INTERNATIOAL RELATIONS

LETTER OF ACKNOWLEDGMENTIn the Name of Allah, the most Beneficent and the most Merciful

Firstly, we are grateful to Almighty Allah for His utmost graciousness and help throughout our work. I bow my heads in front of our Lord on the successful completion of our term report.

I am profoundly indebted to my course faculty, Sir Sahib Khan Channa whose enormous support, mentoring, guiding principles and constructive disparagement has enabled us to accomplish this task. Without her constant check and immense determination, I would not have been able to complete our term report.

THANK YOU SIR, for you sheer mentoring and enlightening our morals and intellect for good. I put forward my profound gratefulness for your support and generosity.

I are also indebted to Institute of Business Management for providing us with an opportunity to augment our skills and rationale through such projects.

Hopefully, this report will lead to the positive reception and commend for our hard work.The Modern State

The role of the state was paramount during the twentieth century. The conditions within which millions of people lived were shaped by the state, the role it sought to pursue, and the ability it had to pursue that role. The centrality of the state is evident as soon as we look at some of the most important developments of that century. In the communist countries, states forced through rapidly-paced programmes of societal transformation that turned (in one case) a backward, partly industrialized society into a nuclear superpower within 40 years. In the capitalist West, the post-war long boom characterized by the highest and most sustained living standards ever achieved by large populations was underpinned by state expenditure policies and the construction of the welfare state. In parts of the Third World, weak states and in some cases kleptocratic states were instrumental in the continuation of widespread poverty, disease, low living standards, violence and war. More than in any other century, peoples lives everywhere on the globe were affected by the successes and failings of states. The state, its power and its capacity were for a long time the central focus of many of those who thought seriously about politics. In part reflecting the origins of political science in constitutional law, this approach projected the state directly into the centre of the concern to understand political life. In contemporary society of the time, the power of the state seemed to loom large in the lives of its subjects. However, in the period following the Second World War, atleast in the English-speaking world, the state seemed to go out of fashion. This may in part have been a response to recent and contemporary history, with the Nazi experience in Germany being seen as a case of overweening state power at the expense of the citizenry, and the communist threat being conceived in the same way. But it was also a function of the way in which political science developed as an independent discipline, spreading the intellectual net to embrace things other than formal institutional structures. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the changing intellectual fashion, reflected in the prominence in the discipline of methodologies such as behaviouralism and functionalism and the direction of interest towards social actors broadly conceived, squeezed the state out of the centre of concern. However, with the growing calls in the 1980s to bring the state back in, this relative neglect of the state by English-speaking scholars was well and truly reversed. The size of the literature on the state and its future expanded enormously and shows little sign of diminishing. This is merely recognition of the important role the state plays in contemporary life. But what do we mean by the state? Where does it come from? And what does it do? What is the State? While most definitions of the state will differ in some details, the core is widely accepted. An early and influential view of the state is provided by Max Weber:

Modern state definition

The national interest cannot be defined as a common interest of the industrial, commercial, and financial companies of a country, because there is no such common interest; nor can it be defined as the life, liberty, and well-being of the citizens, because they are continually being adjured to sacrifice their well-being, their liberty, and their lives to the national interest. In the end a study of modern history leads to the conclusion that the national interest of every State consists in its capacity to make war.

MODERN STATE Characteristics

The primary formal characteristics of the modern state are as follows: it possesses an administrative and legal order subject to change by legislation, to which the organized activities of the administrative staff, which are also controlled by regulations, are oriented. This system of order claims binding authority, not only over the members of the state, the citizens, most of whom have obtained membership by birth, but also to a very large extent over all action taking place in the area of its jurisdiction. It is thus a compulsory organization with a territorial basis. Furthermore, today, the use of force is regarded as legitimate only in so far as it is either permitted by the state or prescribed by it ... The claim of the modern state to monopolize the use of force is as essential to it as its character of compulsory jurisdiction and of continuous operation. Webers definition is complex and elliptical, but suggestive of a vision of the modern state comprising a number of elements. These are a centralized and bureaucratically organized administrative and legal order run by an administrative staff, binding authority over what occurs within its area of jurisdiction, a territorial basis, and a monopoly of the use of force. These elements form the core of most subsequent definitions of the modern state. These elements need to be broken down and elaborated upon, because much that is implicit in Webers definition is explicit in the views of contemporary scholars. Central to the generally accepted view of the modern state is a bureaucratic form of organization. The offices, and many of the institutions of which the state consists, are structured in a formal hierarchy with clear lines of direction and accountability. This formal hierarchy, and the rules of direction and obedience intrinsic to it, is essential for the central state authorities to project their power and authority into the society and across the territory over which they have jurisdiction. The bureaucratic nature of the organization means that it is run by formal rules designed to ensure its efficient functioning. Objective rules and standards are meant to prevail in all decision-making, thereby eliminating personal or partial considerations from the process. Advancement through the bureaucratic structure is based on merit, measured in terms of the acquisition of qualifications and performance on the job, and offices are filled by professional, full-time officials. There is regularized communication up and down the structure and a high level of discipline and obedience to instructions from above. In the modern state (with the exception of city states such as Monaco), bureaucrats and the structures in which they work will be divided into a central state apparatus, usually located in the national capital, and a regional apparatus which conducts the administration in the areas outside the capital. Both parts of the state structure should run along bureaucratic lines. This bureaucratic structure is characterized by specialization and organizational differentiation from other bodies. This means that the hierarchical structure of offices and institutions that forms the physical manifestation of the modern state is distinct from all other organizations and bodies found within the society. In practice, of course, no organization is totally distinct from other structures in society. They are linked together by numerous bonds (personal, institutional and ideological). In contemporary Western democracies, the state is connected to institutions such as political parties, pressure groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and businesses, and through these, to the society as a whole. As will be argued later, this is crucial to state survival. But what is essential is that the state is distinguished from these other groups by the nature of its primary concerns and responsibilities: the state focuses upon political affairs with its sphere of concern ranging across all aspects of political life. In this sense, the modern state is much more wide-ranging than other political organizations such as parties and interest groups. Furthermore, the notion of what is political and within the sphere of state concerns has expanded considerably, as will be shown in this book. Areas as diverse as environmentalism, welfare, safety at work and childcare have become the concern of the state because of their importance for the ordering of life in contemporary society. And in the secular sphere, this is the states primary role: the regulation and ordering of community life.

The modern state is thus a distinct institution, separated from others by this overarching responsibility. Also important is what has been called the autonomy of the state. The state is independent of the control of other organizations or social groups within the society, and able to pursue its own aims and objectives differently from those of other parts of the society. This notion of autonomy will be discussed further below. The modern state is both centralized and internally organizationally differentiated. The bureaucratic structure that is the state is not a monolithic machine, but a congeries of institutions, agencies, organizations and bodies. It is functionally organized into executive, legislative and judicial arms, while each of these (in particular the executive) is further divided into distinct parts. For example, the bureaucratic administrative machine consists of a range of distinct government departments, agencies and organizations, many of which have branches throughout the regions as well as a central office. Similarly, there will be a hierarchy of judicial and perhaps legislative organs spreading across the territory. The state structure is therefore highly differentiated. However, it is bound together by ties of centralism. All of the discrete parts of the state machine are linked to their counterparts at different levels by organizational rules, regu- lations and procedures, and by the range of informal relationships and practices which enable any bureaucratic structure to function. The ties between these different parts bind them all into a hierarchical structure where the central offices of state exercise overall direc- tive and administrative power. These different parts do not exercise authority on their own behalf, but only that authority which flows to them as part of the state. In this sense, the state is both highly differentiated and strongly centralized. It is this that enables it to carry out its central, unique, function, the centralized coordination of power on a territorial basis. The modern state is sovereign, or the ultimate source of authority within the territory under its jurisdiction. There are two aspects of this, the internal and the external. Internally, it means that there are no authorities higher than the state. The citizen cannot appeal against the state to any other authority; the state is supreme, and its will cannot be countermanded. While the appeal to conscience is today accepted in many states as a valid claim against state authority, this is not generally seen as a vitiation of the states claim to sovereignty because in most instances the state does not seek to enter the moral realm. Externally, state sovereignty means that other states recognize the authority of a state within its borders and accept that that state can speak for its citizens in international affairs. External sovereignty is therefore the international recognition of the domestic sovereignty of a particular state. Sovereignty is crucial to the state because it is this that elevates the state to a position of superiority in the society and constitutes the recognition of its right to make binding decisions upon those who live within its bounds. In essence, this is the focus of the states role: its right to make binding decisions upon its citizens and upon those who enter its territory. This right is the key to its power and role, and although at times the sovereignty of individual states may be vitiated (e.g., by voluntary cession through international treaty or involuntarily through the action of other states), as a

