ABSTRACT
PAUL HIRST We still tend to think of politics in terms of what I shall call the ‘flags of all nations’ model. Politics is of course a much contested concept, but in this model it is perceived as state-centric and every inch of the globe is the territory of some state or another. We know that states differ in size and form, from continental-scale states such as Russia or the USA to small Pacific island statelets like Fiji. Since the 1950s, when as a boy I began collecting the cigarette card set of Flags of All Nations, the number of formally sovereign entities has risen to some 190. Political science has tended to follow folk wisdom in this matter, concentrating on politics within relatively homogeneous state-societies, and leaving politics beyond the state to a related sub-discipline, International Relations.
