Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and DissolvePrinceton University Press, 2020 M09 1 - 290 pages The disappearance and formation of states and nations after the end of the Cold War have proved puzzling to both theorists and policymakers. Lars-Erik Cederman argues that this lack of conceptual preparation stems from two tendencies in conventional theorizing. First, the dominant focus on cohesive nation-states as the only actors of world politics obscures crucial differences between the state and the nation. Second, traditional theory usually treats these units as fixed. Cederman offers a fresh way of analyzing world politics: complex adaptive systems modeling. He provides a new series of models--not ones that rely on rational-choice, but rather computerized thought-experiments--that separate the state from the nation and incorporate these as emergent rather than preconceived actors. This theory of the emergent actor shifts attention away from the exclusively behavioral focus of conventional international relations theory toward a truly dynamic perspective that treats the actors of world politics as dependent rather than independent variables. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 51
... assume the actors are exogenously given before analyzing their behavior. The general bewilderment surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union reveals the limitations of this assumption. Preoccupied with behavioral-research puzzles ...
... assumes away historical accidents. In some cases, this simplification is warranted, but the emergent perspective on political institutions and culturally defined groups adopted here is badly served by such a contingency-free approach to ...
... assumes the existence of a self-feeding process of conquest that sometimes leads to “hegemonic takeoffs.” Neorealism cannot explain the contraction of a massively multipolar system into the traditionally presumed small number of great ...
... assumed to be culturally uniform, political identity-formation assumes a new level of complexity; ethnic variety opens the door for strategic manipulation of political symbols. Because nationalist leaders have a choice among the ...
... assume that states can and should be viewed as coherent actors, moving across the international stage, not unlike the chess pieces to which Wolfers alluded. DEFINING THE STATE AND THE NATION Finding a way out of this impasse calls for a ...
Contents
14 | |
Toward Richer Models | 37 |
Emergent Polarity | 72 |
Extending the Emergent Polarity Model | 109 |
13b The sample system at time 1634 | 132 |
Modeling Nationalism | 136 |
Nationalist Mobilization | 151 |
Nationalist Coordination | 184 |
types | 201 |
Conclusions for Theory and Policy | 213 |
Bibliography | 233 |
Index | 255 |