POLS 2940 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Israeli Jews, Palestinians, Fax
20 May 2018
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The State
Chapter Summary
I. T H E S T A T E A N D T H E N A T I O N
• For an entity to be considered a state, four fundamental conditions must be met
(although these legal criteria are not absolute):
o A state must have a territorial base.
o A stable population must reside within its borders,.
o There should be a government to which this population owes allegiance.
o A state has to be recognized diplomatically by other states.
• A nation is a group of people who share a set of characteristics. At the core of the
concept of a nation is the notion that people having commonalities owe their allegiance
to the nation and to its legal representative, the state.
o The recognition of commonalities among people spread with new
technologies and education. With improved methods of transportation and
invention of the printing press, people could travel, witnessing firsthand
similarities and differences among peoples.
• Some nations, liked Denmark and Italy, formed their own states.
• This coincidence between state and nation, the nation-state, is the foundation for
national self-determination, the idea that peoples sharing nationhood have a right to
determine how and under what conditions they should live.
• Other nations are spread among several states; in these cases, the state and the nation
do not coincide.
o It may be a state with several nations, like South Africa and India.
o In the case of the United States and Canada, the state and nation do not
coincide, yet a common identity and nationality is forged over time, even in
the absence of religious, ethnic, or cultural similarity.
o In the United States, national values reflecting commonly held ideas are
expressed in public rituals.
• Not all ethno nationalists aspire to the same goals.
o Some want recognition of unique status
o Some seek solutions in federal arrangements
o A few prefer irredentism: joining with fellow ethno nationalists in other
states to create a new state
• Disputes over state territories and the desires of nations to form their own states have
been major sources of instability and even conflict.
o Of these territorial conflicts, none has been more intractable as the conflict
between the Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, who each claim the same
territory.
o Five interstate wars have been fought and two uprisings by the Palestinian
people within the territory occupied by Israel have occurred since the
formation of the state of Israel in 1948.
o Should Israel and Palestinian territories be divided into two separate,
independent states?
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I I . C O N T E N D IN G C O N C E P T U A L I Z A T I O N S O F T H E S T A T E
• The Realist View of the State
o Realists hold a state-centric view: the state is an autonomous actor
constrained only by the structural anarchy of the international system.
o As a sovereign entity, the state has a consistent set of goals—that is a national
interest—defined in terms of power. Once the state acts, it does so as an
autonomous, unitary actor.
• The Liberal View of the State
o The state enjoys sovereignty but is not an autonomous actor. The state is a
pluralist arena whose function is to maintain the basic rules of the game.
o There is no explicit or consistent national interest; there are many. These
interests often change and compete against each other within a pluralistic
framework.
• The Radical View of the State
o The instrumental Marxist view sees the state as the executing agent of the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie reacts to direct societal pressures, especially to
pressures from the capitalist class.
o The structural Marxist view sees the state as operating within the structure of
the capitalist system. Within that system, the state is driven to expand,
because of the imperatives of the capitalist system.
o In either view is there a national interest or real sovereignty, as the state is
continually reacting to external capitalist pressures.
• The Constructivist View of the State
o National interests are neither material nor given. They are ideational and
continually changing and evolving, both in response to domestic factors and
in response to international norms and ideas.
o States have multiple identities, including a shared understanding of national
identity, which also changes, altering state preferences and hence state
behavior.
• Contrasting the Various Views of the State: The Example of Oil
o A realist interpretation posits a uniform national interest that is articulated by
the state. Oil is vital for national security; thus, the state desires stability in
oil’s availability and price.
o Liberals believe that multiple national interests influence state actions:
consumer groups, manufacturers, and producers. The state itself has no
consistent viewpoint about the oil; its task is to ensure that the playing field is
level and the rules are the same for all players. There is also no single or
consistent national interest.
o In the radical perspective, oil policy reflects the interests of the owner
capitalist class aligned with the bourgeoisie and reflects the structure of the
international capitalist system. The negotiating process is exploitative for the
advancement of capitalist states.
o Constructivists may try to tease out how the identities of states are
constructed around having a valuable resource.
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I I I . T H E N A T U R E O F S T A T E P O W E R
• States are critical actors because they have power, which is the ability not only to
influence others but to control outcomes so as to produce results that would not have
occurred naturally.
• Power itself is multi-dimensional; there are different kinds of power.
• Natural Sources of Power
o Whether power is effective at influencing outcomes depends on the power
potential of each party. A state’s power potential depends on its natural
sources of power. The three most important natural sources of power are:
1. Geographic size and position: a large geographic expanse gives a
state automatic power, although long borders must be defended and
may be a weakness.
1. Alfred Mahan (1840-1914) argued that the state that
controls the ocean routes controls the world.
2. Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) argued that the state
that had the most power was the one that controlled the
heartland.
2. Natural resources: Petroleum-exporting states like Kuwait and
Qatar, which are geographically small but have greater power than
their sizes would suggest.
0. Having a sought-after resource may prove a liability
making states targets for aggressive actions.
1. The absence of natural resources does not mean that a state
has no power potential; Japan is not rich in resources but is
still an economic powerhouse.
3. Population: sizable populations give power potential and great
power status to a state. However, states with small, highly educated,
skilled populations such as Switzerland can fill large political and
economic niches.
• Tangible Sources of Power
o Industrial development: with advanced industrial capacity (such as air travel),
the advantages and disadvantages of geography diminish.
o With industrialization, the importance of population is modified: large but
poorly equipped armies are no match for small armies with advanced
equipment.
o Radicals believe that differences in who has access to the source of tangible
power lead to the creation of different classes, some more powerful than
others.
• Intangible Sources of Power
o National image: people within states have images of their state’s power
potential—images that translate into an intangible power ingredient.
o Public support: a state’s power is magnified when there appears to be
unprecedented public support. For example, China’s power was magnified
under Mao Zedong because there was unprecedented public support for the
communist leadership.
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