Dans le cadre du Groupe de recherche International, Politics, Philosophy du CERI, en partenariat avec le SPOT Seminar de Théorie Politique de l'École doctorale de Sciences Po.

Hierarchies after Empire: Self-determination and the Constitution of Inequality

Maja Spanu de Cambridge University interviendra sur le thème de l'autodétermination.

Whereas International Relations scholars and international lawyers have conceived self-determination serving to constitute an egalitarian post-imperial international system via the principle of sovereign equality, I argue that self-determination is in fact bound up with hierarchy. My paper reveals the existence of a tension between the egalitarian aspiration of self-determination and practices attached to its realisation that create stratifications between older and newer states as well as within the latter. The tension plays out around what I see are the three historical components relating to self-determination practices: people, rights and responsibilities. While these components have been recurrent, the principles of stratification attached to them have changed over time. These are specific standards of membership in the international system of states as well as post-imperial politics of state-formation undertaken domestically. I substantiate these points by examining the three twentieth century waves of state formation after empire: after World War I, during the post-World War II decolonisation, and with the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Greater attention to the ambivalent history of self-determination coheres with recent interest in the study of hierarchy in world politics whilst speaking to literatures on the making of the international system and on state-formation.

Discutant :
Ayrton Aubry, Sciences Po - CERI

Responsable scientifique : Ariel Colonomos, Sciences Po-CERI/CNRS