Westphalia, Authority, and International Society

The Peace of Westphalia, the 1648 settlement of the Thirty Years War, now eponymous among scholars for our system of sovereign states, is 350 years old. Audacious claimants of change commemorate this birthday as a funeral rite. They speak grandly, of our own times as interesting times, of sovereignty's erosion, of moving beyond Westphalia, of a new medievalism, all realized through the expansion of the European Union, the rise of internationally sanctioned intervention, and governments' loss of control over goods, money, migrants, investment, drugs, and terrorists ± moving across borders, ever quickening. Predictably, to others, this talk is fustian. None of the Westphalia settlement's words is lapidary: The rise of state sovereignty at Westphalia, the robustness of state sovereignty since Westphalia, and the fall of state sovereignty today are all overrated. If the seers are right, then Westphalia is properly commemorated, and our times interesting. Changes in international politics after the Cold War are more fundamental than the usual sorts of changes that follow the usual major wars: crownings of new hegemons, constructions of new schemes for maintaining peace and order, and ascents of new victors of the game with new styles of play. If the seers are right, we are seeing a new game, one with new players and new rules, indeed, as I shall argue, a revision in the constitutional authority underlying international relations. Our literature, though, lacks a concept that would tell us whether this sort of change is taking place, and if so, how it compares in quality and scale with previous changes in international authority.