A History of Global Politics:

Creating an International
Order
Dr. Jose Lester C. Duria

Humanities Department, CAS

 ❑ History of ❑ Interactions
bureaucracy between states

❑ International
relations
❑ Diplomatic
❑ Trade deals exchanges

“INTERNATIONALIZATION”

Introduction
The world is composed of many countries or states, all of them having different
forms of government. Some scholars of politics are interested in individual states
and examine the internal politics of these countries.
The Attributes of Today’s Global System

1. There are countries or states that are

independent and govern
themselves.
2. These countries interact with each
other through diplomacy.
3. There are international
organizations, like the United
Nations, that facilitate these
interactions.
4. Beyond simply facilitating meetings
between states, international
organizations also take on lives of
their own.
What are the origins
of this system?

A good start is by
unpacking what one
means when he/she
says a “country”, or
what academics also
called the nation-state.
 Nation vs. State

• The nation-state is
composed of two non-
interchangeable terms.
Not all states are nations
and not all nations are
states.
 The Difference
between Nation and
State:

• State refers to a country

and its government
• Four (4) attributes: citizen,
territory, government, and
sovereignty.
“A nation is an imagined community…” – Benedict Anderson

• Nations often limit themselves to people

who have imbibed a particular culture,
speak a common language, and live in a
specific territory.
• Calling it “imagined” does not mean that the
nation is made-up. Rather the nation allows
one to feel a connection with a community
of people even if he/she will never meet all
of them in his/her lifetime.
Sovereignty is, thus, one of the
fundamental principles of modern
state politics.
Nation and state are closely related because it is nationalism that facilitates
state formation. In the modern and contemporary era, it has been the
nationalist movements that have allowed for the creation of nation-states.
States become independent and sovereign because of nationalist
sentiment that clamors for this independence.
The Interstate System

• The origins of the present-day concept of sovereignty can be traced back to

the Treaty of Westphalia, which was a set of agreements signed in 1648 to
end the Thirty Years’ War between the major continental powers of Europe.
The Thirty Years’ War
1618-1648
Napoleonic Wars,
1803-1815 “Liberty Equality, Fraternity”
Napoleonic Code
• Forbade the privileges, encouraged freedom or religion, and promoted meritocracy
in government service.
• This system shocked the monarchies and the hereditary elites (dukes, duchesses, etc.)
of Europe, and they mustered their armies to push back against the French emperor.
 Concert of Europe, 1815-1914
• An alliance of “great powers” – the UK, Austria, Russia,
and Prussia—that sought to restore the world
monarchial, hereditary, and the religious privileges of
the time before the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars.

Battle of Waterloo
1815
Despite the challenge of Napoleon to the
Westphalian system and the eventual
collapse of the Concert of Europe after
World War 1, present-day international
system still has traces of this history. Until
now, states are considered sovereign, and
Napoleonic attempts to violently impose
systems of government in other countries
are frowned upon. Moreover, like the
Concert System, “great powers” still hold
significant influence over the world politics.
For example, the most powerful grouping
in the UN, the Security Council, has a core
of Five permanent members, all having
veto powers over the council’s decision-
making process.
 Internationalism
• Others, still imagine a system of
heightened interaction between
various sovereign states, particularly
the desire for greater cooperation
and unity among states and
peoples. This desire is called
internationalism.
• Internationalism comes in different
forms, but the principle may be
divided into two (2) broad
categories: liberal internationalism
and socialist internationalism.
 Liberal Internationalism
Immanuel Kant
• The first major thinker of liberal
internationalism.
• Imagined a form of global
government. He Likened states
in a global system to people
living in a given territory.
Jeremy Bentham
• He coined the word “international” in
1780 and advocated the creation of
“international law” that would govern
the inter-state relations.
• He believed that objective global
legislators should aim to propose
legislation that would create “the
greatest happiness of all nations taken
together.”
Giuseppe Mazzini
• The first thinker to reconcile
nationalism and liberal
internationalism.
• He believed in a Republican
government and proposed a
system of free nations that
cooperated with each other to
create an international system.
 Woodrow Wilson
• US president (1913-1921), became one of the
20th century’s most prominent internationalist.
• He saw nationalism as a prerequisite for
internationalism.
• He forwarded the principle of self-
determination—the belief that the world’s
nations had a right to a free, and sovereign
government. He hoped that this nations would
become democracies, because only by being
such would they be able to build a free system
of international relations based on
international law and cooperation.
• He became the most notable advocate for the
creation of the League of Nations.
The League came into being that same year (1919). Ironically
and unfortunately for Wilson, the United States was not able
to join the organization due to strong opposition from the
Senate. The League was also unable to hinder another war
from breaking out. It was practically helpless to prevent the
onset and intensification of World War II.
Despite its failure, the League
gave birth to some of the more
task-specific international
organizations that are still around
until today.
 “Workers of the
world, unite! You
have nothing to lose
but your chains.” Socialist
Internationalism

