Showing papers on "Sovereignty published in 1998"

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

Abstract: Introduction Part I. The Logic of Sovereignty: 1. The paradox of sovereignty 2. 'Nomos Basileus' 3. Potentiality and law 4. Form of law Threshold Part II. Homo Sacer: 1. Homo sacer 2. The ambivalence of the sacred 3. Sacred life 4. 'Vitae Necisque Potestas' 5. Sovereign body and sacred body 6. The ban and the wolf Threshold Part III. The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the Modern: 1. The politicization of life 2. Biopolitics and the rights of man 3. Life that does not deserve to live 4. 'Politics, or giving form to the life of a people' 5. VP 6. Politicizing death 7. The camp as the 'Nomos' of the modern Threshold Bibliography Index of names.

Europe’s ‘Democratic Deficit’: The Question of Standards

Abstract: Arguments about Europe’s democratic deficit are really arguments about the nature and ultimate goals of the integration process. Those who assume that economic integration must lead to political integration tend to apply to European institutions standards of legitimacy derived from the theory and practice of parliamentary democracies. We argue that such standards are largely irrelevant at present. As long as the majority of voters and their elected representatives oppose the idea of a European federation, while supporting far-reaching economic integration, we cannot expect parliamentary democracy to flourish in the Union. Economic integration without political integration is possible only if politics and economics are kept as separate as possible. The depoliticisation of European policy-making is the price we pay in order to preserve national sovereignty largely intact. These being the preferences of the voters, we conclude that Europe’s ‘democratic deficit’ is democratically justified. The expression ‘democratic deficit,’ however, is also used to refer to the legitimacy problems of non-majoritarian institutions, and this second meaning is much more relevant to a system of limited competences such as the EC. Now the key issues for democratic theory are about the tasks which may be legitimately delegated to institutions insulated from the political process, and how to design such institutions so as to make independence and accountability complementary and mutually supporting, rather than antithetical. If one accepts the ‘regulatory model’ of the EC, then, as long as the tasks delegated to the European level are precisely and narrowly defined, non-majoritarian standards of legitimacy should be sufficient to justify the delegation of the necessary powers.

Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration

Abstract: This article explores the reasons for the acceptance of unwanted immigration among Western countries. This author distinguishes between sovereignty as formal rule-making authority and empirical capacity to implement rules. Freemans analysis indicates that there is little evidence of a decline in sovereignty. States are interdependent and expulsion or nonadmittance practices against an alien would be unacceptable. Western states respect the rights of persons and not just citizens. Economic globalization and the rise of international human rights issues may force states to accept unwanted immigration and reduce the autonomy of the state in immigration policy-making but these reasons are unlikely. The author argues that liberal states accept unwanted immigration because of self-limited sovereignty and client politics. The author modifies Freemans model by explaining that Europes acceptance is due to the statutory and constitutional residence and family rights legal issues rather than elitist client politics or popular national interest politics. European countries vary in the processing of unwanted immigration. The author discusses two cases of illegal immigration in the US and family immigration in Europe. The US accepts unwanted immigration because of client politics a strong antipopulist normative view that the US is a nation of immigrants and civil rights imperatives of strict nondiscrimination. The cases of Germany and Britain illustrate that acceptance is due to legal constraints and moral obligations that are unevenly distributed across Europe due to different views of guestworkers and postcolonial regimes.

Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone

Abstract: 1. Informal markets and the shadow state: some theoretical issues 2. Colonial rule and the foundations of the shadow state 3. Elite hegemony and the threat of political and economic reform 4. Reining in the informal market: the early Stevens' years, 1968-1973 5. An exchange of services: state power and the diamond business 6. The shadow state and international commerce 7. Foreign firms, economic 'reform' and shadow state power 8. The changing character of African sovereignty.

A National Security Strategy for a New Century

Abstract: : In his "A National Security Strategy for a New Century" (hereinafter "the document"), President Clinton announces that "the goal of the national security strategy is to ensure the protection of our nation's fundamental and enduring needs: protect the lives and safety of Americans, maintain the sovereignty of the United States, with its values, institutions and territory intact, and provide for the prosperity of the nation and its people. He also firmly states that the strategy will achieve three core objectives of "enhancing our security, bolstering our economic prosperity, and promoting democracy." This essay will examine the core objective of promoting democracy and human rights in light of the essential elements of a national security strategy (assumptions, ends and means, and resources, including whether they are integrated into a coherent strategic framework), discuss why it is flawed as a core objective of national security strategy, and then offer a remedy.

