An/Other IR:
Views from the South
Week six: The Impossibility of the State
Nationalism, States and Citizens
 The Nature of the
contractual state
 States and Nations
 The State in Disciplinary IR
 The selfishness of the nation
 Conflict between Nations
 The contract of International
Society
 Gendered Nature of the
State
 Woman as nation
 Nation as woman
 Production of Citizens
Ambivalences of the Nation-state
 Universal/Particular
 Rational/Irrational
 Based on universal rights
derived from S.O.N.
 Appeal to rationality of future
gain, economics and science
 Only can belong to one
 The appeal to made-up pasts, a
‘spirit’ of the nation, veneration
of ancestors
 Modern/Traditional
 Progressive: forward looking,
aspires to greatness, progress
through science, technology,
culture…
 Appeal to the past, to shared
experiences and core values
 Inclusive/Exclusive
 Appeals to all Scots
 Doesn’t acknowledge French
people
 Artefact/Essence
 Manufactured political entity,
not an inevitability
 The appeal to tradition, culture,
and romantic essences
Failed States discourse
George W. Bush (National Security Strategy 2002): the
US is "threatened less by conquering states than we are
by failing ones."
The Failed State
 Failed States are characterised as:
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lacking territorial control
lacking intensive administration
overly militarised
low levels of responsible government
limited economic and social development
Fundamental disagreement as to the very nature of the state
 When states ‘fail’ we address it through capacity building,
open markets and civil society.
 State-in Society model: where strong social/cultural
legitimacies inhibit or out-weigh those of state formation
 Quasi-State model: institutions recognised internationally, but
not internally. Often described as ‘negative sovereignty’ –
when decolonisation grants statehood before its time
The Aesthetics of Failed States
 “Postcards from Hell”, 2011: images from the world's
most failed states.
The need for Frontier Logic
1. The notion of International Society remains a staple
‘founding legend’ or ‘myth’ of Western Civilization.
2. There is an uncritical celebration of this story-telling in
terms of its relationship to progress.
3. This is reinforced by the principle that decolonisation
represents justice, and that colonised elites equally
romanced the notion of the modern secular state – what
was at stake was participation in international society,
rather than the conditions of it
4. This myth of international society has concealed the
particularist interest behind all national government
formation
The need for Frontier Logic
6. The State-in-Society model questions neither the
desirability of the state form, nor its basic definition.
7. Quasi-State model fails to appreciate that all states rely on
manufacturing legitimacy both internally and at the level of
the International. It also fails to acknowledge the extent to
which the ‘rules of the game’ are set by the interest of
hegemons.
8. Even the critical stance that colonial states were
essentially coercive business ventures run through local
agents (and not much changed when hand-over
happened), fails to acknowledge the coercive nature of all
states and the increasing withering of the ‘contractual
model’ of state legitimacy in the West
Statelessness and Territorial Integrity
 Tension between the rights of people within existing
nation-states and the rights of states to territorial integrity
 Declaration on Friendly Relationships (1970)
 The reality is that states interpret international law, and
recognise the rights of people living with their territory
only insofar as it doesn’t diminish the powers of the state
 Hence refugees can be pronounced ‘illegal’ to justify
essentially racist behaviour which flies in the face of
international convention
 Because of its origin in liberal contract theory an ethical
dimension is given to this denial of human dignity and
rights
Politics of the Governed
 A shift occurred from a conception of democratic politics grounded in
the idea of popular sovereignty to one in which democratic politics is
shaped by governmentality.
 Two corresponding peoples: citizens and populations
 Two corresponding times: homogeneous time (of capital) and
heterogeneous time (of politics or governmentality)
 Two corresponding kinds of seriality : unbounded (nations, citizens,
cultures) and bounded (social science categories accompanied by
integers)
 ‘Population’ carries with it none of the ethical connotations of
citizenship. Mechanism of governing – to look after and control. This
brings the governed into a political relationship with the state, but one
far from participation
Statelessness and the State of Exception
The stateless person as the citizen’s ‘Other’ (following Ashis Nandy):
• The presence of the Other is needed to re-affirm the self.
• But the relationship of the citizen to their Other is not stable, and in this case
is one of denial – it is not helpful to construct what the citizen is not.
• The ‘state’ of exception (Giorgio Agamben following Carl Schmitt): “The
exception explains the general and itself. And when one really wants to study
the general, one need only look around for real exception…”.
• Patriot Act, SARS, swine flu, HIV, et cetera.
• The citizen, in their confrontation with the stateless Other, is reminded of their
own estrangement from the state and their own supposed support and
protection in an age of diminishing rights.
• Detention and hospitality.