This chapter provides a rough summary of how the United States came to be a federation of states rather than a unitary nation. To that end, it offers a thumbnail sketch of the timeline from the British colonial period to adoption of the US Constitution. The debates at the constitutional convention and the advocacy in both the Federalist and Antifederalist Papers are highlighted, with particular emphasis on the role of state sovereignty and the menu of choices that were open to the framers.

This is the first of two chapters that relate the myriad ways in which state government has impeded true democracy in the United States. In this chapter, the focus is on those counter-majoritarian distortions that are hardwired into the Constitution. These structural barriers to majority rule include equal representation of small states and large states in the US Senate; the Electoral College; the constitutional provision under which a majority of state delegations to the US House of Representatives choose the president when there is no Electoral College majority; and the processes for appointing federal judges and amending the Constitution.

The danger to democratic norms aside, this chapter demonstrates that state government is also a needless source of additional regulation, additional taxation, and inefficient duplication of functions – in short, a waste of taxpayer money and a pointless burden on the citizenry. Yet, many of the specific functions currently performed by state governments are essential. The abolition of state government would therefore require the redistribution of those necessary functions between the national government and the local governments. This chapter demonstrates that such a redistribution would be administratively workable. To show this, it formulates general criteria for deciding which functions should go where and offers illustrations of how those criteria might be applied to specific functions in practice.

This chapter discusses the many counter-majoritarian actions of state legislatures and state executive branch officials and elaborates the profound impact of those actions on the functioning of US democracy. These include gerrymandering, nine common voter suppression strategies, and various other less-publicized manipulations of the electoral process. Too often, it will be seen, state governments have purposely targeted African American and other minority voters, threatening to undo decades of social progress.

Abolishing states would not be the end of the matter; the country’s leaders would have to make a number of fundamental secondary decisions. Someone would ultimately have to decide which of the essential functions currently performed by state government should be nationalized, which ones should be localized, and, as to the latter, how the various local functions are to be further distributed among the many different species of local governments – municipalities, counties, townships, special purpose districts, and unincorporated areas. Who should select the decision-maker? Decisions would also be needed as to the processes and responsibilities for replacing the states’ current roles in national elections, in supplying the bulk of the country’s judges, and in the constitutional amendment process. This chapter considers the options for filling those voids. In the process, it offers a portrait of what a unitary American republic might look like without state government.

This introductory chapter articulates the main thesis and summarizes the arguments that support it. It lays out the reasons that the thesis is important, describes what the book adds to the existing literature, explains some critical terms and concepts, and adds necessary disclaimers.

Unlike the preceding chapters, which focus on the democratic and fiscal costs of state government, Chapter 5 addresses the offsetting direct benefits that states and/or federalism have been claimed to bring. The two most popular such defenses tend to be the diffusion of government power and the ability of states to tailor laws and policies to the demands of their respective populations, but there are several others as well. The discussion here evaluates those defenses. It concludes that, despite their facial appeal, the various defenses turn out to be either very minor or, while significant, replicable at least as well by the national government in some cases and local governments or inter-government partnerships in others.

States interact with their national communities abroad in very different ways. In some cases, they actively support and protect them. In other cases, they co-opt and exploit their national communities abroad in that they reach out to them in order to tap into, thus benefitting domestically, from their economic and financial potentials or to garner political support. In still other cases, they repress or coerce their communities abroad, thus conceiving the latter not as an asset but as a possible challenge or threat that needs to be controlled. Against this background, the chapter first explores the general motivations and objectives as to why states interact with their national communities abroad, in the form of “support,” “co-optation,” and “repression.” Then, it discusses key practices that states employ in this interaction, along three substantive dimensions, namely: diplomacy and consular, economy and social, and security. Next, possible drivers that condition whether, how, and for what reason states interact with their communities abroad are presented. This is followed by a discussion on how the countries covered in this volume were selected. The concluding section presents the plan of the book and briefly summarizes the individual chapters.

Chapter 5 is the second of three chapters laying a basic foundation in German law and politics. The chapter presents the key institutions of German politics and law. It starts with a presentation of the German states and federalism. It then focuses on the strength of the chancellor in governance, including law-making and executive power. The chapter then presents the German judicial system, presenting the decentralized and specialized nature of the German judicial framework.

This Introduction begins by outlining what is meant by international relations. It then tells the story of how and why the academic study of international relations emerged in the early twentieth century before considering the need to ‘globalise’ the study of international relations – to make it an academic discipline more open to non-Western perspectives. It sketches the changing agenda of international relations, a shift that some scholars describe as a transition from international relations to world politics or from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘new’ agenda. Although there is little doubt that, as political reality has changed, new theoretical tools have become necessary to grasp it, we should not assume that the myriad changes in our world have rendered the ‘traditional’ agenda obsolete. As we shall see, the ‘new’ agenda supplements, but does not supplant, the ‘traditional’ agenda. It is now more important than ever to consider the relationships between ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ agendas, and to globalise IR.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the ethics and laws of war. The first part outlines what international law and the ‘just war’ tradition say about war; the second explores the conduct of war; and the third examines two recent dilemmas as examples of moral and legal debate: the legitimacy of pre-emptive self-defence and the use of cluster bombs.

The discipline of International Relations owes its origins to the study of war and peace. But are today’s wars so different from their predecessors that we need a new mindset? To answer that question, this chapter begins with warfare’s diverse ends and means before considering five leading issues: the role of violence in warfare; the extent to which that violence is organised; the political nature of war; the interactive nature of warfare; and the scope and scale of war. The argument presented here is that war’s essential features have not changed as much as we might think. This should make us sceptical about claims that the role of war in international relations has somehow been revolutionised.

This chapter tracks the emergence and acceleration of global environmental problems since the end of World War II and delineates the field of global environmental politics. It also introduces the proposed new geological epoch called ‘the Anthropocene’ and the concept of planetary boundaries along with the key global environmental discourses of limits to growth/degrowth, sustainable development/green growth, ecological security and environmental justice. The chapter then examines how scholars working in the major theoretical traditions of International Relations – realism, liberalism, Critical Theory, constructivism and English School theory – have approached global environmental challenges. The conclusion reflects on the pivotal roles of the United States and China in tackling global warming.

This chapter examines the rise and growth of human rights. First, it discusses the historical development of human rights. Second, it outlines how human rights are understood today. Third, it explains how the liberal universalism that lies behind human rights has come up against cultural resistance. Finally, the chapter touches on some challenges that lie ahead in the struggle for human rights.

This chapter gives an overview of the theory and practice of global climate politics. First, it provides a brief history of the politics of climate change as they play out in the international negotiations on the issue overseen by the United Nations . Second, it looks at the formal organisational and institutional structures that exist to manage the international community’s response to climate change. Third, it reviews the ways in which different theories of International Relations have been applied to climate change, assessing both their potential and their limitations. Finally, the conclusion offers some thoughts on the evolving nature of the ‘global’ governance of climate change.

The first section of this chapter looks at how the two terms ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ came to be defined as distinct from each other in the context of the modern state. The second examines how states define and categorise refugees through laws that seek to contain and limit their flow. The third section is concerned with the consequences of limiting the definition of a refugee, which has led to an unequal burden between developed and developing states. The final section will canvass the various options presented to reduce the present imbalance where the vast majority of the world’s refugees eke out an existence in refugee camps in developing countries. Ultimately, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that the choices made by states in border protection become the key determinants of how refugees will be accepted. Adherence to international refugee law will not necessarily address all the problems associated with refugees, but nor will seeing refugees as unwanted intruders in contrast to ‘desirable’ migrants.