The geography of money

Abstract: The traditional assumption holds that the territory of money coincides precisely with the political frontiers of each nation state: France has the franc, the United Kingdom has the pound, the United States has the dollar. But the disparity between that simple mental landscape and the actual organization of currency spaces has grown in recent years, as territorial boundaries of individual states limit currency circulation less and less. Many currencies are used outside their "home" country for transactions either between nations or within foreign states. In this book, Benjamin J. Cohen asks what this new geography of money reveals about financial and political power. Cohen shows how recent changes in the geography of money challenge state sovereignty. He examines the role of money and the scope of cross-border currency competition in today's world. Drawing on new work in geography and network theory to explain the new spatial organization of monetary relations, Cohen suggests that international relations, political as well as economic, are being dramatically reshaped by the increasing interpenetration of national monetary spaces. This process, he explains, generates tensions and insecurities as well as opportunities for cooperation.

The Sovereign Limits of Global Civil Society: A Comparison of NGO Participation in UN World Conferences on the Environment, Human Rights, and Women

Abstract: The increased visibility of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements at the international level invites continuing evaluation of the extent and significance of the role they now play in world politics. While the presence of such new actors is easily demonstrated, international relations scholars have debated their significance. The authors argue that the concept of global civil society sets a more demanding standard for the evaluation of transnational political processes than has been applied in prior accounts of transnational activity. Further, most empirical studies of this activity have focused on a limited number of NGOs within a single issue-area. Using three recent UN world conferences as examples of mutual encounters between state-dominated international politics and global civic politics, the authors develop the concept of global civil society to provide a theoretical foundation for a systematic empirical assessment of transnational relations concerning the environment, human rights, and women at the global level.

On the citizen

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction Note on the translation Key words Principal events in Hobbes's life Further reading On the Citizen Preface to the readers 1. On the state of man without civil society 2. On the natural law of contracts 3. On the other laws of nature 4. That the natural law is the divine law 5. On the causes and generation of a commonwealth 6. On the right of the Assembly of Man, who holds sovereign authority in the commonwealth 7. On the three kinds of commonwealth democracy, aristocracy and monarchy 8. On the right of masters over slaves 9. On the rights of parents over children, and on the Patrimonial Kingdom 10. Comparison of the disadvantages of each of the three kinds of commonwealth 11. Passages and examples from holy scripture about the right of kingship, which appear to support our account 12. On the internal causes which tend to dissolve a commonwealth 13. On the duties of those who exercise sovereign power 14. On laws and sins 15. On the kingdom of God by nature 16. On the kingdom of God by the old agreement 17. On the kingdom of God by the new agreement 18. On what is necessary for entry into the Kingdom of heaven Index.

A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation

Abstract: This paper contributes to recent debates about the geography of power,the nation-state, cartographic history, and postcolonial theory. It does so by connecting the themes of these literatures and exploring empirically the claims about the narration of natio made by the postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha. The two empirical case studies come from contemporary Canada, and concern, in part, the mapping of the nation-state. The first case is a British Columbia trial in which two First Nations, the Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en, brought a case against the provincial and federal governments over the recognition of their native sovereignty. The second study is of volume 1 of the Historical Atlas of Canada, which, unlike many others before it, sought to place native peoples and spaces within the overarching cartography of the country. In both studies, the ambivalent (post)colonial power relations of cartography—the fact that they can work both for and against colonialism—become evident. They therefore serve as exemplary...

