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 25
... multinational system Long-run outcomes as a function of mobilization m A 5 × 5 imperial system The power balance between the center and the periphery The probabilistic rules of center-periphery interaction The history of a system with ...
... multinational states and multistate nations. While Germany's reunification constitutes a major move toward national consolidation, both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are nation-building failures. Of course, these examples constitute ...
... multinational states. This taxonomy helps to identify three types of nationalism that arose first in Western Europe, Central/Southern Europe, and Eastern Europe. The last section provides an overview of the last two modeling chapters in ...
... multinational elite has to consider external challenges to state sovereignty. This dilemma makes mobilization a precarious process, at least under the conditions of provocation theory. An empirical section illustrates the model's logic ...
... multinational state,” or “imperial state” whenever applicable, to designate states that do not live up to the ethnic homogeneity required by the nation-state category (see definitional discussions in chapters 6 and 7). Such fragmented ...
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 |