EMPIRES AND STATES AND THE NEW INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Abstract

In the second half of the last century, even if the world appeared to be divided into two blocks, the very idea of Empires seemed to come out of the political scenario and the panorama of international law scholars. The return to a community of states placed in conditions of equality according to the scheme inherited from Westphalia was taken for granted. In reality, careful scholars such as Carl Schmitt, while predicting the end of the “disturbing dualism” created after the end of the Second World War, imagined a world with political formations which corresponded to “large spaces”; a reality that became evident subsequent the events following the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this new scenario, which has its roots in international law based on the recognition of de facto power, the idea of Empire as a polity has re-emerged, based on very specific historical connotations, and has drawn an institutional set-up that conditions current international relations.