Sovereignty, Economic Autonomy, the United States, and the International Trading System: Representations of a Relationship

Abstract

The meaning of the concept of sovereignty is largely contingent upon the text in which it figures. There is no objective concept that is universally applicable and yet it is of foundational importance to the concept of a state and indeed of modern political knowledge. Much of the literature on sovereignty in international legal journals has been devoted to discussing the relationship between sovereignty and international law and organizations and the limitations that are said to flow therefrom for the exercise by the sovereign state of its powers within, and external to, its territory. This approach to sovereignty, as being mainly concerned with the locus of the exercise of powers of government, featured largely in debates in the US Congress when deciding whether the US should accept and implement the results of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. The approach of this article, however, is different: it conceives of sovereignty as an essentially contestable concept -- with a normative character and value content -- and then goes on to consider what implications this conceptual approach has for the issue of the US relationship to the international trading system. A specific focus of inquiry is the controversial US value of economic autonomy -- in casu, the capacity of corporations and states to make independent decisions about their respective economic futures -- and a consideration of the extent to which US contestations of sovereignty within the GATT, the WTO, and also within its domestic legal and political system can be viewed as a contestation or even projection internationally of this value.