Abstract
Of the minting of new sovereignties there is no end. A kind of Gresham’s Law has seemed to operate in the post-Second-WorldWar world. Bad ideas of what it takes to make a state have sometimes driven out good ideas. As Hedley Bull, who like Bruce Miller has argued strongly and effectively for the continued centrality of ‘the state’ in comprehending the contemporary world political system, has written, there has been ‘a certain debasing of the currency of statehood’.1 This essay examines the extent of the debasing and the gravity of the problem as it affects relations between the West and the Third World.
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Notes
Hedley Bull, ‘The State’s Positive Role in World Affairs’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, CVIII no 4 (Fall, 1979, The State) p. 112;
J. D. B. Miller, The World of States: Connected Essays ( London: Croom Helm, 1981 ).
See F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963 ) pp. 153–5.
See William T. R. Fox, ‘The Super-powers Then and Now’, International Journal XXXV, no 3 (Summer, 1980: Superpower Diplomacy) pp. 417–36.
Frederick S. Dunn, ‘The Scope of International Relations’, World Politics, I, no 1 (October, 1948 ) pp. 142–6.
See Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1959 ).
See W. Howard Wriggins, The Ruler’s Imperative: Strategies for Political Survival in Asia and Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969 ).
J. D. B. Miller, The Politics of the Third World (London: Oxford University Press, 1967 ).
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© 1990 Robert O’Neill and R. J. Vincent
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Fox, W.T.R. (1990). Sovereign Equality, the First World and the Third. In: O’Neill, R., Vincent, R.J. (eds) The West and the Third World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09328-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09328-1_3
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