Beyond hypocrisy? Debating the ‘fact’ and ‘value’ of sovereignty in contemporary world politics

Abstract

It is no exaggeration to say that sovereignty is the foundation both of International Relations (IR) as a field of enquiry and of international politics as an "actual existing" field of practice. Whether seen as the archetypal IR101 topic or in debates about the rights and wrongs of humanitarian intervention, the capacity of international organisations to exert control over significant spheres of international politics, or in discussions about the legitimacy of bodies such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), sovereignty appears as the central referent point of international politics. Over recent years, however, there has been considerable debate over both the substantive content ("fact") and normative framing ("value") of sovereignty. The former comes about as a result of a series of political, economic and security challenges which see states as assuming a role as "one-amongst-many" in an increasingly complex international topography; the latter stems from concerns about whether national states form the optimal site for the articulation of authority claims. This forum engages with both of these debates, focusing on how they relate to understandings of the emergence, development and possible emasculation of sovereignty in the contemporary world. In the introduction to the forum, we outline the ways in which scholars have contested the emergence of the sovereign state and examine the ethical issues surrounding the normative value of this form of rule. In the process, we lay out the ways in which the papers which make up this forum make uncomfortable, if important, contributions to the debate about the fact and value -or "is" and "ought" -of sovereignty in contemporary world politics. It is no exaggeration to say that sovereignty is the foundation both of International Relations (IR) as a field of enquiry and of international politics as an "actual existing" field of practice. For the former, sovereignty is the archetypal IR101 topic. Students entering the subject are informed that sovereignty emerged in Europe sometime around the mid seventeenth century before being exported to the rest of the world, often by force of arms, over the next few centuries. There may be disagreement over sovereignty's precise point of origin (cf. Keywords Sovereignty, historical sociology, political theory, international politics Contact details

The past, present, and future of intervention

“…51 This means that there are no longer formal barriers to intervention. 60 At times, as Lee Jones points out in his article for this Special Issue, intervention has been conducted in solidarity with such movements; at other times, it has been used in their violent suppression. 52 Kofi Annan's remarks speak to a world without frontiers in which boundaries of inside-outside, no longer resting on racial differentiation or constrained by norms of sovereign territoriality, are dissolved.…”

“…59 Transnational solidarities from revolutionary movements to diaspora communities and indigenous groupings have consistently challenged the sovereign territorial frame. 60 At times, as Lee Jones points out in his article for this Special Issue, intervention has been conducted in solidarity with such movements; at other times, it has been used in their violent suppression. However effective international organisations are at reorganising the authority structure of particular polities, such action does not take place on the same scale or with the same intensity as the colonial projects that decimated, starved, and dispossessed entire continents.…”