Understanding Of Sovereignty Research Articles

Theorizing Sovereignty and European Integration

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between the concept of sovereignty and the process of European integration. It is argued that the nature of this relationship has been both mutually informative and transformative. As a particular understanding of sovereignty has influenced and determined the perception of European integration, i.e., its conceptualization, so the process of European integration has reflected back on sovereignty and entailed its rethinking. This poses a particular challenge for legal theorists: how to pin down the meaning of sovereignty and European integration so as to put both in the best conceptual and normative light. The article begins by looking at the traditional perspective on sovereignty and how this has been challenged by European integration. The focus then shifts from sovereignty to European integration in order to examine how different perspectives on sovereignty, when used as an epistemic lens for understanding the process of European integration, have produced uneven conceptions of this integration. Finally, the article concludes by making a choice between the various conceptions of sovereignty and European integration. It is argued that the best conception of European integration is offered by the constitutional form of a union founded on pluralist sovereignty.

The Reflexive Relationship between Internal and External Sovereignty

Sovereignty is deeply contested but omnipresent. The aim of this paper is not to offer a definitive conception of this multifaceted notion. It will rather identify three different dimensions that play a role in our understanding of sovereignty and use these as a basis to explain one particular aspect that has been underexplored in the academic debate: the link between internal and external sovereignty. Firstly, sovereignty describes a legal and political status; secondly, it refers to a factual condition; and thirdly, sovereignty entails a fiction that exists independently from factual or legal changes but that pervades our understanding. These three dimensions interlink and reinforce each other both internally (within the sovereign entity) and externally (in the international context). The legal status and the factual condition usually, but not necessarily, come together. While territory, people and authority are usually considered the factual basis for legal sovereignty, there are no necessary and sufficient factual conditions that will automatically result in the legal status of being sovereign. As a fiction, sovereignty goes beyond power or legal entitlement. It grasps the deeper emotional and cultural dimension, the fear of losing control and ultimately relevance. Since popular sovereignty has replaced royal sovereignty, the internal political status is rooted in the consent of citizens. This creates a particular link of responsibility in that it aims to ensure that for any action of a sovereign entity there is ultimately an individual or a group of individuals that can be held responsible. This paper will explore to what extent this more recent understanding of internal sovereignty is and also should be relevant for our understanding of sovereignty more broadly, including external sovereignty as a condition and a fiction, but ultimately also as a legal status. Indeed, the paper argues there are pragmatic and normative arguments in favour of understanding internal and external sovereignty as a continuum. This confronts the traditional view of international law that denies this connection between the internal and external dimension of sovereignty entirely.

Sovereignty as interconnection in Oceania? Perspectives from Kanaky/New Caledonia

This article argues that a conception of sovereignty at the intersection of Kanak and Western sociopolitical modalities could have ocean-wide implications for the Pacific region. It analyses some of the complex ways in which the concept of sovereignty has been articulated in the New Caledonian cultural and political domains since the 1970s, with a focus on two cultural events (the 1975 Melanesia 2000 festival and the Mwâ Kâ initiative from 2003) and the 1998 political agreement, the Noumea Accord. The analysis illuminates ‘decentred’ understandings of sovereignty, conceived in terms of interconnections and interdependencies, and in terms of the definition and respect of differentiated but coexisting legitimacies, rights and roles. Such a (re)conception of sovereignty encourages us to reflect further on the potential meaning and implications of the Pacific Ocean as an interconnected and interdependent ‘sea of islands’ (Hau’ofa 1993).

Determining the Sovereignty on the Ground of State-Citizen Relations in Cicero and Bodin’s Works