principle for defining the state, sovereignty remains central. The right to exercise authority must be backed up by the capacity to do so, and this is where a further characteristic of the modern state is important: the monopoly over the legitimate use of force. The state has at its disposal a preponderance of coercion within the society. Institutionally manifested in the armed forces, police and paramilitary forces, this preponderance of force is important for the mainte- nance of state supremacy although, in terms of the daily course of political life, such force is usually secondary. It is there to back up the states legitimacy if it is called into question and to ensure the observance of laws and the maintenance of order when these are infringed. As well as this preponderance of force, what sets the state apart from other entities that might use coercion is that thestate possesses a monopoly of the legitimate use of such coercion. Only the state has the right to use organized coercion to get its way. This is intrinsic to state sovereignty and essential for the state to be able to achieve what many see as its basic purpose, the security of its citizens through the maintenance of law and order. The modern state is territorially based and bounded. The state exercises its authority within territorial boundaries which are clearly defined and acknowledged internationally. It possesses no authority outside those boundaries, just as no other state possesses authority within another states boundaries. The states territorial basis distinguishes it from most other types of organization or association, whose power and authority tend to be functionally-based rather than geographically defined. It is this territorial basis that injects an element of ambiguity into the notion of the state. In English, but not in

many other languages, the same word, state, is used both for the administrative apparatus that runs a country, and the territorial formation of which that country consists. In this book, it is the former which is the focus of attention.

Idea of the modern state system

History cannot always be arranged into neat periods, but it is clear that from the Renaissance, through the Protestant Reformation, to the English Civil War in the 17th century, important forces that we associate with the onset of the modern world were at work. Prior to this time, Western Europe had no national borders in the modern sense. Politics, economics, and religion were not well-differentiated parts of the social whole. The Protestant Reformation began a process of separation that helped to undermine the power and authority of the medieval Church and fostered a form of individualism based on the idea of the priesthood of all believers. The invention of the printing press and the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages furthered this trend. The gradual separation of church from state as well as civil society from state allowed for the creation of a sphere of economic competition and new markets for commodities, labor, and capital. This development was hailed in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which articulated the idea of a free, self-regulating market. Such intellectual and economic changes improved social mobility, reducing the importance of heredity in favor of merit and eroding the principle of dynastic rule. Finally, new concepts of personal autonomy emerged, including that of Lord Coke above, holding out the promise of freedom to pursue a variety of interests without interference from the state. These separations did not occur all at once, nor were they perfectly achieved, but they served as important milestones on the road to modern conceptions of liberty.

This period witnessed corresponding developments in political theory. The ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and their heirs in the medieval world, had assumed that men were by nature rational and political animals, and that the proper and natural political order could be discovered through rational philosophical analysis, as in Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. (The Politics in particular was accepted as authoritative in the medieval world.) However, Thomas Hobbes broke sharply with this view of the world in his 1651 masterpiece, Leviathan, one of the most intellectually powerful works of political philosophy in the English language.

No doubt affected by the recent English Civil War, Hobbes hypothesized that humanity's natural state was a violent, asocial "war of every man against every man" in which life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Driven by their fear of death amid this unrestrained, competitive individualism, men enter into a social contract and establish a state, in effect giving up their natural freedoms in exchange for order and safety. The resulting all-powerful state is symbolized by the biblical monster Leviathan. Still, Hobbes allows some exceptions to this submission, arguing that men retain the fundamental right to self-preservation that underlies the social contract. If obeying the ruler's order means giving up their lives, or if the ruler fails to adequately protect them, men may disobey. Furthermore, in any given area of behavior, individuals remain free to do as they please so long as the ruler has not specifically indicated otherwise.

In 1690 John Locke carried on the social contract tradition in his Second Treatise of Civil Government. He too envisions a state of nature, but it is much less grim than the version portrayed by Hobbes. Where Hobbes saw a condition of violence and terror, Locke perceived mere "inconveniences." In nature, he noted, there is no known and settled law, men are placed in the position of being judges in their own case, and property is insecure. Thus, there is reason to leave nature, but men are not necessarily desperate to do so, meaning they are in a position to negotiate favorable terms for the social contract.

For Locke, the underlying reason for leaving nature and establishing society is to protect men's natural right to their "lives, liberties, and estates," a phrase with a clear echo in the "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. After individuals form society, society creates government as its agent; the two remain distinct, with society in the superior position as the creator and potential reformer of the state. Government holds its power in trust, and when the trust is violated, power "devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty." Of course Locke, given his benign view of human nature, anticipates that such revolutions will be rare. He believes that it is generally possible to make decisions through a consensual process in which the members of society agree to abide by the will of the majority. Through this process, property can be preserved and regulated when necessary.

The theory extrapolated by Locke is perhaps the first clear instance of what has come to be known as liberalism, though the term was not used as such in Locke's time. All the elements of modern liberalism are present in his work: a deep concern for individual rights, a belief that government is necessary or at least beneficial, and a recognition that government can do great damage if it is not controlled by the people, through revolution in extreme cases. The history of liberal thought and practice is complex, but Locke's treatise is a standard place to start an analysis of its characteristics.

Before turning our attention to the liberal tradition that followed Locke, it is interesting to compare his theories to the conception of freedom proposed by the Swiss-born French political thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his provocative work The Social Contract (1762). Rousseau's state of nature is milder than those of both Hobbes and Locke. Men in nature are born free and live in a kind of blissful innocence, while in contemporary society they are often "in chains." The problems begin when someone encloses a piece of land and declares it his property.

This leads to an inequality of fortunes and the domination of some men by others. The solution to the problem lies in a tight communitarian form of government. It is the community and its well-being that is the focus of Rousseau's interest, not the individual as with Locke. The community is guided by what Rousseau calls the general will, or the collective self-interest as determined through reason. The general will must be distinguished from the will of all, which is merely the sum of all the existing opinions in the community. The general will, Rousseau claims, is always right and "tends to the public advantage." If individuals dissent from the general will, failing to pursue the common good and through it their own interests, they must be "forced to be free." This places Rousseau well outside the framework of Anglo-American thought, and even though he was a near contemporary of the founders of the United States, he had virtually no influence in late-18th-century America. He has sometimes been called a totalitarian democrat, but this was not his intent Consider for a moment this nonpolitical example.

I am in Grand Central Station with a ticket for Washington, D.C. I pass through the gate and show my ticket to the attendant. There are two platforms in front of me. To my left there is a train going north to Boston and to my right one going south to Washington. I turn left and head for the Boston train. The ticket taker, seeing my mistake, runs after me, grabs me by the shoulders, and pushes me toward the Washington train. Might he not be said to be forcing me to be free by helping me to reach my true goal? Transferred from the individual level to politics, this is a complex and somewhat troubling principle. "Forcing people to be free" risks treating adults like children, but are there not times when citizens become thoroughly confused by the issues before them? It seems clear, if his ideas are carefully read in context, that Rousseau did not have the totalitarian intentions that have often been attributed to him, but the radicalism of his conception of freedom and his flamboyant way of expressing it have limited his influence in liberal Anglo-American society.

