Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants' irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations.
Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants' irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations.
Über den Autor
Alena Drieschova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. She is the co-editor of Conceptualizing International Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and her research has been published in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, International Theory, and Global Environmental Change.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Acknowledgements; Part I: 1. Introduction; 2. Stability and change of international orders; Part II: Introduction: from universal monarchy to territorial balance of power; 3. Monarchia universalis: from ordering principle to threat of order; 4. From international hierarchy to balance of power; 5. Territory as a power resource; Part III: 6. Liberal governance and its contestation in the European Union; 7. Conclusion; Field notes; Interviews; References; Index.
