Limits Of Sovereignty Research Articles

SHAKESPEARE VE EGEMENLİK: MACBETH’İN BİYOPOLİTİK BİR OKUMASI

Biopolitics has brought new perspectives on power relations in society with the conceptualization of Michelle Foucault. Although the history of the concept goes back to the past, biopolitics has been used to analyze the power and social power relations in many areas from body control to population politics, thanks to Foucault. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has carried the concept of biopolitics to another point and contributed to the concept of biopolitics with his studies on sovereignty. Unlike Foucault, who claims that biopolitics is a modern thought, Agamben traces biopolitics in ancient texts. In his book Homo Sacer, Agamben allows us to reflect on the limits of sovereignty with the concept of bare life. Agamben searches for the holy man who can be killed but not sacrificed in Roman Law and makes analyzes on social power relations and sovereignty through this concept. In this article, it is aimed to make a biopolitical reading of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth, based on Agamben's analysis of the Homo Sacer. As Macbeth kills King Duncan and becomes king himself, his struggle with the ghost of sovereignty begins. While this article seeks the reasons for Macbeth's inability to legitimize his power as the possessor of sovereignty and power in Elizabethan political theology and ideological structure, it reveals, in a biopolitical reading, that Macbeth has fallen into the position of the Homo Sacer, who cannot be sacrificed but is legitimate to be killed, that the sovereign is not above sovereignty, and that the king's mystical existence is separated from bodily existence. It is intended to analyze that with the killing of the king, Macbeth seeks to retain sovereignty while trying to cope with the pain of breaking the sacred order as an object of the dominant ideology. In this article, the reason why Macbeth's sovereignty cannot be legitimized is discussed based on the argument that power has a productive rather than an oppressive nature, while examining how his position has transformed into the Homo Sacer in Agamben's theory.

Belarusian Nationalism: Taking Stock of Its Accomplishments

Belarus is a country with a blurred identity that has not cut the umbilical cord connecting it with Mother Russia. According to a representative national survey of April 2020, only 25 percent of Belarusians would prefer to retain statehood and national sovereignty of Belarus even if their living standards worsen whereas 52 percent would opt for limited sovereignty if it is the price to pay for retaining or improving the quality of life. This may be the best-kept secret of Belarus and it has implications more serious than just economic dependency on Belarus’s eastern neighbor. Belarus used to be a contested borderland claimed by both Russians and Poles. Today, it is a country with two historical narratives and nation-building blueprints that have been confronting each other since the inception of the Belarusian national movement. While the neo-Soviet/Russo-centric narrative has held sway over the majority of Belarusians, the Westernizing narrative was hard-hit on several occasions but has been making headway since Gorbachev’s Perestroika. Pluses and minuses of two narratives and the attempts at bridging the gap between them are analyzed. There are essentially two kinds of divisions in Belarusian society: between the respective projects of nation-building and between Lukashenka loyalists and his detractors. These two divisions do not quite coincide, but there is a growing tendency to couch the ongoing political crisis in nationalist terms. The point is made that a lack of cohesive Belarusian identity is an existential threat to Belarusian statehood.

Political restructuring, bureaucratization and minority groups in Myanmar: The case of Rohingya from 2011 to 2018

