INTERNATIONAL POLITICS - Essay Example

Politics on this earth progressively became conquered by one type of division: the sovereign national state (SNS)ii. This study will focus on the questions-What is the Westphalian system and to what extent has it been undermined by globalization? The Westphalian system is the worldwide system emblematically instated at the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, which completed the Thirty Years War. At Westphalia the state was set up as an independent political division, meaning that it accredited no rival authorities.

Popes and monarchs could no longer interfere straightforwardly in the relationships of the state, but neither could it include sovereign feudal jurisdictions or self-governing peasant societies. The plan of a universal society was devastated; or rather it was re-explained as a worldwide system. Several states were autonomous, but they co-existed in a surrounded space where they continued regular communications with each other. De jure, all states were identical, and although de facto a number of states visibly were more influential than others, the dissimilarities between them were not adequately large for a clear-cut structure to appear.

Allegorically speaking, the Westphalian system was a game of billiards with states crashing and jumping into, and off, each other. Autonomy awarded each state the right to take care of its personal affairs: an opportunity first enjoyed by emperors and later, after the national revolts which was pursued by the French Revolution, by individuals. The Westphalian system produces guaranteed “national self-determination” and “non-interference” in the matters of other territories. To the states supporters this was a great move forward.

Kingdoms, indeed any highly planned communication with other territories, associated with the past: to a Roman period, kept in mind for its “despotism” instead of for its centuries-long harmony, to the gloomy Middle Ages, or probably to a