Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics - Politics, Political Education, grade: 1, Oxford University, language: English, abstract: "Nation, nationality, nationalism - all have proved notoriously difficult to define, let alone to analyse", Anderson writes somewhat consternated before trying to change just that in about two-hundred pages. In this essay, I shall have a go at the principle of national self-determination in about a fiftieth of the space and sketch its impact on the international system. For that purpose, I will first establish a neo-realist conception of the international system and define national self-determination to then go on and delineate how the latter has hurt the former. By looking at two historical cases, Nazi-Germany and decolonization, I will focus on the way self-determination highlights the independent significance of norms in international order, undermines the balance of power and - while seemingly cementing an international Westphalian system of stable states - is a continuous force of disruption within it.