Defining Sovereignty

Abstract

There are two ways of looking at Sovereignty. Realists make sovereignty a near-synonym of statehood and the axiomatic basis of the theory of international anarchy. By contrast, constructivists tend to view sovereignty as a norm, a social construction. Krasner’s a modified Realism accepts the notion that sovereignty is a construction but denies it constraining power as a norm, functioning only as hypocrisy. Alexander Wendt accepts it as a weak norm internalized only to the second degree in some aspects and in other respects accepts with Realists that sovereignty is a definitional attribute of statehood. Some constructivists emphasize its normative role further while post-modern constructivists emphasize its ephemeral value in a system of arbitrary symbols. The authors argue that state behavior demonstrates that sovereignty is a norm of the international system but that states regularly seek to evade or test its constraints. The task is to build a framework that can specify: 1. What constitutes behavior that demonstrates recognition of sovereignty as a norm 2. Which states act within the constraints of the norm of sovereignty and which do not 3. When states act within the norm and when they do not. This paper distinguishes the material contours of sovereignty from its normative and socially constructed features to show how leading powers shape the normative features of Sovereignty to construct an international system. We will look at Britain following the Napoleonic Wars, the Great Powers at Versailles, The US and the Soviet Union after WWII as a basis to understand the problems confronting the institutionalization of US hegemony today. A self-help system is constrained only by the gradient of power relations among states. Normative restraint is a direct alternative to reliance on one’s own power and that the context for normative restraint is a form of social knowledge based on the expectation of reciprocal restraints on the part of other actors. Powerful actors in the international system have the least incentive to prefer normative restraints to self-reliance. Preponderant power gives little incentive to respect the sovereignty of smaller, weaker states absent a powerful countervailing coalition. Ikenberry shows that the organization of a system of mutual restraints falls to leading powers at the time of post-War settlements and that these orders are designed to maximize the long-term advantages of leading states (Ikenberry 2001). Ikenberry suggests that the norm of sovereignty became to postwar order under Westphalia, but this was a limited European system. Little and Buzan show however, that the sovereign state became the norm of the international system only following decolonization after the Second World War. Ikenberry’s methodology suggests that the norm of sovereignty and institutional binding are alternative forms of system and international order, whereas the chronology developed by Little and Buzan (2000) suggests that sovereignty becomes universal only with the emergence of embedded liberalism in the post WWII era. In the post cold war era a new challenge to the universality of the norm of sovereignty has emerged with the twin projects of humanitarian intervention and the deliberate pursuit of a ‘democratic peace’ contained in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the US. Is universal democracy displacing sovereignty as a universal norm? Great power disunity surrounding the Iraq war is seen as conflict over competing norms as the basis of the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]