Disintegration of States

4 Key excerpts on "Disintegration of States"

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  eBook - ePub

  European Disintegration

  A Search for Explanations

  • Hans Vollaard(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  2014 ). As a result, classic theories of European integration and international cooperation (not only neo-functionalism but also realism and intergovernmentalism) simply turned on their head are problematic in terms of conceptualising and explaining European political disintegration. State-centric bias should be avoided, even if a return to sovereign states may still be a possible outcome empirically.

  The next set of lessons learned relates to the explanation of European disintegration. The third lesson is that political disintegration is not a mono-causal process . European disintegration is not just a question of changing balances of power, diminishing economic interdependencies to be managed, or failing requirements of an optimal currency area (cf. Mearsheimer, 1990 ; Rosato, 2011 ; Sadeh & Verdun, 2009 ; Vollaard, 2014 ). Instead, comparative analyses of integrating and disintegrating empires, monetary unions, and federations show that a multitude of factors are at play, including ineffective decision-making, administrative corruption, military ineffectiveness, judicial and party-political safeguards, a lack of social and political mobility, economic decline, barbarian invasions, changing demography, cultural heterogeneity, linguistic diversity, and incompatible values or ideologies (see, e.g., Deutsch et al., 1957 ; Doyle, 1986 ; Elazar, 1987 , p. 240ff; Etzioni, 2001 ; Filippov, Ordeshook, & Shvetsova, 2004 ; Franck, 1968 ; Motyl, 2001 ; Riker, 1964 ). A wide variety of factors, both material and ideational in nature, external and internal, systemic and those at the actor level, should thus be taken into account.

  Comparative analyses of disintegrating polities also emphasise that all polities face a continuous struggle between integrative and disintegrative, centripetal and centrifugal forces. For example, empires face a tension between their expansive nature and their internal capacity to sustain growth (Deutsch et al., 1957 , p. 86ff; Kennedy, 1987 ). Federations are characterised by permanent conflicts between member states that shirk on their commitments and the systemic safeguards that are in place to prevent such transgressions (Bednar, 2009 ; Kelemen, 2007 ). The fourth lesson is, therefore, that disintegrative and integrative forces are always present in a polity (see also Eppler & Scheller, 2013

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  Geofusion 2.0

  The Power of Geography in the Economic and Geopolitical World Order

  • Norbert Csizmadia, Bence Gáspár(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • PublishDrive

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 2 The Relationship Between Geography and Geopolitics The Interdisciplinary Relationship Between Geography and Geopolitics The place of geography in the system of sciences Geography once referred solely to the description of Earth; however, by the 20th century, it grew out of the descriptive role and integrated a spatial approach at its frontiers, creating its own subdomains. Nowadays a wide range of sciences, especially social sciences, increasingly turn to geography out of necessity nowadays. New ideas are produced with remarkable intensity in the interdisciplinary fields of economics and geography. The central role played by these geographical features in the development of countries and the global economy is increasingly seen as important in mainstream economic thinking. For example, the rise of geoeconomics, which develops at the intersection of geography, geopolitics, and economics, is due to the realization that development is best explained on a global scale by geographical and historical correlations. The main aim of the book Geography: A Global Synthesis by Peter Haggett, a professor emeritus at the University of Bristol, is to present the whole spectrum of geography in a modern approach. According to him, geography has become a synthetizing science that deals with the spatial context, correlation, distribution, and interrelationships of the social, economic, and environmental processes and phenomena that occur on Earth. Geographical synthesis concerns all branches of geography as well as the neighboring disciplines. Among geographical disciplines, a new fault line was opened with the appearance of regional science in the 20th century. Haggett breaks down the study of geography into five topics

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  Global Politics

  A New Introduction

  • Jenny Edkins, Maja Zehfuss, Jenny Edkins, Maja Zehfuss(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  11Why is the world divided territorially? Stuart Elden

  • ■ The question FORMS OF POLITICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL ORGANISATION
  • ■ Illustrative example THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL STATE
  • ■ General responses THE EMERGENCE OF TERRITORY
  • ■ Broader issues TECHNIQUES AND THE FUTURE OF THE TERRITORIAL STATE
  • ■
    CONCLUSION

  The Question Forms of Political and Geographical Organisation

  If we look at an atlas, we find that it often begins with two maps of the world. One of these is physical, the other political. The first shows relief, depicting mountain ranges and plains, significant rivers, land masses and oceans. The second shows the same land and water, but this time the earth is brightly coloured, divided up and with clear lines separating out states from each other, and capital or other major cities marked as signs of human impact. We find the same divide when we move to maps of the continents later in the atlas.

  The physical maps show a world that has changed little in human history, although our knowledge of it certainly has. The political maps though bear almost no relation to the situation a few hundred years ago, let alone a few thousand. Territorial changes were common until the 1940s, many new states emerged from the process of decolonisation after the Second World War, and certain areas – notably eastern Europe and central Asia – will have dramatically changed in the past 30 years. The final settlement of some areas remains an issue today.

  Taking this kind of perspective shows us that the division of the world into separate territorial units, called states, is both artificial and arbitrary. Today it is generally accepted as the norm for political and geographical organisation. Yet this has not always been the case. Looking at older maps shows a very different perspective. Until relatively recently, large parts of the world were either unknown entirely (such as desert, mountain or polar regions), unknown to people in other parts, or known to them only in the vaguest of ways. Land masses and key rivers appeared on maps of the world drawn in Europe, but the inland areas of islands or continents were largely undiscovered by Europeans and unmapped by them.

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  De Facto States and Land-for-Peace Agreements

  Territory and Recognition at Odds?

  • Eiki Berg, Shpend Kursani(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  de facto state.

  Instead of grasping geography of peace comprehensively—understanding the spatial conditions whereby ‘peace in its fullest senses is lived, created, sustained, and struggled for’ (Megoran 2011 , 187)—we are determined to seek out different kinds of imaginative solutions to conflicts while revisiting traditional topics such as partition, territorial adjustments, and border corrections in non-traditional settings: unresolved disputes between ‘parenthood’ and ‘offspring’. Just like Stanley Waterman who drives inspiration from human relationships. In his words:

  partitions are political geography’s equivalent of marital breakdown and divorce. And, like separation and divorce, they need to be regarded as integral to the life of the international community because they represent failures—of situations in which groups of people with differing and opposing, and often mutually hostile, world views and interests have been thrown together and instructed to get along, often by people who would not contemplate such solutions for themselves or their friends.

  (2006, 3)

  Territorial partitions

  If territoriality and sovereignty are at the core of the protracted conflicts, a conflict settlement formula can be based either on an agreed partition of the territory between the disputants or on a political framework that would allow them to share it. Such a formula of peace—itself an outcome of available resources, existing structures, and political decisions—can have important implications for its stability and endurance (Berg and Ben‐Porat 2008 , 32). The preferred solutions to protracted (and territorial) conflicts take the existing borders as given and promote negotiated settlements (Downes 2006 , 46). Sometimes partition, however, may offer the only available or immediate solution for quickly ending bloody ethnic conflicts. While there is general international reluctance to support secessionist demands (Sisk 2003 ), more and more voices call for adopting partition in emergency cases (Kaufmann 1996 ; see also Mearsheimer and van Evera 1995 ), especially when a security dilemma caused by ethnic violence is not resolvable and, therefore, separation of the hostile groups and the establishment of homogeneous political units for each of them become inevitable. The hostility may be so profound that ‘all attempts to reintegrate the groups in a single state are bound to fail’ (Buchanan 1998

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