State Sovereignty Research Articles

The Dragon's Overwatch: Chinese Private Security Expansion in Latin America and the Caribbean

This scholarly disquisition furnishes a comprehensive exploration of the burgeoning presence of Chinese private security companies (PSCs) across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), delving into the strategic repercussions for regional security architectures and national sovereignty imperatives. Employing a meticulous qualitative methodology encompassing a thorough literature review, policy document analysis, and an examination of Chinese-language sources, the research elucidates the salient drivers catalyzing this phenomenon. These precipitating factors span cultural affinities, economic motivations, geopolitical ambitions, and the exigent security challenges besetting Chinese commercial entities operating within the LAC region. The operational modes of Chinese PSCs are subjected to forensic scrutiny, illuminating their diverse service offerings, geographical permeation across the region, and the obstacles they confront. Furthermore, the inquiry contextualizes the issue within the broader geopolitical milieu, accentuating concerns regarding transparency lacunae, regulatory deficiencies, and potential avenues for Chinese intelligence and military machinations, thereby potentially destabilizing the regional equilibrium. Ultimately, the research culminates in a series of substantive policy prescriptions aimed at mitigating risks, fortifying regional stability, and safeguarding national sovereignty through capacity-building initiatives, constructive engagement with Beijing, enhanced transparency mechanisms, and robust regional cooperation frameworks.

Hunger in global war economies: understanding the decline and return of famines.

The resurgence of famines is a topic of concern. This paper explains the recent trajectory using the framework of contending 'global war economies'. It characterises the unipolar neoliberal world order era (1986-2015) as the 'Pax Americana' war economy, focusing on the United States dollar's roles. These were the decades of the liberal imperium, the corporate food regime, and counterinsurgent coalitions, which generated structural vulnerability to food crises and reduced the actual incidence and lethality of famine. The paper characterises the subsequent period (2016 onwards) as the challenge of the BRICS club, focusing on its efforts to rewrite the global political economy's rules, proactively hedging among diversifying currency regimes. This entails a scramble to secure strategic commodities and infrastructure in subaltern countries, which is intensifying conflict and food insecurity, and revising international norms in favour of reasserting sovereign rights. The global political-economic contestation and, especially, the associated normative regression are permissive of political and military triggers of famine.

Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Revisiting Natural Law Concepts of Statehood and Property in the Context of Colonial Spoliation

Abstract In the late nineteenth century, Western Powers launched military campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa resulting in the colonization of vast territories and the spoliation of cultural property. To justify the conquest, they asserted the supremacy of Western culture and disregarded principles of international law in their dealings with African states, communities, and individuals. This article examines colonialist legal justifications such as the denial of statehood of pre-colonial sub-Saharan African societies, the notion that conquest and spoliation were justifiable, and the belief that African legal systems lacked concepts of property. The article details why these arguments contradict well-established nineteenth-century legal principles, particularly state sovereignty and private property, which together form the conceptual basis for the prohibition of spoliation. The universal nature of those principles allows for the nondiscriminatory application and interpretation of historical law and consequently the protection of African pre-colonial states and private as well as public cultural property.

Reimagining IR’s biomedical foundations: East Asian medicine and the need for cosmological plurality

Critical scholarship has long pointed to the problematic ways in which mainstream International Relations (IR) takes Westphalian state politics to be universally applicable, yet existing analyses fall short of providing an alternative grounding for IR. Departing from the close relationship between medicine and politics, this article advances two arguments. First, Westphalian IR is based on a particular Western conception of biomedicine. Second, biomedicine is treated as the hallmark of modern science, which exacerbates the discipline’s gatekeeping against ‘alternative’ scholarship that does not look like this particular description of science. By mobilising the notion of ‘cosmology’, we suggest that East Asian medicine (EAM), informed by Daoist yin-yang dialectics, can help to rethink the alleged universality of IR’s biomedical metatheoretical foundations. Specifically, we illustrate how the Westphalian state body and its territorial politics are made possible by biomedical knowledge, and how EAM’s relational cosmology and method of employing creative images helps to conceive shared communal bodies and re-evaluate territorial conflicts. Ultimately, this article argues for the necessity of a plurality of cosmological viewpoints in IR to overcome exclusionary oppositions in both the practice and study of global politics.