Abstract Politics of ethnicity can have serious repercussions if balance of interests is not maintained and this can lead to internal destabilization of states. This is the case in Myanmar, a situation which has brought suffering and deaths of thousands; effectively raising concerns and opprobrium against the government of Myanmar. Minority groups in Myanmar are greatly oppressed, though recent proceedings have seen the democratically elected government trying to avert the situation, while facing great restraints from the military which has been in control of the government for decades. The transformation process to uphold minority rights is marred with controversy as the Rohingya systematic alienation has persisted even in the new political dispensation. Discriminatory, cumbrous bureaucratic tendencies, are constantly used to control and manipulate the Rohingya to force them out of the country, a system which is ultimately backed by state sponsored violence. This research therefore, seeks to critically examine how the bureaucratic systems in Myanmar has been weaponized to systematically suppress rights of the Rohingya. Most research has focused on the butchering and series of violence against the Rohingya but this is generally a condensed and comprehensive analysis of the direct contribution of the bureaucrats as the implementers of public policy. This research concludes that, the doctrine of sovereignty has largely remained the salvation harboring and facilitating the continuity of repressive regimes despite the existence of the doctrine of limited sovereignty. Most importantly, the Rohingyian ordeal hints on the failures of the United Nations as actions of member states are conditioned by their selfish interests and states would only act where their national interest lie. There is need to create a global authority with executive legislative, judiciary, military and constitutional authority to exert authority over governments.

Understanding Dollarisation: A Keynesian/Kaleckian Perspective

ABSTRACT What does ‘dollarisation’ mean in a world of endogenous money, i.e., in a world where money is not (only) created by printing pieces of paper, but (mainly) by making loans? Is it true that dollarisation only constitutes a limitation of sovereignty in the short run (making it harder to run standard stabilisation macro policies) or can it also slow a country’s growth process? To answer these questions, the paper builds a theoretical Keynesian-Kaleckian growth model for a dollarised economy within a framework of endogenous money. We will show that, ceteris paribus, the steady-state medium-term growth rate of a dollarised economy is lower than that of a country with its own currency. We will also show that a dollarised economy is more likely to be unstable than an economy with its own currency, in the specific sense that, everything else being equal, it is more likely for a dollarised economy to fall into a debt trap.

The (anti) politics of central banking: Monetary policy, class conflict and the limits of sovereignty in South Africa

During the transition to democracy in the 1990s, the departing apartheid regime granted political power to the black majority but kept the main levers of economic policy insulated from the revolution. Control over the South African Reserve Bank (SARB; hereafter also Reserve Bank) was central to this strategy. The SARB was made private and independent, its mandate limited to maintaining ‘price stability’, and the financial sector was liberalized – all in line with neoliberal principles. The SARB represents itself as ‘apolitical’, and claims that independence is necessary to build investor trust. But since 2009, left-wing movements have argued that central bank policy is in fact political; that it ultimately benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. They want to renationalize the SARB and establish democratic control over finance and monetary policy, thus completing the revolution. This paper explores the history and politics of central banking in South Africa, including the role of African National Congress (ANC) decision-makers, to determine how and why the SARB become independent during the transition, and who benefits from this arrangement. I find that the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy does indeed have uneven distributional effects, and serves the interests of some class factions (specifically, speculative finance) over others. But I argue that the vision for a more democratic financial system may be difficult to actualize. Not because it is unrealistic, but because it fails to address the external pressures that overdetermine SARB policy. Ultimately, the Reserve Bank is beholden to powers that lie beyond the borders of the domestic political economy. Integration into global financial markets, and dependence on foreign investment, has severely curtailed South Africa’s economic sovereignty.

RECREATIONAL HUNTING: WHY? AN ETHNOGRAPHIC AND HISTORICAL CASE STUDY FROM NORTHERN CYPRUS

In this paper I answer the question of why people, particularly men, hunt recreationally. I combine ethnography and archival research to explore the personal motivations of contemporary recreational hunters in Northern Cyprus. I then go on to examine histories of recreational hunting by different colonisers of Cyprus. In both past and present cases, my analysis reveals that recreational hunting is a personal practice in being free in the context of everyday life in a coercive civilisation. In addition, recreational hunting is recognised as being entangled with gains in political rights in the wake of the Enlightenment and its extension to newly free citizens, men in particular. Furthermore, the history of recreational hunting situates it as spatially juxtaposed against the fixed settlements of coercive civilization, echoing protected areas today. I conclude that male citizens hunt recreationally seeking a passing taste of elitist ways of being free, as it is a demonstration of the limited sovereignty over one’s life that being a legal citizen offers.

