Sovereignty

About: Sovereignty is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25909 publications have been published within this topic receiving 410148 citations.

The War on Terrorism: When the Exception Becomes the Rule

Abstract: This article argues that the semiotics of the war on terrorism points at a significant shift in United States' discourses on security. This shift can best be described as a move from defence to prevention or from danger to risk. Whereas the notion of defence is closely connected to the state of war, this article claims that the war on terrorism instead institutionalises a permanent state of exception. Building upon Agamben's notion that the state of exception is the non-localisable foundation of a political order, this article makes two claims. First, it argues that semiotic shifts in United States' security politics point at a general trend that, to some extent, structures international American interventions. In a sense, the semiotic shifts in American security discourse declare the United States as the sovereign of the global order: they allow the United States to exempt itself from the (international) framework of law, while demanding compliance by others. Second, it claims that this production of American sovereignty is paralleled by reducing the life of (some) individuals to the bare life of homo sacer(life that can be killed without punishment). In the war on terrorism, the production of bare life is mainly brought about by bureaucratic techniques of risk management and surveillance, which reduce human life to biographic risk profiles.

Propositions on citizenship

Abstract: Much has recently been said about "new citizenship," although often in an unclear way. The turn of phrase may be only a gimmick, as was, recently, the "new philosophy" or that kind of auberge espagnole where you have to bring your own food, also known as "la nouvelle cusine." Most of all, it risks soon passing out of fashion with the ups and downs of French socialism. Yet whatever the future redistribution of political power may be, several of the problems raised by discussions of the "new citizenship" will still have to be faced. These include racism and the status of immigration (or rather of "the communities that have issued from immigration") in France. Nevertheless, the form in which these problems will be faced and the chances of finding a solution to them may be singularly transformed depending on whether dominant parties confront or fail to confront certain fundamental alternatives. "Citizenship" (in Greek politeia) is a concept as old as politics itself and which has always marked two distinctions: it is bound to the existence of a state and therefore to a principle of public sovereignty, and it is bound to the acknowledged exercise of an individual "capacity" to participate in political decisions. This is why the dimension of equality-with all the problems of definition which it poses and the mystifications which it may conceal-is always present in the constitution of a concept of citizenship, even when the latter is paradoxically combined with a hierarchical principle and with caste distinctions (as seen in the difference between "active citizens" and "passive citizens" in the nineteenth century). Beyond the conflict between citizenship and allegiance to an actual or transcendentally legitimate state, history still shows that this concept has no definition that is fixed for all time. It has always been at stake in struggles and the object of transformations. Not only because, as Aristotle has already shown, each political regime builds the distribution of powers into a specific defintion of citizenship but also because, in juridically (or quasijuridically) delimiting a certain type of "human being" and a certain model of rights and duties, this definition crystalizes the constitutive social relations of a society at the level of the individual.

Thomas Hobbes의 國家論에 대하여

Abstract: Because of the great importance on political and philosophical probl-ems which Leviathan had, Hobbes became one of the originator of modern politics and philosophy, and as one of the representatives of absolute Sovereignty. His theory of Common-Wealth had the elements of cure for the Civil War (1642-49) in England, and it was the necessary product of those times according to the demand of new political system to over-come the disordered chaos of the politics, religions and social problem, and to replace the theocratic system of mediaeval ages. Under such a current background (in the state of disorganization), he understood that the instinctive character of human being contained egoistic facts, and insisted the theory of natural condition-what we call the name of "bellum omnium contra omnes". His philosophical method was dealt with natural science and psy-chological method, but he chiefly used his born and characteristic per-sonality. 'He denied traditional idea of Natural Law and contributed to the development of modern political thought by stressing the Jus Naturale. His absolutism of severeignty was not for any persons or parties or any dynasty, but was to protect mostly the natural right of all human beings, and to maintain the national peace. He didn't have any partial situation. Today even in any countries which have any other political theory, the absolute Sovereignty is not denied, and we must bethink about our criticism for naming Hobbes as a absolutist. For he insisted that all men are created equal and he suggested that in any case all the subject could resist against any unreasonable behavior. The chief point of his theory of Common-Wealth was in the cons-truction or conception of national sovereignty, and it was considered one of his methods that he gave many rights to the Sovereignty. Leviathan's weak points lay in his unifying thought for the national interests and there was no any statement for between nation and nation. Nowadays if his natural condition is similiar to the Cold War between any countries, it may be possible for us to lead a method from Hobbes to correct the new international order.

American Indians, time, and the law: Native societies in a modern constitutional democracy

Abstract: In 1959, the Supreme Court ushered in a new era of Indian law, which recognizes Indian tribes as permanent governments within the federal constitutional system and, on the whole, honors old promises to the Indians. Drawing together historical sources such as the records of treaty negotiations with the Indians, classic political theory on the nature of sovereignty, and anthropological studies of societal change, Wilkinson evaluates the Court's work in Indian law over the past twenty five years and considers the effects of time on law.