'What are your academic interests?'

I usually say security and the European Union. Honestly, though, in the most general sense, my single overarching interest is in states. These units of political division have been around for four or five hundred years, but one wonders how long they'll last. Why have the borders from colonialism largely remained intact? To what degree will states converge in a supranational world government, if they ever will? Will states break down into simply ethnic entities - as many states already are, to various and often slight degrees, but as we see increasingly in the Balkans and parts of Africa, for example?

But perhaps saying "states" is being too general. Studying the implications of global politics operating with states as the primary actors, though, is a worthy study, and has been the focus of many scholars who might list international organization, world politics, realism, and/or neoliberal institutionalism among their interests. (Neoliberal institutionalists probably wouldn't list "states" as an area of interest, but state-based realism "remains the bete-noire of every non-realist approach," according to Jeffrey Taliaferro).

And I most often list "security" and "the European Union" as the areas in which I'm most interested because they provide excellent arenas for the study of states. Security, in many ways, is the hallmark of the state - whether via the monopoly of legitimate force (Weber) domestically or in the international community. And although states might cede some sovereignty to international organizations on fishing rights and pollution standards, they almost always balk when they feel they're losing the ability to defend their borders or otherwise keep the military they see fit. Therefore, analyses of states' actions respective to security can provide indications of how those states value sovereignty.

Evaluating the actions of states in regards to security isn't the only way to measure perceptions of sovereignty. Other methods include surveying popular attitudes - on the subject of security integration, in the EU's case, but the citizens of any state on the subjects of immigration, border control, or economic interdependence. Perceptions of the value of sovereignty are a valuable indicator of people's opinions on the general concept of the state, I believe.

Any discussion of state sovereignty and security can transition into a discussion of the European Union, because a state's right to independent security is one asset that politicians of European states (note that I did not say "European politicians") don't dare give away to Brussels. This was the subject of my senior honors thesis at the end of my undergrad. There is a European Defense Agency, but it is operated intergovernmentally as opposed to supranationally.

The European Union is a unique organization, of course, and we shouldn't expect to see states of any other region, much less the entire world, join into a similar community. Ethnic identity does play a role in the formation of such organizations, which is part of the reason why Latin America might be the region with the most potential for a closer economic union - a stronger and more inclusive Mercosur. The Andean community would have to be included before the organization would be more comparable with the EU. And even then, Mercosur doesn't have the from-the-ashes-of-WWII-and-then-the-Cold-War mentality that has continued to inspire Western Europe. Other regional organizations, such as ASEAN and the proposed North American security and economic community, similarly lack a comparable 20th century experience. So the EU is unique, and won't be fully copied, at least for a long time. But it's fascinating to watch it evolve.

So perhaps I should say, "States in general, more specifically as a basis for studying security and the European Union, among other subjects."