Description
States are primary actor in international politics. The notion of statehood has been linked to the notion of Westphalian states system and sovereignty. International politics as an independent academic discipline has completed a hundred years. In this period we have seen increasing number of new states in international politics. During the first half of the century self determination was linked only to the European context. The second half of the century has experienced new states due to decolonisation but cold war made the situation worse due to superpower rivalry. Anti imperial struggle united the peoples in the colonies to fight against imperialist powers but now there are separatist tendencies due to under-representation of particular section in that very former colony. Once a colony now it is behaving like an imperialist power which are suppressing its own people. It is important to assess the impact and opportunities offered by that experience. This paper explores how the process of state building and the demand for self-determination may offer a way of reconceptualising the Eurocentric epistemology of statehood in international politics. This paper will argue that self-determination and state building in the twenty-first century provide positive tools to rethink the belongingness and citizenship of the marginalised people by the binary division of self and other in international politics. It will pay particular attention to the concept of self-determination, sovereignty, intra-state violence, the rising demand of the nations and the need to redefine statehood in the twenty-first century.