PRINCIPLES OF THE STATE SYSTEM

The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War, which had caused catastrophic human and material losses in central Europe, especially Germany. Millions had died, and Europe would not see a larger general war until the Napoleonic conflicts at the end of the 18th century and the First World War (1914-1918). The Thirty Years' War had been fought partly over the rival ambitions of dynastic families, and partly over religion. It originated as a conflict over the balance of Protestant and Catholic states in the Holy Roman Empire - an issue dating from the adoption, almost a century prior, of the principle that the local ruler could determine which religion should be practiced. Over time, as ruling dynasties changed or died out through marriage, succession, or death, Protestant areas were threatened with re-Catholicization.

The war also involved an effort to contain the power of the Hapsburg dynasty in central Europe and its claim to universal monarchy. Hapsburg generals had won major victories in the early part of the war, but Swedish intervention on the Protestant side turned the tide for a time, until the pendulum swung in the other direction and the Protestant princes, exhausted by war, concluded a compromise peace with the empire in 1635. However, it was at this point that France directly intervened in order to roll back, or at least contain, Hapsburg gains. The war dragged on, stripped of its initial religious justification, for another 13 years. The Peace of Westphalia, a massive and complex diplomatic achievement, ushered in a new era in international relations.

The Peace of Westphalia was itself an innovation. For the first time, a peace treaty was written by representatives from all parties, rather than just a few. Thousands of diplomats helped draft it. The Peace of Westphalia thus established the precedent of a diplomatic congress, which has remained a model for diplomacy until today. After 1648, a new state system emerged in Europe (as well as a new constitutional structure in the Holy Roman Empire). The principles that governed this state system predominated until the late-18th century. There were two primary kinds of states in this period - republics and absolute monarchies - but virtually all states accepted the principles of the new state system. Two principles were particularly important: the principle of sovereignty and that of raison d'tat, or "reason of state." (Are present-day international relations governed by diplomatic congresses? What are the strengths and weaknesses of such a system?)

The Rise and Fall of the Modern State SystemGiven practical form by the new nation states of Western Europe such as France in the late Middle Ages or Prussia in the nineteenth century, the old state system rested on the idea that by concentrating power in a single head or center, the state itself could be sufficiently controlled and its environment sufficiently managed to achieve self-sufficiency or at least a maximum of self-sufficiency in a world which would inevitably be hostile or at best neutral toward each state's interests and in which alliances would reflect temporary coalitions of interests that should not be expected to last beyond that convergence. The old maxim: "No state has friends, only interests," typified that situation.

The first powerful nation-states were monarchies, advocates of the divine right of kings to protect central authority and power. After a series of modern revolutions, first in thought, led by people like Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and Rousseau, and then in practice as articulated in The Federalist, kings were stripped of their exclusive powers and new power centers formed, presumably based upon popular citizenship and consent but in fact with the same centralized powers, only vested in representative assemblies and executive officers speaking in the name of the state. Only in a few cases, where earlier dispersions of power had been constitutionalized, did they need to be taken into consideration. This led to the establishment of federations, forms of federalism that combined national supremacy with real constituent state powers, at least for purposes of foreign relations and usually defense.

The second defining element of the nation-state was its striving for homogeneity. Every state was to be convergent with its nation and every nation with its state. Where people did not fit easily into that procrustean bed, efforts were made to force them into it. This was done either through internal pressure (as in France where the French government in the name of the state warred against Bretons, Occetanians, Provencals, and Languadocians, among others, even denying them the right to choose names for their children that did not appear on the official Francophone list), or external (as in the Balkans where small national states with minorities outside of their state boundaries regularly warred with one another in an effort to conquer the territories where their fellow nationals lived and either exterminate or expel those not of the same nationality). As a result, modern wars were basically of two kinds, either imperialistic wars designed to enable more powerful states to become even more self-sufficient by seizing control of populations, territories and resources that could be used in that direction, or nationalist wars designed to reunite parts of the nation with the national state.

In the end, none of these three goals could be achieved. In many cases they were not achieved at all; in others they were achieved temporarily until those disadvantaged by them succeeded in revolting. In still others they proved to be unachievable by any sustainable means, usually with a combination of all three factors that preventing their attainment. As a result, the existing states in the world, 90 percent contain minorities of 15 percent of their population or more within their boundaries (like Croatia) and of the remaining 10 percent, almost all have large national minorities living outside of their state boundaries (like Somalia). Since then, matters have gotten more complex, as we see by the great resurgence of ethnic conflict in one form or another throughout the world, a factor that has become one catalyst for the new paradigm in its search for ways to overcome those conflicts.

As we approach the end of the era of the politically sovereign nation-state, we also are beginning to recognize that state self-sufficiency, in reality was never achievable. It is well to recall that modern economic liberalism, which was essentially based on the principle of free trade, emerged shortly after the emergence of modern statism with its economic basis in mercantilism which sought self-sufficiency, because of the problematics of mercantilism brought to the fore, inter alia, by the American revolution against Great Britain. When that policy failed, imperialism replaced it -- for the powerful states -- as the means to the end of self-sufficiency. Imperialism failed by the middle of the twentieth century, not only because the subjugated peoples rejected it, but because a democratic moral sensibility came to affect the subjugators. So the world has had to find a new paradigm -- and it seems that we have.

The Origins of the Modern European State System

S. Anderson inaugurates Longman's new The Modern European State System series in fine style with The Origins of the Modern European State System, 1494-1618. This introductory volume to the series is a good survey of early modern European diplomacy and politics. This book, and the new five-volume series, is intended as a revision of Longman's three-volume Modern European State System series by Derek McKay, H. M. Scott, Roy Bridge, Roger Bullen and Graham Ross. Much like its predecessor, it synthesizes much of the historiography on the subject and adds a few new points as well. Anderson starts off his study with three chapters on general themes: war, trade and finance, and diplomacy. Then he moves into a chronological narrative of the period, beginning with the French invasion of Italy in 1494 and ending with the start of the Thirty Years' War. He ends his book with two chapters on the impact of peripheral European powers, the Ottoman Empire and Russia, on early modern politics. Anderson's book is clear and precise and easily understood by both novices and experts in early modern European political history.

Anderson begins his study with an analysis of war in the early modern period. Building on the work of J. R. Hale, Frank Tallett and I. A. A. Thompson, he argues that early modern war was not a carefully defined concept; it was often entered into very lightly, on the basis of personal rivalries between rulers, disputed dynastic claims and early attempts at a balance of power. War, particularly war with religious overtones, was seen not only as a natural part of life, but also as part of a divine plan to stamp out impure elements in foreign countries and remove undesirable social elements at home. Chivalric ideas left over from the feudal period reinforced this view of war; war was an acceptable means of preserving royal or national honor. As the early modern period progressed, chivalry and war contributed to the growth of early ideas of state formation; the chivalric urge to defend Europe against non-Christians became refocused into the urge to defend and glorify one's country.

While war continued to dominate the early modern European political scene, commerce was gaining new importance in the area of international relations. Commerce and finance often determined the outcome of war, but were becoming important tools of international relations in their own right. Since domestic discontent was easily sparked by a rise in bread prices, economic pressure was a good way to influence other countries' behavior. While economic warfare was often an effective means of international pressure, it was difficult to enforce and control. Economic warfare was an alien concept to most early modern Europeans, and few countries had the bureaucratic force to undertake such measures or could withstand the shock of financial warfare on their own economies. At the end of the sixteenth century, financial warfare began to be more effective, as in Spain's attempts to pressure England during Elizabeth's reign. Anderson's discussion of early modern finance reflects the classical view established in Richard Ehrenberg's research on the Fuggers backed up by several more recent studies of individual countries.

