Introduction: Cultural sovereignty – claims, forms and contexts beyond the modern state

Connecting the Fields

“…22 The traditional notion of sovereignty was based on the so-called Westphalian duo of internal and external state sovereignty: internal sovereignty indicated state sovereignty over territory free from outside intervention; external sovereignty indicated the coexistence of a multiplicity of states equal to one another.23 Nowadays, as states have increasingly delegated governmental agency to international institutions in various fields, sovereignty has been articulated in manifold ways and different places. 24 Although sovereignty remains an important feature of the international system, it is no longer confined to the nation-state; rather, new kinds of sovereignty have emerged.25 The 'crisis' of state sovereignty has been matched by the growing exercise of power and agency by supranational institutions in the political realm and economic space. International legal regimes have now acquired a new type of shared sovereignty, with some competences that used to be within the exclusive domain of states.…”