Limits Of Sovereignty Research Articles

For What May We Hope? An Appreciation of Peter Simpson’s Political Illiberalism

Peter Simpson’s Political Illiberalism defends a Hobbesian view of the dominant liberal political regimes of the West. In practice, the theoretical liberalism animating these regimes has not and cannot sustain any limits on government power. Simpson articulates a Roman Catholic alternative for limited sovereignty, animated by the complementary principles of subsidiarity and solidarity. Two reservations: (1) War and “national security” have driven and justified the unlimited centralization and expansion of political power in liberal regimes. Simpson’s Hobbesian view of the internal life of liberalism invites the question of whether this centralized expansion is necessary for survival in an equally Hobbesian external world. War and international affairs play little role in Simpson’s analysis. (2) The Roman Catholic notion of solidarity in the last half-century may not in practice complement subsidiarity and limited sovereignty so much as supplant it, an issue I illustrate with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Elouise Cobell and the Indian Trust Funds: Accountability and Trust in Public Administration

U.S. government policy and jurisprudence concerning American Indian nations have long been marked by paradoxes and contradictions. The story of Cobell v. Norton, the largest class action suit ever brought against the federal government, illuminates issues that are basic to the administrative state, including accountability, trust, and the nature of sovereignty. For more than a century, administrators neglected their fiduciary responsibility for the management of Indian trust accounts. The legal doctrine of limited sovereignty failed to protect the rights and interests of Indian citizens and Indian nations. This discussion recounts a history that should be learned from rather than erased.

Poland and the Brezhnev Doctrine (1968–1989)

After the Sovietled invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Moscow began to advance the notion of “limited sovereignty”, soon dubbed by Washington the “Brezhnev Doctrine”. The Doctrine was next debated during the period of Solidarity (1980-81) when Soviet leaders considered the pros and cons of a military invasion. After sixteen months of hesitation, the domestic “martial law” alternative was chosen instead. In the late eighties, Gorbachev advised his Eastern European counterparts that violence was no longer an option and that they should therefore reach peaceful accommodations with their own societies. Jaruzelski was the first to do so.

Desovereignization and the Loss of Political Subjectivity by the State

The article discusses the interconnection of desovereignization processes and state’s loss of political subjectivity. The author points out the need to introduce a special approach to the identification and to the analysis of state sovereignty, as well as offers to consider facts of limitation of sovereignty in terms of desovereignization processes. This specialization of study helps to search to detect and to establish allowable state restrictions of state sovereignty in which its supreme power retains the ability to quickly and effectively respond to threats promotion policy of national interests. Restriction of sovereignty, according to the author, is acceptable only when it does not lead to a loss of political subjectivity of the state.

‘Big brother, little brothers’: comparing China's and India's transboundary river policies

Hydro-hegemons can provide both positive and negative forms of leadership, the former leading to cooperative outcomes and the latter to conflict in transboundary river basins. What constrains hydro-hegemons and under what conditions do they cooperate? This paper examines China's and India's hydro-hegemonic behavior, using case studies of the Mekong and the Ganges, respectively. As a positive hydro-hegemon, China cooperates multilaterally with other Mekong riparians, while India takes a limited sovereignty view by sharing water with Bangladesh and Nepal in the Ganges. China and India behave as dominant hydro-hegemons when they engage in resource capture strategies, such as water diversion projects and unilateral dam-building activities. The regional context and domestic politics of hydro-hegemons constrain their behavior, and determine the forms of positive and negative leadership they provide. When strong multilateral mechanisms already exist in the regional context, hydro-hegemons are more likely to cooperate multilaterally. This explains why China cooperates multilaterally in the Mekong while India rejects multilateralism in the Ganges. Domestic considerations also explain why China cooperates multilaterally in the Mekong but avoids water-sharing discussions. In India's case, electoral politics account for the eventual signing of the Ganges and Mahakali treaties after decades of negotiations.

