Making a Modern Political Order: The Problem of the Nation State

Sheehan’s thoughtful book makes a convincing case that the modern political order arises out of people’s shared expectations and hopes, without which the nation state could not exist.
Every political order depends on a set of shared expectations about how the order does and should work. In Making a Modern Political Order, James Sheehan provides a sophisticated analysis of these expectations and shows how they are a source of both cohesion and conflict in the modern society of nation states. The author divides these expectations into three groups: first, expectations about the definition and character of political space, which in the modern era are connected to the emergence of a new kind of state; second, expectations about the nature of political communities (that is, about how people relate to one another and to their governments); and finally, expectations about the international system (namely, how states interact in a society of nation states). Although Sheehan treats these three dimensions of the political order separately, they are closely bound together, each dependent on―and reinforcing―the others. Ultimately, he claims, the modern nation state must balance all three organizing principles if it is to succeed.
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