The Individual and the State System Flashcards
What are three reasons for a state focus in IR?
- States may possess, or be plausibly understood to possess a national interest
2. States are authoritative actors whose duly enacted policies are binding on their citizens
3. States are understood to be shaped and reshaped as states by their material and ideational environment
Define a “State”
“A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a certain territory” Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation, 1919
What are the elements for a state?
State = permanent population + defined territory + government + conducts international relations with other states
Define government in terms of IR
The government is a body of individuals, who monopolise political decision-making. Their function is to enforce existing laws, legislate new ones, and arbitrate conflicts etc.
What are the main sources of sovereignty in the UN?
Article 2(1) of the UN Charter states that the organisation ‘is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members’.
Article 2(4), it prohibits the threat or use of force by any state against the political independence or territorial integrity of another sovereign state.
Article 2(7), the United Nations prohibited intervention ‘in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state’.
What is the definition of citizenship?
Citizenship means that a person is a legal member of a sovereign state
What rights and obligations does citizenship give you?
Rights: Political, legal and economic rights afforded by the state
Obligations: Allegiance, taxes, abiding by laws and military service etc.
What do borders create?
A notion of self (citizens) and the other (Non Citizens)
How is citizenship gianed?
jus soli (right of the soil) jus sanguinis (right of blood)
How are people left stateless (Without Citizenship)?
Gaps or conflicts in nationality laws
E.g. jus sanguinis from father only
Discrimination against minority groups in legislation
the Rohingya or Tibetan refugees in Nepal
A lack of effective birth registration procedures or documentation
Roma communities across Europe
Failure to include all residents in the body of citizens when a state becomes independent
Fall of USSR
Under what article of the UNDHR does “everyone has the right to a nationality and a person cannot be deprived of his or her nationality arbitrarily”
Article 15 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights
What are some issues surrounding statelessness?
Cannot exercise the basic rights associated with citizenship or find it very difficult to do so.
Excluded from political processes, cannot travel freely and blocked from publicly funded services such as education, health care and welfare support
Forced into illegal working conditions (unsafe, exploitative and abusive, slavery etc.)
Face detainment by authorities
What were the main causes for WW1?
Alliances with different state systems
Nationalism
Imperialism
Capitalism
What were the first 5 points of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 point plan for the redress of WW1
- Open Diplomacy
- Freedom of Navigation
- Removal of Economic Barriers
- Reduction of Armaments to levels concerning domestic safety
- Adjustment of Colonial Claims
What were the aims of the league of nations?
• International effort to create a permanent international organization to promote and global cooperation and achieve international peace and security
