Notion Of Sovereignty Research Articles

EU environmental regulation for a circular economy in the light of national sovereignty

This paper aims to explore the impact of the latest European Union (EU) circular economy initiatives on the national sovereignty of EU Member States, specifically examining whether new EU measures encouraging a circular economy limit the domain of Member States’ sovereignty. Accordingly, the paper begins with the assessment of the measures laid out in the second Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) adopted in 2020. It analyses the effectiveness and impact of these measures in promoting a circular economy in the EU (Chapter 2). Following this, it reviews the progress made on implementing the actions listed in the CEAP, with a special focus on legislative and non-legislative measures. It highlights the achievements in the implementation process and provides a brief overview of key legislative proposals (Chapter 3). The following section explores how different countries in the EU are developing their own strategies to promote a circular economy (Chapter 4). Lastly, the paper delves into the notion of sovereignty within the EU and the relationship between the EU and its Member States. It analyses how Member States balance their national sovereignty in relation to the EU and investigates the types of instruments and legal basis used for regulating a circular economy (Chapter 5). The final section concludes, noting the current minor impact of the EU’s environmental regulation for a circular economy on national sovereignty (Chapter 6).

Colonialism and the Sovereignty of Peoples: A Dialogue between Hegel and the French Revolution

Abstract This article discusses the relation between colonialism and the sovereignty of peoples through a dialogue between Hegel and the thought of the French Revolution. These two sides are relevant to each other not only because of their historical proximity, but also because of the connections that can be established when we approach the topic of colonialism through these two manifestations. Hegel is explicit that his philosophy of history and his philosophy of right are supposed to be philosophies of freedom. Yet despite the importance that he lends to freedom, Hegel also explicitly defends, in the very same text, colonial domination when he deals with the relation between peoples. A similar problem had arisen in the course of the French Revolution. Following the declarations of war, France is confronted on various occasions with the question of how to deal with other peoples and countries. With the foundation of the Republic in 1792, the relation with other peoples becomes central in the revolutionary debates. The topic of colonialism is part of the constituting debates, and not only because of the uprisings in then Saint Domingue leading to the Haitian Revolution. This article is a part of a larger research project that attempts to reassess the relations between Hegel and the French Revolution, and deals with the question of how we can re-read Hegel's interpretation of the French Revolution based on the evolving historiography of the Revolution. After an introduction of both sides of this dialogue, the paper discusses how Hegel's political philosophy can be applied to understand the debates about the emancipation of colonies that take place during the French Revolution. The next part further analyses some issues, such as the notion of sovereignty and, in the concluding remarks, I summarize my discussion and point to some avenues for further research.

Pitfalls of Sovereignty: Romanian State Building on the Eve of Independence from the Ottoman Empire

ABSTRACT The present article explores the trials and tribulations of the Romanian state in building viable institutions and acquiring independence in the latter half of the 19th century. Starting from a flurry of diplomatic exchanges on the eve of the Russian-Turkish war (1877–1878), which were aimed at securing experienced General Staff officers for the young Romanian army, this article shows how intimately interconnected the domestic and international dimensions of state building were for such fledgling states and explores the inversely proportional relationship between Krasner’s notions of sovereignty – legal-international and Westphalian. The article thus proposes a more institutional-oriented approach to state building in South-Eastern Europe and seeks to bring the state and the pragmatics of its creation back into a discussion of independence and sovereignty in the region.