Reflections on the Revolution in Karlsruhe: The Bundesverfassungsgericht Ruling in Weiss

“By contrast with ordinary international treaties, the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which, on the entry into force of the Treaty, became an integral part of the legal systems of the Member States and which their courts are bound to apply. By creating a Community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality, its own legal capacity and capacity of representation on the international plane and, more particularly, real powers stemming from a limitation of sovereignty or a transfer of powers from the states to the Community, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves. The integration into the laws of each Member State of provisions which derive from the Community and more generally the terms and the spirit of the Treaty, make it impossible for the states, as a corollary, to accord precedence to a unilateral and subsequent measure over a legal system accepted by them on a basis of reciprocity. Such a measure cannot therefore be inconsistent with that legal system. The law stemming from the Treaty, an independent source of law, could not because of its special and original nature, be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed, without being deprived of its character as Community law and without the legal basis of the Community itself being called into question.” The above words - among the most famous to emanate from the European Court of Justice - can be credited as having given form to a true legal revolution. They are the words of the European Court of Justice in Costa v ENEL in which that Court established the doctrine of supremacy.

To the question on institutional disproportion of the Constitution of the Russian Federation

The subject of this research is the structural characteristics of the Constitution of the Russian Federation from the perspective of cross-disciplinary institutional approach. The author describes the peculiarities of application of institutional and neo-institutional methods of analysis in political science and jurisprudence. Two main vectors in application of methodology of institutional analysis in the constitutional-legal research are proposed: internal constitutional analysis of the branch of Russia’s constitutional law; and external institutional analysis, the object field of which includes interaction of the constitution with external environment of public authority and public policy. The author provides arguments for existence of institutional imbalance in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which is substantiated by historical conditions and complexity of the state structure. Scientific novelty of the article is defined by application of cross-disciplinary methodology of institutional analysis towards studying structural specificity of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Peculiarities of implementation of institutional analysis in political scientific and constitutional-legal research are revealed, which opens a new perspective upon correlation between various constitutional norms and institutions contained in the main law of Russia. The examples of institutional imbalance of the Constitution of the Russian Federation are demonstrated: a qualitatively and quantitatively complex model of federative structure; recognition by the Constitution of limited sovereignty of the republics as the constituent entities of the Russian Federation; entrenchment of a broad list of constitutional rights and freedoms without elaboration of the more effective mechanism of their implementation; imbalance between the rights and responsibilities; division of powers between central government and regional governments; absence of sufficient guaranteed of the system of local self-governance, etc. It is noted that to a certain extent, the ongoing constitutional reform eliminates the institutional imbalance of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and the work in this direction should be continued.  

Suzerainty, Semi-Sovereignty, and International Legal Hierarchies on China's Borderlands

AbstractThe concept of semi-sovereignty, a now obsolete category of international entities possessing limited sovereignty, remains hazily understood. However, the historical examination of how semi-sovereignty was defined and practised during the long nineteenth century can provide insights on the interplay between authority and control within the hierarchies of international relations. This paper examines one specific type of semi-sovereignty—namely, suzerainty—which is often used to describe China's traditional authority in Tibet and Mongolia. By examining the events that led to the acceptance of suzerainty as the legal framing for the China-Tibet and China-Mongolia relationships, I argue that suzerainty was a deliberately vague concept that could be used to create liminal international legal spaces to the advantage of Western states, and to mediate between competing claims of political authority. Finally, I point to the importance of semi-sovereignty as an arena of legal contestation between the Western and non-Western members of the “Family of Nations”.

