A History of Global Politics: Creating
an International Order
-The world is composed of many
countries or states all of them having
different forms of government.
-It is important to study international
relations as a facet of globalization,
because states or governments are key
drivers of global processes.
Politics is viewed as “the institution that
creates warfare and sets economic
policies for a country”
Global politics concerns the relations
between different actors in the world, the
characteristics of those relations, and
their consequences.
*The Attributes of Today’s Global
System
Modern world politics has 4 key
attributes:
1. There are countries/states that are
independent and govern
themselves.
2. These countries interact with each
other through diplomacy.
3. There are international
organizations that facilitate these
interactions.
4. These international organizations
take on lives of their own.
Defining the nation-state:
 States whose population shares a
sense of national identity.
Composed of two non-
interchangeable terms.
 Not all states are nations and not
all nations are states.
State: a country and its government
Four attributes of a state:
1. It exercises authority over a
specific population, called its “
citizens.”
2. It governs a specific territory.
3. It has a structure of government
that crafts various rules that its
citizens follow.
4. Most crucial: The state has
sovereignty over its territory.
Sovereignty –the right to govern
one’s own territorial borders,
exercises internal and external
authority.
Internal - no individuals/groups
can operate by ignoring the state.
External - state’s policies and
procedures are independent of
other states.
Nation is defined as group of people who
share a national identity and culture
According to Benedict Anderson: “an
imagined community”
 Rights and responsibilities are
mainly the privilege and concern
of the citizens of the nation. It is
limited, it has boundaries. -
Often limit themselves to people
who share a particular culture,
 speak a common language, and
live in a specific territory.
 “Imagined” does not mean it is
made up. It means it allows the
citizens to feel a connection with
members of the same community
even if he/she will never meet all
of them.
 Finally, most nations strive to
become states. Nation-builders’
goal is for the national ideal to
assume an organizational form. If
within a mother state, they strive
for autonomy.
Remember: Not all states are nations
and not all nations are states.
- Examples: Scotland and UK,
Bangsamoro and PH
- There are states with multiple nations,
nations with multiple states. - Examples:
Korea: nation; SK & NK: states
- Chinese nation, China mainland,
Taiwan
*The Interstate System
-a system of competing and allying states
-origin of the present-day concept of
sovereignty can be traced back to the
Treaty of Westphalia
Treaty of Westphalia- set of
agreements signed in 1648 to end the
Thirty Years’ war between the major
continental powers of Europe. It was
designed to avert wars in the future by
recognizing that the treaty signers
exercises complete control over their
domestic affairs and swear not to meddle
in each other’s affairs and provide
stability for the nations of Europe.
Concert of Europe- alliance of “great
powers” of United Kingdom, Austria,
Russia and Prussia that sought to restore
the world of monarchial, hereditary and
religious and religious privileges of the
time before the French Revolution and
Napoleonic Wars. This Metternich
system lasted from 1815 to 1914, at
dawn of WWI.
Since the existence of this interstate
system, there have been attempts to
transcend it.
 Some, like Bonaparte, directly
challenged the system, while
others sought to imagine other
systems of governance, while not
necessarily challenging
sovereignty.
 Still, others imagine a system of
heightened interaction between
various sovereign states,
particularly the desire for greater
cooperation and unity among
states and peoples.
*Principles of Interstate System
1. Nationalism is a doctrine and /or a
political movement that seeks to make
the nation the basis of a political structure
especially a state. It is a sense of national
consciousness that generally exalts
one’s own nation above others, and
focuses on the promotion of interest.
2.Internationalism is a desire for greater
cooperation and unity among states and
people. In a more comprehensive
definition.
-It is a political principle that places the
interests of the entire world above those of
individual nations and argues for cooperation
among nations for common good. It can be
divided into two broad categories:
2.1 Liberal internationalism
2.2 Socialist internationalism
Immanuel Kant
 18th-century German philosopher
 1st major thinker of liberal
internationalism
 Likened states in a global system
to people living in a given territory.
If people living together require a
government to prevent
lawlessness, shouldn’t that same
principle be applied to states?
Without a form of world
government, he argued, the
international system would be
chaotic. Therefore, states, like
citizens of countries, must give up
some freedoms and “establish a
continuously growing state
consisting of various nations
which will ultimately include the
nations of the world.”
 imagined a form of global
government.
Jeremy Bentham
 Coined the word “international” in
1780
 Advocated the creation of “
international law” that would
govern the inter-state relations. -
Believed that global legislators
should aim for legislation that
would create “the greatest
happiness of all nations taken
together.”
Giuseppe Mazzini
 19th-century Italian patriot
 He was a nationalist
internationalist
 1st thinker to reconcile
nationalism with liberal
internationalism
 Advocate of the unification of the
various Italian-speaking mini-
states and a major critic of the
