---
title: "What Is IR? The State, Sovereignty and Anarchy"
description: "Learn IR's core vocabulary: the state as actor, sovereignty rooted in the Westphalia 1648 settlement, and the condition of anarchy shaping international"
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/exam-ir-what-is-ir-state-sovereignty-anarchy"
---

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What is IR? State, sovereignty, anarchy

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# What is IR? State, sovereignty, anarchy

The foundational lesson on IR's core vocabulary: the state, sovereignty from Westphalia 1648, and the condition of international anarchy.

## What International Relations Studies

International Relations (IR) is the systematic study of relations among states and of the actors, structures, and processes that operate above and across the state. Its defining puzzle is order without government: how do political units coexist, cooperate, and fight in a system that has no central authority? Every theory you will study — realism, liberalism, constructivism — is ultimately an answer to that puzzle, and every answer turns on three foundational concepts you must define with precision: the **state**, **sovereignty**, and **anarchy**.

## The State as the Primary Unit

The state is IR's basic unit of analysis. The authoritative legal definition is supplied by the **Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, 1933, Article 1**, which lists four criteria of statehood: (1) a permanent population, (2) a defined territory, (3) a government, and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states. The first three are the *declaratory* elements; the fourth points to the *constitutive* debate — whether statehood depends on recognition by other states. Examiners reward candidates who can name the convention and distinguish the **declaratory theory** (statehood is a fact once criteria are met) from the **constitutive theory** (statehood exists only through recognition). Disputed cases — Taiwan, Kosovo, Palestine, Somaliland — are tested precisely because they sit on this fault line.

Do not conflate *state*, *nation*, and *government*. A **nation** is a community bound by shared identity, language, history, or aspiration; a **state** is a legal-territorial entity; a **government** is the administrative apparatus that exercises the state's authority at a given time. The nation-state is the *fusion* of nation and state, an aspiration rarely fully realised — multinational states (India, the former USSR) and stateless nations (the Kurds, pre-1948 Jews) are the standing exceptions.

## Sovereignty: The Organising Principle

Sovereignty is supreme authority within a territory and independence from external authority. Its conventional historical marker is the **Peace of Westphalia, 1648** — the Treaties of Osnabrück and Münster ending the Thirty Years' War — which crystallised the principles of territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of other rulers. Hence the term *Westphalian sovereignty*.

Distinguish two faces of the concept. **Internal sovereignty** is supreme authority over a population within borders; **external sovereignty** is recognition by, and legal equality with, other states. The latter is codified in the **UN Charter, 1945, Article 2(1)** — the sovereign equality of all members — and protected by **Article 2(7)**, barring UN intervention in matters essentially within domestic jurisdiction. Sovereignty is therefore not absolute: it is bounded by treaty obligations, by the **Responsibility to Protect (R2P)** doctrine endorsed at the 2005 World Summit, and increasingly by economic interdependence.

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