The Politics of Sovereignty

Abstract

This chapter continues the work of disentangling the meaning of sovereignty from the modern state conception of it. Having outlined a relational conception of sovereignty in Chapters 1, 2 and 3, this chapter returns to the question of the political character of sovereignty. It argues that the political nature of the concept of sovereignty has been obscured in the modern state conception by the division of labour between internal and external dimensions. In the ‘internal’ discourse on modern sovereignty the emphasis has been either on analysing a depoliticised notion of authority or on prioritising legal over political sovereignty and promoting the Rechtstaat, and the discourse has largely understood political sovereignty very narrowly in terms of the highest authority to make law. The ‘external’ discourse has largely fixed upon political sovereignty very narrowly in terms of ‘ruler sovereignty’, the agency of the sovereign body acting as an individual. In consequence, full recognition of the political work of sovereignty has fallen between the legal and international relations discourses.