Determining the Sovereignty on the Ground of State-Citizen Relations in Cicero and Bodin’s Works Fikret Çelik, Kamil Sahin Abstract At the every period in historical evolutions of societies, the individual or public use of power in the name of public, the order in the society and its maintenance encounter every society as a highly controversial issue in the scope of political structure. In relation to the entire principles as the ground for right and limits of the use of power and to the presentation of the transformation of discussions on “sovereignty”, the comparison of Roman Republic thinker Cicero’s “understanding of sovereignty as based on the citizen”, with 17th century French thinker and lawmaker Bodin’s “understanding of sovereignty as based on the state”, is significant in the sense of understanding modern period discussions on sovereignty. Since, on one hand Cicero, in a period where individual honor and virtue is considered as very important, had grounded and legitimated the sovereignty relations between the state and the citizen on the awareness of citizenship and reciprocal responsibilities, in order for the maintenance of state’s stability and perpetuity. This kind of legitimization of sovereignty, after Cicero, is seen only in the Enlightenment and following periods. On the other hand, Bodin, after a period where sovereignty unconditionally depended on the divine obedience, had tried to legitimate the sovereignty under worldly conditions in a rational way. Bodin’s conceptualization of sovereignty as such is considered as an initiative for taking the mind and individuality to the stage again in terms of legitimacy of the sovereignty. From this point of view, this emergent situation; it should be noted that it is not a new kind of understanding; can be regarded as significant in the sense of providing the ground for modern period understanding of the politics in the scope of legitimizing the sovereignty. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/rhps.v2n3-4a3

Territoriality, State, and Nationality in the Making of Borders of Finland: The Evolving Concept of Border in the Peace Treaties between Russia and Sweden, 1323–1809

uropean political language, state, territoriality and nationality. With the theoretical discussions in conceptual history as starting point, the paper illustrates how a concept of state, separated from the person of the ruler, emerges in mediaeval and early modern peace treaties, and how the estates of the ruler gradually gain status as political units. With special focus on how notions of a linear state border were attached to the territory of Finland, the paper discusses broader processes of the development of ideas of territorial state and linear state borders. The paper asks how and at which political junctures new understandings of sovereignty appear in the treaties between Russia and s weden and how international recognition of territorial integrity and the rights of citizens were introduced as part of the relations between the two countries. The broader aim of the paper is to contribute to a comparative discussion on how state-making and bordering processes in the e uropean North were linked to political modernization, and how and to what degree the redefinition of borders and territories were connected to new kinds of conceptualizations of state, sover

Agamben, Postcoloniality, and Sovereignty in South Korea

AbstractThis paper examines modern Korean politics through the framework of Giorgio Agamben's theories of sovereign power, bare life, and the state of exception. Though his political analysis draws from the European history, we contend that the nature of his method attests to the possibility of analogical examples in non‐Western places. Thus, we argue that a postcolonial encounter with Agamben may enrich our understanding of sovereignty and political geography. In the Korean context, such an analysis needs to consider that sovereign power has been shaped by the itineraries of colonialism and empire. Korea's political space is deeply marked by the legacy of Japanese colonialism, the imperial interventions by the U.S., and the division of the peninsula. Thus, Korea offers a valuable lens through which to read Agamben's critique of sovereignty. Our paper offers such a reading to argue that a state of exception functions as the underlying nomos for postcolonial Korea.

On the problem of scale: Spinozistic sovereignty as the logical foundation of constitutional economics

This paper argues that sovereignty, as envisaged by Spinoza, is the logical foundation of constitutional economics. Constitutional constructs such as sovereignty weave an evolutionary dialectic between different organizational scales (the local, national, and global). This dialectic continues to wreak havoc at the local scale, and can be interrupted only through explicit constitutional constraints on the size of jurisdictions. The paper argues for more emphasis on constitutional orders in the spirit of Spinoza’s understanding of sovereignty. This entails preference for federal polities in which sovereignty is shared between different cities rather states where once capital cities dominate.

Cinematic checkpoints and sovereign time

This article articulates a concept of sovereign time and aims to demonstrate how the checkpoint generates this time. After briefly discussing how the checkpoint system in the West Bank radically alters the tempos of daily life, It then works through the understanding of messianic time developed by Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben in order to distinguish sovereign time as a unique concept. It argues that the temporalities of the checkpoint correspond to the spatial configurations of these sites, labeling these compound spatio-temporal relationships as chronotopes. The second half of the article examines how the checkpoint functions as a film set where a theological understanding of sovereignty is performed and filmed, and also explores how critical cinema exposes the checkpoint as a location that brings different kinds of chronotopes to crisis. It analyzes scenes at the checkpoint in Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966), Tawfiq Saleh’s The Dupes (1972), Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention (2002) and Yoav Shamir’s Checkpoint (2004) in order to show how these films interrupt the sovereign time of the checkpoint and make it audible and visible.