Fisheries law enforcement in the yellow sea by Chinese coast guard agencies: Legal sources, core issues and dispute settlement

As an important aspect of maritime law enforcement, fisheries law enforcement is no longer solely within the sovereignty of coastal states. Instead, it has become a complex issue of domestic and international law, especially in disputed waters. This essay focuses on the Yellow Sea area, first sorting out the legal sources of fisheries law enforcement by Chinese Coast Guard Agencies, and then discussing core issues closely related to fisheries law enforcement in the region, including the definition of Chinese jurisdictional waters, the right to use weapons by authorized agencies, and administrative procedures for fisheries law enforcement. Meanwhile, this essay considers alternative options and potential pathways on both domestic and international levels, through which China and South Korea might settle their disputes arising from fisheries law enforcement activities. On this basis, a regional cooperation framework is argued to be established to eliminate differences, reach consensus, and promote peaceful, harmonious, and effective fisheries law enforcement activities between the two states.

The Effectiveness of the International Environmental Law: The Issues of State Sovereignty, National Interests, and Differing Levels of Commitments

This study aims to explore the main challenges facing international environmental law and affecting its effectiveness. Although many international texts and agreements have been adopted to address environmental degradation and promote sustainable resource development, most of these agreements remain ineffective in achieving the objectives of these agreements. The critical study reveals that these legal frameworks face many challenges that affect the effectiveness of these texts, for example, there are issues such as national sovereignty, the lack of unified implementation at the state level, insufficient funding, and weak institutional frameworks. This study aims to provide a comprehensive analytical view of the factors that affect the effectiveness of these texts and frameworks. The issues of national sovereignty, insufficient funding, weak institutional frameworks, different levels of commitment, lack of political will, and global cooperation will be mainly discussed here. By focusing on the most important challenges facing international environmental law, this research aims to contribute to developing international environmental law to make it more effective.

Концептуальные признаки технологического суверенитета в государственной политике и академической практике

The article presents a conceptual and theoretical analysis of the technological sovereignty of the Russian state. The work examines the main academic discourses in the interpretation and justification of the essence, meaning and role of technological sovereignty in the modern era of society development. The legal policy of various states andits key priorities in the field of ensuring technological sovereignty are discussed separately, as well as the doctrinal, legal and legislative foundations for ensuring technological sovereignty of Russian society during the period of sanctions pressure and changing geopoliticalreality are analyzed.

The quest for continuous improvement in light of power disciplinary, sovereign and pastoral power in a state-initiated school improvement programme

ABSTRACT There is a global movement of education reform, informed by a neoliberal agenda, emphasising continuous improvement and accountability through performance measurements, surveillance and monitoring. This puts local school actors under constant gaze and endless pressure to perform. This article uses a Swedish state-initiated school improvement programme, Co-operation for the Best School Possible (CBS), to investigate how power is exercised within the programme and to discuss possible implications for the local actors. A theoretical model based on Foucault’s power modes of sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral power as well as governmentality is used. Empirically, the article builds on a case study from a municipality participating in CBS. The analysis takes impression of Jackson and Mazzei’s “thinking with theory”. The CBS programme illustrates the widespread and multifaceted nature of power in educational governance, prompting local actors to internalise norms, self-regulate, and continuously evaluate their practices. This study highlights the importance of understanding the interplay of different power modes in shaping educational practices and the professional lives of local school actors. This article has contributed to questioning the common sensical, and it has made the exercises of power recognisable through the use of Foucault’s concepts.

Collective Wisdom in Constitutional, Informational and Digital Dimensions: on the Concept and Nature of Popular Deliberative Constitutionalism for Public Law

The article discusses the scientific and intellectual origins of collective wisdom in the constitutional, information and digital dimensions, reveals the doctrinal approaches and normative foundations of popular deliberative constitutionalism, the development of an inclusive constitutional paradigm and its significance for the use of procedures and technologies for citizen participation, expert opinion and civil society institutions in the constitutional development, in social transformations, in constitutional changes brought to life by the needs of society and the state. Popular deliberative constitutionalism is identified in the article as a public legal meta-concept that explains the process and need for constitutional involvement of citizens. The author concludes that popular deliberative constitutionalism allows us to better understand the problems of implementing the principle of popular sovereignty in modern democratic states, create an optimal model and consider the forms of exercising the constituent power of the people when implementing constitutional changes. In the article, the author notes that the future of democratic constitutionalism is associated with the creation and use of collective intelligence technologies in the public legal sphere, which, in the context of the development of an algorithmic and information society, combine classical procedures for discussing constitutional issues and the use of aggregated preferences. The practical application of the achievements of natural and artificial intelligence is intended to discuss and resolve issues of public legal significance, is based on co-evolutionary development and leads to the emergence of mini-publics, civil assemblies, and constitutional crowdsourcing.