Metternich System
 Believed in a Republican
government, and proposed a
system of free nations that
cooperated with each other to
create an international system
 For him, free, independent states
would be the basis of an equally-
free, cooperative international
system
 Argued that if the various Italian
mini-states could unify, something
bigger could be possible, for
example, a United States of
Europe
 Influenced the thinking of
Woodrow Wilson.
Woodrow Wilson
  US President (1913-1921)
 One of the 20th century’s most
prominent internationalists
 Like Mazzini, Wilson saw
nationalism as a prerequisite for
internationalism
 Forwarded the principle of self-
determination, the belief that the
world’s nations had a right to a
free, and sovereign government
 Hoped that these free nations
would become democracies,
because only by being such would
they be able to build a free system
of international relations based on
international law and cooperation
 Became the most notable
advocate for the creation of the
League of Nations
 The League also came into being
in 1919.
 Unfortunately, US was not able to
join the League because of strong
opposition from the Senate.
 During WW2, internationalism
was eclipsed.
 But, despite its failure, the League
created int’l organizations that are
still around today, including the
World Health Organization
(WHO), and the International
Labour Organization (ILO).
 The League also served as a
blueprint for future forms of int’l
cooperation (UN).
 Despite its organizational
dissolution, the League of
Nations’ principles survived WW2
. 
*League of Nations
 Concretization of the concepts of
liberal internationalism
 From Kant: it emphasized the
need to form common
international principles.
 From Mazzini: it enshrined the
principles of cooperation and
respect among nation-states.
 From Wilson: it called for
democracy and self-
determination.
Karl Marx
 One of Mazzini’s biggest critics
 German socialist philosopher,
also an internationalist
 Did not believe in nationalism; he
believed that true internationalism
should completely reject
nationalism because it rooted
people in domestic concerns
instead of global ones.
 Believed in dividing the world into
classes, rather than countries
→ Capitalist class: owners of
factories, companies, and other
means of production
→ Proletariat class: those who
didn’t own means of production;
worked for capitalists
 He and Friedrich Engels believed
that in a socialist revolution
seeking to overthrow the state and
the economy, the proletariat “had
no nation.”
Famous battle cry: “Workers of
the world, unite! You have
nothing to lose but your chains
.”
 Opposed nationalism because
they believed it prevented the
unification of the world’s
workers. Instead of identifying
 with other workers, nationalism
could make workers in individual
countries identify with the
capitalists of their own countries.
 Died in 1883, but his followers
continued his vision by
establishing their international
organization: the Socialist
International (SI).
*Socialist International (SI)
 Union of European socialist and
labor parties established in Paris
in 1889.
 Achievements include:
‘ Declaration of May 1 as Labor Day
‘ Creation of an International Women’s
Day
 Started the campaign for an 8-hr
workday
 Collapsed during WW1 because
member parties were unable to
join internationalist efforts to fight
for the war. Many parties even
ended up fighting each other. This
was a confirmation of Marx’s
warning: when workers and their
organizations take the side of their
countries instead of each other,
their long-term interests are
compromised.
 - As the SI collapsed, a more
radical version emerged. In the
Russian Revolution of 1917,
Czar Nicholas II was overthrown
and replaced by a revolutionary
gov’t led by the Bolshevik Party,
headed by Vladimir Lenin. This
new state was called Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR).
 - Unlike most members of the SI,
Bolsheviks didn’t believe in
obtaining power for the working
class through elections. Rather,
they pushed the revolutionary
parties to lead the revolutions
across the world, using methods
of terror if necessary. Today,
these parties are referred to as
Communist parties.
- To encourage these socialist
revolutions across the world, Lenin
established the Communist
International (Comintern) in 1919.
* Communist International
(Comintern)
 Served as the central body for
directing Communist parties all
over the world.
 More radical than SI; also less
democratic because it followed
the top-down governance of the
Bolsheviks.
 Many of the world’s states feared
Comintern, believing that it
worked in secret to stir up
revolutions in their countries
(which was true).
 This caused a problem during
WW2, when the Soviet Union
joined the Allied Powers. The US
and UK could not trust the Soviet
Union. To appease his allies,
Joseph Stalin, Lenin’s successor,
dissolved the Comintern in
1943.
 However, after the war, Stalin re-
established the Comintern as
the Communist Information
 Bureau (Cominform). The
Cominform, like the Comintern,
helped direct the various
communist parties that had taken
power in Eastern Europe.

 With the collapse of the Soviet

Union in 1991, ideas about
communist internationalism
also practically disappeared.
 The SI managed to re-establish
itself in 1951, but its influence
remained primarily confined to
Europe, and has never been
considered a major player in
international relations to this very
day.
 For the postwar period, however,
liberal internationalism would
once again be ascendant. The
best evidence of this is the rise of
the United Nations as the center
of global governance.

Conclusion:

Internationalism is just one window into

the broader phenomenon of
globalization. Nevertheless, it is a very
crucial aspect of globalization since
globalization.