Sovereignty and State Practice: Morality and Being

Abstract

The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws, Populations. By Douglas Howland, Luise White. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009. 284 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-253-22016-5). A survey of issues that have been associated with sovereignty over the last century is revealing: liberty, equality, imperialism and the ontological inevitability of violence; nationalism and international morality; rights, community, and order. All have been addressed according to the organizing principle of sovereignty (for example Heiberg 1994; Biersteker and Weber 1996; Lugo 1996; Brown 2002; Hensel 2004; Cole 2005; Farquhar and Zhang 2005). There is also continuing debate over what exactly is the nature of sovereignty, and what different types, manifestations or accommodations of it there might be (for example Krasner 1999; Caporaso 2000; Stacy 2003; Roland 2004; Santa-Cruz 2005). It has been categorized as divisible, relational, plural, mythical, a problem and a riddle (Aguirre 1993; Korff 1923; Lauterpacht 1997; Schwarz and Jutersonke 2005; Stacy 2003; Wilde 1919). Popular political anxiety over threats to sovereignty is rife. This book touches on all these issues, mainly by assessing the application of sovereignty-the-concept to real-world strategic and political situations. It is a collection derived from a conference on the question of “how and under what circumstances states become sovereign” (p. 1) and is shaped by questions of territory, authority and population (p. 2). It reveals the relationship …