How Does the EU Challenge Bicameralism? First Reflections from the Italian Constitutional Experience

This chapter firstly investigates the main rationales and justifications of bicameralism, arguing that all modern bicameral systems are based, in their roots, on two possible ultimate justifications: the separation of powers and the protection of minorities. Subsequently, this chapter explores the model of bicameralism adopted in the Italian Constitution of 1947. The analysis argues that the bicameral system of the Italian Republican Constitution is a formidable case study, as long as it is almost exclusively based on one single driver of bicameralism, namely the separation of powers. After having analyzed this model, the chapter explores the changing pattern of Italian bicameralism in light of the European integration process. European integration, a source of limitations of sovereignty, is considered as a key factor of the overcoming of the main justification of Italian bicameralism.

Leviathan No More: The Right of Nature and the Limits of Sovereignty in Hobbes

AbstractThis article challenges the prevailing interpretations of Hobbes's thought as providing only minimal protection for the natural right of individuals in political society. Natural right requires the protection of not just the subjects' lives, but their ability to live commodiously, and as a result the protection that natural right receives in political society places substantive constraints on the actions of the sovereign. When those entrusted with sovereign power overstep this constraint, they cease to be sovereign and the former subjects are returned to the state of nature to seek protection as each judges fit. I develop the substance of commodious living more thoroughly than similar analyses and demonstrate that this understanding is not limited to Leviathan but can be found in Hobbes's earlier political work as well.

In Search of Sovereignty: Central and Eastern Europe, 1956-1989

International theory is replete with contested concepts, none more than state sovereignty. Although embodied in the UN Charter, it came under continuous strain during the early Cold War, culminating in the crucial year of 1956. Subsequent Soviet ideologists sought to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia as „limited sovereignty”, dubbed by US analysts the “Brezhnev Doctrine”. A few Western scholars thought this ended with the „non-invasion” of Poland in 1980-1981, but Russian archives reveal that it was not annulled until spring 1989.

POLITICAL AND LEGAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE ROLE OF THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN POLITICS OF THE REPUBLIC OF TATARSTAN IN 2014–2015

In this article political and legal development is analyzed as well as the role of religion in the Republic of Tatarstan (RT) in late 2014 to November 2015. The most important factor in the legitimacy of power in the RT became the fact that the Constitution of the RT contains a statement about the limited sovereignty of the RT, the post of president of the RT and the restoration of republic-wide elections for the RT presidency. At the same time, the leaders of the RT actively cooperated with the representatives of major Muslim, spiritual organizations such as the Muslim Spiritual Administration of Tatarstan on organizing social events, projects in the sphere of education and Muslim festivities.

Towards a Single African Sky: Challenges and Prospects

From the outset the international law position was that the airspace above the high seas was not subject to the sovereignty of any state. However, the same cannot be said of the airspace above territorial waters. Dugard contends that under international law today, the airspace immediately above the territory of the state and that above its territorial waters, was at some point the subject of conflicting theories. Initial thoughts on the subject of territoriality of airspace dismissed the idea of sovereignty over a block of air, and instead treated the airspace as an entirely free continuum much like the high seas. Other theories assumed limited sovereignty,

Use of Force: Ideological Influence on US National Security Strategies under George W. Bush and Barack Obama (2002-2010)

This research extends the survey that classifies the US political theories upon the issue of military enforcement issue in American foreign policy and international relations. The article demonstrates how earlier proposed theoretical classification and its implications works when applied to the comparative analysis of the National Security Strategies of the USA released by George Bush Administration in 2002 and 2006 and Barack Obama Administration in 2010. The key provisions of these Strategies are reviewed consistently with the ideas of American political scientists who participated in the elaboration of the Strategies’ drafts. The research has shown that the Strategies 2002, 2006 and 2010 had inherited the main principles and guidelines worked out in by Philip Zelikow, Peter Feaver and James Steinberg as for the Strategies of the years 2002, 2006 and 2010 respectively. The analysis of ideological influence on Bush and Obama Strategies has also exposed that Bush and Obama political courses have quite similar ideological backgrounds for the use of force issue In this way the Obama’s Strategy of the year 2010 contains the same categories as the Bush’s Strategies of 2002 and 2006: the regime change, the limited sovereignty and probable preventive use of force. Henсe, interventionalism turns out to be the primary ideological foundation of the Strategies of 2002, 2006 and 2010. However the differences between the approaches of the Bush and Obama Administrations towards the questions of the use of force legitimacy and priorities unveil that the Strategies of 2002 and 2006 have radical inclinations whereas Obama’s strategy incorporates the ideas of rationalism.

