The state and the nation: changing norms and the rules of sovereignty in international relations

Abstract

The international relations literature regularly embraces sovereignty as the primary constitutive rule of international organization. Theoretical traditions that agree on little else all seem to concur that the defining feature of the modern international system is the division of the world into sovereign states. Despite differences over the role of the state in international affairs, most scholars would accept John Ruggie's definition of sovereignty as “the institutionalization of public authority within mutually exclusive jurisdictional domains.” Regardless of the theoretical approach however, the concept tends to be viewed as a static, fixed concept: a set of ideas that underlies international relations but is not changed along with them. Moreover, the essence of sovereignty is rarely defined; while legitimate authority and territoriality are the key concepts in understanding sovereignty, international relations scholars rarely examine how definitions of populations and territories change through-out history and how this change alters the notion of legitimate authority.

Why South Sudan’s problems stem from the abuse of sovereignty: The case for co-governance

“…Empirical and popular sovereignty were ignored. This was partly because international society defined sovereignty primarily in terms of the territorial norm (Barkin & Cronin 1994). However, since the end of the Cold War, international society has increasingly defined sovereignty in terms of the democratic norm (Makinda 1998b).…”

Probing the links between political economy and non-traditional security: Themes, approaches and instruments

“…The Bretton Woods settlement sought to avoid a repeat of past crises through 'embedded liberalism': an open trading system premised on the development of national economies and nationally based, Fordist social contracts between labour and capital (Ruggie 1982). Although this settlement was partly upheld through powerful Western states intervening abroad to negate revolutionary threats to economic interests (Barnett 1970), the formal sovereignty of nation-states remained the cornerstone of the international system and international security practices in this period (Barkin and Cronin 1994;Colás 2008) Correspondingly, the security function of states also transformed. To secure capital accumulation, it was no longer sufficient to guard national markets, which in any case were again becoming increasingly internationalised.…”

Value of Public Administration Management to International Relations: Scaffolding an Inter-Disciplinary Research Agenda

“…This emphasis on civil society (power to citizens) enabled by networks, democratization and globalization parallels that of PVM/Governance/NPS in PAM and can be argued as an outcome of the intellectual influence of Jurgen Habermas"s Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (Cox, 1983) from Sociology (Gottlieb, 1981). Second, Social Constructivists (Wendt, 1992;Wendt, 1999;Adler, 1997;Ruggie, 1998) argued that "anarchy is what states made of it" and that international politics is socially 5 Syracuse University Minnowbrook Conference since late 1960s have actively challenged the orthodoxy with its core ideas in postmodern public administration such as public administration cannot be neutral; technology is dehumanizing; public administration must be built on post-behaviorial and post-positivist logic of more democratic, more adaptable, more responsible to changing social, economic and political circumstances (Frederickson & Smith, 2003, p. 128;Anonymous, 2011). constructed by ideas (Goldstein & Keohane, 1993), interests (Finnemore, 1996), culture (Katzenstein, 1996) and norms (Barkin & Cronin, 1994), rather than "out there to be discovered" in the (positivist) natural sciences. Social Constructivism can be seen as a response to agency-structure debate; instead of arguing primacy of either agency or structure, social constructivism focuses on interactions (Giddens, 1984;Bathlet & Gluckler, 2011, pp.…”