Rethinking states in international politics: Introduction
| Published date | 01 June 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088215573093 |
| Author | Antonio Franceschet |
| Date | 01 June 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium: Rethinking states in international politics |
Journal of International Political Theory
2015, Vol. 11(2) 203 –205
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088215573093
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Rethinking states in
international politics:
Introduction
Antonio Franceschet
University of Calgary, Canada
Now more than half a millennium since its invention, the sovereign state still dominates
international political theory. Not long ago, Alexander Wendt observed that “states still
are at the center of the international system, and as such it makes no more sense to criti-
cize a theory of international politics as ‘state-centric’ than it does to criticize a theory of
forests for being ‘tree-centric’” (1999: 9). Our minds inhabit the state. Whether we fol-
low Wendt’s social constructivist path or head in some other direction, international
political theorists tend to dwell on the trees and in the forest.
At times constraining, at others liberating, thinking about the state is a political and
ethical activity. If we take the state for granted, then our decisions and actions reflect a
thoughtless choice. To accept the state as a permanent, timeless theoretical axiom in the
discipline’s stories and science risks eliminating our responsibility to imagine better
political worlds. But there is an opposite worry: If we disregard the state, pretending that
it does not house our daily activities and mental states, then we are also helpless. If we
fail to sharpen our accounts of the state’s origins, evolution, and contemporary effects on
the world, then we settle for the powerlessness that comes from ignorance. As an idea, as
a practice, and as an ideological project, then, we should not just think about the state—
we should rethink it.
The articles in this symposium rethink specific aspects of sovereign statehood. We
each deliberately approach the enormity of the state—its manifold presence in the world—
by focusing on a particular theoretical problem of state practice. Thus, our symposium
does not presume a massive gap in theoretical knowledge about the state. Rather than
offering another panoramic view of the forest, one that would rival grand theorists such as
Wendt, the four articles that follow are bounded portraits of sovereign statehood.
Each author rethinks the dominant, liberal conception of statehood. Without plumbing
the metaphysical depths of the state’s corporate agency, the articles isolate four types of
state action: existence, caring, disobedience, and outlawry. Together, these activities
Corresponding author:
Antonio Franceschet, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2K 1Y6, Canada.
Email: afrances@ucalgary.ca
573093IPT0010.1177/1755088215573093Journal of International Political TheoryFranceschet
research-article2015
Symposium: Rethinking states in international politics
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