Externalized Migration Governance and the Limits of Sovereignty: The Case of Partnership Agreements between EU and Libya

AbstractCan state sovereignty justify privileged receiving countries exercising authority over non‐members in a third country to safeguard their own interests? Under the current migration governance of the EU, state sovereignty is manifested in migrant interdiction, interception and detention policies employed to prevent unauthorized migrants from reaching the EU, and even from attempting to embark on cross‐Mediterranean journeys. While reinforcement of the Schengen region's external borders is a key aim of the EU's internal migration politics, collaboration with third countries regarding migration control has, in the last decade, become a key feature of its external migration policy. In close collaboration with third countries, the EU has managed to curb the outflux of migrants from transit and sending countries. In effect, irregular migrants are prevented from exiting as well as from entering. This article explores the justifiability of such practices, by questioning commonly invoked models of justification such as the sovereignty “model”, with a special focus on partnership agreements regarding migration control between the EU and Libya.

New South Indians: Tribal Economics and the Eastern Band of Cherokee in the Twentieth Century by Christopher Arris Oakley

Reviewed by: New South Indians: Tribal Economics and the Eastern Band of Cherokee in the Twentieth Century by Christopher Arris Oakley Tamara Levi New South Indians: Tribal Economics and the Eastern Band of Cherokee in the Twentieth Century. By Christopher Arris Oakley. ( Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2018. Pp. [xii], 265. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-62190-404-5.) In New South Indians: Tribal Economics and the Eastern Band of Cherokee in the Twentieth Century, Christopher Arris Oakley brings a tribal perspective to indigenous economic history in the twentieth century. Utilizing oral history interviews and private papers, as well as tribal, state, and federal documents, the author traces the role that the Cherokee Tribal Council played in economic development from the 1880s through the 1990s. Oakley ultimately seeks both to [End Page 716] add to the body of historical work on the Eastern Band in the twentieth century and to integrate that history into the broader context of the New South. The book is divided into five chronological chapters spanning from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. In each, Oakley places Cherokee actions within the context of the changes in federal Indian policy, from termination to self-determination. With each major policy, he discusses the impact on the Eastern Band, highlighting the consequences of uncertainty in relation to termination and unreliable federal funding. He also provides context of the broader trends in southern history from Jim Crow to the impact of the civil rights movement. Chapter 1 covers the period from incorporation in 1889 through the 1920s and places tribal actions in the context of late-nineteenth-century Indian reform and the growth of Jim Crow segregation. Following an 1886 U.S. Supreme Court decision that, in part, ruled that the Eastern Band was not a recognized tribe, the tribal council sought a way to protect the community and its tribal identity. The creation of a corporate charter allowed the tribal council to own land in common and to engage in collective negotiations with outside entities in order to develop the local economy. Chapters 2 through 5 discuss the Eastern Band's efforts to capitalize on the growing tourism industry and the subsequent challenges doing so created from the late 1920s through the late 1990s. With limited sovereignty, the tribal council sought partnerships with non-Indian entrepreneurs and organizations to develop a tourism economy. Oakley also covers the problems the Eastern Band faced in trying to stabilize an economy based largely on seasonal tourism. Oakley concludes the book with a discussion of the immediate economic impact of Harrah's Cherokee Casino. The success of the casino increased the tribal council's operating budget, reduced the Eastern Band's economic dependence on the federal government, and contributed to a reduction of the poverty rate on the reservation. Tribal leaders viewed their increased economic independence as vital to protecting Cherokee identity and tribal sovereignty. Oakley's work succeeds in providing a general introduction to Eastern Cherokee tribal economic history in the twentieth century. He provides context for Cherokee economic development within both federal Indian policy and the broader economic and social histories of the New South. A more detailed analysis of the interplay between Jim Crow segregation and the economic actions of the tribal council, and how this interplay impacted the regional history of western North Carolina, would have been welcome but was probably beyond the scope of the work. Likewise, while Oakley does touch on internal tribal divisions and on the paternalism and racism of many non-Indian economic actors, he does not explore their consequences in any depth. New South Indians provides a valuable basis for future examinations on the interplay between the Eastern Band of Cherokee and the broader region and on economics as the basis of integrating tribal history into the historiography of the New South. It also highlights that Native peoples are not reflections of nineteenth-century stereotypes but are present and integral to modern history. [End Page 717] Tamara Levi Jacksonville State University Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association

