Sovereignty in Africa: Quasi-Statehood and Other Myths in International Theory

Abstract

International relations (IR) theorists and publicists have proposed the need to reconsider the notion of sovereignty with a view to reforming practice (Kegley 1993). They have been moved to their conclusions by international developments such as the plethora of internal wars owing to ethnic conflicts and the collapse of legitimate authority; the increasing flow of refugees worldwide; and the attendant spread of misery and pandemic diseases across borders. Invariably, these critics denounce the rigidity of the present regime of sovereignty and point to its insufficiencies as basis for understanding and managing international existence. In general, they assume the existence of one international regime of sovereignty of fully autonomous territorial states. Many complain that belief in this Westphalian system obscures otherwise fluid international dynamics and relations of power. Thus, they find it paradoxical that the regime of sovereignty-as-enclosed-territories persists as the privileged mode of international existence (Lyons and Mastanduno 1993, 1995). Such are the positions of Robert H. Jackson (1990), Robert Kaplan (1994), and others who argued that post-colonial states possess neither internal coherence nor credible governments to be granted the status of full sovereignty. I do not question the humanitarian dispositions underlying their arguments, but I find their representations of sovereignty, the international order, and international relations fraught with analytical errors, ideological confusions, and historical omissions.