Rethinking Political Order:
The Nation State in the Emerging World

A New Initiative in Political Science at Yale

The world is dramatically different today than it was even 20 years ago. The cold war's end has been followed by an unprecedented wave of democratization and marketization, and the extension of American political, cultural, and economic practices around the globe. These developments have afforded millions of people new opportunities to improve their lives. Markets and democracy come at a price, however, one that is potentially high. In the short term at least, markets increase inequalities of wealth and risk both within and among countries. And as the framers of the U.S. Constitution were aware, democracy can prove tyrannical unless it is supported by institutions that check and limit authority and protect minority rights. Moreover, these innovations are precarious. There are no guarantees against the decay of market systems or the resurgence of authoritarian politics in many parts of the world.

Taking advantage of the benefits of democracy and markets while mitigating the suffering and conflict they make possible are among the great challenges that will confront us in the coming decades. Meeting these challenges will require great effort in many countries. It will also involve fostering a global order in which peaceful progress can occur, and developing as yet untested institutional possibilities. Yale's new initiative in Political Science is intended to advance critical understanding of these challenges, and, we hope, to help confront them in constructive ways.

The authoritative nation state, fulcrum of so much international and domestic politics in the recent past, faces unprecedented stress. Territorial integrity is threatened from within and without. Frightening weapons technologies are spreading to increasing numbers of states. Some international organizations and non-state actors straddle national borders. Other institutions devolve power to regional, local, and even suburban entities. Information and capital flow instantaneously around the globe in ways that no government acting alone can control. Environmental hazards spill across boundaries without regard to the niceties of sovereignty. Democracy enjoys unprecedented worldwide legitimacy, but its primary institutional embodiment -- the nation state --seems decreasingly able to deliver on the normative promise of democratic governance.

The emerging world is one in which material inequality is growing within and among nation states, but also one in which the distributive politics that grew up around the modern welfare state are in considerable flux. It is a world that defies simple dichotomies such as north versus south or east versus west. Parts of what used to be the third world have vibrant industrial economies and sophisticated political systems; in other areas crude repression and grinding poverty persist. Some members of the former Communist bloc will soon belong to NATO; others are developing new allegiances in unpredictable directions. The nationalism that shaped the modern nation-state remains powerful, but it must vie with resurgent ethnic and religious identities -- widely dismissed as vestiges of the premodern era less than a generation ago. It is a world, in short, in which the fundamentals of political order are in question and must be rethought.

The Yale Political Science Department plans to make a series of appointments over the next several years to take a lead in this rethinking. We will run a number of searches focused on some of the central questions of politics as they present themselves today. Our searches will be open with respect to rank, and to applicants from any of the conventional subfields of political science. We will consider people who study any part of the world, and we declare no preference for any particular methodology. Our primary objective is to appoint scholars who can illuminate the emerging political universe in rigorous, systematic, and creative ways.

This approach is motivated by the conviction that the traditional organization of the political science discipline, while valuable for some purposes, confronts limitations in the face of today's challenges. They involve some of the most enduring questions of political philosophy, but in the context of an unprecedented emerging political reality. Considering American politics in a comparative and global context is potentially more productive than it ever has been, given American political hegemony and the influence of the American constitutional model in the democratizing world. But students of American politics also have much to learn from examining their own institutions in light of a better understanding of how the rest of the world works. This makes it vitally important to study the nature and dynamics of American politics, but to do it in ways that can aid, and benefit from, the study of other parts of the world.

By the same token, there are evident limitations to the conventional divisions between the study of international and domestic politics when external developments are central to domestic political decisions, and when domestic choices shape global political interactions. This does not mean that we should abandon the distinction between domestic and international politics. But it does suggest that there are benefits to studying their interaction, and to analyzing the ways in which the same problems are dealt with in national and non-national settings.

Our searches will proceed in the following areas:

Order, Conflict, and Violence

What are the implications of conflict, or its potential, for political order, and what makes conflict more or less prone to become violent? Candidates who promise to deepen our understanding of these issues may study, for example:

Revolution, civil war, genocide, and international war and peace.

The relevance of classical theorists of order and conflict such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Kant.

The evolution of national, non-national, or transnational political orders over time.

The political dimensions of crime.

The role of legitimacy in sustaining or undermining political order.

The state as an instrument of political order.

Representation and Popular Rule

This search is geared to improving our understanding of the systems of representation and popular rule that exist in the world, as well as the systems that might be judged best. Possible concerns might include:

Interest groups, political parties, the relation of representation to taxation, and the role of money in politics.

Different bases for representation, including the nature of the franchise, redistricting, subsidiarity and transnational systems of representation, and concerns about group rights (whether by reference to ethnicity, race, gender, or something else).

Failures of representation, including topics such as why some groups become marginal to the political process, the limits of citizenship and demands for secession, and suburban white flight.

Mass political action or the lack of it, ranging from voting, to protest, to civil disobedience, to revolutionary behavior.

The preconditions for popular rule. These might include economic and cultural conditions, civil society and social capital, or the nature of the public sphere.

Assessing the value of classical insights on these questions, such as those developed by Locke, Burke, de Tocqueville, or Mill.

Distributive Politics

We will consider applicants who promise to enhance our understanding of the impact of the distribution of wealth and risk on politics, or vice versa. Appropriate concerns could include:

The distributional foundations and consequences of different types of political regimes.

Interaction between increasingly global markets and the nation state as the basic unit of political organization.

Rights, entitlements, and the politics of the welfare state.

The theory and practice of collective action.

Normative theories of distributive justice and positive theories of social choice, whether classical or contemporary.

The global distribution of goods and bads.

Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances

This search is concerned with how we should understand the various human attachments that shape, or are shaped by, politics. Possible areas of investigation include:

The usefulness of classical discussions of the sources of political identities such as those of Hegel or Nietzsche, or of contemporary philosophical literature on the sources of the self.

The political psychology of partisanship and ideology.

Ethnicity, race, class, gender, nationalism, and religion as sources of political attachment.

Immigration, displaced persons, refugees and dual citizens.

Identities and allegiances in international politics (what brings states together, keeps them together, and drives them apart).

Crafting and Operating Institutions

The focus of this search is the choice, operation, and evolution of political institutions. Candidates might study:

The development of political institutions over time.

The governance of political institutions above and below the nation state.

The relevance of classical ruminations on institutional choice such as those of Plato, Machiavelli, or the authors of The Federalist; or of contemporary analytical theory.

Parliamentism v. presidentialism, bicameralism v. unicameralism, or confederal, federal, and unitary systems.

Components of institutional regimes such as courts, legislatures, bureaucracies, executives, and subnational governments, as well as their interactions.

The political functions of non-governmental organizations.