The Transfer of Asylum Seekers in Australia to Third Countries: A Case Study of Sovereignty versus International Law

Asylum is an issue equally central to refugee law and human rights. Generally, they are protected under the 1951 Refugee Convention, but asylum cases are largely state regulated affair, subject to state legislations, policies and guidelines, which certainly do not preclude the applicability of international obligations directing the conduct of state towards the asylum seekers, which emanate from the recognized international human rights principles such as right to seek asylum and right against refoulement and right not to be arbitrarily detained. Contracting parties to international conventions such as the 1951 Refugee Convention, ICCPR, ISESCR, CAT, CRC, CEDAW and CERD among others acquire the responsibility to respect, protect and fulfill the obligations adducible in treatment of asylum seekers. In this regard, Australia was one of the earliest state parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention and is also a party to the relevant human rights treaties. However, it is determined to adhere to its conventional understanding of sovereignty and nationalism, at the cost of comprising the minimum protection of the rights of those who seek asylum in it.

MARIA TERESA CALDERON and CLEMENT THIBAUD. La majestad de los pueblos en la Nueva Granada y Venezuela, 1780-1832.

Many works on Latin American independence focus on the influence of North Atlantic liberal ideas on the formation of republics. María Teresa Calderón and Clément Thibaud demonstrate that there was a well-established political culture before 1808 that informed the ways in which New Granada and Venezuela dealt with the absence of the Spanish king. In effect, they show that the Venezuelan nation was built upon pre-existing political ideas surrounding the concept of majestad (majesty). In particular, the authors argue that the absence of a legitimate Spanish king in 1808 caused colonies to reformulate their understanding of sovereignty. They demonstrate that new political forms were rearticulated from previous religious and hierarchical traditions based on corporatism, and not on modern, liberal ideas imported from Europe. Contrary to the modern idea of sovereignty, in which people and places are equal and homogeneous, the principle of majesty then entrenched in the Spanish world presumed that the king reigned, with God's blessing, over a number of communities that were unequal yet somewhat autonomous. The majesty of the king was a sacred place from which the other ranks emanated. He was fair and just, and his fairness ensured social equilibrium. The monarch held the place of God and, when he or she made the people happy, was an instrument of eternal goodness; but when this failed to happen, the monarch could be punished by God. These principles warranted the veneration and obedience of the people. The preservation of the symbolic order that associated God with the political system rendered legitimacy to authority. Thus, anyone who diminished the greatness of the king was considered a traitor, guilty of the crime of lesa majestad, because he/she was rebelling against God, and, hence, a menace to the whole political body. Yet, in practice, the concepts of sovereignty and majesty overlap, and so there was no evolution in practice from one to another.

The Concept of Sovereignty in Contemporary Continental Political Philosophy

AbstractThe concept of sovereignty is one of the central concepts of modern political philosophy. However, faced with processes of economic globalization as well as legal and political universalism, contemporary political theory struggles to account for the exercise of state power in terms of the traditional understanding of sovereignty. This survey article reviews the most influential conceptualizations of sovereignty in contemporary continental political philosophy. These include Schmitt’s defense of sovereignty and Agamben’s rejection of sovereign politics as well as a number of theoretical attempts to account for the complexities of sovereignty and its adaptation to new political circumstances.

Ruti G. Teitel. Humanity's Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 304. $35. ISBN: 9780195370911.

In Ruti Teitel's view there is absolutely no doubt that we live in a world in which legal relationships are undergoing ever more significant change, a fact of which she informs the reader right at the beginning of her book. States alone are no longer the main actors; instead persons and peoples are assuming greater prominence. Their interests and needs for protection increasingly dictate the content of international law which is becoming humanity's law as a result. It is very possible that those who pride themselves on adopting a perspective informed by realpolitik would refute this view with a dismissive gesture and refer with a benign smile to China's and Russia's latest veto against a resolution of the UN Security Council that was intended finally to bring an end to the killing in Syria. Two large and powerful states stressed the traditional understanding of sovereignty with the associated ban on intervention in the internal affairs of another state, leaving no room for the vital needs of the people who become the abused object of this sovereignty. However, even these international law realists must acknowledge that the veto by China and Russia triggered a global storm of indignation and, moreover, not solely on the part of international civil society but also among the majority of states, including the members of the Arab League. For all of them, the protection of the Syrian population against murderous state despotism is and was more important than respect for Syrian sovereignty which, in this case, is truly blind to the reality of the situation. This alone supports the emergence of a humanity law as perceived by Ruti Teitel. If we consider the many other examples she describes and analyses in her book, we can only agree with her wholeheartedly. A humanity law is currently emerging, �

