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. |
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... less well defined than the absolute states that emerged in early modern Europe. Likewise, it is not proper to talk of nationalism as a consciously propagated ideology prior to the French Revolution. As with territorial sovereignty ...
... less sanguine view of the short-term prospects. Provocation theory, finally, argues that the center's attempts to impose its culture are likely to backfire by fueling peripheral nationalist mobilization rather than imperial ...
... less than a theoretical merger of statecentrism and liberal individualism. Arriving at this uncompromising conclusion, Wolfers suggests that “all events occurring in the international arena must be conceived of and understood from two ...
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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 |