south – it’s good for keeping unity but very bad in a globalized
world because there is rigidity and The Pope has difficulties giving his vision in global politics and the
place of Catholicism in the world today.

➢ The Protestant Religion, It started with opposition of what was happening in the Roman Catholic
Church, opting exactly the contrary. There is no intermediate between god and the individual, it’s a
direct approach.

Two different systems of governance: from the Roman Catholic System of delegation and
representation (The Pope is representative of god on earth), we get the forerunner of ➢
Episcopate: in politics, its perfect. - The French political system from the Mayor to State institutions
representing the hierarchical structure of the church. - For the Roman Catholic Church: complicated
because the fluidity and transnationality of actors is going against their institution because the
church is preaching unity.

- The number of orthodox religious followers has not really increased (due to the historical context
of Russia, 1971 Revolution, the orthodox religion has mostly remained to the north). - The orthodox
religion has not known the separation of the state and the church because it has remained much
longer with the Russian Empire which allowed orthodox church to remain very strongly linked
between the political and church leadership - Russia, Putin doesn’t really have a strong relationship
with the orthodox church even though the link still exist.

b) Islam: a globalizing religion.

o Distinguish the two branches: suni and shia

➢ Shiasm: A diversity of Shiasm in many countries but the institutionalized version is essentially to
be found in Iran because Iranian chiasm is based on a religious elite and are called mullah’s - they
have the right to rule and to interpret the Koran.

➢ Suni Islam: This institutionalization does not exist, it is very much like Protestantism, there is no
intermediate figure between Allah and individuals because Suni Islam does not accept any political
leader as the only leader Religious context is superior to the political rule, which means any political
leader can be destituted if he doesn’t follow the rules of god. Fitna: Sinful, political decision making.

c) Judaism

Not a proselytizing religion and essentially concentrated in areas like Israel, US, Europe and Russia
where you have the biggest communities.

d) Hinduism: introduces to India by the Aryans.

➢ Hinduism is spreading slowly, is socially extremely structured, and follows the logic of the pure
and impure. ➢ In the Indian society: the Brahmans (the priest which lead), the Kshatriyas (the
decision makers), Vaisyas (the merchant population), the Sudras (farm, workers, labors) and lowest
are the Intouchables/Sudras (don’t have any possibility of upward mobility as intermarriage is very
few between Brahmans and Sudras).

e) Buddhism: response to Hinduism.

Religion that takes more and more importance in the global political sphere, is a little
institutionalized and essentially a personal meditation technique and not really a religion – as Levi
Strauss says, as it is not fixed, rigid and institutionalized.

2/Different structures, different strategies.

- Roman Christianity - Reformed Christianity - Islamic Models - Buddhist model

III) Insertion into Global Politics

1/ Autonomous political action

→ Roman Christianity

- Diplomacy of the Vatican: Vatican has influenced global politics - Episcopates: strong in terms of
advocating and lobbying for particular policies - ex: “Le marriage pour Tous” in France or the huge
mobilization in Paris carried by episcopates and religious leaders who went against the former
education minister because he wanted to put an end to some old legislation to which some were
attached to, so he resigned, the mobilization capacity of these are extremely important and
shouldn’t be underestimated. - Political parties: Roman Christianity also plays part in political parties
based on religion - MRP in France. - Religious NGOs: The Vatican is host to a number of religious
NGOs that work for Le Secours Catholique or PACS Christi.

→ Reformed Christianity - Strong capacity to join civil society - Strong link between religious and
political mobilization - Less institutionalized

→ Islamic models - Distinguish between Islam (=religious/theological knowledge) and Islamism

(=political ideology derived from religion)

-> Appropriation of political power by instrumentalizing Islam. -> Legitimizing political power
through religious discourse/symbols. -> Networks of preachers, mosques, Koranic schools, etc. ->
Contestation movements - one uses Islam as a way to express discontent, oppose certain values of
globalization at large. Suni Islam where nothing is more valuable than the law of god “there is not
greater god than god” and no greater truth than the truth of god.

o Big figure of these contestation movements: Hassan El-Banna has been the founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood (a spiritual movement that has a very fundamental vision of Islam), has encouraged
people to follow his movement, which was a quietist one (non-violent approach mainly because for
him, the struggle needs to go through the greater djihad). o Djihad has first of all two
understandings: the greater djihad (the personal effort every Muslim engages in order to get closer
to god by good) and the violent djihad (by violence that we today mostly see in that way).

o Qotb, became the leader of the Muslim brotherhood and had a different vision than Hassan
because he politicized the movement - gave it a political voice to directly oppose the politics of
Nasser.

o meanings - Salafism is not the violent guy with the bazooka (nothing to do with a violence
discourse), Salafism are the pious ancestors who have the true Islam.

o There is an intimate link between Salafism and globalization: Globalization has contributed to
foster these contestation movements. If Salafism is first and foremost the return of ancestors and if
it takes away this anti-western standpoint, then this has nothing to do with the religious side of the
things.

o Radical Salafism is using the core spirit of the quietist movement by giving them a violent
expression, we have to make this distinction between the quietist version and radicalized/djihadist
vision, which leads to the terrorist movements we are facing.

