|
…. Walker and Richard Ashley have argued in several issues that
IR has historically been based upon a sophisticated binary opposition
of international-domestic politics, where the representation of
international relations as the domain of violent, hostile, anarchic
activity relies upon the opposite picture of the domestic arena
as one of peace, domesticity and orderly progress. …….
….
State sovereignty has a special status within IR theory because
it has been so important in founding modern concepts of political
identity, as we have seen with Realist
theory. Often defined as the exercise of power within a delimited
territory, state sovereignty implies an oppositional model of
an inside/outside for political government. Consequently, the
state on the 'inside' is seen as a stable community and is given
positive priority over the anarchical, unruly and turbulent international
'outside'. 'Inside' is regarded as a sphere of steady electoral
politics, while the 'outside' is construed as the disturbance
of politics. Although this model has been a powerful idea in providing
us with political identities by erecting boundaries between 'us'
and 'them', Walker is concerned to deconstruct this illusory dichotomy
and move beyond state sovereignty. Yet he poses no simple alternative
to the modern state, since he argues that the opposition of time-space
is so deeply rooted with in the modern state that this dichotomy
itself would have to be deconstructed before a new conception
of the state might emerge.
from "Beginning Postmodernism", by Tim Woods,
Manchester University Press, 1999, p 246.
Comment. - This clearly shows the problem for world peace and
development - how can these come when even the poorest countries
firmly believe that their politicians, legal systems, and nationhood
is 'better' than those of their nearest neighbours 'outside'.
They may simultaneously have totally unrealistic dream and fantasies
about the 'far away' nations like the USA . These are the challenges
of development goals and international systems.
|