International Scientific Conference
‘Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization’
PSRC Zagreb and University of Dubrovnik, 22-24.10.2009. Dubrovnik
Prepared by Igor Jovanoski, Bremen International Graduate School of Social Science [BIGSSS], University of Bremen
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The subject
 Why sovereignty and why US-EU Foreign policy behavior
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The concept of sovereignty
 A view from traditional IR
 A social-constructivist perspective on sovereignty
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Sovereignty and Foreign Policy
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Sovereignty in time
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Ideal sovereignty types
Sovereignty in space
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Modalities for sovereignty translations through FP
The US vs EU [France and Germany] sovereignty conceptions
Sovereignty and Transatlantic Relations
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The recent Transatlantic Relations [TR] crisis prompted studies searching
for the deeper, conceptual and empirical, sources behind the rift. Some
invoked the concept of sovereignty (Keohane 2003, Anderson 2007). Its
differing conceptualizations in the US and EU were seen as good
indicators for the TR clash.
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This presentation takes up these issues into account. It briefly overviews
mainstream, as well as IR constructivist perspectives on the theory of
sovereignty, and following the last develops a framework for
understanding translation of sovereignty into processes of Foreign Policy
[FP] making and behavior. Lastly, it shows some empirical findings on the
patterns of sovereignty in the US and EU [France and Germany] and
presents some tentative assumptions on its effect on their respective FP
behaviors in the recent TR rift
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“Definition”
 Sovereignty is a descriptive and prescriptive, legal, political,
social and philosophical concept. It is the idea that legitimizes
forms of supreme authority in a political community (Hinsley
1966).
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Rationalism
 Sovereignty is a legal and organizing principle; it is a historically
fixed and static term that orders the relationships within state
and among states. As such it is the feature all states posses and
share (Waltz:1986)
 “To say that a state is sovereign means that it will decide for
itself how it will cope with internal and external problems,
including whether or not to seek assistance from others and in
doing so limit its freedom by making commitments to them”
(ibid.:90)
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Social constructivism
 Sovereignty
is a socially constructed and discursively
reproduced norm, constitutive of both state identity and the
international society of states. It is a historical, time and space
dependant rule, socially and culturally predetermined
(Biersteker and Weber 1995, Biersteker 2002).
 Instead of a given, analytical category, the meanings of
sovereignty are:
 Discursively negotiated out of interactions within intersubjectively
identifiable communities, and,
 In the variety of ways in which practices construct, reconstruct and
deconstruct sovereignty (Bierteker and Weber, 1995:11)
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Definition:
 For the rationalists, FP it is a strategic, rational state behavior
aimed at protection of national interests; for constructivists it is
also a normatively, identity driven behavior
 There are 3 ways for translating normative conceptions of
sovereignty through FP:
▪ By constituting and shaping the agency and identity of the state
▪ Sovereignty practices shape state identity
▪ By constituting the national identity
▪ The discourse of sovereignty and the inside/outside boundary imposes fixed and
stable meanings about who belongs and who doesn’t to the nation (Dotty
1995:122)
▪ By serving as social power in various FP contexts (Biersteker and
Weber 1995, Philpot 2001)
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If analyzed historically, sovereignty practices
as well as the discourse of sovereignty can be
placed in 2 ideal types:
 Classical sovereignty*
▪ Statist and popular sovereignty
 Post-national sovereignty**
▪ Pooled
▪ Post-statist [or post-modern]
▪ Cosmopolitan
Classical sovereignty conceptions
Post-national sovereignty conceptions
Core constitutive principles
- sovereignty resides in the monarch, state or the nation
- sovereignty is an absolute condition;
- sovereignty is unitary;
- sovereignty in non-transferable
- Sovereignty keeps its classical locus of residence, but:
- sovereignty is limited - it may be fragmented and
delegated;
- sovereignty is divided – it may be shared among
sovereign/sub/supra national actors;
- sovereignty is partial and transferable to institutions below
and above state authority line
Core regulative principles
Exclusive and centralised control over territory, state
autonomy and independent internal and external state
policies, territoriality and inviolability of territorial
integrity, Non-intervention
Division and transfer of states’ competences, diffusion of
power to regional, state or supra-national level, multilevel
governance, multilateralism;
Core normative principles
Protection and provision of National Security,
International order, Freedom, National Liberty, Justice
and Welfare
Democracy, human rights protection, individual liberties,
legitimacy, welfare provisions, inter/transnational
cooperation
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US conceptions of sovereignty
 Classical
▪ Popular
▪ Rooted in the historical processes of the constitution of the
American polity
▪ Constantly constitutive of the US exceptionalism discourse
▪ Statist
▪ Also historicaly present in the formative processes, in the
struggle between the former colonies and the newly established
Federation
▪ Dominant as a form of statism in the US FP discourses from the
end of the WWII onward and related to the prominence of the
political realism theory
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EU conceptions of sovereignty
 Post-national
▪ Institutionally embedded in the EU and its respective policies
▪ Beyond sovereignty and EU integration [Germany]
▪ ‘le souverainisme’ contra ‘la souveraineté transféré’ and
‘partagée’
▪ and France]
 Classical
▪ Staatssouveränität über alles [Germany]
▪ La Mal de Bodin Rousseau’s challenges
▪ Souveraineté nationale vs.Souveraineté populaire
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Transatlantic relations as a social, political,
military and economic order
 Material factors matter
 Normative
factors such as conceptions of
sovereignty have deep impact on the TR FP
Relations
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Anderson, Jeffrey, Ikenberry, George and Risse, Thomas. 2009. The End of the West? Crisis and Change in
the Atlantic Order. Cornell University Press.
Biersteker, Thomas and Weber, Cynthia. 1995. State Sovereignty as Social Construct. Cambridge Studies
in International Relations
Burchill, Scott et all. 2003. Theories of International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan
Checkel, Jeffrey T. 1998. The Constructivist Turn in IR. World Politics 50 , 324-48
Hinsley, F.H. 1986. Sovereignty, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Keohane, Robert O. 2002. Ironies of Sovereignty: the European Union and the United States, Journal of
Common Market Studies 40, pp. 743-760.
Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ruggie, John G. 1998. Constructing the World Polity. Essays on International Institutionalisation.
Routledge
Waltz, Kenneth. 1986. Political Structures, in: Keohane, Robert O. (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1986, p.90.
Byers, Michael & Sinclair, Adriana (2006) When US scholars speak of ‘sovereignty’, what do they mean?
‘Sovereignty, the State and Fundamental Transformations in Public International Law’ TranState Project
- University of Bremen, Germany