2/ Religious conflicts

a) Conflict of internal extraction b) Binary conflict c) International conflict

3/ Religious “influence” networks

a) The case of Opus Dei b) The case of Tablighî Jemaât

- Non political global Sunni Islmaic missionary movement - Between 12 million and 150 million
adherents mainly in SE Asia - Based on the idea that Muslims are in a constant state of “greater
jihad” - That their weapon is “dawah” (proselytization) - Battles are lost in the “heart of men” not on
the battlefield

c) The case of the Muslim League

Session 7:
Start with the main actor of international relations: the State because the State has or is with whom
has been invented the international system.

How to define the State? Can define the state at large (every political system somehow emerged
out of a state) or can define a state through a more restrictive definition (look into history, culture,
social context, and the story of how the state has come about as a result of social, historical state).
Study politics of France in the US: - In the US: politics is seen as state driven and understood by réal
politique, so you can’t define the state at large as it is looking the state from a realist perspective. -
In France: politics has not been a field of study, political science has come through law and science
studies so in France it allows us to have a different look on the State as an actor that is socially and
historically rooted.

State = Political System (centralized + differentiated + institutionalized + territorialized +sovereign)

→ describing an ideal type of State which is very difficult to find in the international system of our
current period.

o Political System - five characteristics:

1) Centralization: the state disposes of a power set up and of institutions in which system.

2) Differentiated: a separation of the social sphere and the political sphere, it is a system that knows
where the state domain is and where the domain of civil society is.

3) Institutionalization: there should be an autonomy of the institutional apparatus from the

functions - there needs to be a distinction of a president as a person and a president as a function,
the president of France might change but the function remains -> This distinction between the
institution and the function is part of institutionalization.

4) Territorialization: the political system is territorialized but not all of them - Territory gets more
and more doubled and in virtual states they don’t have territory but an abstract territory has been
created. Territoriality is as a soil defined with borders and limits.

5) Sovereign: the state is also a political system with sovereignty - holds power in the territory and
on the individuals living in this territory. Model of Hobbes: security but what happens if the state
privatizes security, does this mean that the sovereignty of the state decreases?

The Logic of Power

S = ps (c+d+i+t+s)
o A distinction to be made between states and power: some states don’t have very strong stateness
index but their power is strong and vice-versa. This definition is however based on a Western legal
tradition and historical background and has become an “ideal type” to describe the state. But there
is also a paradox: the most powerful states are not necessarily those with the biggest stateless
indicator.

I) The State, an international actor.

A) The international system in which we are living derives directly from the State and the
interactions of States.

a/ State genesis of the International System:

➢ Thomas Hobbes: protection was the “raison d’être” of the state. - 13th century: War all around,
he figured out that the state would be the only possible actor to put an end to the insecurity of
individuals as more the individuals saw security from the state, more the state will maximize their
power and become sovereign. - International relations has for a very long time been conceived as
not peaceful relations between states - “an arena of gladiators where people are fighting in order to
maximizes their power”.

b/ State logic of the international system derived by Hobbes.

Based on:

- Sovereignty: the state has power over the territory and the people in it, it also allows a state to be
recognized in the international arena by other players as sovereign (internal and external
sovereignty).

- Security: idea of non-interference, a state needs to be able to provide security to its own
population as a whole, and when not able or willing to do that, there is the question of
interventionism/responsibility to protect (R2P) as it is obliged to interfere, the international
community has a duty to intervene under international law but it is very loosely defined, we don’t
know exactly when it has to intervene and when not and the big problem is the comparison between
Libya and Syria.

- Territoriality: the states logic is to settle its strategy on its territory as the state action is very often
territorially grounded.

- Inter-State war: Hobbesian vision - states would continue to fight each other.

- Sovereign equality of states: problematic because it presupposes de facto equality - state are never
ever de facto equal even though the United States charter says all states should be equal, states are
very different when we look historically, socially and economically.

- First amendment: idea of the Heterogeneity of the International System – – to be careful when
looking at international politics because behind the term State you have a multiplicity of States and
ways of defining these actors (the international system behind this homogeneity is very
heterogeneous because it is composed of states that have emerged in different cultural historical
contexts that don’t have different political regimes).

- Second amendment: De Facto equality in the International Relations System is replaced by a De

Facto inequality (inevitable): be it culturally, historically…

- Third amendment: diversity of actors - a state is not just one entity but a government/a
bureaucracy/a military (which means there is a political power) - the state is not a homogenous
actor because multiple actors work inside the state.

- Fourth amendment: the state and the society - pressure of lobbying between the society and
state. In order to survive, the State needs legitimacy with the population - it is an abstract model
that has only existed as such in Europe in the 16th century and from than on have diversified itself
from country to country.

II) The difficult universalization of the state.

1/ Why and how the State model has been exported?

In the 1990s with the end of the cold war, big debate on spreading out the state- etatization of state
building, state making, state creating…

o Why?

- The question of temporality: in Europe, it took 6 centuries to see the that Europe had to develop
this concept was not given in the third world (Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Asia).