Germany, America and the shaping of post-Cold War Europe: a story of German international emancipation through political unification, 1989–90

German reunification within NATO in 1990 marked the end of the Cold War. It also cemented America's role as a ‘European power’. By focusing on three key moments in German-American security relations in 1989-90, this essay explains how this outcome materialised. For Chancellor Helmut Kohl, driving the process of unification offered Germans the prospect of international emancipation after four decades of limited sovereignty. For President George H.W. Bush, backing unification proved an opportunity to preserve and transform NATO. Moreover, the new, more political version of the Alliance that emerged became Washington's device to shape the post-Cold War era.

The ‘elephant in the room’ in debates about universal jurisdiction: diasporas, duties of hospitality, and the constitution of the political

Universal jurisdiction is typically understood by reference to the interstate world: for example, as a cosmopolitan institution transcending the limitations of sovereignty. This article highlights instead the concrete role of victim diasporas in bringing claims under universal jurisdiction. Transnational criminal law as a paradigm can also help one understand how the transnational movement of persons is shaping the prosecution of those responsible for atrocities. In addition to being a better descriptive theory of universal jurisdiction, transnationalism has the potential to provide a better normative theory. This article focuses on the extent to which the provision of universal jurisdiction can be understood as fulfilling a duty of hospitality towards those who have suffered harm abroad but are now on the territory of a new state. Universal jurisdiction is part of the constitution of political bonds in migrant societies and should be understood as a manifestation of forms of rooted cosmopolitanism.

Popular or Partial Sovereignity?

Nowadays sovereignty is one of the fundamental concepts in all jurisdictions and bends in all its forms. In theory it is talked too much about sovereignty, no matter where it derives from and how it is conducted. But, in practice things change, because it is not performed correctly what is noted in general in all modern constitutions. Questions do not lack in this respect as: where sovereignty derives from; to whom sovereignty belongs; what are the limitations of sovereignty; what are the problems that arise when there is a conflict to respect the appointed head of sovereignty; by what means is done the transfer of sovereignty in case of need? Another problem has to do with the relationship between the direct and indirect sovereignty and its manner of implementation. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n6p163

Unsettling Citizenship/Circumventing Sovereignty: Reexamining the Quandaries of Contemporary Anticolonialism in the United States through Black Puerto Rican Antiracist Thought

This essay weighs the uses and limitations of sovereignty and citizenship for the 7.3 million people who live in contemporary US colonies (i.e., reservations and “unincorporated territories”), where residents continue to be deprived of both political equality and the right to self-determination. It brings to light a series of little-known critiques written by two early twentieth-century Puerto Rican antiracist activist intellectuals, Tomás Carrión Maduro and Luis Felipe Dessus. By excavating the original ways in which these thinkers dispelled the notion that either full annexation or full separation from the United States would bring about substantive decolonization for race and class subalterns in the island, this piece aims to provoke those of us who today continue to grapple with the impasses of contemporary US colonialisms to chart alternative decolonial approaches by possibly “sidestepping” sovereignty and citizenship as the primary rallying banners of our struggles.

About the Impossibility of Absolute State Sovereignty

State sovereignty is often thought to be absolute, unlimited. This paper argues that there is no such a thing as absolute State sovereignty. Indeed, absolute sovereignty is impossible because all sovereignty is necessarily underpinned by its conditions of possibility—i.e. limited sovereignty is the norm, though the nature of the limitations varies. The article consists of two main sections: (a) the concept of sovereignty: this section is focused on some of the limitations the concept of sovereignty itself presents; and (b) a historical account of the notion of sovereignty as it was used in the Ancient Times. The particular focus on early notions of a modern concept such as sovereignty has to do with the fact that this early notion has been anthropomorphised with societal evolution. Therein, the current concept of State sovereignty embraces the same limitations it had in its ancient form as a non-fully developed conceptual idea. The implications of understanding State sovereignty as limited rather than absolute are several, both directly and indirectly. A main immediate consequence is that sovereign States can cooperate together, limit their sovereignty and still be considered sovereign.

