The End of the West or Ending Empire

The End of the West?: Crisis and Change in the Atlantic Order

Author: Jeffrey Anderson

The past several years have seen strong disagreements between the U.S. government and many of its European allies, largely due to the deployment of NATO forces in Afghanistan and the commitment of national forces to the occupation of Iraq. News accounts of these challenges focus on isolated incidents and points of contention. The End of the West? addresses some basic questions: Are we witnessing a deepening transatlantic rift, with wide-ranging consequences for the future of world order? Or are today's foreign-policy disagreements the equivalent of dinner-table squabbles? What harm, if any, have recent events done to the enduring relationships between the U.S. government and its European counterparts?

The contributors to this volume, whose backgrounds range from political science and history to economics, law, and sociology, examine the "deep structure" of an order that was first imposed by the Allies in 1945 and has been a central feature of world politics ever since. Creatively and insightfully blending theory and evidence, the chapters in The End of the West? examine core structural features of the transatlantic world to determine whether current disagreements are minor and transient or catastrophic and permanent.

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Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition

Author: Hendrik Spruyt

At the dawn of the twentieth century, imperial powers controlled most of the globe. Within a few decades after World War II, many of the great empires had dissolved, and more recently, multinational polities have similarly disbanded. This process of reallocating patterns of authority, from internal hierarchy to inter-state relations, proved far more contentious in some cases than in others. While some governments exited the colonial era without becoming embroiled in lengthy conflicts, others embarked on courses that drained their economies, compelled huge sacrifices, and caused domestic upheaval and revolution. What explains these variations in territorial policy? More specifically, why do some governments have greater latitude to alter existing territorial arrangements whereas others are constrained in their room for maneuver?

In Ending Empire, Hendrik Spruyt argues that the answer lies in the domestic institutional structures of the central governments. Fragmented polities provide more opportunities for hard-liners to veto concessions to nationalist and secessionist demands, thus making violent conflict more likely. Spruyt examines these dynamics in the democratic colonial empires of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. He then turns to the authoritarian Portuguese empire and the break-up of the Soviet Union. Finally, the author submits that this theory, which speaks to the political dynamics of partition, can be applied to other contested territories, including those at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

About the Author:
Hendrik Spruyt is Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations at Northwestern University. He is the author of The SovereignState and Its Competitors, which won the J. David Greenstone Award given by the History and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

Foreign Affairs

This insightful book explores one of the great dramas of the twentieth century: how imperial powers left their colonial territories. Why were the British able to relinquish control of their empire without getting caught in protracted conflicts, while others — such as the French in Indochina and Algeria — were drawn into long and violent struggles? Spruyt argues that the character of government institutions at the "center" was key. The more fragmented the political system, the greater the opportunities for hard-liners who resisted territorial partition to block policy change. Detailed case histories illuminate the domestic politics of imperial endings. Postwar Britain was an open democracy with a strong executive and extensive military oversight, and so political elites were able to deal with secessionist demands unimpeded by veto groups and entrenched interests. The French Fourth Republic, in contrast, lacked civilian control of the military, and undisciplined political parties provided hard-liners with opportunities to resist changes in the status quo. Spruyt also takes a close look at the unraveling of the Soviet empire — a surprisingly swift and peaceful divestiture of territorial control.

What People Are Saying

Charles Lipson
The unwinding of Europe's vast colonial empires is one of the great transitions of the twentieth century. Hendrik Spruyt explains the process with clear, nuanced arguments, backed with historical studies, all designed to show why different imperial powers handled that unwinding so differently. What accounts for the differences, according to Spruyt, are the varied political structures in the metropolitan countries themselves. In some countries-but not in all-groups opposed to decolonization held effective veto power over territorial changes. In developing this 'veto points' approach, Spruyt's Ending Empire provides a powerful analysis of the varied paths that decolonization took. It is a major achievement.

David A. Lake
Ending Empire is a remarkable achievement. Hendrik Spruyt addresses the collapse of overseas empires and, in one case, a multinational state/continental empire. Spruyt shines in his talent for combining theoretically informed analysis with deep historical research across multiple cases.

Charles A. Kupchan
An elegant and compelling account of the politics of decolonization, Ending Empire is a major contribution to the literature on imperialism and to the study of how domestic institutions shape grand strategy.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction : contested territories and empire	1
1	Institutional frameworks and territorial policy	11
2	The changing fortunes of empire	39
3	The hexagon or the empire : France and the Algerian quagmire	88
4	Whitehall tacks to the wind of change	117
5	Ranking with Denmark : the Dutch fear of imperial retreat	146
6	The first maritime empire and the last : Portugal in Africa	176
7	Russia retreats from the union	204
8	The fourth republic in Jerusalem	234
	Conclusion : contesting sovereignty in a global system	264