The growth of the modern European state system was provoked and supported by the beginnings of the idea of the balance of power. Drawing on the work of Garrett Mattingly and D. E. Queller, as well as his own earlier The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450-1919, Anderson argues that the balance of power gained popularity for several reasons. It was, to some extent, an outgrowth of the medieval concept of alliances, such as the Bavarian Guelph alliance against Philip Augustus. Italy provided the first example of an early modern balance of power, when the various states of the Italian peninsula all established diplomatic contacts (and spies) at each other's courts. The system slowly spread north from Italy as other powers saw its utility in keeping tabs on their rivals. Diplomats remained within Protestant or Catholic circles until the early seventeenth century, and permanent embassies were not established in or by early modern eastern European countries. The nearer countries of eastern Europe seemed small and insignificant to most of western Europe, and Russia and the Ottoman Empire were too alien and far away to gain much attention. However, by the first decades of the seventeenth century, almost all western European countries saw the balance of power as the natural state of Europe.

After discussing these general elements of the early modern state system, Anderson moves into a chronological account of early modern international politics. His chronological account does not differ significantly from that of many standard histories, such as The New Cambridge Modern History. He begins with the French invasion of Italy in 1494, which created the rivalry for dominance in western Europe between the French and the Spanish. This invasion also exposed both the weakness Italy's inability to unite and form a nation-state had created within the peninsula and the growing inability of the divided Holy Roman Empire to affect European politics in any meaningful way. The more united states dominated the weaker, divided states. France, and later Spain, had the army and bureaucracy to exert their will on weaker, divided countries, who did not have the resources to defend themselves, and were often divided about whether they needed or wanted to defend themselves, as Italy was in the 1490s.

Charles V won the title of Holy Roman Emperor and took his place as the political leader of Christendom, an obligation he took seriously. The 1520s saw a menacing advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe that Charles was determined to head off. Charles V's view of himself as protector of Catholic Christianity also heightened his animosity toward Francis I of France, who had formed a loose alliance with the Turks in order to damage Charles's holdings in eastern Europe, and Henry VIII of England, whom he viewed as an apostate after his conversion from Catholicism. Further, Charles's resources were drained by his attempts to defeat the Turks and their vassals, the Barbary corsairs in north Africa. The corsairs, famous for their piracy, were weaker but closer and took more of Charles's attention and resources than the Turks did. Francis I courted them both, angering Charles and making him more determined to stomp out Francis's potential Muslim allies. But Muslims were not his only religious opponents; Charles also, as the defender of Catholicism, attempted to stop the growth of Lutheranism in Germany. German Lutherans not only offended Charles's devout Catholicism, but also contributed to the growing divisions in Germany, further weakening the German heart of the Holy Roman Empire. The Habsburg-Valois struggle continued in Italy, in eastern Europe, and increasingly in Germany and the Netherlands, as France took advantage of the growing divisions in Germany to weaken Habsburg power there.

After the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, Spain emerged the victor of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry. But Philip II, who had inherited after his father's abdication in 1555, had a new enemy to face as the leader of Catholic Europe: Calvinism. Lutheranism had become an accepted fact in Germany; the Calvinists were newer, more organized, and more determined to spread their religion. Philip II was almost fanatical in his orthodox Catholicism and determined to stamp out Calvinism and other forms of Protestantism. Following Mary Tudor's death, however, he showed his realism by courting Elizabeth I, first as a possible bride, then as an ally, despite her firm refusal to return England to Catholicism. Mary Queen of Scots was next in line, and despite her Catholicism, she was too closely linked to France for Philip's comfort. He preferred a Protestant ruler of England to a French-English alliance.

When the English forged an alliance with the Dutch rebels in the 1580s, Philip felt obliged to respond. Defeating England seemed the only way of forcing the Dutch into submission, and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 removed the main barrier to a Spanish-English war. The defeat of the armada in 1588, however, provided the first main check to Spanish power. Henry IV's accession to the French throne, combined with his conversion to Catholicism which appeased his Catholic subjects, provided a second check: Philip invaded France to try to prevent Henry's consolidation of power, but the Spanish army proved ineffective. With France, England and the Netherlands all united in their opposition to Spain, Philips place as leader of Europe was insecure. All four countries involved in this conflict faced severe financial strains, but Spain's were worst of all. The war ended in 1609 in a stalemate, when all sides compromised in order to alleviate the financial pressures of war.

Anderson devotes the final two chapters to the study of powers that seem peripheral to Europe at first glance: the Ottoman Empire and Russia. Neither power was centrally involved in European politics; both resisted involvement in the growing diplomacy of western and central Europe. As Robert Schwoebel argued, the Ottoman Empire was usually not active in European politics, but was always a potential source of concern. France, England, and the Netherlands all toyed with the idea of an alliance with the Ottomans against Spain, and the Ottoman Empire was quite involved in central European affairs.

Russia was beginning to develop into a great power at this time, too. Working from Robert Crummey's basic arguments, Anderson asserts that Ivan III and his heirs were busily extending Russian dominance over surrounding areas and creating a rudimentary state with diplomatic, economic and cultural contacts with the rest of Europe. However, Russia seemed distant, foreign and unimportant to most of western Europe. In the sixteenth century, Russian expansionism led to conflicts with Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, Livonia and the Crimea, which led to increased contact with western Europe and the Ottoman Empire. War had led Russia to seek out European military theory and technology. Trade between Russia and the rest of Europe increased dramatically as Russia grew in size and wealth. After Ivan IV's death, internal chaos led to Swedish and Polish interference in Russia. Thus, northern Europe was also drawn into the Thirty Years' War when it began.

The Origins of the Modern European State System is a truly useful synthesis of early modern European diplomatic history. Anderson's explanations of the twists and turns of early modern politics are clear and fully developed. Very rarely does he seem to be rushing through his topic, as so many general histories do, but he even more rarely goes into too much detail. This is an excellent introduction to early modern diplomatic history. However, this book is more than a general introduction. His first few thematic chapters on war, finance and diplomacy are an intriguing analysis of major themes in the period, and his final chapters on the Ottoman Empire and Russia help to place Europe in a more global context. The main chronological chapters explaining the period 1494-1618 give little new information, but are an excellent summary of what we know about the political history of the period. The Origins of the Modern European State System is a good source of information and analysis for both novices and more advanced scholars in this periods political history.

Underlying Conditions of the State System (1648-1770)The new state system did not emerge within a vacuum. Particular economic and social conditions affected its development.

In eastern Europe, roughly defined as the area east of the Elbe River (in the middle of modern Germany), state economies and armies were supported by peasant labor. Peasants, or serfs, were tied to the land, providing both agricultural labor and drafted soldiers for aristocrat-led armies. Prussia's military might, for example, was built on serf labor. The local noble landlord, the Junker, had the responsibility of raising soldiers from the villages in his region. Towns had to pay heavy taxes and provide material to support these forces. The Prussian bureaucracy devoted much effort to mobilizing human and material resources for maintenance of an army.

In western Europe, state economies were more highly developed, and peasant labor could not simply be pressed into military service. Governments used tax revenues to hire captains who recruited paid soldiers. A general "draft," or conscription, came into use in western Europe only in the era of the French Revolution. Armies were also supported indirectly, through commercial surpluses based upon trade with far-flung colonial empires. Some Western powers (England and Holland in particular) developed sophisticated financial organizations as well. Joint stock companies allowed investors to pool wealth for business and trading ventures. Central banks (e.g., the Bank of England, founded in 1694 - later a national bank, then a private monopoly granted to shareholders who were willing to finance government needs) allowed some states to borrow vast sums from their subjects (the origin of a national debt). England's great military asset was not a large army - although it did raise armies as war required - but a preeminent navy, as well as the capacity to subsidize its continental allies (such as Prussia in the Seven Years' War). This capacity rested on the most advanced financial system in the world. The Bank of England provided security such that loans could be raised, and the English upper classes - peers and gentry - accepted heavy taxing to fund national defense. (In contrast, the French nobility claimed immunity from major taxes.)

