ABSTRACT

The international system has become the most unstable of all political systems. Made up of an infinite number of units all of which are evolving, it is changing before our very eyes without us knowing how to extract laws from it or plot its future. When the nation-state triumphed in Europe, notably with the Treaties of Westphalia (1648), a de facto international system was formed which resulted only from the composition of political orders emanating from internal driving forces. The spread of a homogeneous territorial order has in particular led to the universalisation of the national model and to the division of space into finite territories which are institutionalised and presented as legitimate. The picture has now changed. The numerous signs of a decline in the capacity of states inevitably undermine the quality of civil obedience and therefore the quality of their international action. The international space is thus gradually given over to an explosive dynamic fuelled by a cultural pluralism which becomes more powerful every day, while actually being crossed, travelled and indeed articulated by constant transnational flows which are increasingly active and structuring. These changing and deteriorating conditions call for an effort to reconstruct knowledge and practices.