No End in Sight

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Other States grade: 17 The Open University language: English abstract: The often abstract sounding term called 'the international' could be made better sense of if it is to be conceived of as a system. As such it functions because socially organized entities (currently nation-states) are affected by mutual social interaction on political socio-cultural economic and technological levels. This kind of interaction among those entities or more precisely the seeds of current social order can be traced back to pre-modern times when agriculture facilitated settlement and communities formed as a consequence (Bromley and Brown 2004 p. 3).A key event in specific communal organisation is the rise of the sovereign nation-state an outcome - most are convinced - of the Peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. This development was so successful that the sovereign social organisation of communities is still the most common form and up to this day determines relations at all levels within the international system (Bromley and Brown 2004 p. 3). While the nation-state can claim authority to regulate domestic political life and social interaction it lacks a comparable authority in the international realm. Any interactions - be they social political or economic - among nation-states are therefore taking place in an anarchic as opposed to a hierarchic environment. In order to be able to analyse interaction among states or simply put international politics a framework can be modeled that is informed by observations and abstractions which are derived from actual and perished societies represented as the problematic of the international (Bromley and Brown 2004 p. 3). The problematic of the international also includes the studying of interaction of various socially organized entities (not merely nation-states) - so-called geopolitics - and so reveals agents transforming characters