Be Careful What You Wish For: Changing Doctrines, Changing Technologies, and the Lower Cost of war

The collective security structure created by the UN Charter is becoming shakier than ever, and two recent trends pose particular challenges to Charter rules on the use of force. The first trend involves a normative shift in understandings of state sovereignty, and the second trend involves improvements in technology--specifically, the rapid evolution of unmanned aerial vehicles, precision weapons, and surveillance technologies. Each trend on its own raises difficult issues. Together, they further call into question international law's ability to meaningfully constrain the use of force by states. CHANGES IN NORMATIVE UNDERSTANDINGS OF SOVEREIGNTY The last two decades have seen a dramatic shift away from traditional ideas about state sovereignty. Increasingly, both legal scholars and national and international-level advocates and political decisionmakers have articulated an understanding of state sovereignty as limited and subject to what amounts to de facto waiver. In this vision of sovereignty, a state is required to execute certain responsibilities. If it to do so, external actors have a right and/or an obligation to step in themselves to ensure proper execution of these responsibilities. Versions of these arguments have emerged recently in two very different discourse communities. One is the human rights community, in which this vision of sovereignty is often couched in terms of atrocity prevention and the to protect. Parallel versions of this argument have also emerged from within the national security community. Here, the argument is generally couched in terms of state duties to prevent the export of terrorism. The Responsibility to Protect Let us start with the to protect. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the debates in the 1990s over humanitarian intervention had morphed into discussion of the responsibility to protect, or R2P, a doctrine initially developed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). In a 2001 report, ICISS offered a starkly different understanding of sovereignty than that taken for granted prior to World War II: State sovereignty implies ... Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international to protect. (1) ICISS was careful to note that the use of military force to protect populations should be a last resort, and that any R2P-based military interventions should be authorized by the Security Council. But ICISS was unwilling to view Security Council authorization as an absolute requirement: If the Security Council rejects a proposal [to intervene to protect a population] or to deal with it in a reasonable time, alternative options ... [include] action within area of jurisdiction by regional or sub-regional organizations under Chapter VIII of the Charter, subject to their seeking subsequent authorization. (2) After all, warned ICISS, if the Council fails to discharge its to protect in conscience-shocking situations crying out for action ... concerned states may not rule out other means to meet the gravity and urgency of that situation. (3) Within a decade, the R2P concept had gained substantial traction throughout the international community. It was referenced in the 2005 UN World Summit Outcome Document, and in 2011, the Security Council referenced R2P in Resolution 1973, which authorized the use of force to protect civilians in Libya, as well as Resolution 1975, authorizing the use of force in Cote d'Ivoire. (4) While most post-ICISS elaborations of R2P have--for obvious reasons--tended to downplay the possibility of military interventions undertaken without Security Council authorization, the normative logic of R2P suggests that Security Council authorization should not be dispositive. …

Recalibrating Intervention in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia is home to many diverse cultures across and within national borders. The vast majority of these borders evolved out of those created during the colonial period in the region. While the Westphalian state system was imposed in the region, the post-independence period has illustrated traditional understandings of sovereignty are rhetorically prevalent in Southeast Asia. This is noticeable in the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which was a founding document of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This treaty bound its signatories not to interfere in another’s domestic affairs yet there remain several high profile interventions which have trumped the noninterference norm – what explains this? Examples range from the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor to the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and to a more contemporary example of ASEAN member states’ participation in United Nations peace operations in East Timor from the early 2000s onwards. As a result there is a dichotomy between these two policy positions. On the one hand, formal legal agreements bind signatories to respect traditional sovereignty norms, yet in practice there are several cases when military intervention was used within the region by other states in the region. The historical military interventions during the 1970s are illustrative of pre-emptive military interventions to stave off the communist threat whereas more recently interventions have taken place under the guise of UN mandated peace operations. This noticeable shift can also illustrate the level of legitimacy attached to the interventions with those unilateral interventions taking place in the 1970s lacking the legitimacy bestowed upon UN peace operations either at the UN Security Council or through the UN General Assembly