- Consequence: if you live in a country where there has been no time for intellectual elites to
produce scholars and knowledge as done in Europe (Rousseau), two options: copy-paste when no
time to produce yourself (Christofer Jafroaleau political scientist and economist, in his book the
Pakistani system is the copy paste of western models that have not worked in the local context and
led frustration) or look what exists elsewhere (copy) and try to inspire yourself from what exists
elsewhere to transform what is relevant to the local context.

- Importation: political scientist Bertrand Badie (book: The Imported State): 1st option -> argues that
the state model has been imported through elites. But the 2nd option -> by another political
scientist: Jean-Francois Bayard (book: “La greffe de l’Etat”) argues a transplantation of the state
model.

o How did they import the state?

➢ Conservative modernization: The Ottoman Empire - practiced this conservative modernization by

opening its political field through western ideas, scholars and actors. It has been a way to maintain
itself in power. Whenever the legitimacy of (create schools, form future elites, military) in order to
have support. Conservative modernization = make modern values coincide with the traditional
values.

➢ Revolutionary modernization: based on the logic “I will take the modern values of the western
world and I will instrumentalize them and turn them against them”- the various independentist/anti-
colonial movements – African States with nationalism and national sentiment against colonizers or
India with political leaders engaged (one used anti-western thoughts by using it against the western
values, and then Nehru, former Indian prime minister studied in the best western universities and
went back home and started a revolution against the western) or Sukano in Indonesia, president of
Indonesia, he learnt nationalism in a Dutch school in Jakarta (socialized to western values)…

2/ The limits or the failures of the imported state.

➢ A simple copy-paste: why would an imported state not work in Africa or in the Middle East? - All
copy-pasted state models suffer from legitimacy and allegiance of the population, as very often you
don’t have a bottom up grown social contract.

- There are couple of States in the Middle East where they have appropriated in order to create a
fake unity to turn off the ethnic claims that might exist in their society. We see this especially in the
countries where nationalism failed - Syria, nationalism “à la Assad” where local religious claims were
not taken into consideration, it was power of minority and not minority power. - Lack of legitimacy
leads to increased authoritarianism: engenders separatist movements and doesn’t recognize you as
leader and therefore turns against you by seeking internal support - Africa, most of them have
groups that are supported by neighboring states inside their borders or Libya – each community has
its external supporter and in Lebanon any action that is taken internally has to have the approval
from outside actors, this is not how a state should operate.

➢ Return to traditions: If the state does not work, you might reinvent the tradition in order to make
it work - traditions are being reused and instrumentalized in order to valorize a particular political
model and to make it work.

3/ Invention of competing forms of the political system, deviant forms of political systems.

The ideal type of State doesn’t really exist and diverging forms of political systems are the reality of
our global politics.

- Preferentialism: the policy or practice of granting preferences in international trade. - Despotism:

an oppressive absolute power and authority exerted by government (Saddam Hussain and Irak). -
Clientelism or Crony Capitalism: client giving political or financial support to patron in exchange for
some special priviledge or benefit.

IV) The International Diversification of States.

- Virtual States: a concept introduced by American political scientist James Rosecrance (book The
Virtual State) - he takes the example of Singapore - a state who’s territory only measures 581 square
meters but the GDP of Singapore is much higher than a much bigger state like Pakistan, so the much
variable is not making the power of Singapore, its power doesn’t lie on its territory but in the
virtuality of the relations and the actors that work in Singapore (investment flows, cultural flows,
population flows etc) - Hong Kong , Dubai or Abu Dhabi.

- Micro-States: Hard life in global politics because their visibility is very weak, they have a very
particular strategy in international relations because they are invisible and are obliged to delegate
their functions to bigger states - example: Monaco or Palau - a citizen of Texas America is defending
Palau’s diplomacy in the United Nations which shows that their sovereignty is very limited.

- Failed States or collapsed states: concept invented by Robert Jackson, going back to a particular
historical moment - 1992 when the Somalian state collapsed. Many political scientists combat this
concept as if it doesn’t make sense, that Somalia is not a failed state because it has no state at all so
it doesn’t has sovereignty anymore - Failed States 2017 Index included Iran as one of the n’1 failed
state but Iran is a theocracy but doesn’t really make it a failed state.

- Rentier States: the problem with these states is they never needed to develop a social contract
because they were able to impose their rule thanks to the oil money (case of Saudi Arabia).

- Rogue States: popularized during the Clinton Presidency of 1995 (a political rather than a social
concept): states that are a threat to peace in the world, which is more an ideological than
sociopolitical and economic reality of those states - case for Iran, Irak, Lybia, North Korea, Sudan,
Cuba, Syria, China, Afghanistan… - Unrecognized States: separatist issues and states that not have
been internationally recognized (Kosovo), Palestine (Palestinian authority but state not recognized).
- State consistency: the importance of a state’s public debt, the presence of foreign military on a
state’s soil etc. – US, the perfect state followed by Japan. At the end the stateness of a state is
unpredictable because the stateness and the power of a state not only depend on military.

Session 8:

What is power? A capacity or an action. In international relations, power is to be a strong nation,

with a strong army…

o The Traditional Power.

