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How States Die: Membership and Survival in the International System

Online ISBN:
9780197805053
Print ISBN:
9780197805015
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

How States Die: Membership and Survival in the International System

Published online:
24 February 2025
Published in print:
1 May 2025
Online ISBN:
9780197805053
Print ISBN:
9780197805015
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

In How States Die, Douglas Lemke investigates patterns associated with the deaths of states. He broadens the focus from sovereign states to include territorial contenders, and from externally imposed deaths to include states dying from internal processes. How States Die tests hypotheses about state death from a wide range of theories: state making theory, theories about international norms, geopolitics, realism, and the English school. Some of the findings support the conventional wisdom (power politics are unrelated to state death but buffer states are especially likely to die), some force reformulations of the conventional wisdom (the norm against conquest is associated with longer life only for territorial contenders), and some are completely new (conflict experiences are powerful correlates of state death). In addition to offering a new way to study state death, Lemke’s combination of types of states and consideration of both internal and external political processes offers a new way to study international relations more broadly.

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