• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Changing the Rules: Reconceiving Change in the Westphalian System
  • Contributor: Burch, Kurt
  • imprint: Blackwell Publishers, 2000
  • Published in: International Studies Review
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1521-9488; 1468-2486
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <p>Is the Westphalian system changing? Disputes abound. This essay interprets the question of Westphalian change as a question about analytical vocabularies and frameworks. The essay seeks to inform a new vocabulary and to craft an analytical framework sufficiently robust and comprehensive to address large-scale change and to embrace the scope, scale, fluidity, and contested character of Westphalian practices. The method is "close reading" of prominent texts. The essay makes three contributions. First, it elaborates a vocabulary and taxonomy of rules and rule, crafts an analytic framework attentive to forms of social rule, and develops a rule-oriented form of constructivism. Second, the essay illustrates that a rules-orientation is intrinsic to many prevailing views on Westphalia and social change. Third, the essay applies the rules-orientation to material and ideational theories of social change. The essay concludes that one may understand large-scale change in terms of changes in the form of rule. Specifically, global relations among states and corporations increasingly rely upon coordination and collaboration rather than commands.</p>