The Zapatista Effect: The Internet and the Rise of an Alternative Political Fabric

Abstract: The primacy of the nation state is being challenged from both above and below. From above, after the Second World War, the growth in the power and scope of supranational institutions--from multinational corporations to the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund--have gradually usurped national sovereignty in both economic and political matters.(1) More recently, from below, the increasingly active role of regional and city governments in foreign trade, immigration and political issues have challenged national governments' constitutional monopoly over foreign affairs.(2) Simultaneously, there has been tremendous growth in cross-border networks among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the hundreds that mobilized against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Not only do such networks outflank national government policymakers; they often work directly against their policies.(3) In the last few years, governmental concern with the ability of NGO networks to mobilize opposition to the policies of national governments and to international agreements has grown--both during the period of policy formation and after those policies have been adopted or agreements signed. In part, this concern is derived from the growing strength that such networks gain from the use of international communications technologies. The rapid spread of the Internet around the world has suggested that such networks and their influence will only grow apace. No catalyst for growth in electronic NGO networks has been more important than the 1994 indigenous Zapatista rebellion in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico. Computer networks supporting the rebellion have evolved from providing channels for the familiar, traditional work of solidarity--material aid and the defense of human rights against the policies of the Salinas and Zedillo administrations--into an electronic fabric of opposition to much wider policies. Whereas the anti-NAFTA coalition was merely North American in scope, the influence of the pro-Zapatista mobilization has reached across at least five continents. Moreover, it has inspired and stimulated a wide variety of grassroots political efforts in dozens of countries.(4) Today these networks provide the nerve system for increasingly global organization in opposition to the dominant economic policies of the present period. In the process, these emerging networks are undermining the distinction between domestic and foreign policy--and challenging the constitution of the nation state. For reasons outlined below, it is not exaggerated to speak of a "Zapatista Effect" reverberating through social movements around the world; an effect homologous to, but potentially much more threatening to ,the New World Order of neoliberalism than the Tequila Effect that rippled through emerging financial markets in the wake of the 1994 peso crisis. In the latter case, the danger was panic and the ensuing rapid withdrawal of hot money from speculative investments. In the case of social movements and the activism which is their hallmark, the danger lies in the impetus given to previously disparate groups to mobilize around the rejection of current policies, to rethink institutions and governance, and to develop alternatives to the status quo. REPRESSION IN CHIAPAS The voices of indigenous people in Mexico have been either passively ignored or brutally silenced for most of the last five hundred years. Indigenous lands and resources have been repeatedly stolen and the people themselves exploited under some of the worst labor conditions in Mexico. The official policies of the Mexican state have been largely oriented toward assimilation, with only lip service given to the value of the country's diverse ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage.(5) The result has been a long history of fierce resistance and recurrent rebellion, first to Spanish colonization and then to the dominant classes after independence. …

A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India

Abstract: Radhika Singha looks at law-making as a cultural enterprise, one in which the colonial authorities were compelled to draw upon normative codes of rank, status, and gender so as to realign them to a new, more exclusive definition of the state's sovereign right.

Sovereignty and Inequality

Abstract: Inequality within and between societies has been a neglected issue in the contemporary theory of international law. The concept of sovereignty makes this neglect possible in traditional international law, as analysis of Oppenheim's 1905 textbook demonstrates. Globalization and democratization are placing state sovereignty under strain, as international rules and institutions appear to become more intrusive, transnational civil society more active, and unitary state control less pronounced. State sovereignty as a normative concept is increasingly challenged, especially by a functional view in which the state loses its normative priority and competes with supranational, private, and local actors in the optimal allocation of regulatory authority. But discarding sovereignty in favour of a functional approach will intensify inequality, weakening restraints on coercive intervention, diminishing critical roles of the state as a locus of identity and an autonomous zone of politics, and redividing the world into zones. The traditional normative concept of sovereignty is strained and flawed, but in the absence of better means to manage inequality it remains preferable to any of the alternatives on offer.

The European Nation-State: On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship

