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Archive 1

Westphalian sovereignty and Contingent sovereignty needs attention

  • These articles were apparently created as part of a cover history for User:Liliana Dioguardi, who has been suspected to be in the employ of a Kremlin propaganda effort - specifically in her creation and maintenance of the International Council for Democratic Institutions and State Sovereignty article in support of the public legitimacy of that organization. The prominent international news and business magazine The Economist magazine has reported that this organization is likely a front for a Kremlin-sponsored disinformation effort, and has specifically identified the ICDISS article and User:Liliana Dioguardi as part of this effort. See these articles[1][2] and the ICDISS article talk page[3].
  • While these articles seem to be legitimate subjects, Dioguardi is responsible for all, or almost all their content - this makes these articles suspect for NPOV reasons.. I urge Wikipedians with a political theory/history/international relations/international law background to help build these articles beyond their sad "cover story" beginnings. Bwithh 05:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I studied IR to Bachelor's level, but find the summary on http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia of the modern impact to be sufficient; I'll try and have a read through over the weekend if I can, but I'd suggest a redirect with a slightly padded out definition of sovereignty in there. It's definately a very significant treaty but that impact is already discussed in the main article. --195.137.123.244 15:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)-MatGB
  • Hi. I guess I count as an expert here (I'm a political philosopher, and much of my research work is on the problem of Global justice). I'd like to make two points:
    • I agree with the comment above that Peace of Westphalia covers the material here.
    • The 'Opponents' section is absurdly POV - as a cosmopolitan opponent of the Westphalian system myself, I slightly dislike being lumped in with Hitler and Al Qaeda!

Cheers, Sam Clark 15:51, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough - I like the work you've done so far. A small thing, though: isn't 'imagined communities' Benedict Anderson's coinage, not Anthony Giddens's? Cheers, Sam Clark 09:40, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I wasn't aware of this (I saw it in Giddens, but maybe he regarded it as so well-known as not to require attribution). Google shows you're right. Fixed now. JQ 09:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


Me too. Cheers, Sam Clark 08:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

1850?

... forcible intervention by one country in the domestic affairs of another was less frequent in the period between 1850 and 1900 than in most previous and subsequent periods (Leurdijk 1986).

Pardon me, but if it took two hundred years to have this effect, then maybe it wasn't the Peace of Westphalia that did it.

Much of this article seems to be taken up with modern criticism or discussions of the system, not of what it actually is, or how it has historically been interpreted. It almost makes it look like a neologism. Mdotley 03:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Nobody knowledgeable has any time to spare for this article. The obvious flaw pointed out by Mdotley has gone more than half a year without correction. Should it be marked for deletion? --Metaed (talk) 20:06, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Mdotley's point is Original research unless there is a a Reliable source making this criticism, or responding to it. If there is a problem here, it's a problem with the way the concept has been used in the literature, not a problem with the article.JQ (talk) 03:31, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
This is not a problem with the way the concept has been used in the literature. It is bad writing. Poor organization, rambling, and leaving things out.
The article promises to define Westphalian sovereignty and point out what's notable about it. Before we know it, we have gotten to a fact about the effect of the rise of nationalism upon the rate of interventionism in the period 1850–1900, and we're off topic. No facts to explain how that period came to be different from the periods before and after, or what, if anything, Westphalian sovereignty had to do with it. This is what I mean by an obvious flaw.
The article brings in the terms Westphalian system(s), Westphalian doctrine, and Westphalian state without first clearly defining or even differentiating them. Are they synonymous with Westphalian sovereignty? Or is one a concept, another a multinational political system, another a doctrine, and another a type of state? There is a belated attempt at a definition of Westphalian System, but it does not appear until late in the article, long after it has been used.
The article is at odds with itself. It presents controversies about the terms I just mentioned and about the meaning of the treaty itself, but in a disorganized way. It is divided into traditional view, revisionist view, and modern view. But the disputes are distributed under all three headings, and presented as if there are really only two points of view: pro and anti Westphalian sovereignty. The effect is to make it sound as if the following are all the same controversy: whether the Peace of Westphalia was the origin of nation-state sovereignty, whether nation-state sovereignty as it exists today is useful or moral, and whether nation-state sovereignty is eroding.
The article is overloaded with irrelevant controversy. There's plenty of room under Peace of Westphalia for the disagreement over whether it created sovereign nation-states. The debate over globalization is covered elsewhere and could be referenced by a See Also. Let this article explain what is meant by Westphalian sovereignty and what is notable about it. Maybe even present enough facts to make clear what the low rate of interventionism 1850–1900 has to do with it! But if an expert is not going to step up, I would prefer to can the article rather than leave it in this condition. --Metaed (talk) 09:24, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
If you want to improve the article, feel free to get stuck in.JQ (talk) 23:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Let me just note that the Peace of Westphalia article should be about the actual Peace of Westphalia. I don't think there is much of a controversy over whether it created sovereign nation-states among actual historians of the seventeenth century, because it is pretty obvious that it did not. The problem seems to be that there are 3 topics: 1) the actual Peace of Westphalia as a historical event in the 17th century; 2) the imaginary Peace of Westphalia made up by political scientists as the supposed origin of the "sovereign nation-state"; and 3) the concept of "Westphalian sovereignty" discussed by political scientists. The second topic doesn't really fit very well into either article, because it is nonsense. john k (talk) 21:03, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Neutrality tag. This article is massively biased and requires a major redraft as per Mdotley and Metaed . At the vbery least, readers should be warned of the extreme bias in source selection, weasel wording, and emphasis.Historicist (talk) 14:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I've changed this to a cleanup tag, since no particular claim of bias has been made. Obviously, this article could do with some actual work, rather than talk-page complaints.JQ (talk) 19:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Countries stopped interfering in each other's domestic affairs while the Scramble for Africa was going on? I don't know enough about the Peace of Westphalia to edit this, but that point seems highly dubious, or at least distressingly Eurocentric.Meesher (talk) 22:37, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

