Afin d’expliquer comment la mondialisation reconstruit les politiques publiques et les comportements sociaux nous étudions les échanges et interactions entre les acteurs politiques, économiques et sociaux -publics et privés, individuels et collectifs- et la façon dont ils redessinent les relations internationales. Ce cours prend sa source dans les approches sociologique et historique françaises des relations internationales. This course is also available in english version: www.coursera.org/learn/global-studies
Une origine occidentale
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En provenance du cours de Sciences Po
Espace mondial, une vision française des global studies
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À partir de la leçon
L’État-nation
L’État-nation est-il encore fonctionnel partout dans le monde ?
Rencontrer les enseignants
Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
And now let’s move to
more classical aspects of the world,
of our present <i>Espace mondial</i>.
Let’s take into account state, power,
war, peace, international systems,
international organizations and so on…
Of course in a classical,
in a traditional vision of the world,
the concept of the state
appears as a natural cornerstone.
The state was consecrated
as the main unit
and even as an exclusive unit
of international relations,
that’s to say of interstate relations.
This seems to be obvious,
but in fact it’s much more complex.
Let’s try to make an order
in this very high complexity.
First of all,
state is not a concept easy to define.
We are inclined to consider state
as a political system and no more,
but state must be considered
as a very special political system,
with a very precise definition,
and it would be a bad method
to consider state as a general political order,
which can be applied to all the histories,
all the cultures, all the societies.
We must build the concept of state
as an historical concept, if we don’t do that,
we take the risk, we take a double risk.
The risk first, to not really understand
the specificity of articulation
politics and society in all the histories,
the politics and society
are not bound in the same way,
are not related to each other in the same way.
And the second risk,
if we have a too much general vision of state;
is to consider that state, as we know it,
as it was built in our European
and western history,
can be exported everywhere around the world,
and we know now that this was a failure.
State, if we consider it
as an historical fact, appeared in the crisis
of the European Middle Age,
it was invented
during the 13th and the 14th century
in order to contain the fragmentation
of the political and social and economic order
inside the feudal society.
State has to be considered
as a political solution to a crisis,
a very strong crisis, which took place
at the end of the feudal era.
That’s to say state is constituted
by some characteristics that are setting up
the definition we commonly give to it.
States will be considered
as a political system,
but a special political system.
That’s to say: a centered,
centralized political system,
a differentiated political system,
an institutionalized political system,
a sovereign political system
and a territorial political system.
Center, differentiation, institution,
sovereignty and territory
are the five components
of the nation state model.
Center: all the political systems
are not centralized,
if you take into account the tribal system,
the tribal system is not centralized.
If you take into account the feudal society,
feudal society was not centralized,
that’s to say that there is no necessary link
between center and politics.
State is a way of centralization,
which took place when the decentralization
of the feudal order went to collapse.
Differentiation:
this is another main characteristic
of the western state,
of the historical western state,
that’s to say separation
between private and public,
between civil society and state.
This differentiation cannot be found
in other kinds of political systems,
neither in empire nor in traditional monarchy
or traditional political order
as we find it in the traditional societies.
Institutions:
institutions that’s to say a separation
between the norms and those who are
implementing the norms,
that’s to say state must be considered
as an institutional political system,
it is quite different for instance
from a patrimonial monarchy
and patrimonial order as it was conceived
in a Weberian tradition.
Sovereignty:
that’s to say the state is sovereign,
no other power behind the state power,
this sovereignty, which is as you know
the cornerstone
of the Hobbes vision of the politics,
is founding the state.
We have in mind the great question:
what about globalization
in which a total sovereignty is not possible?
Is state able to survive
in this globalized order?
And finally territory, that’s to say,
and it appears very clearly
in the definition of the state given by Weber,
state implies a territorial order
with very precise borderlines.
This is also quite different from
other kinds of political systems,
like for instance empires.
In an empire there is no clear borderline
but there are these peripheries,
which cannot be reduced to
classical territory drawn by the borderline.
If we admit this definition,
we can clearly find the relationship
between state building
and overcoming the feudal order,
solving the political crisis
emerging from the medieval social disorder.
And that’s why I will insist
on a very important point,
the more feudal society was fragmented,
the more centralization was strong as a solution
to the deadlock of this fragmentation,
that’s to say, nowadays, those societies,
which were strongly and deeply feudalized
are now affected by a strong tradition
of a strong state.
That’s why for instance France
was considered and is still considered
as the motherland of states,
where state is developed,
where there is a strong culture of the state,
a strong separation between public and private,
and this culture of the state
which is at the very center of the French culture
is explained by the deep crisis
of a very fragmented social order
which took place in France
at the end of the Middle Age.
Now, if we consider other kinds of societies,
of European societies,
like for instance England,
England was not strongly feudalized,
and that’s why the state was never very strong
and the civil society
played a more important role
than a state, a classical state order.
And now if we move to US,
which didn’t meet the history of feudality,
we cannot find for this reason
a strong tradition of state.
I will add another point,
which is connected to this one:
that’s to say, the more a civil society
is able to be govern by itself,
the more, of course,
it will escape from the state tradition,
and the less developed the state is.
Now we have also to take into account
another aspect of this specificity, that’s to say
the cultural background of the state.
The state in his history
is clearly related to the Christian culture
as we mentioned in the last lecture,
Christianity is probably
bearing the state model,
that’s to say this conception of separateness
between temporality and spirituality,
this vision of secularism,
but also this institutional culture,
this culture of representation.
The way the church, the roman catholic church
organized itself in administration,
territorial administration,
judicial administration,
fiscal and tax administration and so on,
all these trends were imitated by the kings
and the state builders
for shaping the new nation state,
which was in creation from
the 13th and 14th centuries.
Last point which was stressed by
the great sociologist Charles Tilly
is that in the European history,
there was a very dense interaction,
interplaying, between state and war.
War making, state making,
as established Charles Tilly,
this means that the history
of the state building in Europe
is clearly connected to the war history,
and that the main features of the state
are connected to the main features of the war.
And that’s why also Hobbes stressed
that there is an interaction
between state and security.
The security function was conceived
at the very center of the state institutions,
and it is not possible to have in mind state
without having in mind security,
as we will elaborate later.
This is, Ladies and Gentlemen,
what we call the westphalian system,
which took place in the 17th century,
and which implied a new international order,
which is made of the juxtaposition of these units,
of this territorial nation states.
The question now is what about
those political systems which now
are reluctant to this model,
this implies empires.
We have some surviving empires
like China, like Russia,
which are not really conceived as states.
And what about those imported states,
which were not able to grow up
as a new political system
for instance in Africa or Asia?
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