The National Aboriginal Conference and the Makarrata: Sovereignty and Treaty Discussions, 1979–1981

This article examines the different understandings of sovereignty that were developed through Australian Indigenous campaigns for a treaty in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It begins with an assessment of the National Aboriginal Conference's call for a treaty in 1979, which was replaced by a seemingly more moderate proposal for a makarrata. These ideas were debated by other Indigenous people who proposed more radical positions. This article argues that Aboriginal ideas of sovereignty were diverse, in flux, and sometimes contradictory, as Indigenous leaders experimented with new ways to achieve greater independence and power.

Sovereignties (Once Again) in Question

Globalization and Sovereignty. By John Agnew. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009. 216 pp., $26.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-742-55678-2). Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty. By Elden Stuart. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. 304 pp., $25.00 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-816-65484-0). Sovereignty and the Limits of the Liberal Imagination. By G. Nelson Scott. New York: Routledge, 2009. 206 pp., $130.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-415-77784-1). The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation. (McCarthy 1985:199) Contemporary scholars of global politics, it needs be said, are awash in sovereignties. Beset by suspicions that global connections have eroded sovereignty—that, given international legal norms, trade relations, global flows of people, etc. —“we cannot presume “the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth” as Bodin (1992:1) once did. For some, sovereignty became fractured and proportional; states could enjoy varying degrees of sovereignty, which fundamentally changed the concept. In a lucid attempt to address the confusion, Steven Krasner opened up the term, offering four different meanings of sovereignty—all descriptors of authority which are neither logically nor empirically coupled (Krasner 1999:9). By 2000, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri were transforming sovereignty into a series of imperial, disciplinary, capitalist, and network practices, all given the name Empire . In short, we seem to have replaced Bodin's sovereign absolute with a series of contending, overlapping sovereignties. Despite all of this, whenever I read new contributions to our understandings of sovereignty, my thoughts drift back to one of the English language's most monstrous literary creations. It is not, as the reader might suspect, Hobbes's Leviathan, but instead Cormac McCarthy's Judge Holden—the desert-crossing philosopher/beast from Blood Meridian. Both violence and desire personified, one of Judge Holden's hobbies was to kill birds and to make detailed notes and sketches of the species he had found. When queried about his purpose, he claims that he wishes to become suzerain of the Earth—”…a special kind of keeper. A suzerain rules even where there are other rules. …

Pirate Trials, the International Criminal Court, and Mob Justice: Reflections on Postcolonial Sovereignty in Kenya

