How Ideas RuIe the World

"The Religious Roots of Modern International Relations" by Daniel Philpott, in World Politics (Jan. 2000), Bendheim Hall, Princeton Univ., Princeton, N.J. 08544. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ended ereign territorial states. More than 350 the era of religious wars in Europe and years later, argues Philpott, a political scibrought into being the modern system of sov-entist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the treaty remains relevant in a way that is not widely appreciated: It shows the momentous influence that ideas—in this case, religious ideas—can have in international affairs.

Though most political scientists maintain that the Westphalian system emerged as a result of the states’ gradual accumulation of armed might, wealth, and other forms of power, Philpott contends that the Protestant Reformation was "a central cause."

Without the Reformation, he says, medieval impediments to a system of sovereign states would have remained: "the substantive powers of the Holy Roman Empire and its emperor, the formidable temporal powers of the church, religious uniformity, truncations of the sovereign powers of secular rulers, [and] Spain’s control of the Netherlands." Protestantism, Philpott writes, "challenged all temporal powers of the church and the empire," the latter of which was born by papal decree under Charlemagne in the ninth century and reached its fullest extent over much of Christian Europe during the 13th century.

Only where a strong clash between Protestants and Catholics over the political order took place, Philpott says, did an interest in the Westphalian notion of sovereign statehood develop. The German Protestant states and the northern provinces of the Netherlands, which were partly independent "protostates," wanted full independence. Already-independent France (which kept its Catholic monarchy but, after a civil war, opted for religious toleration) and independent Sweden wanted sovereign statehood for the rest of Europe. England and Denmark lent diplomatic support to the antiimperial powers. But "none of the Catholic polities, the Catholic German principalities, Spain, Italy, or Poland, developed any interest at all in a system of sovereign states," notes Philpott. "They remained allies" of the Holy Roman Empire.

The case of Spain, early modern Europe’s strongest state, presents, Philpott believes, an especially damning argument against the conventional view that the impetus for modern statehood grew solely from polities’ rising material power. "Like other European states, Spain gained strength in the 15th century, unifying its territory and experiencing, by some measures, the earliest and most rapid growth of any contemporary European state. It expanded its military...to 150,000 [troops] in the 1550s (three times that of France), established an overseas empire that fed it hordes of silver and gold, and enlarged its treasury and royal bureaucracy. Yet the Spanish colossus never sought or fought for a Westphalian system of states and was indeed its arch-opponent, regarding it as heresy."

If ideas—not just material forces— played a crucial role in the emergence of sovereign territorial states nearly four centuries ago, Philpott concludes, then other ideas may have a similar importance today. Ironically, he points out, ideas about human rights and democracy, and about federalism, now are encouraging movement away from sovereignty, in such "contemporary trends...as internationally sanctioned intervention and the expansion of the European Union."