➢ Seems to have become powerless in global politics (Bertrand Badie – “L’impuissance de la

puissance”)- Considering the entrance of individuals in the international scene, the importance of
economy, non state actors, multinationals are challenging the traditional and conventional power of
states.

➢ Tradition power has been one of the base line concepts that have structured international
relations. Thomas Hops’s worldview was centered on a traditional concept of power: being a strong
state, having a big territory or having a good or big military and economic power.

➢ In the past, power has been often defined as a capacity or as a source: if power is a resource that
you can rely on, it is a very negative powerful army, strong GDP… you are a powerful state and it has
been a line of thinking for a very long time.

➢ The key to success of terrorist movements or international mafia groups’ lies today not on the
resource capacity but the relational power - when you look at power as an action, you’re interested
of the outcome and not of what you have but traditional definition of power does not allow looking
at outcomes. If you look at power as an action, you have a positive understanding of power because
it means that everybody can be powerful.

➢ Max Weber (1864-1920): founding father of the “power concept” in sociology distinguished
between: - Macht (power) - Herrschaft (domination)

➢ Power according to MW is that you can impose on someone, something that you would not have
done otherwise, even against his/her will. ➢ In this sense, power = relations towards the other
(sociological approach) and refers to a three-fold capacity: • To act • To make someone act even
against his will • To hinder someone to act

o Observations: - Is it possible to transpose this observation based on individual behavior also at the
“group level” (collective behavior)?
The “Power concept” - that perceives it. - Power changes its form, its content and its means, but
only a socio-historical approach allows to unravel these transformations. - Eventually, is power a
question of capacity to achieve a desired outcome or of resources?

I) Power, the modus operandi in the International System.

o International Relations were seen as: - A “clash of the giants” (Hobbes) - A power equilibrium or
“balance of power” (Otto von Bismarck- continuous confrontations does not lead to outcomes)

o Triangular relationship - La Triade (The Triad) Why the triad at this moment? It was a way for
Bismarck to balance against France and England; he needed to strike this triangular alliance between
Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire, a balance of power in Europe at that time - Why
did Russia break the alliance? It was when Germany became very powerful. The breaking of the
alliance is conducive to WWI.

o Markers and factors of power:

- Winners vs. Loser? Before there was the winner or the loser by the Declaration of War. Today the
winner and loser theory does not make sense anymore as you don’t win war anymore - the fight for
terrorism, there is no winner or loser, we’re all losers and there is no more peace treaty neither any
Declaration of War.

- Military Capacity? World military spending in 2016, the USA is still amongst the top number 1
country with the highest military expenditures, followed by China US a superpower today? Is the
military arsenal, transformable or fungible into diplomatic power? Not the case anymore.
Geographical positioning depends on the way you look at international politics.

- GDP? It depends on political strategy; Germany doesn’t have a bad GDP but decides to allocate
only 1% of its GDP spending in military - GDP doesn’t allow us to see the reality that is behind it, one-
dollar doesn’t have the same value around the world.

- Population size? Powerful was the nation that had a big population size, but today in the globalized
world, this has lost its value as bigger population size means you need to produce more food, more
electricity and in the end population is not looked at as a positive aspect.

- Cultural power? Is important to understand the regional political games.

o Observations:

➢ Power is fluid or liquid: power is no longer rigid or no longer conceived as a resource.

➢ Economic power does not explain it all. Other factors also play a role:

- Technological or virtual power (Singapore, Dubai, etc)

- Soft power (J. Nye) or cultural power (KSA vs. Iran):

➢ Nye says, hard power (ability to change others’ position by force) is not strong anymore but the
soft power, which is much more in the level of persuasion, is about making people accept your
power without them realize it - American culture, clothing, English as a worldwide language, the
Americanization of the world… cultural homogenization feasible with the unipolar mode of the US.

➢ In the 1990s, time when identity politics came all over the world and made other cultures realize
that they might have values that are important - Asian value movement led by the president of
Malaysia at that time or in China and even Singapore - authoritarian trend and engaged with the
cultural value taught for their political movement.

➢ But in 1990s, in the soft power phase, there were limits: resistance emerged slowly - started in
Asia and extended in the Middle East. In the beginning of the 2000, Joseph Nye from the hard to soft
power, argued that the future of power does not lay in hard power nor in soft power, but should be
a combination of both, a term that he called Soft Power.

- Nuclear power: is today not only a weapon of extermination. There is a deterrence strategy. In the
past, we also have seen political scientists and decision makers who have made a nuclear peace
theory -Dilemma of the Middle East where Iran seeks to become nuclear power.

- Energy production: frustration created when you know that your neighbors in other countries have
nuclear energy, electricity and better living standards than you.