A New Relationship Between Globalisation and Interest Representation

What we have been witnessing for decades is a crisis of the organizations that represent both workers and employers. This paper examines some of the reasons for this situation in light of globalisation, and an increasingly limited State sovereignty which has led to its own loss of legitimacy. This paper also explores the changed scenario resulting from internationalisation and offers indications for a different way of organising interests by combing the new demands for identity recognition with the expansion of market borders.

Nacionalni subjekti međunarodnih odnosa i ograničeni suverenitet

Postmodern social theory and science on international relations treat national entities as primary actors i.e. participants in the international community, as well as international politics. The state remains an essential actor in international relations, with respect to other traditional subjects and contemporary factors. National organizations, especially secessionist movements supported by terrorist groups, present the greatest threat to humanity. Also, certain religious groups in collaboration with organized crime and terrorism seriously endanger human existence in many parts of the world. The main characteristics of state structures remain crucial for every society, especially the population, territory and sovereign power. Global trends increase the importance of other characteristics of the state, especially economic resources and military effects. Sovereignty remains the main principle in international relations, where the phenomenon of limited sovereignty becomes a constant in objective relations at a global level.

The limits of sovereignty as responsibility

The limits of sovereignty as responsibility

Unresolved Sovereignty and the Anthropocene Novel: Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book

ABSTRACTThe recent “Uluru Statement from the Heart” (May, 2017), and the Final Report of the Referendum Council (June, 2017) are significant expressions of a rapidly evolving discourse on sovereignty in Australia. Alexis Wright's The Swan Book (2013) is a futuristic meditation on the limits of sovereignty from an Indigenous perspective: what if national borders disappear under the rising waters of global warming? What if national governments are superseded by global rule? The Swan Book explores these scenarios in a complex interplay of utopian and dystopian modes. This article argues that Alexis Wright's work is an instance of how the Indigenous world novel can address real world issues of anthropocene futures, Indigenous rights and national sovereignty.

PROMESA, Puerto Rico and the American Empire

As the United States ascended to hyper-power status during the late 1970s, it changed colonial policy in Puerto Rico. The change, which included the elimination of favorable tax legislation and demilitarization, devastated Puerto Rico’s economy. Puerto Rico borrowed heavily in a failed effort to offset the dramatic decline in capital inflows. The federal government enacted PROMESA after Puerto Rico announced it could not repay the debt. The law was designed to restore Puerto Rico to financial solvency by imposing oppressive austerity measures. PROMESA was a watershed event because it stripped Puerto Rico of the limited sovereignty the federal government had allowed. But, just as colonialism is the source of Puerto Rico’s economic and humanitarian crises, colonialism will also sabotage PROMESA’s plan to extract wealth from an impoverished population. Hurricane Maria has guaranteed that Puerto Rico will never have the resources to repay the debt holders.

Trans-migrations: Agency and Confinement at the Limits of Sovereignty

Intersectional analyses of gender, sexuality, and migrations have been central to feminist and queer theorizations of the state in historical perspective. In the twenty-first century, mounting deportations and mass incarceration—mostly of brown and black men—have elicited growing scholarly concern about the intersections of gender, race, and increased state coercive power under neoliberalism, including the emerging field of detention studies. However, the increasing displacement of trans subjects in the Americas, and what their embodied experiences of migration tell us about the changing nature of state sovereignty at the border and beyond, remains undertheorized. Based on participant observation and interviews conducted with chicas trans at migrant shelters in Mexico, this study sheds light on how gender and geographical transitions shape each other, blurring distinctions of shelter and homelessness, motion and boundedness, and freedom and unfreedom. It reveals counterintuitive inversions and sites of confinement beyond the walls of strictly carceral facilities, even as rates of migrant detention and imprisonment have increased dramatically in both Mexico and the United States in the past few years. Drawing on these findings, I propose the notion of “confinement in motion,” a state that persists even when the subject is not traveling through space in an ordinary sense. I further argue that, while the requirements of global accumulation continuously set people in motion, migratory flows have not remained undisciplined but have been incorporated into contemporary global governance through a carceral regime of sovereignty that exceeds the state.

