Event Date: October 30, 2019 - 11:00 to - 12:30
Location: FSS5028, 120 University Private, Ottawa

Presented by CIPS

This talk address the puzzle that motivates Chowdhury’s book: most states in the international system are “weak” states—states unable to monopolize violence or provide public goods, and yet the nation-state remains the primary organizational form for world politics. The book specifies the conditions under which citizens are willing to disarm and pay the high level of taxes that exemplify European-style “strong” states. It then shows that these conditions—namely, costly war and empire—could not be repeated beyond a certain level of destruction. This enables us to see why states everywhere face popular dissatisfaction with their performance and why addressing this dissatisfaction—through institutional alternatives to the state like the European Union, or through higher taxation—is so difficult.

Arjun Chowdhury is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Myth of International Order (Oxford, 2018), which won best book awards from the American Political Science Association and the European Consortium for Political Research.