Sovereignty

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

Democracy's Edges: Citizenship in an era of globalization: commentary on Held

Abstract: The literature is replete with discussions of the impact of globalization on us as workers, consumers, investors, or as members of cultural communities. Less attention has been paid to its impact on us as citizens – as participants in the process of democratic self-government. This is a vitally important issue, for if people become dissatisfied with their role as citizens, the legitimacy and stability of democratic political systems may erode. This question in fact arises at two levels – domestically, and transnationally or globally. David Held's chapter provides a clear and balanced assessment of the possible consequences of globalization for citizenship at both levels. In effect, Held argues that globalization is eroding the capacity for meaningful democratic citizenship at the domestic level, as nation states lose some of their historic sovereignty and become “decision-takers” as much as “decision-makers.” If meaningful citizenship is to exist in an era of globalization, therefore, it will require democratizing those transnational institutions which are increasingly responsible for important economic, environmental, and security decisions. In this short commentary, I would like to pursue a couple of Held's points in more depth. While I do not disagree with any of his substantive claims, I would like to suggest that there is more room for optimism regarding the prospects for domestic citizenship than he suggests, but perhaps less ground for optimism about global citizenship. Domestic citizenship First, then, let me consider the impact of globalization on citizenship at the domestic level.

Exceptional Sovereignty? Guantánamo Bay and the Re‐Colonial Present

Abstract: The US government has presented Guantanamo Bay to the world through the lens of “exceptional sovereignty”. This argument holds that international law does not apply at Guantanamo because while America has “complete authority” over the base “ultimate sovereignty” rests with Cuba. Many accounts rightly critical of the abuses of power taking place at Guantanamo similarly understand it as something wholly abnormal—a literal “non-place”. But in falling back on this argument both the American position and many of its critics have tended to “black box” what is taking place within the camp. In this paper I suggest that we ditch any sort of critique that says Guantanamo is somehow outside of the law and instead replace this line of argument with a critical history of the deployment of a particular sort of Executive power there. From this perspective, Guantanamo is better understood as a rather more normal part of the current imperial moment and connected up in various ways to American imaginations and materialisations of power. As a way of exploring some of these connections in greater detail, I examine the construction of Guantanamo as a particular sort of social space by drawing upon the accounts of those who have been there: former guards, detainees and their defence lawyers.

The politics of protection : sites of insecurity and political agency

Abstract: Following the end of the Cold War, the security agenda has been transformed and redefined, both academically and politically. This book focuses on the theme of protection and ways in which political agency emerges in the regulation and definition of protection and insecurity. It poses the question of political agency in relation to some of the most significant questions raised in relation to the governance of insecurity and protection in the contemporary world: • The role of private security companies • The political agency of refugees • The role of non-military security actors • The reconstruction of state capacity in post-conflict situations • The political role of the judiciary and the judicial regulation of armed conflict • The changing relation between humanity and nature in environmental politics Contents 1. Agency and The Politics of Protection: Implications for Security Studies – Jef Huysmans 2. Privatizing the Politics of Protection: Military Companies and the Definition of Security Concerns - Anna Leander 3. Privatisation, Globalisation, and the Politics of Protection in South Africa – Rita Abrahamsen and Michael C. Williams 4. Taking Rights, Mediating Wrongs: Disagreements over the Political Agency of Non-Status Refugees – Peter Nyers 5. Resisting Sovereign Power: Camps In-between Exception and Dissent – Raffaela Puggioni 6. Protection: security, territory and population – Didier Bigo 7. ‘Civilizing’ the Balkans, Protecting Europe: the International Politics of Reconstruction in Bosnia and Kosovo – Alexandra Gheciu 8. The Judicialisation of Armed Conflict: transforming the 21st Century – Elspeth Guild 9. The Limits of Agency in Times of Emergency – Vivienne Jabri 10. Sovereignty, International Security and the Regulation of Armed Conflict: the Possibilities of Political Agency – Neil Walker 11. Do we need (to protect) nature? – Andrew Dobson 12. On the Protection of Nature and the Nature of Protection – R.B.J. Walker

Anomaly and commonplace in European political expansion: realist and institutional accounts

Abstract: The global expansion of the European state system suggests strong connections between political “life chances” and international status. Polities recognized as sovereign within the Western international community are much less likely than unrecognized polities to be colonized and are much less likely than dependencies to merge or dissolve. These variations in stability are difficult to understand through balance-of-power politics. They may be more plausibly explained through the institutional structure of the state system and, in particular, the organization of the system as a community of mutual recognition. Sovereign members of this community are treated in fundamentally different ways than are those seen as outside Western state society or as the dependent possessions of sovereign states.

Indigeneity and Political Theory: Sovereignty and the Limits of the Political

Abstract: 1. Introduction: The Problem of the Political Part 1: Sovereignty and the Political 2. Hobbes: Producing Politics/Effacing Interrogation 3. Violences of Sovereignty: The "Regrettable Necessity" of Civilization 4. Sovereignty and Disciplinarity Part 2: Negotiating the Limits of the Political 5. Resistance: Negotiating the Interstices of Sovereignty 6. Adjudication: Paradoxes of Law and Sovereignty 7. Limits: James Tully and the Politics of Theory Part 3: Emerging Politicizations 8. Rethinking Sovereignty: Deleuze and Guattari 9. Rethinking Indigeneity: Remapping the Political 10. Conclusions: Leviathan's Angels and the Future of Political Theory Bibliography