Государственное публичное управление цифровой средой: реализация идеи в условиях выявления и устранения конституционных рисков

Deployment of contemporary digital technologies creates new dynamics for the people, society and state and introduces considerable changes to the public administration system. Application of big data technologies significantly expands the opportunities for the development of new economic models, international cooperation and competition. However, increased involvement of people in the digital environment not only reveals new forms and methods of innovative administration of the state but is also associated with serious constitutional risks and threats for the state sovereignty. Consecutive constitutionalization predetermines efficiency of implementation of constitutional laws and activities of public government authorities. Efficient public administration of the digital environment can be reached through development of a high-quality regulatory framework characterized by relative stability and constitutional orientation.

Роль и значение правоограничений на гражданской службе в условиях недружественной политики иностранных государств

The study of restrictions and prohibitions in the civil service in ensuring internal and external security, protecting the interests and sovereignty of the Russian Federation in the context of the unfriendly policies of foreign states is of particular relevance. The authors substantiate the expediency of establishing special legal restrictions in the civil service, the strict implementation (compliance) of which by civil servants can serve as a guarantee of ensuring the protection of the interests and state sovereignty of the Russian Federation, especially in the current conditions of the unfriendly policies of some foreign states.

Neural Network Algorithms in Current Processes of Transformation of Traditional Worldview and Ideological Systems.

This study is devoted to identifying potential risks, challenges, and threats of intensive development and active implementation of artificial intelligence technologies and in particular self-learning neural network algorithms in the current practice of socio-political communications associated with active information impact on mass consciousness. This study proves that contemporary digital technological transformations and the active spread of digital technologies most directly influence the transformation of traditional worldview systems and ideologies. Based on the results of the study, it is concluded that with the help of digital tools, there is a significant information and communication impact on mass consciousness in terms of influencing traditional worldview and ideological systems. In this regard, the author puts forward the thesis about the need to form and maintain the digital sovereignty of contemporary states as a key conclusion. It is viewed as a critical condition for preserving and protecting national worldview and ideological spaces in the conditions of current global technological transformations

The theory of democratic integration

The outcome of the 2024 European Parliament elections highlights the need for the EU to underpin its functioning as a European democracy with a proper political theory. This article introduces the theory of democratic integration as a political philosophy of the EU. It aims to provide the EU with a philosophical foundation by analysing its evolution as a deviation from the Westphalian system of international relations and its doctrine of absolute sovereignty. The article finds that the EU is succeeding in creating a new democratic home for its citizens and its member states. In times of increasing support for parties which promote national sovereignty as the recipe for the future and which consequently call for the dismantling of the European Parliament and the deconstruction of EU democracy, the theory will empower the Union to defend its constitutional achievements and prevent it from backsliding into an undemocratic organisation of illiberal states.

The enigma of Nagorno-Karabakh: a ‘hierarchised amoebic composite’ with Armenia

ABSTRACT Based on a comprehensive examination of Nagorno-Karabakh’s critical junctures within Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, this article introduces the concept of the “hierarchized amoebic composite” framework. This model surpasses traditional paradigms of state sovereignty and territorial disputes by revealing the dynamic and contingent relationships within composite structures. Empirically, we use the Nagorno-Karabakh-Armenia relationship to demonstrate the framework’s applicability. Central to our analysis are two key research questions: how can we conceptually and empirically reflect on the relationship between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia and what have been the factors influencing patterns of stability and change in this relationship? We argue that Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrates amoebic spatiality, characterized by its ability to be both integrated into and dissociated from Armenia. This relationship is further influenced by the Russian neo-imperial presence, which redefines the region’s strategic calculus. Our research explores two key dyads of interaction between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh: identity and territory for contingency and amoebicity, and diplomacy and economy for stable interconnection. Although Nagorno-Karabakh was seized by Azerbaijan and its unrecognized republic dissolved in 2024, the hierarchized amoebic composite framework allows us to study the ongoing transformation. We suggest that while traditional perspectives consider the conflict resolved with Nagorno-Karabakh’s incorporation into Azerbaijan, our framework indicates a spatial shift of the conflict’s epicenter to Armenia. This shift involves the same actors in a reconfigured yet persistent struggle, highlighting the conflict’s evolving nature. Through this perspective, we offer fresh insights into conflict mechanisms and coexistence in post-Soviet spaces and beyond, challenging the Westphalian model’s limits in explaining the complex spatial realities.