Abstract: As even the name of the United Nations reveals, world society today is composed politically of nation-states. The historical type of state that emerged from the French and American revolutions has achieved global dominance. This fact is by no means trivial. The classical nation-states in Northern and Western Europe evolved within the boundaries of existing territorial states. They were part of the European state system which already took on a recognizable shape with the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. By contrast, the “belated” nations – beginning with Italy and Germany – followed a different course, one which was also typical for the formation of nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe; here the formation of the state followed the trail blazed by an anticipatory national consciousness disseminated by propaganda. The difference between these two paths (from state to nation vs. from nation to state) is reflected in the backgrounds of the actors who formed the vanguard of nation and state builders. Along the first path, these were lawyers, diplomats, and military officers who belonged to the kings administrative staff and together constructed a “rational state bureaucracy” (in Max Weber‟s sense); along the second, they were writers and historians, and scholars and intellectuals in general, who laid the groundwork for Cavour‟s and Bismarck‟s subsequent diplomatic and military unification of the state by propagating the more or less imaginary unity of the “cultural nation.” After the Second World War, a third generation of very different nation-states emerged from the process of decolonization, primarily in Africa and Asia. Often these states, which were founded within the frontiers established by the former colonial regimes, acquired sovereignty before the imported forms of state organization could take root in a national identity that transcended tribal differences. In these cases, artificial states had to be first “filled” by nations that coalesced only later. Finally, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the trend toward the formation of independent nation-states in Eastern and Southern Europe has followed the path of more or less violent secessions; in the socially and economically precarious situation in which these countries found themselves, the old ethnonational slogans had the power to mobilize distraught populations for independence.Thus today the nation-state has definitively superseded older political formations.1 To be sure, the classical city-states also had successors in modern Europe, for a certain period, in the cities of Northern Italy and – in the territory of the old Lodiaringia (Lorraine) – in the belt of cities out of which Switzerland and the Netherlands emerged. The structures of the old empires also reemerged, first in the form of the Holy Roman Empire and later in the multi-nation-states of the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. But in the meantime the nation-state has displaced these remnants of premodern states. We are at present witnessing the fundamental transformation of China, the last of the old empires. Hegel took the view that every historical formation is condemned to decline once it has reached maturity. One need not accept Hegel‟s philosophy of history to recognize that the triumphal procession of the nation-state also has an ironical, obverse side. The nation-state at one time represented a cogent response to the historical challenge to find a functional equivalent for the early modern form of social integration which was in the process of disintegrating. Today we are confronting an analogous challenge. The globalization of commerce and communication, of economic production and finance, of the spread of technology and weapons, and above all of ecological and military risks, poses problems that can no longer be solved within the framework of nation-states or by die traditional method of agreements between sovereign states. If current trends continue, the progressive undermining of national sovereignty will necessitate the founding and expansion of political institutions on the supranational level, a process whose beginnings can already be observed. In Europe, North America, and Asia, new forms of organization for continental “regimes” are gradually emerging above the level of the state, regimes which could one day provide the requisite infrastructure for the currently rather inefficient United Nations. This unprecedented increase in abstraction is merely the continuation of a process the first major example of which is the integration achieved by the nation-state. Hence I think that we can take our orientation on the precarious path toward postnational societies from the very historical model we are on the point of superseding. First I would like to review the accomplishments of the nation-state by clarifying the concepts “state” and “nation” (I) and explaining the two problems to which the nation-state provided a solution (II). Then I will examine the potential for conflict built into this form of national state, namely the tension between republicanism and nationalism (III). Finally, I would like to deal with two current challenges that overburden the nation-state‟s capacity for action: the differentiation of society along multicultural lines (IV) and the processes of globalization that are undermining both the internal (V) and the external (VI) sovereignty of the existing nation-states.

Dialogues in Arab politics : negotiations in regional order

Abstract: 1. A Narrative of Arab Politics2. The Game of Arab Politics3. The Creation of "Arab" Polticis, 1920-19454. Securing Arabaism, 1945-19555. The Ascent and Descent of Arabism, 1956-19676. Sovereignty and Statism, 1967-19907. The End of the Arab States System?8. The Making and Unmaking of Arab Politics

Democracy in Europe: Legitimising Politics in a Non-State Polity

Abstract: Foreword List of Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Incompatibilities The Concept of 'Sovereignty' Federalism Democracy Conclusion Chapter 3. Inadequate Solutions The Recent Reform Debate Parliamentarisation Multi-Cameralism Federalism Conclusion Chapter 4. In Search of an Adequate Model: Theoretical Considerations Contract Theory Fiscal Federalism Concepts of Group Representation Network Analysis and Game Theory New Normative Democratic Theory Conclusion Chapter 5. A Proposal for the Democratisation of the EU The Practical Task A System of Veto Rights Regional Subunits: the Assignment of Powers Sectoral Subunits: How to Distinguish Them Procedures Some Illustrations A Summary of the Proposal Chapter 6. Major Objections Democratic Ambivalence (or: How Democratic is Democracy?) Democracy vs. Efficiency Biases and Asymmetries The acquis communautaire Chapter 7. Models and Realities Bibliography Index

The End of Secrecy

Abstract: Two standards of behavior are slugging it out around the world. Advocates of well-established norms such as corporate privacy and national sovereignty want to hide information from prying eyes, while promoters of transparency tout it as the solution to everything from international financial crises to arms races and street crime.

Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy

Abstract: We are entering a period of turbulent, systemic change in the organization of the world economic and political order--a period comparable to the transition from the feudal to the modern era in the 16th and 17th centuries. As Hobsbawm observes, the late 20th century world economy appears temporally confused, involving a "curious combination of the technology of the late twentieth century, the free trade of the 19th and the rebirth of the sort of interstitial centres characteristic of world trade in the Middle Ages."(1) I have argued elsewhere that globalization represents a systemic transformation of the world economy that will result in new structures and new modes of functioning.(2) Globalization entails two interrelated, technologically driven phenomena. First, dramatic increases in the cost, risk and complexity of technology in many industries render even the largest national markets too small to serve as meaningful economic units. Second, and more important here, the emerging global world economy is electronic, integrated through information systems and technology rather than organizational hierarchies. We are in the midst of what Cerney and others have called the third industrial revolution, "characterized by the intensive application of information and communications technology, flexible production systems and organizational structures, market segmentation and globalization."(3) The digital revolution has "dematerialized" manufacturing and commerce; all firms, regardless of sector, have become information processors.(4) One result of the information revolution is the "deintegration" of the large, vertically integrated "Fordist" firms which organize a significant portion of international economic transactions within their administrative hierarchies.(5) In their place, a complex system of networks and alliances is emerging in which information technology facilitates the integration and coordination of geographically dispersed operations. An international system of production is being replaced by a complex web of interlaced global electronic networks.(6) The scale and complexity of technology and the emergence of electronically integrated global networks render geographic borders and, more fundamentally, the basic construct of territorial sovereignty problematic. A critical issue raised by globalization is the lack of meaning of geographically rooted jurisdiction when markets are constructed in electronic space. There is a basic disconnect between geographic space and cyberspace. THE NEOMEDIEVAL ANALOGY The Peace of Westphalia (1648) is taken conventionally as marking the end of medieval universalism and the origin of the modern state system. The medieval to modern transition entailed the territorialization of politics, the replacement of overlapping, vertical hierarchies by horizontal, geographically defined sovereign states.(7) The modern state system is organized in terms of territorial sovereignty: the division of the globe's surface into fixed, mutually exclusive, geographically defined jurisdictions enclosed by discrete and meaningful borders.(8) Nation states and national markets are defined spatially. Geographic jurisdiction implies that each state's laws, rules and regulations apply within its territory--within the space encompassed by its borders.(9) As Carr noted many years ago, it is difficult for contemporaries to even imagine a world in which political power is organized on a basis other than territory.(10) Geographically rooted, sovereign nation states and the international state system, however, are relatively recent creations which comprise but one of a number of historical modes of organizing political activity.(11) Furthermore, the current state system may well be unique, a product of a very specific historical context. Agnew reminds us that "the spatial scope of political organization has not been set for all time in a particular mode. …

The spirit of Islamic law

Abstract: This study focuses on a Muslim legal science known in Arabic as usul al-fiqh, which elaborates the theoretical and methodological foundations of Islamic law. It outlines the main features of Muslim juristic thought, including the espousal of divine sovereignty and a fixation on divine texts.

Immigration and the state: The devolution and privatisation of immigration control in the EU

Abstract: This article examines the theoretical framework of the debate over sovereignty in the European Union and the state's powers of immigration control, adopting a neo‐corporatist approach to assess the role of the state and its mterlocutors in migration regulation. It provides an overview of three sets of third party agents incorporated in migration regulation by EU member states: international, private and local actors. In focusing on the institutional structures and norms that have emerged ‐or rather been reinvented ‐ in the 1990s, the analysis connects with the broader questions raised in this special issue: namely, to what extent do these institutional forms open up new channels and opportunities for state regulation over migration? The dynamics behind these processes are briefly examined, particularly from the view of the state. What are the incentives/constraints and costs/benefits that keep these processes in motion? Finally, the conclusions draw implications for both state control and migrati...

Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract: Chapter 1 Foreword Chapter 2 Introduction Chapter 3 From War and Peace to Violence and Intervention: Permanent Moral Dilemmas under Changing Political and Technological Conditions Chapter 4 Military Intervention and National Sovereignty: Recasting the Relationship Chapter 5 Peacekeeping, Military Intervention, and National Sovereignty in Internal Armed Conflict Chapter 6 The End of Innocence: Rwanda 1994 Chapter 7 Mixed Intervention in Somalia and the Great Lakes: Culture, Neutrality, and the Military Chapter 8 Military-Humanitarian Ambiguities in Haiti Chapter 9 Weaving a New Society in Cambodia: The Story of Monath Chapter 10 "You Save My Life Today, But for What Tomorrow?" Some Moral Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid Chapter 11 Hard Choices after Genocide: Human Rights and Political Failures in Rwanda Chapter 12 Refugee Camps, Population Transfers, and NGOs Chapter 13 Bringing War Criminals to Justice during an Ongoing War Chapter 14 Moral Reconstruction in the Wake of Human Rights Violations and War Crimes Chapter 15 The Morality of Sanctions Chapter 16 Moving in Vicious Circles: The Moral Dilemmas of Arms Transfers and Weapons Manufacture Chapter 17 A Future, If One Is Still Alive: The Challenge of the HIV Epidemic Chapter 18 The Stories We Tell: Television and Humanitarian Aid Chapter 19 Index

Trying to Have Your Cake and Eating It: How and Why the State System Has Created Offshore

Abstract: From modest beginnings in the wholesale financial market specializing in government debt, offshore has expanded rapidly, penetrating and then dominating an ever growing portion of international economic life. This article reflects on the relationship between offshore and the concept of state sovereignty. My argument is that far from escaping the state, offshore is intimately connected with the state system. The concepts of sovereignty and national self-determination played simultaneously an enabling and constraining role in the development of offshore. Furthermore, having “created” offshore, sovereignty and self-determination are themselves constrained and (re-)enabled in turn. Offshore therefore is not a diminution of state sovereignty but a legally defined realm marking differential levels of intensity by which states propose to apply their regulation. Such a bifurcation of juridical space represents a process by which the state is reimagining its relationship to its territory.

The republican legacy in international thought

Abstract: 1. Contemporary international thought Part I. From Antiquity to Kant: The Republican Legacy: 2. Republicanism 3. City of sovereigns 4. Imagined republics Part II. Vattelian Themes: The Legacy of Atlantic Republicanism: 5. Sovereignty 6. Intervention for common good 7. The constitution of international society Part III. Kantian Themes: The Legacy of Continental Republicanism: 8. Levels 9. Peace in the liberal world 10. The system of needs.

Contested Sovereignty: The Tragedy of Chechnya

Abstract: I T h e creation of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1923 as a federation of sovereign republics, however fictitious in practice, proved to be highly consequential six decades later when Mikhail Gorbachev, then secretary-general of the Communist Party of the USSR, initiated a program of ideological and political liberalization. As the process of reform gained momentum between 1988 and 1991, it unleashed a growing tide of national self-assertion in which the tension between the formal rhetoric of republic sovereignty and the reality of a highly centralized state produced growing pressures to give substance to the claim.' With the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991, its fifteen constituent union republics were proclaimed sovereign, independent states, and their recognition by the international community bestowed upon them an acceptance, status, and legitimacy barely dreamt of even three years earlier. Although this process of dissolution and reconstitution was remarkably peaceful and consensual, especially by comparison with Yugoslavia, it was nonetheless accompanied by a number of serious, and in some cases deadly conflicts, many of them over demands for sovereignty or independence by ethnopolitical groups within the new states. Even though the overwhelming number of potential confrontations have been managed peacefully, six conflicts escalated into regional wars involving regular armies and heavy arms: the civil