THE GEOPOLITICS OF GILGIT-BALTISTAN: ANALYSING INDIA, PAKISTAN, AND CHINA PERSPECTIVES

The region of Gilgit-Baltistan, of significant strategic significance, has been a topic of contention between India and Pakistan since their respective declarations of independence in 1947. The territory stated above, located in the northernmost part of Pakistan, plays a vital role as a key gateway to the Central Asian region. It is generally seen as an important geopolitical asset due to its near proximity to China's Xinjiang province. This article provides a thorough analysis of the contemporary geopolitical dynamics in Gilgit-Baltistan, with a focus on the historical backdrop, the current political and economic circumstances, and the possible implications for the security and stability of the region. The region of Gilgit-Baltistan, located in the northernmost part of Pakistan, has considerable strategic importance. The region in issue, which shares borders with China, Afghanistan, and India, has a complex and contested historical context that has had a substantial influence on its contemporary political and economic conditions. The territory of Gilgit-Baltistan has attracted considerable attention in recent years due to its strategic location along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and its crucial role as a gateway to Central Asia. The objective of this essay is to provide a thorough analysis of the strategic importance of Gilgit-Baltistan, including its historical background, geopolitical significance, and prospective implications for regional security and stability. The region of Gilgit-Baltistan, located in the Himalayas and Karakoram mountains, has acquired considerable geopolitical significance due to its strategic location and contested legal standing. The perspectives of India, Pakistan, and China about Gilgit-Baltistan provide valuable insights into the intricate interaction of interests, historical narratives, and geopolitical strategies that shape the dynamics of the region. This article engages in a comprehensive analysis of the viewpoints espoused by three influential actors, evaluating the possible ramifications for the stability of the region. The geopolitical landscape of Gilgit-Baltistan is a complex and intricate puzzle, characterised by the intricate interaction of historical narratives, strategic considerations, and regional dynamics. The Indian position focuses considerable stress on the notion of sovereignty, whereas Pakistan's standpoint is largely centred on the concept of self-determination. In contrast, China's approach is primarily focused on the concepts of connectivity and economic growth. Given the convergence and intersection of the aforementioned perspectives, the trajectory of the region's future remains ambiguous, thereby making it an illustrative instance of broader global dynamics concerning power struggles and cooperative endeavours.

Theories on Sovereignty

The notion of sovereignty has been invented in the 16th century. This concept is traditionally linked to Jean Bodin, who first used the term to describe modern statehood in his work ‘Six Books of the Commonwealth,’ written in 1576. The concept itself was originally conceived to define the characteristics of the absolute monarchy, but was later used to describe the rule of other sovereigns as well; thus, it was created as one of the most prolific concepts in political theory. Although sovereignty was an object of intense interest to political philosophers mainly until the middle of the 20th century, it is still not an out-of-date concept. While it is true that modern international law, recent political practice, and the chiselled concepts of law and state have diminished the importance of this notion until now, it has not disappeared. In fact, even the recent international policy and the modern constitutional practice are not able to do without the paradigm of state sovereignty. Like all concepts, it has been inflated, yet, its core political theoretical content remained almost the same. In the present paper I am going to attempt to introduce the types of sovereignty, mainly on the basis of who the sovereign can be.

“Love in the Time of War”. Contra Autonomy of the Political

The political as a category and politics per se involves the war — historically and substantively, but ambivalently. The war, according to Schmitt, is the basic premise of politics, and politics is war, at least in potency; at the same time, politics is a way to limit war, delay it, suspend it, or at least civilize it. This was essentially the aim of the process of political autonomy, during which a meaningful revision of the concept of autonomy made it almost indistinguishable from the notion of sovereignty. Decisive theoretical turn in this direction was performed by Kant. After a long pause filled with the rise and decline of national, nationalist, and totalitarian projects, Kantian political praxis has become an almost universally binding standard in the West. By now, however, it is clear that the possibilities of political autonomy as a means against war have been exhausted — a palliative, not a panacea. War is irremovable from the political, even an autonomous one. The author suggests that the solution to the deadlock may be a partial de-autonomization of the political, returning the notion of autonomy to the pre-Kantian content, consisting in the opening access into the political for at least some non-political values, and subordinating it to the latter. The author shows that such a value can become love — in its Christian understanding, not identical and not orthogonal, but directly antagonistic regarding to the war. The author demonstrates that the well-known phenomenon of the civil religion is an effective institutional channel for partial de-autonomization of the political. The author insists that his considerations are not yet another version of political theology, as they are grounded within the boundaries of mere reason.

How Jewish Orthodoxy Became a State: Isaac Breuer and the Invention of the Statist Theocracy

AbstractThis article traces the incorporation of the modern state and the notion of sovereignty into Jewish Orthodox thought, culminating in the idea that the role of Orthodoxy is to establish a statist theocracy. Unlike narratives that emphasize the continuation of theocratic thought from ancient to modern Judaism on the one hand, and the relationship between religious Zionism and contemporary forms of Jewish theocracy on the other, my research reveals a fundamentally anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox layer in the doctrine of statist theocracy, through a novel reading of the early writings of one of the leaders of Agudath Israel, Isaac Breuer (1883–1946). During the 1920s, Breuer coined terms such as Gottesstaat and Torastaat, which informed broader theocratic discussions into the 1930s. The article examines the intellectual history of this discourse and the grammar of this doctrine, identifying in it ultra-Orthodox reasoning such as an aversion to secularism and modern nationalism, resistance to a redemptive, kookian philosophy of history, and adherence to the “Rule of Torah.”

Does the notion of sovereignty in Georges Bataille (1897-1962) shed light on suicides at work?