So military financing differed between eastern and western Europe. Warfare was recurrent and pervasive during the era of the new state system. Individual wars, however, were somewhat less destructive than in the 17th century. Sieges and slaughters of civilians diminished. In the 19th century, diplomacy would more effectively secure the balance of power, but in the 18th century, balance of power was chiefly secured through continuous warfare. England and France, for instance, were at war for about 56 years between 1688 and 1815. States fought until they were militarily or financially exhausted. They would then trade territory in Europe or in their colonies, settling an uneasy peace until the next war. The requirements of 18th-century warfare required a great expansion in the size of European armies. The table below reflects that expansion of soldiers in the first half of the 18th century. The classical balance of power system (c.1648-c.1789) had a simple goal: to preserve the independence of the key states by preventing any one state from becoming so powerful militarily that it could dominate all the others. Wars of containment were a central mechanism for achieving that goal. Classical balance of power principles called for defeated states to be rehabilitated, not destroyed, so that they would be available as potential alliance partners against any new threats in the future. There were supposed to be no permanent friends or enemies; all the major powers had to be available as potential alliance partners for one another. The small states, including especially the many principalities in central Europe, were considered expendable.

All of the prerequisites for an effective balance-of-power system that existed between the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the French Revolution of 1789 gradually disappeared under the combined pressures of the Industrial Revolution, the growth of nationalism, and the demand for democratic governments. The French Revolution signaled the beginning of the end of the classical balance of power system. The Westphalian norm that sanctioned dynastic rule was directly threatened not only by the demand for democratic representation that was at the center of the French Revolution but also by the nationalism it unleashed. The French Revolution also generated a drive for preponderance, thereby directly attacking one of the most cherished goals of classical balance of power.

The Concert of Europe, the diplomatic coalition of major powers established after the Napoleonic wars, was an effort to restore the old order and the balance-of-power system. It was simultaneously innovative and profoundly conservative. The innovations were in the international arena, where the major powers (with the exception of Great Britain) replaced the decentralized approach of classical balance of power with a standing alliance designed to enable them to act in concert. The conservative dimensions of the Concert were in the domestic arena, where monarchs tried to save the legitimizing principles of the old order by suppressing domestic coalitions that supported social and political change.

The efforts by the states in the Concert of Europe to restore the old order failed, largely because the legitimizing principles established at Westphalia and the goals and methods of the classical balance of power were incompatible with fundamental economic, political, and social changes.

Between 1863 and 1890, Bismarck demolished what remained of the balance-of-power system. After exploiting German nationalism to unify the German states in a series of three wars, he scrapped the idea in the Westphalian system that a regime's legitimacy was based on interstate agreements ratified by treaty. He then built a network of alliances that were qualitatively different from those in the balance-of-power system. The Bismarckian security system was a complex web of alliances designed to deter the strong and restrain the weak. It was also designed to prevent the creation of reinforcing grievances and antagonistic blocs while simultaneously isolating France and preserving German preeminence on the European continent.

Bismarcks post-unification alliance system was designed to preserve the status quo. After 1890, his successors decision to use power politics to demand a global role for Germany led to the collapse of Bismarck's intricate web of alliances and the diplomatic encirclement of Germany by Britain, France, and Russia. In response, German policy makers developed a defense strategy called the Schlieffen Plan that was designed to win a two-front war. Unfortunately, the only way they could see to do that required starting a war as soon as any of their neighbors mobilized their armies. That put the German military on a hair trigger in any crisis

Evolution of the modern state system

The Evolution of Modern States is a significant contribution to the literatures on political economy, globalization, historical institutionalism, and social science methodology. The book begins with a simple question: Why do rich capitalist democracies respond so differently to the common pressures they face in the early twenty-first century? Drawing on insights from evolutionary theory, Sven Steinmo challenges the common equilibrium view of politics and economics and argues that modern political economies are best understood as complex adaptive systems. The book examines the political, social, and economic history of three different nations Sweden, Japan, and the United States and explains how and why these countries have evolved along such different trajectories over the past century. Bringing together social and economic history, institutionalism, and evolutionary theory, Steinmo thus provides a comprehensive explanation for differing responses to globalization as well as a new way of analyzing institutional and social change.

State autonomy and independence

There has been a tendency in much of the theorizing about the state to conceive of the state in an epiphenomenal way. The state is seen as not having an existence in and of itself, but as being merely a representation of other social forces. This is the view taken by proponents of the instrumental and some of the guardian models of the state noted above. The liberal approach to the state views it as an arena within which a variety of social forces struggle for supremacy, within a context of a broad value consensus which underpins the legitimate authority of the whole process. In this view, the state does not exist independently of the interactions of these social groups; it is their relationships which give the state its meaning and purpose. This epiphenomenal approach to the state is also evident in Marxism. In this view, the state is the means whereby the exercise and consolidation of the control of the dominant class is brought about. The state has no existence, purpose or interests independent of those of the dominant class. It is thereby a product of class interest rather than an organization with any independent standing or purpose. However, this epiphenomenal approach, reducing the state to a manifestation of deeper social forces, is misleading. Certainly there will be instances when the state is used by other groups for their own ends. The state can be captured by particular groups and their agenda imposed upon it; but this does not happen all the time. The state as an institution does possess the potential for autonomy, the potential for pursuing policies that are in its own interests as an institution, that are in the personal interests of those who work in the state, or that are in the interests of the society as a whole as perceived by state offi- cials. This is the partisan view of the state. It assumes that the state is not automatically the representation of other social forces, but has an existence and a set of interests that are different from and poten- tially in conflict with those of other social forces. Once we conceive of the state as a set of institutional structures, primarily administrative and coercive, it follows that those structures and the people who

work in them will have their own interests arising from the states very existence. At minimum, these will include maintenance of the state structure and protection of its integrity against outside forces. By extension this will also embrace the maintenance of order in society, since the existence of widespread conflict and dissent is destructive of the state itself. Thus even without implying any idealistic feelings or aspirations on the part of the state, its concern for its own survival will dictate that it has an independent interest in the way in which society is ordered. Given that the state also has to participate in international geopolitics by interacting with, inter alia, other entities like itself, the quest for survival will lead it to pursue policies in the international arena as well as the domestic. If the very existence of the state as an institutional structure generates a set of interests centred around its maintenance and survival, this will lead to overlap with the interests of the dominant classes in society. State survival requires domestic peace and order, and this is best achieved through the guaranteeing of the existing power structure, including as expressed through property relations. Clearly the dominant classes share this aim, wishing to bolster their predominance against possible challenge from below. In this sense, the state is normally concerned to defend the status quo, an aim which coincides with that of the dominant classes. However, the states desire for maintenance and survival also generates a point of tension with the dominant classes in society. Central to the states survival is its ability to collect sufficient resources to sustain its operations, but in this it is in competition with the dominant classes. Both state and class seek to extract resources from the populace, thereby generating the taxrent trade-off; the more the people have to pay in taxes, the less landowners can extract in the form of rent, and vice versa. This tension is present in the relationship between all states and dominant classes and, unless it is stabilized, the relationship between the two is likely to be difficult. Furthermore, the state may actively pursue policies at variance with those preferred by the dominant classes. The states quest for order and domestic peace may encourage it to make concessions to lower classes at the expense of dominant classes, while its desire for external security may lead it into policies which have a negative impact upon the wealth of members of the dominant class or may even lead it to seek to restructure domestic society, the better to compete internationally. Thus state and class interests do not always coincide, and it is the capacity of the state to maintain its autonomy that enables it to pursue its interests in this situation. But what enables the state to establish and maintain its autonomy? There have been a number of answers to this question. Marx provided one in his discussion of mid-nineteenth-century France when he referred to Bonapartism. In this conception, a broad balance of social forces in which none gained a primary or dominant position enabled the state to escape from control and pursue a course guided by its own perceptions. The Bonapartist leader, relying upon the state bureaucratic and coercive infrastructure, was able for a time to override social interests and pursue his own course of action without constraint. The problem with this conception of the state and its autonomy is that it continues to see the state in terms of the other social forces in the society. What enables the state to gain autonomy is nothing about the state itself, but the nature of the broader class relationships within society as a whole. Of course in practice state autonomy is linked to the nature of class relations; but to define state autonomy purely as a function of those relations is once again to reduce the state to epiphenomenal status. State autonomy has been better explained in other ways. One approach to this question is to focus upon the nature of state personnel. In this view, state autonomy depends upon the holders of high civil and military posts not being recruited from the dominant classes and not developing close relations with those classes once in office. It is thus the personal origins and associations of state officials that are seen to be central. In Trimbergers view, when officials retain ties to dominant elites, reform may be possible, but revolution from above can only come about when the state elite is free of such ties. Thus this view sees state autonomy as being the same as the state having few direct relations with the society as a whole. This implies that state power is best conceived of as a zero sum game, to be exercised over the society rather than through it. State autonomy is thus a product of the insulation of the state from society. The problem with this approach is that it conceives of the state acting autonomously only against the will of society. This is because it has focused upon those major cases when the state has stepped in to fundamentally re-organize society in the form of a revolution from above. Such an effort clearly provoked opposition from within