The greening of sovereignty in world politics

Abstract: The greening of sovereignty - an introduction. Part 1 Theoretical tensions: between sovereignty and environment - an exploration of the discourse of government, Thom Kuehls taking indigenous critiques seriously - the enemny "r" us, Franke Wilmer sovereignty and ecosystem management - clash of concepts and boundaries?, Veronica ward the nature of sovereignty and the sovereignty of nature - problematizing the boundaries between self, society, state and system, Ronnie D. Lipschutz. Part 2 Reconfiguring sovereignty - case studies: forms of discourse/norms of sovereignty - interests, science and morality in the regulation of whaling, Ronald B. Mitchell sovereignty reconfigured -environmental regimes and Third World states, Marian A.L. Miller satellites and sovereign knowledge - remote sensing of the global environment, Karen T. Liftin sovereignty, environment and subsidiary in the European Union, Joseph Henri Jupille. Part 3 Revisioning sovereignty: eco-cultural security and indigenous self-determination - moving toward a new conception of sovereignty, Sheldon Kamieniecki and Margaret Scully Granzeier reorienting state sovereignty - rights and responsibilities in the environmental age, Paul Wapner global village sovereignty -intergenerational sovereign publics, federal-republican earth constitutions and planetary identities, Daniel Deudney.

Modern law as a secularized and global model : Implications for the sociology of law

Abstract: Law and legal forms now flow very rapidly around world society. This is difficult to understand if we take only a realist and bottom-up view of the law: local processes would engender internationalization only out of rather slowly evolving interaction and interdependence. But it is easy to understand if we add a more institutionalist view of the law - and the sovereignty of the modern State, with which it is now linked - as constructed out of a common and universalistic world cultural frame. In this paper, the authors develop such a view and show its implications. Modern legal systems, worldwide, rest on universalistic and rationalistic cultural assumptions about the natural and moral world outside of society. First, sovereignty is a peculiar claim: it is a claim to autonomous decision power, but under exogenous universal principles and addressed to an exogenous and often universal audience. Second, law, with remarkable uniformity, creates States which are defined by and constituted from legally-assumed societies. Emphasizing the dependence of the authority of modern law on universalistic cultural principles transcending specific societies can help explain distinctive features of modern legal systems: (1) the rapid worldwide diffusion of rather standardized legal principles and arrangements; (2) the ritualistic character of the enactment and implementation of modern law; and (3) the widespread and expansive legal assumption of an integrated and rationalized nature and cosmos. To highlight these implications, the authors contrast the law with organizational rule-making at the other end of the spectrum: rule-making which is not very closely tied to universal principles tends to have a very different character.

An essay on the modern state

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction 2. The modern state 3. Social order in anarchy 4. Legitimacy 5. Reasons 6. Justice 7. Sovereignty 8. Boundaries 9. The functions of governments 10. States: pretenses, powers, prospects Notes Index.

Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages: History and Theory

Abstract: The European Middle Ages have recently attracted the attention of international relations (IR) scholars as a “testing-ground” for established IR theories. Neorealists, historicizing neorealists, and constructivists dispute the meanings of medieval anarchy and hierarchy in the absence of sovereignty. On the basis of a detailed critique of these approaches, I offer a historically informed and theoretically controlled interpretation of medieval geopolitics revolving around contested social property relations. My interpretation is meta-theoretically guided by dialectical principles. Lordships are the constitutive units of medieval authority, combining economic and political powers and assigning contradictory forms of rationality to their major agents, lords, and peasants. Interlordly competition over land and labor translates directly into distinct forms of geopolitical relations, generating a culture of war. Against this background, I clarify the specific meanings of the medieval “state,” territoriality, frontiers, peace, war, anarchy, and hierarchy before drawing out the wider implications of changing social property forms for IR theory.

The European Court and national courts -- doctrine and jurisprudence : legal change in its social context

Abstract: Part 1 National reports: report on Belgium, Herve Bribosa report on France, Jens Plotner report on Germany, Juliane Kokott the Italian Constitutional Court and the relationship between the Italian legal system and the European Union, Marta Cartabia report on Italy, P. Ruggeri Laderchi report on the Netherlands, Monica Claes and Bruno de Witte report on the United Kingdom, P.P. Craig. Part 2 Comparative analyses: explaining national court acceptance of European Court jurisprudence - a critical evaluation of theories of legal integration, Karen Alter the role of national courts in the process of European integration - accounting for judicial preferences and constraints, Walter Mattli and Anne-Marie Slaughter sovereignty and European integration - the weight of legal tradition, Bruno de Witte constitutional dialogues in the European Community, Alec Stone Sweet constitutional or international? the foundations of the community legal order and the question of judicial kompetenz-kompetenz, J.J.H. Weiler and Ulrich R. Haltern epilogue - the European Courts of Justice - beyond "beyond doctrine" or the legitimacy crisis of European constitutionalism, J.H.H. Weiler.