II) The transformation of power – sociological approach necessary.

o The emergence of the individual in international politics: where power becomes manageable, it is
no longer the game of states, but is also in the hand of individuals that play in international politics.

o The culturalization of power: ➢ The two big political ideologies filled with other types of
ideologies, cultural ones and political ones, with different understandings. ➢ Cultural power was
the possibility to convince a whole population. ➢ Our western and big traditional powers are
fighting back new types of wars who have nothing to do with fighting a war on a battlefield; fighting
back individuals who don’t have the same ideological mindset with military arsenal. Then, you run
the risk to reinforce them = Paradox.

o The proliferation of states: Does it makes sense to talk about THE powerful state, should we not
have a multilateral approach, where power makes us strong v.s. the other?

o Globalization: Transformation of power from a traditional to a fluid

III) Contemporary Power Aporia (power that is not permutable into soft power).

o Wars take new forms in which military power becomes more and more obsolete (e.g. Cyberwar;
ideological warfare; civil wars): having an army is costly (it’s a luxury) and if you possess an army it
means you have an interest to let soldiers play in the playground because otherwise if it stays at
home, it is very expensive. Moreover, war is good for economy and trade.

o Globalization as a way to reconstruct one’s power: not necessarily the case of states although
some reconstruct their power with globalization, but some non state actors use globalization to form
their power, terrorist groups or mafia networks use communication technology to make an impact in
the international scenery - the CNN effect, media and media coverage change the vision we have of
who is powerful and who is not, they show for example how powerful the terrorists are when they
cover for weeks the news of terrorism. This terrorist is being celebrated in the international media
like a star and it is dangerous as it transforms the way we see terrorism.

o 1st strategy:

Linked to the Iraq war, when Obama decided to apply the no boots strategy, to implement a strategy
called leading from behind, where you no longer send your own soldiers to the ground, but to build
alliances with the ones that are on the ground and could work for you.

This strategy recalls the old proxy (someone that you use in order to fight for you) wars during the
Cold War. These proxy wars already used a strategy of leading form behind, not so on a
technological level but the ideas have been pretty much the same. The two strategies of the Obama
diplomacy have been criticized.

Example: companies like Blackwater- Academia.

Session 9:
Graph 1: Global trends in Armed conflict (1946-2916)

o Since the 1990s, Societal Warfare (civil wars) is decreasing: contrary of what you can generally
hear, that civil wars have increased while the overall trends say the contrary. How come we still
consider that we are living in a world where civil wars increased?

➢ Explanation: the shift of perception - the figures do not support the argument of increased civil
wars but the perception of how we see it - in our imaginary we are living with wars everyday and this
keeps us thinking that civil war/societal warfare is increasing.

o Interstate wars are very much on the decline: they become rare.

➢ Explanation: the ongoing democratization process, the states are trying to become democratic
and a theory brought up by Emmanual Kunt called the Democratic Peace Theory: democracies do
not fight with each other.

Graph 2: Intrastate conflicts have been on a steady level: declining towards 2012. Why do we have
warian societies?

o Interstate conflicts are almost inexistent in the periods between 2006 and 2012. Conflicts
internationalize themselves, which explains that most of the conflicts involve the countries in
international politics.

Graph 3: Armed conflicts in Muslim countries (1946-2016) o Since 1990s, we can see a rise in
violence in Muslim countries: in Muslim majority countries there is a smaller trend of violence than
in Muslim minority countries. → Religion: but is never a explanatory fact for any violence.

Graph 4: Estimated annual deaths from political violence (1946-2011)

o Most conflicts between 1946 and 2011 have engendered victims that were civilians and not
military or soldiers.

o Most of covers of The Economics talk about “war”: “the war on Ebola”, “Currency wars”,
“Cyberwar”, “nucelars war between north korea and the US”… o The terminology of war has
become an overstretched concept: everything could → These Global War trends show a shift in the
terminology and meaning of the word “war”.

Evolution of war and peace

I) Wars of yesteryear…

o The wars have been understood as conflicts between states but the definition by Hugo Grotius
(1583-1645) – the 1st one to consider that war is one thing that states do but peace is still possible,
and in his book he argued that peace could be brought about if we agreed to set international rules
or norms. He is not like Thomas Hobbes who believed that men are evil and they will anyhow go to
war, Hugo Grotius argues that men have an social appetite (social bonding) but for that you need
rules.

o Quincy Wright argues that states do war to measure their force: war is a violent confrontation
between two or more entities of similar nature but it’s problematic because we don’t have many
states of similar nature they are profoundly unequal by population, demography, geography,
territorial size... Is his vision still variable today? Yes when we analyze European conflicts, states
were similar but if we transpose his theory at an international level, it becomes complicated.

o The old definition of war evolves essentially around 4 central ideas:

- War is inherent to human nature (Heraclitus) - War is a political construction as men are brutal
(Hobbes) - War is the continuation of politics by other means (Carl von Clausewitz) - War is about
“total enemies” (Carl Schmitt): therefore realists tell that states need an external enemy in order to
better exist internally. o According to Charles Tilly, State building and war making go hand in hand as
they are able to consolidate and this theory goes hand in hand with Hobbes political construction
theory.

