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
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... presents a series of models that separate the state from the nation and incorporates these as emergent rather than preconceived actors. The models draw on both formal and constructivist theories in an attempt to integrate them. This ...
... present era. The post–cold war period exhibits remarkable complexity and change. The dominance of the two superpowers has been replaced by a more complicated power distribution involving an open-ended set of players. The United States ...
... present situation forces the IR theorist to aim at a moving target. To hard-wire actors and specific strategic exchanges into the theoretical framework defeats the purpose of understanding historical novelty. Instead of presupposing ...
... present a series of models that represent both states and nations as inherently history-dependent actors. In addition to stressing their emergence, the proposed formal frameworks also distinguish clearly between states and nations as ...
... present, and by the mental construction of a course of events which is altered through modification in one or more 'conditions'” (173).Equipped with such abstract devices, the researcher is in a position to examine “judgments of ...
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 |