Beyond Integration and Differentiation? The Holy See and the Pope in the System of World Politics

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Notes

1. The Catholic Church has been described as an “atypical advocacy nongovernmental organization” in this context (Ferrari 2006, 41); the Catholic Church in this sense would seem to be not an “international” actor in any meaningful sense, but rather a “transnational actor” (Ryall 2001)

2. See Albert (2016) for an extensive elaboration; also Albert, Buzan, and Zürn (2013).

3. Sometimes it is argued that centre–periphery provides constitutes a specific form of social differentiation as well. The argument against seeing centre–periphery as a genuine for of social differentiation would be to identify it as a specific spatial expression of stratification.

4. The most “modern” and sophisticated version of this argument is provided by Habermas in his Theory of Communicative Action (1987), where the forces of functional differentiation pull apart – and likewise require re-integration by – the “lifeworld.”

5. See Schimank and Volkmann (1999) for a concise overview over “integration” vs. “emergence” views of modern, functionally differentiated society.

6. See Shelledy (2004) for an interesting similar argument that sees the role of religion not to work across, but within different function systems (although in somewhat different terminology), in order to explain the Holy See’s influence in world politics.

7. See Albert (2016) for an elaboration of this part of the argument.

8. It should added here that despite overlaps the situation does not exactly mirror international legal subjectivity. While in relation to the latter the same argument could be made regarding the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, for example, there is no equivalence whatsoever between the latter and the Holy See when it comes to the role in world politics described above.

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Mathias Albert

Mathias Albert is Professor of Political Science at Bielefeld University. He received his Ph.D. from Goethe University Frankfurt in 1996 and his habilitation from Darmstadt University in 2000. His research is in world society studies and in youth studies.