Meaning in a Changing Context: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach to Authorial Revision

SummaryIn this article, I seek to develop a genetic/diachronic approach to the phenomenon of authorial revision, and to the interpretation of texts that exist in multiple versions. In all such cases, the reconstruction of textual meaning cannot be separated from the reconstruction of the process through which the text in its ‘final’ form came into being; furthermore, an understanding of the author's intentions in (re)writing cannot be entirely separated from an understanding of his/her motives for (re)writing. This article is divided into three sections. In the first section, I consider recent trends in editorial and literary theory that aim at characterising texts in terms of processes rather than products, in order to uphold the equal dignity of each version without losing sight of its connectedness to other stages in the history of the text. In the second section, I discuss how Quentin Skinner's views on meaning and context apply to cases of authorial revision, and I suggest that some key aspects of Skinner's contextualism need to be reconsidered. In the concluding section, I focus on a case study in order to demonstrate the operational value of such a genetic and motive-based approach to authorial revision: more particularly, I seek to show how a close examination of Jean Bodin's rewriting practices in the Methodus (1566–1572) and the République (1576) can throw new light on his shift from a concept of limited sovereignty to one of absolute sovereignty.

Centering Panama in Global Modernity: The Search for National Identity and the Imagining of the Orient in Rogelio Sinán’s “Sin novedad en Shanghai”

Centering Panama in Global Modernity: The Search for National Identity and the Imagining of the Orient in Rogelio Sinán’s “Sin novedad en Shanghai”

Four Types of Diaspora Mobilization: Albanian Diaspora Activism For Kosovo Independence in the US and the UK

This comparative study explores the conditions and causal pathways through which conflict-generated diasporas become moderate or radical actors when linked to homelands experiencing limited sovereignty. Situated at the nexus of scholarship on diasporas and conflict, ethnic lobbying in foreign policy, and transnationalism this article develops four types of diaspora political mobilization—radical (strong and weak) and moderate (strong and weak)—and unpacks the causal pathways that lead to these four types in different political contexts. I argue that dynamics in the original homeland drive the overall trend towards radicalism or moderation of diaspora mobilization in a host-land: high levels of violence are associated with radicalism, and low levels with moderation. Nevertheless, how diaspora mobilization takes place is a result of the conjuncture of the level of violence with another variable, the linkages of the main secessionist elites to the diaspora. The article uses observations from eight cases of Albanian diaspora mobilization in the US and the UK from 1989 until the proclamation of Kosovo's independence in 2008.

Piracy in the Offing: The Law of Lands and The Limits of Sovereignty at Sea

This article uses the offing as a metaphor to theorize piracy in relation to pivotal moments in Southeast Asia's maritime engagement with the world. "In the offing" usually indicates that something is about to happen. This figurative meaning derives from a literal one that refers to the visible sea beyond inshore navigational hazards. Nautically apt, the offing's literal sense also provides a useful metaphor for analyzing piracy. Like the physical location of the offing, piracy entails both an embodied orientation as well as a more general relation of structured perceptions between those aboard ship and those on shore. Yet shore-based political authorities have had an inordinate power to define what counts as piracy and who is determined to be a pirate. While designations of piracy illuminate the efforts of states to manage the limits of their sovereignty, the boundary between legitimate plunder and that which is not has often been negotiated across social arenas in which legal (and other) legitimacies are differentially acknowledged. Like the space of the offing, acts that might be considered piracy and those who do them thus entail questions of definition, visibility, and point of view-matters that for piracy unfold in relation to particular configurations of politics, power, and cultural comprehension. The question of piracy comes under scrutiny here in three such configurations:first, in the relations between Southeast Asian polities and between them and China during the 15th century; second, in the context of early 17th century Dutch trade in Southeast Asia along with the European political and legal setting; and third, in connection with 19th century views on piracy's proliferation in the region and inter-colonial attempts to curb it. This analysis informs a discussion of infamous ethnic names that signified "pirates" in colonial European and Southeast Asian discourses. It then also anchors critical observations about contemporary piracy and the notion of failed states.