II) Wars of today:

o Battle-related deaths by type of conflict 1989—2016: the battle death rate of inter-state conflicts
is not so much in increase. In global trends we have a misperception that there are more. So should
we adhere to the theses made by Mary Kaldor (1946-) in her book in 2006 about the new wars
“Organized violence in a global era”? There is no word “war” in her subtitle, does war have been
replace by violence?

o War of yesteryear: mainly been waged by states, which by the definition of Max Weber were the
only actors who had the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence - since 1990, this monopoly has
waned a little because those other actors that emerged also claimed this type of monopoly as they
wanted to experience this pressure violence.

o The old wars: took place on a battlefield in someplace outside the city and did not allow civilians
to be dragged in these conflicts, only national militaries confronting each other.
- The goals of the old wars were for states to show their power or sometimes question of territory. -
All this is today very much outdated: States are no longer the only actors to do fighting against non-
state actors) - no longer on the battle field, not delimited, the the battle field of terrorists. Citizens
today fight each other.

o Mary Kaldor: introduced the idea of old v.s. new wars as well as Peter Wallensteen (1945-) points
towards a southwards movement of conflicts.

- Not related to religious factors, religious wars don’t exist, there always has been a political or
economical interest behind. But in most of the regions where there is very strong food insecurity,
water stress, high population growth, very less access to education of labor market. Religion is a way
that political entrepreneurs have mobilized them - Example: the koni religious army that recruits
child soldiers.

o Emile Durkheim: labor helping to socially integrate people, but when violence replaces labor, we
create warial societies.

What is it that is “new” with the “new wars”? Is the term “war” still appropriate to describe the
current conflicts?

A) The context in which these conflicts emerge.

o Changing nature of power:

➢ Wars of today consist of involving civil society on a daily basis and pose the question of power
differently: military power is becoming less and less pertinent and does not always transform itself
into smart or soft power.

➢ The new threats that exist are difficult to tackle with military capacity: mainly because those new
threats are becoming more and more ideological or spiritual - how can you eradicate an enemy that
is physical (he exists) but an enemy that has brought up an ideology that is spreading technology
that is at hand. Our way for fighting ban has to adopt various new ways of strategies that could
include today the Internet and moving away from battlefields.

o Changing norms and values: o Changing meaning of war:

B) The issues that are at stake.

o The problem of naming the “new wars”:

- Resistance: refers to a historical past in France (French revolution) when resistance is declared by
rebels and they present them as resistance movements.

- Insurrection: sounds like rebellion.

- Guerilla: “petite guerre”, when napoleon Bonaparte decided to invade Spain - Counter-
insurgency: fighting back insurgent groups, not done by state but a state calling another state to
intervene for him - Afghan state called US to carry out counter insurgency against the Taliban.
o New wars mobilize a multitude of new actors: new wars often spill over a territory to another.

➢ Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria: one of the most biggest and disastrous civil wars that we have know
recently with different type of actors: state actors, non-state actors and transnational companies.

o Historical evolution of asymmetric warfare:

➢ Wars are today not only done by states: more non-state actors (weak actors) have actually ended
a war in their favor rather than states - this shows that the power of states has become powerless
and that non-state actors have a different type of capacity in order to decide conflicts from
themselves: new wars require new techniques and strategies…

- Drone warfare (“fire and forget strategy” by the US): Shift of perception from Bush to Obama
regime - Obama received the Nobel Peace price to be the 1st American President to be peace loving,
but the “zero boots on the ground strategy” was his and drone strikes also increased in his period –
in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan the number of drone strikes under Obama administration was 340-
355 drone strikes with 25% of civilians killed while the drone policy argues that drone are zero
civilian killing. - IED (improvised explosive device) - Suicide bombers

C) Revolution in military affairs.

III) New wars, New peace: The evolution of conflict resolution and peace building.

Since war have evolved, new strategies to obtain peace also have evolved…

1. Disarmament: the general tendency shows military expenditures increased again. Today thanks
to the networks and black economies, those weapons also reach the hands of non-state actors and
terrorist groups. The trend in international transfers of major weapons isn’t very encouraging
because it allows to fuel warian societies who have access to such arms through the shadow
economy.

2. Positive peace: Johan Galtung (founder of peace studies) argued that peace is considered as an
action. Saying peace today is the absence of war is not satisfactory, we have to act for peace, be
peacemakers, keepers and builders.

3. Preventive Diplomacy: consensual diplomatic and political action taken by sovereign states with
the consent of all directly involved parties to help prevent disputes and conflicts between states that
could pose threat to peace and stability.

4. Human Security: UNDP report of 1994 has argued that if we want to have long lasting peace, we
need to address the 7 fears of human kind - personal, economic, health, food, community,
environmental and political security.

→ Socio economic insecurities are one of the main causes of the instability and of the fears that exist
today
Session 10:
- Is global governance a myth or a reality? - What future for global governance?

o What is global governance?

➢ Difficult to define: not just a concept but a process that is not finished but still in the making. It
has received attention since the 1990s for many reasons: the end of the cold war and the fall of the
Soviet Union because it had released a great number of expectations in international organizations.

➢ United Nations was considered as the leader of the international political system.

➢ New trends: Very visible in the global economy. With the fall of the Soviet Union, there was the
fall of the “planned economy” - Cuba still practicing it, and China has slowly adopted market
capitalism. -> Change toward economic liberalization.

o What is Bretton Woods’s system about? ➢ Global governance is appearing in the economic
sectors.

➢ Already in 1944, there was the Bretton Woods System, established to organize the international
order for the post-war order.

➢ It has been done to put in place three institutions: - The International Monetary Fund (IMF). -
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) that became the World Bank. - The
GATT later becomes the World Trade Organization.