Does the notion of sovereignty in Georges Bataille (1897-1962) shed light on suicides at work?

Rogue Revolutionaries: The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean

Rogue Revolutionaries: The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean

Of Zombies, Witches and Wizards – Tales of Sovereignty

Abstract Don Herzog’s book Sovereignty RIP offers a tour d’horizon of one strand of sovereignty’s conceptual history and its changing meanings over time. It culminates in a ferocious call to bury the notion of sovereignty and replace it with concepts such as jurisdiction, authority and state. Based on insights from conceptual history, in particular about basic concepts, the review essay criticizes Herzog’s approach. It questions whether one can convincingly denounce the concept of sovereignty by relying predominantly on episodes from Anglo-American history as Herzog does. Instead, the essay tells two alternative stories in order to first argue that ignoring other narratives risks misunderstanding and misinterpreting the current re-rise of sovereignty-related discourses and that, second, sovereignty remains an important tool to understand how both the constitutional state and multilevel governance work. Eventually it would be more pernicious to discard the concept of sovereignty instead of engaging with it and confronting its diverging conceptions.

On the Concept of a Global Public Interest: Some Reflections

The emergence of the global public interest stems from a shift in the notion of sovereignty that goes beyond the interest of a State per se. It comprises inevitability of the assertion of sovereignty in a state-centric international legal and global order. As growing numbers of international legal instruments factor in and use different nomenclatures to indicate quest to go beyond the narrow confines of ‘sovereignty’ to cater to need for co-existence with other nations and peoples, it calls for sensitivities in our pursuit for something ‘common’ on the planet earth. This article seeks to examine and contextualize the quest for a global common interest in the emerging scenario of deepening of the global environmental challenges and the need to find legal and institutional mechanisms for our survival. Can we chisel the existing tools and prioritize the common interest at the global level? What will it entail?

Derrida's Wheel – The Circularity of Political (R)Evolutions

This article investigates the relationship between political revolutions and the evolution of politics. It discusses the circularity within the concept of revolution through Jacques Derrida’s theory of sovereignty as particularly per Rogues – Two Essays on Reason and The Beast and the Sovereign. Derrida’s notions of wheel and ipseity display ontological prerogatives and evolutionary limits of political revolutions possibly coinciding with reversals hard to turn into linear evolutions, excluding rather than reaffirming circularity. Political revolutions show such incapacity to become evolutionary for politics when lacking ontological substance and resting upon formal contingencies such as new techniques. An ‘alturnative’ notion of sovereignty is proposed as a heuristic criterion to gauge political events’ ‘revolutionary’ quality. This undermines the (r)evolutionary nature of political turns, like those associated with the contemporary digitalisation of politics. The Italian Five Stars Movement’s parable is a case in point of digital political turns whose effect is non-evolutionary for politics.

On the brink of sovereignty: Maroon Chief Alonso de Illescas and vernacular agency in the colonial Atlantic

ABSTRACT Marronage is often treated in academic discussions as a compelling example of resistance, a type of agency that has a definitive insurgent impulse. This approach makes the study of maroons vulnerable to ideological taint because it can downplay the full complexity with which slave rebels and free people of color achieved social mobility and engaged with colonial power structures. By exploring late sixteenth century negotiations between a maroon leader named Alonso de Illescas and Spanish viceregal authorities in Esmeraldas province, Ecuador, I demonstrate how maroon agency in early colonial Latin America can disrupt theories about resistance or accommodation. I explore various types of mediation at work in negotiating power in the colonial Atlantic, uncover some of the risks associated with reading maroon agency through North Atlantic universals (namely the notion of sovereignty), and offer the term “subsovereign agency” to bridge the chasm between theory and colonial politics of marronage.

Amerikan Aristocracy

Leftist political theory remains trapped between two dominant conceptions of sovereignty: the liberal conception of popular sovereignty and the decisionist conception of sovereignty as the power to declare a state of exception. This essay offers a historical critique of the liberal and decisionist conceptions of sovereignty and develops a descriptive theory of aristocratic sovereignty, which is more suited to the history and the needs of radical political theory and praxis. By tracing the genealogy of sovereignty through early modern European political thought to the founding of the United States, this essay reveals the debilitating shortcoming of notions of sovereignty derived from both Carl Schmitt and the liberal tradition and provides a basis for a distinctively radical analysis of the sovereign aristocracy in Amerika.

Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century England and the Making of the Modern Political Imaginary. Feisal G. Mohamed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. viii+220.