society, and the state has been able to overcome that through the mobilization of coercive capacity. But it is not clear that this way of viewing the problem assists in our understanding of how the state administers the society in an ongoing fashion. When the focus is upon humdrum day-to-day administration, the view of the state arising from periods of large-scale state-induced societal transformation is not necessarily the most useful. Such an approach emphasizes the disconnection of state from society, which is precisely the reverse of the situation that prevails in looking at normal administration. Another approach is to see the state as a distinctive sort of organization operating in a sphere that no other organization fully occupies, although many will impinge on it.

The modern state arose between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, and it spread to the rest of the world via conquest and colonialism. By the time the last African colonies became independent in the 1960s, the modern state ideal had become universal. This ideal comprises four defining characteristics: (1) territory, (2) sovereignty (external and internal), (3) legitimacy, and (4) bureaucracy. No state enjoys complete sovereignty or a completely effective and efficient bureaucracy, but some states are closer to this ideal than others. Legitimacy may come in various formsfrom traditional, to charismatic, to rational-legal, the latter of which requires a highly effective bureaucracy and some semblance of the rule of law.

States use the four attributes described here to provide their populations such goods as security, a legal system, and infrastructure. Weak states are those that cannot adequately provide these goods, and once a state has become so weak that it loses effective sovereignty over part of its territory, it may be called a failed state (or in extreme instances a collapsed state).

The State System from a Global Perspective

The State System is one way to look at our planet from a global perspective. States are the single most important building blocks fromwhich our world is constructed. But the social world inhabited by human beings is more complicated than implied by the term "state system." Another way of looking at the Global System is in terms of international actors. In this model, central governments of sovereign states continue to be the most important actors within the system. But other actors, besides governments, are admitted into this model.

The Global System is dominated by large, powerful organizations. Most of these organizations meet the criteria for being called bureaucracies. These large, formal organizations include not only governments but also large business corporations, banks, and some religious organizations. I have previously defined some of these international actors. Chapter Six of Kegley looks at the non-state actors in greater detail.

The origins of the modern state system are generally dated from 1648 after the end of the last great European wars of religion, the Thirty Years War.

During the Middle Ages, there were no states in the modern sense. The Medieval Ideal was of a single world empire and a single world church. The Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Catholic Church symbolized this ideal. The reality of the Middle Ages was that power was exercised on the local level by feudal lords. Feudalism and manorialism characterized the Middle Ages.

It is only when feudal monarchs were gradually able to transform themselves into absolute monarchs that the modern state was born. A system of such absolute monarchies evolved after the Thirty Years War.

Just as the Enlightenment philosophes saw a rational plan in the laws of nature and the universe, they also influenced rulers in building their states along rational lines. For the first time in European history, there was a general realization of the relationship between economic, administrative, diplomatic, and military factors in state building. Despite their vast differences, there was a general trend in both Eastern and Western Europe toward more tightly run bureaucratic states. Public works projects, such as roads, bridges, dams, and canals, multiplied in the hope of building the economy of the mercantilist state. New government departments also appeared in such areas as postal service, forests, agriculture, and livestock raising. States also took censuses and kept statistics in order to plan out policies better.

In order to understand the evolution of the modern state, one needs to understand that the feudal state was patrimonial. In other words, the kingdom was the patrimony (hereditary property) of a dynasty. Likewise, the various judicial and administrative offices that ran the kingdom at the provincial and local levels were the patrimonies of privileged families. The modern concept of kings and officials who were accountable for their actions and responsible for the welfare of their subjects was alien to the old feudal state. This made the feudal state more a federation of separate principalities that, in theory, owed allegiance to a common monarch. In the High Middle Ages, this concept of one monarch, among other things, provided at least some degree of order, helping lead to the rise of towns and feudal monarchies which supported each other and increased each other's strength. Over the years, a common language and culture along with the spread of nationalism after the French Revolution united many of these states into what we would call nations. The feedback between the rise of towns and kings produced two lines of development that would help each other in the rise of the modern state.

For one thing, the rise of towns and a money economy helped provide the basis for the Italian Renaissance and Protestant Reformation. Calvinism, in particular, saw all believers as equal in God's eyes, which discredited Divine Right of Kings, helped justify religious/political revolution, and lay the foundations for modern democracy in the Dutch Revolt and English Revolution. By the late 1600's the religious element was fading from theories of revolution. Such political writings as John Locke's The Social Contract pushed the idea of the ruler being responsible for the welfare of his subjects. Second, kings were building strong nation-states that, by the 1600's, were assuming greater control over all aspects of the state. For example, the economic theory of mercantilism spurred rulers to work to develop the resources of their kingdoms.

Together these led to a growing realization of the interrelationships between administrative, economic, and political factors in the overall welfare of the state. As a result, more and more royal officials were trained professionals. They had to take competitive exams to gain their positions and did their jobs efficiently and impartially. Kings and their officials also paid more attention to building and maintaining public works such as roads, bridges, and canals to improve the economy. While the purpose of these reforms was to increase the tax base for the kings, they also benefited their subjects. Higher standards of administration made people see their officials as a bureaucracy of service rather than one of privilege. And since they were the king's men carrying out his will, people also saw their kings as public servants rather than as privileged owners of the state. Frederick the Great's quotation at the top of the reading best represents this idea of the king as public servant. As a result, in the 1700's the term absolute monarchy gave way to the term "enlightened despot", a monarch who ruled according to enlightened principles rather than the divine right of kings.

The eighteenth century state still had problems. For one thing, it had a modern political administration superimposed upon a feudal social order. Nobles were still the privileged social class, holding most of the important administrative and military positions. Peasants in Central and Eastern Europe were still downtrodden serfs. Even French peasants, who were otherwise free, had feudal obligations imposed upon them.

In spite of this, the centralized states emerging in the Enlightenment were important in the evolution of our own modern states in two ways. First of all, the emergence of a professional bureaucracy, chosen largely for merit, not money or birth, provided the state with a modern administrative structure that continues today. Second, the idea of the rulers and officials being servants, not owners, of the state was central to the revolutionary ideas that swept Europe starting with the French Revolution in 1789. A closer look at several of the major states of eighteenth century Europe will give a better idea of their accomplishments and limitations.

France

under Louis XV may at first glance have seemed like a strongly unified state. But it had serious problems at the center of government. First of all, the court at Versailles with its petty intrigues stifled the work of most capable officials. Instead of tending to their appointed duties, officials spent more time defending their positions at court. Under Louis XV there were 18 foreign secretaries and 14 controller generals, most of them eventually ruined by palace intrigue. Their average terms of office were between two and three years. At the center of this was the king, Louis, who was a somewhat intelligent, but weak willed and disinterested man who let others run the government for him.

Another problem for the central government was the intense competition between the council of state (from which all laws supposedly emerged) and the various ministers (justice, finance, war, navy, foreign affairs, and the king's household). The ministers carried out and often formulated the king's policies. However, we have seen what court intrigue did to many of the ministers, and one can imagine the confusion and lack of direction in the central government.