Whatever happened to Hungarian freedom fighters? Collective memory, collective forgetting, and dissociative collective identity

As the war in Ukraine unfolds, the Hungarian government seems less enthusiastic about the idea of state sovereignty than one might have anticipated given Hungary’s historic past. Moreover, there is a surge of pro-Russian sentiment among government supporters. This is counterintuitive in light of prevailing mnemonic practices which put heavy emphasis on Hungary’s struggle for freedom and independence. The new developments suggest that the role of collective memory in collective identity formation needs to be reconsidered, especially concerning the apparent inhibition of otherwise persistent and widely shared memories. The article discusses the problem in the context of socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting and social identity complexity theory. It puts forward two complementary arguments: (1) this Janus-faced public behaviour might be accounted for by selective commemorative practices of the government and (2) how memories of historical events sustain a shared sense of belonging and continuity is not only contingent on group membership but also on the ever-changing group interest.

Decentralized Web3 Reshaping Internet Governance: Towards the Emergence of New Forms of Nation-Statehood?

This article explores how decentralized Web3 is reshaping Internet governance by enabling the emergence of new forms of nation-statehood and redefining traditional concepts of state sovereignty. Based on fieldwork conducted in Silicon Valley since August 2022, this article systematically addresses the following research question: How is decentralized Web3 reshaping Internet governance and influencing the rise in new nation-statehood paradigms? It compares three emerging paradigms around Web3: (i) Network States (Srinivasan), envisioning digital entities rooted in crypto-libertarian principles; (ii) Network Sovereignties (De Filippi), emphasizing communal governance aligned with digital commons; and (iii) Algorithmic Nations (Calzada), drawing on Arendtian thought and demonstrating how communities—such as indigenous and stateless groups, as well as e-diasporas—can attain self-determination through data sovereignty. This article contributes a unique conceptual analysis of these paradigms based on fieldwork action research in Silicon Valley, responding to evolving technologies and their potential to reshape Internet governance. This article argues that decentralized Web3 provides a transformative vision for Internet governance but requires careful evaluation to ensure that it promotes inclusivity and equity. It advocates for a hybrid approach that balances global and local dynamics, emphasizing the need for solidarity, digital justice, and an internationalist perspective in shaping future Internet governance protocols.

Discursos sobre descolonización y conflicto social. El caso de la VIII Marcha Indígena en Bolivia (2011)

This article examines how the narrative of the plurinational state provided the common symbolic framework for the conflict over the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (Tipnis) in Bolivia in 2011. The central dispute, one of the most important in Bolivia’s recent history, was whether or not to construct a highway through this area, a debate that has led to a major rift between peasant and indigenous social organizations that shared common reivindicative imaginaries but ultimately experienced profound divisions. This discussion serves as a key observation point to understand how decolonization imaginaries actually function, which I consider a anchoring point (point du capiton) in the narrative of the plurinational state. Through discourse analysis, review of chronicles, press statements, and accounts of the VIII Indigenous March, I aim to identify the discursive threads that framed the debates on decolonization, showing that it can be used as a rhetorical tool to mask extractivism or defend “national sovereignty,” or as an argument to uphold the self-determination of indigenous peoples. I also examine how the repertoire of the indigenous march was constructed discursively and symbolically, and the impact it left on Bolivia’s recent history. I intend for this analysis to contribute to understanding how Bolivian social perceptions are shaped in relation to the narrative of the plurinational state and its potential for social transformation as a new regime of truth.

