Analysis of the “Westphalian System”

Modern international relations theory has traditionally designated the peace of Westphalia in 1648 as the birth of the contemporary states-system, which has dominated world politics during the past few centuries. However, scholars today often debate whether or not the ‘Westphalian order’ accurately describes current interactions among various international states in the political arena. Indeed, there even is disagreement over usage of the ‘society of sovereign states’ model to describe the international order since Westphalia. The past decade especially has seen an increasing number of challenges to the Westphalian conception of today’s society.
Westphalia did indeed mark an unprecedented organizational change to the international order, a change that Adam Watson has described as “the movement from the horizontally stratified medieval system to a vertically organized states-system (1992:139-140).” The Westphalian order served as a prescriptive model rather than a d...