➢ Since the 1970s, those institutions have changed overtime and have to adapt to the changing of
the economic system by organizing their function and activity.

o Definition of Global Governance:

➢ “ Global Governance has been described as the “collection of governancerelated activities, rules
and mechanisms, formal and informal, existing at a variety of levels in the world.” - Karns and
Mingst, 2009. ➢ Refers to a cooperative problem solving: we wait first for a problem to happen
before acting for it - in international relations, problem solving theories have become under pressure
by people who argue that rather

Global Governance: waiting for the problem to emerge, we should start thinking about theories
change. ➢ What global governance is and is not: a broad, dynamic and complex process of
interactive decision making at the global level. ➢ Global governance is different from: International
anarchy, Global hegemony, and World government.

o Global governance -> management.

➢ Not a system of enforceable decisions: laws and refers to global government, which is not the
same than a global governance. ➢ Global governance actually means management without a
government: considers that we can deal with the processes that emerge over politics without having
a supra-national entity that supervises on everything. ➢ Global governance is about problem
solving arrangements and we need norms and rules for that: in which states agree to tackle
international migration etc. because without them we won’t get a collective action between state
actors and non-state actors. ➢ This idea has become prominent after the cold war: a number of
regulatory regimes have emerged in international relations and these regimes are carried by
international organizations and sometimes there is confusion between global governance and
international organizations.

o World government:

➢ Idea of all of humankind united under one common political authority: all the body, which would
possess legislative and executive power.

o International relations, international anarchy.

➢ Thomas Hobbes - international scene is a scene of gladiators with the idea that in international
relations there is an international anarchy. ➢ Anarchy - there is no supranational entity that
overseas international relations. It is an absence of different actors. ➢ Leads to a security dilemma -
you never know when your neighbor is going to attack so you are living in a permanent threat which
means you are always ready - power maximization - try to amass as much military and economy
power as you can in order to respond whenever. ➢ Since 1945, there is enough proof to counter the
vision of Thomas Hobbes: In his leviathan, he argues that states are gladiators and are unwilling to
cooperate but since 1945 there are many examples that demonstrated the capacity of the states -
the UE or the regionalization process is a good example to show the Hobbesian vision is wrong and
that cooperation is possible with the states when they have the same vision. ➢ At the world scale,
the British scholar Hedley Bull argued: we have moved away from an international anarchy to an
anarchical society - non state actors cooperate with each other so cooperation is possible. ➢ Vision
of an international anarchy is not to be banned: there are still situations that are best understood
through an approach of power politics or than international anarchy.

o Global hegemony:

➢ which goes against the principle of the UN Charter that both states are equal, but states are not
equal, they are different with regard to resources, population size etc. This means that if we follow
this line of global hegemony, powerful states can impose their will on weaker states → imperialism.
➢ Hegemony can exist at a regional scale - Iran vs Saudi Arabia debating on who can become the
next regional hegemon and it is similar in Asia between China and India. ➢ Can also have global
hegemons: United Nations has emerged as global hegemons and was able to impose a global
financial system, an international currency and able to act like a world police. ➢ State could emerge
as a global hegemon: a hegemon also tries to resolve conflicts in distant places - the situation today
has not changed so much and still US act out like a global hegemon. ➢ The institutions that were
set in 1945 weren’t set up for the sake of generating cooperation amongst states. The Bretton Wood
system and the UN have increased America’s structural power. ➢ Global governance is not
international anarchy, global hegemony or world government - Jacques Attali.

o Despite the visions that stress the necessity of seeing world governance to emerge:
➢ Globalization: led to a fragmentation and decentralization rather than the idea of centrality that
the world government underlines. ➢ The UN: constructed under the idea of creation of Federation
of States that could lead to the emergence of world government. ➢ Why are some people attached
to this concept? Especially those who are extremely attached to the enlightenment philosophy and
to the social contract theory (contract between states and citizens). ➢ Unrealistic:

- that states need to give up their sovereignty in order to emerge… - People are more likely to
abstract transnational identities rather than local identity. Transnational institutional building is
often triggered in seeing transnational identities. - Lacks democratic accountability: suffers from a
democratic deficit because in order to make it legitimate, you need to have a legitimacy –
transparency in the decision making processes which is difficult to measure at a global scale.

➢ The world government has the problem of checks and balances: Tocqueville argues that they are
preconditioned, if you want a democratic government, you need someone to check all of them but
who would do it at the global level? ➢ Other issue: remains true that regional and local attachments
of people will remain stronger than global attachments. ➢ Input – throughput – output: if these
three types are deficient, not there or not given, the least democratic the regime becomes.

o So what is global governance then?

- Global governance has replaced the idea of global government. - internationally. - It’s a
management: understanding ways of organizing the policies amongst different actors and in order to
be able to do that, the different actors have to cooperate and to work together in order to produce
collective action. - → Global governance is the management of global policies in the absence of a
central government.

o GG requires some features: - Polycentrism: GG relies on a multiple set of actors, on different

institutions and decision-making mechanisms. - Inter-governmentalism: states and governments
agree on consensual decisionmaking (something Trump did not do, went out of the Paris agreement)
- Mixed actor involvement: the public and private distinction becomes more and more blurred. -
Multilevel processes: actors from various groups / institutions work together at all levels (local,
national, international). - Deformalization: we are more and more working on informal international
regimes rather that formal and legally constituted ones.

o Global governance: a myth or a reality?