By contrast, the provincial government was fairly efficient. The main figures here were the intendants that ran the 32 generalites (provinces) set up by Richelieu some 100 years before. He was in charge of tax collection, justice, and policing his province, and he had a fairly free hand to carry out these duties as he saw fit. The intendant was the king's agent in the province and was the man most Frenchmen saw as representing royal authority. He also represented the interests of the people to the central government, and his opinion was generally respected by the king's ministers and councilors. In contrast to the unfortunate officials close to Versailles, the intendants generally kept their positions for decades, which allowed them to know their territories and peoples more thoroughly and better rule them. The intendants were often criticized for being too powerful and corrupt. There certainly was some corruption, but in general, the intendants represented efficient and conscientious government. Unfortunately, nobles, anxious to preserve and regain their ancient prestige, even took over more and more intendant positions as the 1700's progressed.

The intendants needed help at the local level. These lower level officials fell into three categories. The first category consisted of feudal officials who had bought or inherited their positions. Such men had little training or care for their work and were a burden to the intendants that were stuck with them. Next, there were subdelegates, who were poorly paid, poorly trained, and also of little use. Finally, there were what we might call true civil servants. These were specialists (engineers, architects, physicians, etc.) who had to take competitive tests to gain their positions. These were the men who usually carried out the directives of the intendants and kept the French state running. It was these officials who would survive the French Revolution and become the nucleus of the modern French civil service.

The Hapsburg Empire

may have been an absolute monarchy, but it was a far cry from being a unified state. The War of the Austrian Succession especially pointed out the need to organize an administration such as Richelieu and Frederick William the Great Elector had done for their respective states a century earlier. The central government in Vienna had a number of governing bodies whose functions overlapped, which led to great confusion. A full one-third or more of all taxes collected never made it to Vienna, so no effective budget could be made. Local government consisted of noble estates (assemblies) that granted or refused the central government its taxes. Nobles in Hungary owned 80% of the land and paid no taxes, leaving the full tax burden to the peasants. The nobles also maintained jurisdiction over the peasants on their lands. It was this mess that the Austrian minister, Count Haugwitz, set out to clean up. He did it at the central, provincial, and local levels. The central government was streamlined into five ministries: foreign affairs, commerce, war, justice, and internal affairs. Typical of the prevailing mercantilist philosophy of the day, the minister of finance was deemed most important in both France and Austria.

At the provincial level, an administrative board known as the gubernium largely replaced the power of the noble estates. In 1748, after the disasters of the War of the Austrian Succession, the estates recognized the need to reform the state and granted ten years worth of taxes to the central government. This meant that the empress could rule without the estates for the next decade. As their power withered, that of the gubernium increased. Thus the feudal estates were gradually replaced by a more modern system. Another important principle that took over here was that of the separation of powers within a government, specifically between the courts and the executive/legislative branches. This principle was pushed by the French philosophe, Montesquieu, and has remained an important part of the modern state down to this day.

At the local level, a Hapsburg official, the kreishauptmann, interfered more and more in the affairs traditionally left to the noble estates. The more such officials became involved in the daily affairs of the peasants, the more concerned they and the Hapsburgs were for their welfare and their ability to pay taxes. Therefore, the kreishauptmann became the virtual champion of the peasants against the nobles, preventing them from evicting peasants and taking their lands or forcing them to do extra servile labor.

Maria Theresa's government also effected a major fiscal reform to raise revenue. Even nobles and clergy had to pay regular property and income taxes. This distributed the tax load more evenly, but there were still gross inequities. The average peasant still paid twice the taxes that a noble paid. And Bohemia was liable for twice the taxes that Hungary was. Still, her reforms were a giant step forward for the Austrian Empire, and her system remained the basis for Hapsburg administration to the end of the empire in 1918.

Maria Theresa's son, Joseph I, carried the spirit of enlightened rule even further than his mother had. He was an enlightened ruler who was determined to use his power to make his people live according to enlightened principles whether they liked it or not. Joseph's reforms cut across the whole spectrum of the Hapsburg state and society. In the judicial realm, he had the laws codified, tried to get speedier and fairer trials presided over by trained judges, and outlawed torture, mutilation, and the death penalty. He ordered toleration for both Protestants and Jews and legalized interfaith marriages. Along the same lines, he relaxed censorship, restricting it only to works of pornography, atheism, and what he deemed superstition.

Joseph was a devout Catholic, but saw the Church as a virtual department of state that needed some house cleaning. Therefore, in 1781 he closed down many monasteries or converted them into hospitals and orphanages. He also required a loyalty oath from the clergy to ensure tighter control of the Church. He controlled and encouraged education, especially for the purpose of producing trained civil servants. Through a combination of incentives for families who sent their sons to school and punishments for those who did not, Austria under Joseph had a higher percentage of children in school than any other state in Europe.

Joseph's reforms extended to trying to make his subjects' lives easier. Although he failed to abolish serfdom, he did get the number of days per week that peasants had to work for their lords reduced from four to three and evened out the tax burden paid by peasants and nobles. He tried to encourage trade and industry through high protective tariffs, tax relief, subsidies, loans, and the building of roads and canals. He rewarded immigrants, but severely punished those trying to emigrate from his empire. Sometimes, his decrees could interfere with the minutest aspects of people's lives, such as forbidding them to drink the muddy water of the Danube or to eat gingerbread and encouraging peasants to mix vinegar with their water.

By his death, Joseph had increased his empire's revenues from 66 million to 87 million florins, while virtually tripling the size of his army. Unfortunately, no amount of reform probably could have solved the Empire's most serious problem: the large number of different nationalities and cultures forcibly held under Hapsburg rule. German language and culture were imposed throughout the Empire. But in the long run, the Hapsburg Empire was a virtual time bomb of nationalities waiting to explode and fragment into different states.

Prussia

was the state that most people saw as the epitome of the enlightened despotate. At the center of this was Frederick II himself, whose incredible energy, drive, and intelligence were more than equal to what all the ministers and rulers of any other state in Europe were capable of. Frederick clearly saw the interdependence of foreign, domestic, military, and financial affairs and was determined to direct all these affairs personally. Therefore, he served as his own foreign minister, finance minister, and general staff. (He even scouted enemy positions by himself, much to the worry of his officers.)

Frederick's workday started at 4 AM and extended to 10 PM. The vast body of work and responsibilities he undertook required an incredibly organized schedule and work routine. His civil servants in Berlin sent him details and data on specific matters, and he sent back orders he expected them to carry out punctually. His court at Potsdam had neither family, court etiquette, religious holidays, nor other distractions to impair the government's efficiency. The court and government resembled a barrack and were run with military precision. If any one man gave us the idea of the state serving the people rather than the other way around, it was Frederick the Great.

Frederick had little faith in either his troops or bureaucracy and subjected them to severe surveillance and discipline to make sure they did their jobs. Royal agents, known as fiscals, combined the duties of spies and prosecuting attorneys to keep the bureaucrats in line. Any examples of corruption led to immediate dismissal. Civil servants had virtually no civil rights (including that of a trial) and have been described as the "galley slaves" of the state. Even with the fiscals, Frederick felt he needed better information about his government and kingdom. Therefore, he had subordinates report to him about their superiors. He also made an annual tour of the kingdom from May to August, personally examining officials, interviewing private citizens, inspecting local conditions, and gathering immense amounts of information. There were few things of importance that escaped Frederick's notice for long.

Unlike the rest of Europe, where most public offices were either bought or inherited, Prussia required all of its civil servants to earn their positions by passing a civil service exam. Most candidates had a college education in jurisprudence and government management. All of them, regardless of class, also had to spend one to two years on a royal farm to familiarize themselves with the various aspects of agriculture, in particular the new scientific agricultural techniques being developed and the problems of lord-serf relations.