• He believed that any true form of

internationalism should deliberately reject
nationalism, which rooted people in
domestic concerns instead of global ones.
• Marx placed a premium on economic
equality; he did not divide the world into
countries, but into classes (capitalist vs.
proletariat).
• With his co-author (Friedrich Engels), they
opposed nationalism because they
believed it prevented the unification of the
world’s workers.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

The Socialist International (SI) • Marx died in 1883, but his followers
soon sought to make his vision
concrete by establishing their
international organization called the
Socialist International, a union of
European socialist and labor parties
established in Paris in 1889.
• The SI’s achievement included the
declaration of May 1 as Labor Day and
the creation of an International
Women’s Day including the initiation
of the successful campaign for an 8-
hour workday.
• The SI collapsed during WWI as the
member parties refused or were
unable to join the internationalist
efforts to fight for the war.
 Russian Revolution
1917
• As the SI collapsed, a more radical version emerged. In the
so-called Russian Revolution of 1917, Czar Nicolas II was
overthrown and replaced by a revolutionary government led
by the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, who
later founded a new state called the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR).
• Unlike the member parties of the SI, the Bolsheviks did not
believe in obtaining power for the working class through
elections. Rather, they exhorted the revolutionary “vanguard”
parties to lead revolutions across the world, using methods
of terror if necessary. Today, parties like this are referred to as
Communist parties.
• To encourage these socialist
revolutions across the world,
Lenin established the
Communist International
(Comintern) in 1919.
• Many of the world’s states
feared the Comintern,
believing that it was working
in secret to stir up revolutions
in their countries.
• A problem arose during World War II
when the Soviet Union joined the
Allied Powers in 1941. The United
States and the United Kingdom
would, of course, not trust the Soviet
Union in their fight against Hitler’s
Germany. These countries wondered
if the Soviet Union was trying to
promote revolutions in their
backyards. To appease his allies,
Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin,
dissolved the Comintern in 1943.
• After the war, however, Stalin re-
established the Comintern as the
Communist Information Bureau
(Cominform).
• The Soviet Union took over the
countries in Eastern Europe when
the US, Soviet Union, and UK
divided the war-torn Europe into
their respective spheres of
influence.
• The Cominform, like the
Comintern before it, helped direct
the various communist parties that
had taken power into Eastern
Europe.
• With the eventual collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, whatever
existing thoughts about communist
internationalism also practically
disappeared.
• The SI managed to re-establish itself
in 1951, but its influence remained
primarily confined to Europe, and
has never been considered a major
player in international relations to
this very day.
• For the postwar period, however,
liberal internationalism would once
again be ascendant. And the best
evidence of this is the rise of the
United Nations as the center of
global governance.
Conclusion:

• The lesson examined the roots of international system.

• Internationalism is but one window into the broader
phenomenon of globalization. Nevertheless, it is a very crucial
aspect of globalization since global interactions are heightened
by the increased interdependence of states.
• Increasingly, international relations are also facilitated by
international organizations that promote global norms and
policies. The most prominent example of this organization, of
course, is the United Nations.