ДЕСУВЕРЕНИЗАЦИЯ ГОСУДАРСТВА: ОТСТУПЛЕНИЕ ОТ ПРИНЦИПОВ МЕЖДУНАРОДНОГО ПРАВА ИЛИ ОБЪЕКТИВНАЯ НЕОБХОДИМОСТЬ

We examine processes of desovereignization and the loss of a state political subjectivity. Noted the necessity of research and analysis of state sovereignty in the context of globalization and threats to international peace, which affect the degree of independence of the state and require the search for legal and political levers to protect the monolithic right of the state to independence, inviolability and non-interference in internal affairs. Has been made an attempt to search for detect and establish acceptable grounds for limiting state sovereignty. It is established that the voluntary restriction of sovereignty with the transfer of powers to supranational entities has constructive consequences in the form of good-neighborly cooperation, financial and economic support of states from international financial institutions, etc. In cases where, in order to establish the rule of law, protect human rights and freedoms and under other good intentions, the policy of the state is interfered with by both the organs of the international community and individual states that have endowed themselves with the right of “international arbiter”, fears for the stable development of national states increase. It is concluded that any limitation of sovereignty should not lead to interference in the national interests of the state and to the loss of political and legal independence.

The Entangled Eastern Front and the Making of the Ukrainian State: a Forgotten Peace – a Forgotten War and Nation-Building

In his article the author reproduced a picture of the Ukrainian state formation and described the stages of the independence movement deployment. Despite all the efforts — conscious or unconscious — of the numerous “authors” of Ukrainian statehood, there were always powerful forces who opposed the idea of Ukraine’s independence. The Bolsheviks and Whites showed the most hostile attitude towards the idea of the Ukrainian state and nation. This was confirmed by the devastating actions of the White Army and the Polish Republic in the western lands of Ukraine. A first war between Soviet Russia and Ukraine poisoned the relations of the two revolutionary governments and ruined the peace among the Ukrainian Bolsheviks. However, because of their state weakness and the urgent need for food for the starving Petrograd and other parts of Russia, Bolsheviks were supposed to pretend that they take their slogans of national self-determination seriously. Even recognizing the Ukrainian People’s Republic and at the same time putting ultimatums on it and threatening war, unless the UNR surrenders its armed forces and statehood to the subject of the Bolsheviks. The author explored the process of German-Austrian occupation of Ukraine, noting that the occupation in wartime is characterized by the features of colonial regimes of exploitation and subordination, which vividly and at the same time sadly demonstrates the presence of the Central Powers in Ukraine in 1918. By strengthening the Ukrainian government they had contracted with and promised military and political support, the Germans were simultaneously weakening and undermining it because of their inflated demands. The article also analyzes the limited sovereignty of the Ukrainian state, describes the attitude to the idea of the Ukrainian state and the nation of other peoples. Keywords: Ukrainian state, independence, sovereignty, occupation, Bolsheviks, Soviet Russia, Central states.

The Globalization of Labor and the Limits of Sovereignty: Immigration and the Politics of Forgiveness

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of ever-growing global migration of people with a following set of questions: (1) What are the main causes of this global phenomenon?; (2) What are the possible ethical and political issues of the rising global migration of people?; (3) What should be the theological response to these issues, and how should the church engage them? In answering these questions, this paper is specifically focused on the case of undocumented migrants: their social predicament, political impasse, and religious (theological) ethical engagement.