At the provincial level, there were 15 provincial chambers, each with 15 to 20 members. Since the members were responsible for each other's actions, there was little corruption at this level. The provincial chambers had two main duties: to collect taxes; and stimulate the economy to raise the tax base. In true mercantilist spirit, they had sandy wastes reclaimed, swamps drained, and new settlements founded. They went to England and Holland to study commercial and agricultural methods there, sought out markets for Prussian goods, and arrested any vagabonds they found, since laziness and indolence were public offenses in Prussia.

At the local level there were the steurrat and landrat, who administered towns and rural affairs respectively. The steuerrat ruled from 6 to 10 towns, and left them little in the way of home rule. In addition to collecting taxes, he fixed food prices, enforced government decrees, regulated the guilds, and kept the garrison properly housed. The landrat had much the same duties in the countryside, but was not so closely supervised by the central government, largely because the king had too little money to closely control the Junkers (nobles). The landrat was always a local noble and estate owner and was elected to his position by his fellow Junkers as often as he was appointed by the king. The landrat exercised all the functions of local government: tax collecting, administering justice, maintaining public order, and conscripting recruits for the army. As long as he did his job and did not abuse the peasants too severely, the central government largely left him alone.

To a large extent, poverty built the Prussian state of the 1700's. It created a tightly run and loyal officer class by forcing impoverished nobles into service to the state. It also forced Prussia's rulers to adopt the tight-fisted economic measures that became the basis of Prussian discipline and regimentation into this century.

Russia

Catherine the Great of Russia also strived to be an enlightened despot, at least in appearance. However, Russia was too big and too far behind the West for it to be transformed into an enlightened society overnight. The court, to be sure, reflected the fashions and manners of courts in the rest of Europe. However, this was a mere facade to mask the still medieval nature of the rest of society in the countryside. Symbolizing this facade was the series of fake villages stocked with healthy prosperous looking peasants that Catherine's prime minister, Potemkin, set up to fool Catherine into thinking her realm was indeed on a par with the West. Unfortunately for Russia, parity with the West was far from the case, and Russia would pay a heavy price for its backwardness in the years to come.

Emergence of the modern state

During the 1880s a new emperor-centered state structure took shape. After the Satsuma Rebellion, disgruntled former samurai started a popular rights movement demanding a national legislature. Meiji leaders were not opposed to constitutional government; indeed, their contacts with the West had convinced them that it would unify and strengthen Japan as well as improve its international standing by conforming to Western ideas of civilized government. Thus, in 1881 the emperor declared his intention to grant the country a constitution. In preparation, the government leadership created a strong executive branch run by professional bureaucrats dedicated to the national good rather than sectional or partisan interests. During the 1880s the government made several steps in this direction. It created a new nobility of five ranks from the former court aristocracy and daimyo, established a cabinet system modeled on that of imperial Germany, created a new privy council of imperial advisers, and instituted a civil service examination system for recruiting high officials.

The constitution, drafted by a small bureaucratic committee working under statesman Ito Hirobumi, was promulgated in 1889 as a gift of the emperor to the people. It came into effect the following year. The constitution placed most of the powers of state in the hands of the emperor, who was declared sacred and inviolable. It guaranteed the emperors subjects certain basic political and religious freedoms within the limits of the law. It also established a bicameral (two-chamber) national legislature, the Imperial Diet. The upper chamber, called the House of Peers, was composed of members of the newly created nobility and imperial appointees. The lower chamber, the House of Representatives, was elected by a small percentage of the populationonly adult males paying more than 15 yen (Japans basic unit of currency) in taxes could vote. While a relatively conservative document, very similar to the constitution of imperial Germany, the Meiji constitution was a remarkable departure from a long tradition of authoritarian politics in Japan. It provided a foundation for the eventual development of representative government.

Nevertheless, for many years a small ruling group made up of the Satsuma and Choshu leaders continued to monopolize executive power. The emperor, although constitutionally the countrys highest political authority, did not participate in administration. Until the late 1910s, prime ministers and most cabinet members were drawn from the ranks of the Satsuma-Choshu clique, their proteges, and members of the civil and military bureaucracies. However, political parties gradually grew stronger during this period, eventually winning positions in the cabinet.

In addition to restructuring the government, the Meiji leaders worked diligently to build up a modern economic sector by acquiring new manufacturing technology. In the 1870s the government imported a mechanized silk-reeling mill, cotton-spinning mills, glass and brick factories, cement works, and other modern factories. They also brought in foreign workers and technicians to get the factories started and train Japanese workers. The government hired hundreds of foreign teachers, engineers, and technicians to build up modern infrastructure, such as railroads and telegraph lines, and dispatched hundreds of bright ambitious young men to study science, engineering, medicine, and other technical specialties in the United States and Europe. In the 1880s the government set up a modern banking system.

By the 1890s the beginnings of industrialization were well underway. A railroad network linking the major cities of Honshu had expanded into Kyushu and Hokkaido; coal mines were producing fuel needed for new steam-driven factories; the cotton-spinning industry had reduced the countrys dependence on foreign imports; and a domestic shipbuilding industry was developing. Except for the railroad system, however, the government no longer played a direct role either in financing or managing these enterprises. It had sold off its imported factories to private entrepreneurs and had adopted a policy of encouraging private enterprise.

The dramatic changes during the three decades after the Meiji government took power were driven by government initiatives from above, but other classes of society were not simply passive recipients of change. Many former samurai, although stripped of their traditional privileges, made a successful transition to the new society. Highly educated, trained for public service, and imbued with the values of ambition, hard work, and perseverance, they played an important role in many areas, including government, business, science, education, and culture. The same was true of the well-to-do elements in the countryside, who introduced innovations in agriculture, worked to develop local schools, and were active in the movement to establish a national legislature. Even the sons of poor peasant farmers conscripted into the army returned home with new skills, ideas, and habits that they spread to fellow villagers. And by the 1890s, when most school-age children were attending elementary school, Japans educational system became a formidable vehicle to promote enthusiasm for change.

Disintegration:

Studies of the international relations of the Middle East have been dominated by discussions of inter-state relations and conflicts.[1] The dominant state- and conflict-centric approaches used to study this region largely ignore the impact of regional structures and non-state actors.[2] Furthermore, much existing literature tends to view the regions international relations in a relatively short time-frame. This usually entails exploring the regions history since World War One. Again, this is problematic as it results in the exclusion of an analysis of the transformation of the regional system since the mid-19th century. The main argument of this paper is manifested in two parts. The first is that the proliferation of states in the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the occupation of much of the region by the British and French following World War One led to the disintegration of intra-regional relations.[3] That is to say that, relations between people in the Middle East were relatively integrated under the imperial system in the sense that there were fewer borders and boundaries (both physical and imagined) between them.[4] This was a result of the lack of state borders within the region these were few in number and left large swathes of territory as part of the same political entity and economic market. Introducing modern states as a way of organising people into political entities resulted in the creation of many political borders and many claims to sovereignty over territories which often were relatively small in scope. The second element of this papers argument is that the post-World War One disintegration of the Middle East system disrupted economic as well as political activity within the region, ultimately resulting in more instability in intra-regional relations.State system in the Middle East

Essential to this study is the belief in the value of historical analysis as well as the adoption of the tools of historical sociology in the study of international relations.[5] Understanding and explaining the relations of the Middle East requires us to view the history of the region not as cyclical or full of patterns of behaviour. There is more value in viewing the regions history as containing multiple layers of progression/movement from one condition to another unevenly experienced at different times and in different spaces for the inhabitants of the region. It is certainly the position of this paper that searching for patterns of behaviour with regards to this region at least prevents the development of an eclectic framework of analysis which can take into account the diversity of experiences of the people in the region.

In order to develop an analysis of the systemic transformation which took place in the Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries this study addresses three core research questions. The first considers what the experiences of people living in the Middle East were like under the previous system in terms of level of interaction and integration through the movement of people, goods, capital, services and ideas. The second area of investigation focuses on what these experiences have been like fol