Pirate Trials, the International Criminal Court, and Mob Justice: Reflections on Postcolonial Sovereignty in Kenya Mateo Taussig-Rubbo (bio) But jurisdiction is not merely an ambit or sphere (better described in this case as “competence”); it is basically—as is visible from the Latin origin of the word itself, jurisdictio—a legal power, hence necessarily a legitimate power, “to state the law” (dire le droit) within this ambit, in an authoritative and final manner. —Prosecutor v. Tadic1 Jurisdiction is typically understood in relation to territory or nationality.2 This conceptualization complements a global order of separate sovereign states, each enjoying the power to judge within its territory and to create law for its citizens. Universal jurisdiction, by contrast, entails the ability to judge offenders who have no connection to the state sitting in judgment. Decoupled from territory and nationality, the exercise of universal jurisdiction raises the question of whether it undermines a global order of sovereign states by allowing one state to reach into the affairs of another. This question is underscored by the crimes that, in the twentieth century, were found to give rise to universal jurisdiction, such as crimes against humanity that, in one common formulation, “shock the conscience” of mankind. There is an apparent tension between a global order of state sovereignty and the exercise of universal jurisdiction that either promises to curb sovereign abuses or threatens to conceal imperial meddling behind a judicial façade. There are, however, other ways in which the relation between state sovereignty and universal jurisdiction might be construed. For instance, the figure of the pirate, the original object of universal jurisdiction, suggests a different relationship. The pirate acts in a zone beyond sovereignty—the high seas—and acts not on a sovereign’s behalf. The exercise of universal jurisdiction in prosecuting piracy thus seems to complement a global order of territorial states. The pirate was hostis humani generis, the enemy of all mankind, or at least the enemy of the state system.3 Conversely, the perpetrator of crimes against humanity—the modern enemy of all mankind—often claims to act in the name of the state. Presented thus, we have two distinct conceptions of the relationship between sovereignty and universal jurisdiction. Over the past few years in Kenya, various stories have unfolded side by side that provide a more nuanced illustration of the ways that sovereignty and universal jurisdiction interact. On the one hand, Kenya has been unable to establish a domestic process to punish the political and business elites said to be behind the vicious ethnic [End Page 51] violence occasioned by the contested election in 2007. In response, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has initiated proceedings on his own motion and asserted his intention to prosecute a handful of perpetrators for crimes against humanity. On the other hand, over roughly the same time period, starting in 2006, Kenya has accepted delivery of and begun prosecuting Somali pirates captured by the naval forces of various wealthy states on the high seas, asserting its universal jurisdiction over them. For a moment, then, we have in Kenya both the oldest and one of the newest objects of universal jurisdiction. Even as Kenya imports the original “enemy of all”—the pirate—it prepares to export to The Hague the new “enemy of all”—the perpetrator of crimes against humanity. How should we understand this conjunction in Kenya? Does the profound tension produced by the dual appearance of figures from such different historical moments constitute a contradiction? Are the two stories expressive of different understandings of sovereignty and global order, or do they fit together as a coherent whole? Is the twentieth-century extension of universal jurisdiction from piracy to crimes against humanity expressive of the roughly contemporaneous decoupling of formal sovereignty from power after World War II and decolonization? Drawing on brief visits to Kenya in 2008, 2009, and 2010, including firsthand observations of pirate trials in Mombasa, I take up these questions. The abstract problem of the relation between universal jurisdiction and state sovereignty should be localized and theorized, I suggest, in relation to the postcolonial African sovereign state, its relations with more wealthy states, and its relation...

The afterlife of Parliamentary sovereignty

The paper discusses the nature of Parliamentary sovereignty. Beginning by reflecting on the understandings of sovereignty that were present before 1991, the paper argues that the rule was abandoned in the pivotal case of Factortame. Nevertheless, Parliamentary sovereignty has enjoyed an afterlife. Though no longer part of the United Kingdom's Constitution, it still continues to attract the attentions of scholars, who, knowingly or unknowingly, apply the label to new constitutional phenomena. The paper concludes by reflecting on the problems this can cause.

There is Something of One (God): Lacan and Political Theology

For both Lacan and Badiou, Plato's Parmenides is a primary locus for the question of the One. Moreover, for both Lacan and Badiou, the One ultimately takes on political valence, as key to the problematics of representation and the discursive conditions of collectivity. However, unlike Badiou, Lacan's exploration of the question of One also passes through theology— through what I am calling "something of One God"— and I want to argue that it is only by bringing the One into explicit relationship with those monotheistic issues that we can fully understand its implications for analytic discourse and political life. Lacan's thinking on the "something of One" takes a necessary swerve back through a theological problematic, and in the process articulates the terms of a political theology, an essential conjunction of political and religious understandings of sovereignty, subjectivity and collectivity.

Sovereignty and Privatizing the Military: An Institutional Explanation

Since the mid-1990s, almost all Western states have privatized military tasks, albeit to varying extents. The article addresses both aspects of the phenomenon: Why did Western states privatize military tasks, and why did they do so to varying extents? The neorealist argument of the market providing a competitive edge for the armed forces and liberalist ‘casualty aversion’ and ‘cost-effectiveness’ explanation both equally fail to provide a comprehensive answer for the privatization of military tasks. Alternatively, the article employs sociological institutionalism, arguing that transnational norms on conventional warfare prescribe the structure and organization of armed forces. If the content of these norms changes, states will adjust their force structure accordingly. Consequentially, states started to privatize military tasks when the requirements changed from self-sufficiency to more market reliance. However, transnational norms have to work their way through domestic norms resulting in variations. The more consistent transnational normative demands are with the domestic structure, the more extensive the former demands are implemented. The crucial domestic variable is the notion of sovereignty. If sovereignty is defined minimally market solutions are embraced and military activities are outsourced extensively. If states hold a broader understanding of sovereignty, they are reluctant to hand over military tasks to the market.