<i>Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century England and the Making of the Modern Political Imaginary</i>. Feisal G. Mohamed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. viii+220.

The Treachery of Images in the Digital Sovereignty Debate

This short theoretical and argumentative essay contributes to the ongoing deliberation about the so-called digitalfug sovereignty, as pursued particularly in the European Union (EU). Drawing from classical political science literature, the essay approaches the debate through paradoxes that arise from applying classical notions of sovereignty to the digital domain. With these paradoxes and a focus on the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the essay develops a viewpoint distinct from the conventional territorial notion of sovereignty. Accordingly, the lesson from Westphalia has more to do with the capacity of a state to govern. It is also this capacity that is argued to enable the sovereignty of individuals within the digital realm. With this viewpoint, the essay further advances another, broader, and more pressing debate on politics and democracy in the digital era.

The longue durée of extraterritoriality and global capital

ABSTRACT This article investigates the shifting nature of the concept of extraterritoriality at particular junctures in history from the Italian city states to contemporary visions of floating micro-sovereignties. Extraterritoriality is the exercise of the jurisdiction by one state or non-state actor within the territory of another state. Since extraterritoriality is a challenge to the fundamental principle of sovereignty, it is by definition an exception in relation to sovereignty. As sovereignty evolved and changed over time, so did extraterritoriality – and, in the discussed cases, it changed primarily to be able to fulfil the needs of agents of global capital. The article discusses the privileges granted to the Italian city states by the Byzantines and the Ottoman capitulations, extraterritoriality on the colonial frontier, private investments in the Middle East and the proliferation of ideas of micro-sovereignty by Libertarian politicians and Silicon Valley billionaires. The article makes three distinct arguments: first, extraterritoriality has to be understood in relation to shifting notions of sovereignty. Secondly, extraterritoriality emerged within the context of colonial and imperial inequality and any extraterritorial relations contain the echoes of these structures of inequality. Finally, extraterritoriality is often driven and shaped by the needs of global capital, trying to avoid specific sovereign structures.

The Future of an Illusion: The Problem of Sovereignty.

The author explores the idea of sovereignty as an illusion that is and will continue to have deleterious effects on cooperative efforts to slow or stop climate change and the extinction of millions of species. To make this case, the notion of sovereignty is defined and its attributes described. This lays the foundation for arguing, from a psychoanalytic perspective, that sovereignty is a tightly held illusion (and practice). The last section of the article identifies the negative present and future impact of sovereignty with regard to the Anthropocene Age, as well as briefly identifying other possibilities for ordering societies.

Post-nationalism, sovereignty and the state

The term ‘post-national formations’ is a product of some of the recent work of Jürgen Habermas. In using this term, Habermas highlights what he regards as a laudatory trend in social and political research. This is the trend away from an intense focus on the role of nation-states – a role he believes to be unconducive to progressive politics – and towards a focus on the role of new configurations – a role he believes to be much more conducive to this type of politics. ‘Post-national formations’, then, is the term Habermas uses to describe new non-state configurations he has identified. He is confident these configurations will eventually break free of the supposed yoke of the nation-state and usher in a new era of progressivism. This article is not concerned with the post-national formations literature per se. Rather, it is concerned with this literature’s failure to take into account the full history of both the nation-state and the notion of sovereignty that helps the nation-state to function. In pursuing this concern, the article draws material from various sources to offer a short historical defence of the sovereign state.

The Animal Question via Art and Law

Since at least the late 1960s, artistic creation has increasingly called upon its audiences to consider the acceptability of certain actions in ways that law cannot. Based on four examples carrying especial weight in international artistic circles due to their reliance on animal actors—Kim Jones’s Rat Piece (1976), Yukinori Yanagi’s World Flag Ant Farm (1993), Xu Bing’s A Case Study of Transference (1993-1994) and Huang Yong Ping’s Theater of the World (1993)—this article reflects upon the notion of sovereignty as an unstable contest between competing views of acceptability, permissibility and enforceability. Inflected by counter- or non-anthropocentric views, I consider how artworks serve as augmented para-legal cases accountable to both legal and art historical interpretation. Predicated on the belief that we consider artworks as sources of critical action rather than as products of human expression or examples of property, I explore how live animal participants initiate active reflection upon the misalignment between existing laws and proposed standards of human behavior towards animals. What common justices are imaginable for humans and animals? A corollary aim is to explore how such questions are inflected less by universal-versus-local dichotomies and more by the contingency of bodies moving across legal jurisdictions that both reinforce and undermine the structuring forces of globalization.