Emily Crawford (Sydney): Territorial Jurisdiction and Statehood. Christopher J. Coyne (GMU) and Adam J. Pellillo (WVU): The Art of Seeing Like a State: State-Building in Afghanistan, the Congo, and Beyond. Sidney C. Turner (George Mason): Country Size, Institutions, and Trust: Some Evolutionary Evidence. Raghuram G. Rajan (Chicago): Failed States, Vicious Cycles, and a Proposal. Simone Florio (Granada): The Fragmentation of Geopolitical Space: What Secessionist Movements Mean to the Present-Day State System. David Gartner (Arizona State): Beyond the Monopoly of States. Hannibal Travis (FIU): On the Existence of National Identity Before "Imagined Communities": The Example of the Assyrians of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Persia. Brendan McSweeney (London): The Myth of Cultural Communion: Civilizations, Nations, and Ethnic Groups. Bloodlust: Russell Jacoby on why we should fear our neighbors more than strangers (and a response). Immanuel Wallerstein on self-determination of peoples: Which self? Nation-state or country-state: how do we discuss belonging in an age of fluidity? (and a response) Alternative to obsessive compulsive military might: Thomas Naylor on small nation neutrality. When a country as large as Tunisia is routinely called “tiny,” how then are we to refer to Lichtenstein, a state one thousand times smaller — "super-teeny-tiny"? Treating microstates as equivalent to ordinary countries wastes effort and leads to misleading comparisons. How to start your own country: Is Sealand better than Canada, do micronations have tiny fights? Filmmaker Jody Shapiro explains the weird world of DIY democracies. Who owns the world? The Queen, the family of the actress Nicole Kidman, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the media tycoon Ted Turner are just some of the most powerful global landowners. Check out Territory and Justice, a research network.
