Björn Hammar

Theodore Christov, Before Anarchy. Hobbes and His Critics in Modern International Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015. 297 páginas. ISBN 9781107114531.

Review of: Theodore Christov, Before Anarchy. Hobbes and His Critics in Modern International Thought

Transformación y naturaleza de los entes políticos en nuevos órdenes mundiales

The use of the word «empire» has been increasing in academic, political and journalistic contexts for the last 15 years. In spite of the several and varied attempts to renovate the analysis of International Policy Studies with the recourse to new ideas about imperial orders, the conception of the most basic political entities has been unaffected by these very ideas. The meanings presently atributed to «empire» in political language have remained in tune with several assumptions, inherited from state-centred traditions of Foreign Affairs Studies, which are difficult to match with the possible theoretic-political contributions of the concept of empire. Some sub-fields of International Studies, such as Strategic Studies, get into similar troubles when they intend to analyse «new world orders» without dispensing with the old tenets about the nature of the sovereign state. The concept of «empire» tends to be used today as synonymous of a very powerful state, without further interrogation about the implications this concept can put forward for the Political Theory of International Relationships and for entities such as sovereign states.