Le concept du contrat du transport maritime de marchandises et les Conventions qui le rglementent

Somalian Piracy constitutes one of the main threats not only to internAlthough the contract of carriage sometimes looks similar to other contracts such as the contract of affreightment and tonnage contract, the legal system that governs it is different. Several Conventions, Protocols or International Rules regulate the carriage of goods. We can mention the American Harter Act, the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to Bills of Lading signed at Brussels on 25 August 1924 (The Hague Rules), the Protocol to Amend the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Relating to Bills of Lading signed at Brussels on 23 February 1968 (Visby Rules), the Protocol amending the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law relating to Bills of Lading of 25 August 1924 (The Hague Rules), as amended by the Protocol of 23 February 1968, signed at Brussels on December 21st, 1979. We can also mention the United Nations International Convention on the Carriage of Goods by Sea adopted in Hamburg on March 31st, 1978 (Hamburg Rules). In an effort to organize the maritime transport of goods in an equitable manner, each Convention is intended to fill the gaps of the previous one and maintain a balance between the various parties to the contract of carriage. At the beginning of the century, each mode of international carriage continues to be governed by autonomous Rules. For the sake of globalization of trade and trade facilitation, jurists acted for the unification of the rules of international carriage. Thus, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) adopted on July 3rd, 2008, the "Draft of Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea". On December 11, 2008, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted the "the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea", and recommended that the rules laid down in the Convention are from now on known as the "Rules of Rotterdam". This Convention has since then been open to ratification by the states. It shall enter into force one year after the ratification meeting at least twenty states. These Rules have advantages, but they also have some disadvantages. A study of these advantages and disadvantages is interesting.: Piracy, international legal system, International Law, sovereign territory, non-liquet, UN resolutions, Universal Jurisdiction, United Nations Charter, Non-State Actor

Humanitarianism as a tool of statecraft: contested authority, sovereign violence, and humanity in the Syrian civil war.

This research explores the dynamics of interaction between the sovereign state and international humanitarian organisations in alleviating human suffering in the Syrian civil war. Considering civil wars as a rupture in sovereignty, its focus is on the practices of the sovereign state within its social context and the resulting implications for aid organisations. I argue that the Syrian regime has employed state violence, in tandem with administrative and bureaucratic impediments, to reassert its sovereign authority in humanitarian decision-making processes. This exercise of sovereign power is intertwined with the actions of aid organisations, thereby reshaping power dynamics among the state, aid organisations, and vulnerable populations. Through a qualitative method, I show that the deployment of state violence concomitantly pushes aid organisations, specifically the United Nations, towards enforcing the state sovereignty defined by the regime. As an effect of assertive sovereignty, interpretations of humanitarian principles and practices are continuously negotiated and constructed differently by aid organisations, even though they share a common overarching goal.

Part two: “thirty-seven years later - the UK migrant crisis” Deconstructing the erosion of British national sovereignty

This part two body of work 37 years after this researcher’s first delving into immigration entitled “The Worst is Yet to Come. The Challenges of Multiculturalism in Britain: An Examination of Over-Migration, Assimilation, and A Warning for the Future.” (1987). This investigation will seek to dissect the administrative practices that have allowed for unshackled policies on immigration to be sustained in the United Kingdom for six decades and undermine the tenets for the checks and balances in a democracy. Why has the British public become so subjugated that it accepted over-migration without any initial protest in the past and had waited for a tragedy of three little girls to occur, and to finally revolt against the state - notably the recent summer of rioting. This study investigates how a once influential nation, became acquiescent to a dangerous level of devaluation. A comparison was made with the repressive attitude of Poland towards immigration of dissimilar faith, specifically resulting, in zero terrorist activity that has been observed in their country. The research explores the extent to which ethnic stability can be expected with over-immigration - addressing factors such as tolerance, the state of the economy (Nash’s Equilibrium) and alternative models of social integration. It is also recorded from the results that the United Kingdom has failed in its policies regarding immigration which has caused social problems, cultural disquiet, and economic pressures that have put at risk the societal structure or the fabric of Britain itself. Concerning the theoretical contributions, the study squarely cites the lack of responsibility or poor governance from all political parties. Their neglect of nation sovereignty even though, governments have critical role that they play in ensuring the protection and welfare of its native citizenry. Finally, this research will serve as a warning to other neoliberal oriented nations of which ignore their fellow citizenry’s well-being.