to 2050

I don't see what the problem is and think the clean up tag should be removed if nothing clear could be said or done in a year. Came here looking for a definition of the "Westphalian System" which was being contrast in a recent work on China with the state-tributary system which a shift of the geocenter to east asia would occasion. Any really good original composition for the article is likely to run into flack so what's there is probably as good as it gets. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 01:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Removed the section on Libya since it is not cited and is flat-out wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.43.239 (talk) 17:09, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposals

This article seems OK to me. Wikipedia is littered with redundant articles on the same subject, including Sovereignty and Sovereign state. The other articles are very problematic, and I think they should be carefully merged into this one (losing all the unsourced and OR material from those other articles.) Joe Bodacious (talk) 12:59, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Whatever about the problems with the sovereignty article, this article is worse, so I really can't see how this article is somehow the solution.
Insofar as both this article and Sovereign state both deal (or attempt to deal) with the concept of the state within the modern public international law, this article should be merged there, not the other way around. Sovereignty should be left where it is but improved. — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 16:44, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Thumbs up icon --Adv.tksujith (talk) 02:11, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thumbs down icon I think Westphalian sovereignty is a particular type of sovereignty within the wider topic of sovereignty itself. Medieval methods of governance would be an exercise in non-Westphalian form of sovereignty. --Nug (talk) 18:55, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Thumbs down icon I've responded earlier at Talk:Sovereignty#Absolute vs. shared sovereignty. Don't merge here (maybe merge somewhere else). --Kubanczyk (talk) 15:02, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Yet another related article is Monopoly on violence. That's a potential merge candidate. Non-state actor is also relevant, as is Failed state, and even Warlord. In today's wars, there are lots of people running around with guns who aren't affiliated with the army of a recognized sovereign state. Many articles in Parameters, the journal of the U.S. Army War College[4], try to address this, as the people most involved try to figure out what to do. John Nagle (talk) 06:41, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Legitimacy and Continued Existence of WS?

I'm not sure that anything in the article suggests that this is anything but an academic analysis of international relations. If we ask whether there is any legal or constitutional basis for the proposed relation between nations, or between nations and their citizens, where would we find such a thing, if it even exists?