- Global governance is a process rather than an established system. - Norms and rules of global
governance are much better established in some parts of the world than in orders.

I) Global Economic Governance: The Evolution of Bretton Woods System.

The biggest success story of GG can be found in the economic area: since 1945, we can argue that
we had a GG that existed –

o Two goals of the Bretton Woods System (since 1945): - We don’t want to return in economic
instability – fascism leading to WW2 thats why the economic domain would be the most important
field to start acting multilaterally and engaging global governments. - The monetary order was based
on a fixed exchange rate to prevent competitive depreciation. - 1930: Great depression: beggar-thy-
neighbor protectionism (keep it to yourself rather than distribute) has pushed states and
Governments to recognize the need for frame works and rules for economic stability and that’s why
there was the Bretton Woods.

o The outcome of the setting of the Bretton woods system was three institutions: the making of the
Bretton Woods System.

- August 1944: The USA, the UK, and 42 other states met at the UN Monetary and Financial
Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. - Objective: to formulate the institutional
architecture for the postwar international financial and monetary system. - Outcome: creation of
three bodies: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in operation in 1947, the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBDR) in 1946 today World Bank, the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.

o BW showed that multilateralism exists and can work: Bretton Woods as an example of working
multilateralism? ➢ Multilateralism: process that coordinates behavior among three or more
countries on the basis of generalized principles of conduct (Ruggie, 1992).

➢ For a process to be genuinely multilateral, it must conform to three principles: - Non-

discrimination (all participating countries must be treated alike) - Indivisibility (participating
countries must behave as if they were a single entity, as in collective security) - Diffuses reciprocity
(obligations among countries must have a general and enduring character, rather than being
examples of one-off cooperation).

o Bretton Woods (Golden Age) System:

→ Seems to be a proto economic global governance based of norms and rules that would guide the
economic relationship amongst the states.

➢ The BW system: based on liberal economic theories, the virtue of open and uncompetitive
market economy because global market condition isn’t the very liberal understanding → policy of
“laisser faire”.

➢ The BW institutions were shaped on the fear that unregulated market economy would be
unstable.

➢ Keynesianism: markets need to be managed - embedded liberalism: favor market economies by

having in mind the social values and input of the economy.

➢ The Keynesian model also proposed that capital should be allowed to flow into but not out of
countries with a trade deficit. Why? Because such a policy would allow stimulating growth and
increase the export of deficit states -this proposal of the Keynesian model was rejected by the US at
that time.

o Weakness of the Bretton Wood system: was a success for 2 decades - 1950s and 1960s period of
the golden age, the OECD countries had a 4-5% growth rate which is enormous, might be prosperous
due to the economic domination of the US, the US had 60% of all capital of the industrialized world-
imperialism already existed at that time.
➢ Capital movement restrictions. ➢ The pressure Bretton Woods put on the US. ➢ Internal
objective of growth and full employment scarified: when countries face fundamental inequalities,
fewer foreign exchange reserves, Internal measures tend to rise prices, unemployment and reduce
economic growth. ➢ International competitive environment bypassed: to make the home product
more competitive in foreign markets. ➢ Encouragement of Speculation led to the failure of the
system in 1971 due to speculations on the dollar. ➢ “Nixon Shock”: surplus of dollars due to foreign
aid, military spending and foreign investment. ➢ The US did not have enough gold reserves to
support the convertibility of gold at the rate of 35 dollars per ounce. ➢ Thus the fear that the dollar
was overestimated was rising and Nixon Objective: Incite major trading partners to adjust the value
of their currencies upward and the level of their trade barriers downward to allow from more
imports from the US.

➢ Result: In 1973, the G-10 approved an arrangement wherein six jointly floated against US dollar,
this decision signaled the abandonment of Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system in favor of the
current system of floating exchange rates. ➢ The New International Economic Order: proposal for
the world economy to provide better protection for developing countries by altering the terms of
trade, strengthening regulation and nationalizing foreign enterprises.

II) Evaluating Global Economic Governance.

III) Reforming the Bretton Woods System?

1. Global economic governance and the 2007-2009 crisis: a necessity to reform 2. Obstacles to
reform.

➢ Suzan Strange in her book argues: The world economy has allowed the existence of “Mad
Money” -> speculation bubbles to emerge and something that can’t be controlled, problematic
because if we can’t control these speculations how can we control the world economy? ➢
Encouraging: work being done by the G20 and social forums (in Sao Paolo) or forums taken by CEOs
of companies in Davos.

IV) Towards a global democracy?

o Idea of a cosmopolitan democracy:

➢ because globalization has “hollowed out” the state and strengthened transnational processes. ➢
Multilevel system of post-sovereign governance in which supra-state bodies, state-level bodies and
sub-state bodies interact without any of them exercising final authority over the others. ➢ But how
such a global democracy look like? There are different visi