In "U.S./Iran Schema", I propose that the willing or unwilling consent of various bodies of individuals is in fact the basis of the powers of nations. Where dissent is common and strong enough amongst a body of people, either within a nation or at large in the world, we see the overthrow of governments on the one hand, or global organizations making their presence felt, either in demonstration or in terrorism. Such events and processes can only become more frequent, as there is no "rule of law" for any government to refer to in these matters. The ability for people to communicate internationally, directly and without the "representation" of governments would seem to all but guarantee the end of national sovereignty as outlined here. -- TheLastWordSword (talk) 17:51, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Benedict Anderson

Is Benedict Anderson sufficiently notable to be included in the article, or is this a promotional edit? Joe Bodacious (talk) 13:56, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Benedict Anderson is certainly one of the major theorists of nationalism and I think it's safe to say he was added in good faith. However, it's not really relevant to this article: Anderson's notion of "imagined communities" relates to the concept of nationality more than sovereignty and doesn't really make sense in this article as opposed to that about nation states: Westphalian sovereignty can be and is invoked by other types of states (including virtually all of the major European powers at its peak in the late 19th century) *against* separatist claims by national minorities and irredentist claims by other states. I removed that section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.2.5.179 (talk) 18:09, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Bad use of sources

How can this article cite "The Myth of Westphalia" as support for that myth? Crazy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.69.219.230 (talk) 13:20, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

The article was written by fascist globalists, as can be seen from the wording and bias and what was left out. Probably Jean-Claude Juncker personally or some other corporate-NATO puppet. ^^ — 87.78.162.93 (talk) 14:00, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Barbaric philosophy, lacking wisdom

Chinese scholars and statesmen are resolute in their rejection for this barbaric philosophy formed from wrong thought and greedy intentions. Please remove entry to respect the world's peaceful cultures. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.86.135.53 (talk) 21:14, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

2002 is Recent in 2016?

This article is full of problems pointed out by other Wikipedians, but the last line states that what happened in Somalia 14 years ago is recent, and the current date is 17 November 2016. This at minimum needs a "when?" tag and the article needs cleaned up by someone that understands more about the subject than I do. The quote follows and is supported by reference 19 which states the reference is from 2002. "Some of the recent debate over Somalia is also being cast in these same terms.[19]" HaroldBuddy (talk) 00:36, 18 November 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by HaroldBuddy (talk • contribs) 00:32, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Fascist globalist bias of the article

The article’s wording is strongly biased towards globalist fascism. It only mentions the (pseudo-)positive aspects of globalist fascism and employs strong words to puts counter-positions the corner of nationalism and terrorism. The opposite aspects are systematically left out. When in reality, it is not black and white, and everything has its advantages and its disadvantages, and using though-terminating clichés like association with Nazis to further political agendas, is completely unacceptable for an encyclopedia.
The key missing element is, that the globalist movement has the same ideals as nationalists, but wants to force the own culture upon everyone, even outside of the initiators’ borders, resulting in not just the goose-stepping forced conformity mold of nationalism, but a lowest common denominator rule core, and a large surrounding rule body that fits nobody. On top if this, the current European anti-Westphalian-sovereignity stream originates in fascist-corporate organizations (Luxemburg→Benelux→EG→EU→TTIP/CETA/…) and has the sole purpose of overriding the sovereignty of the representatives of the actual people.
In order to present a balanced neutral view, this needs to be represented in the article as well, if it does not want to come across as biased towards fascism and US-style psychopathic corporatism. (But please don’t overdo it either. Because some people will read what they want to read, I repeat: I’m obviously not advocating nationalism. It is you who act like any form of criticism of globalist fascism is the same thing as 'basically the literal Nazis'. Because apparently, in the US, nobody can think beyond extreme one-dimensional rigid dichotomies anymore. (See: Presidential election))
— 87.78.162.93 (talk) 13:58, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 28 July 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus for move. No consensus after over 1 month at RM. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 01:24, 4 September 2020 (UTC)


Westphalian sovereignty → State sovereignty – State sovereignty is simply the better-known name for the concept; see here. Westphalian sovereignty only started to be used around 2000. Zoozaz1 (talk) 04:14, 28 July 2020 (UTC)—Relisting. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:54, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Comment The difference is that the term state sovereignty redirects here; if someone wants to make an article specifically on state or Westphalian sovereignty, which are slightly different, then that would be the preferred solution, but as of now we are stuck with two very similar topics on the same page, with one of them significantly more well know than the other. Zoozaz1 (talk) 15:44, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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