Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy

"Sovereignty is such an important issue right now. We can think about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; its claims of threats to its own sovereignty; issues surrounding Taiwan; China’s attempts to control the South China Sea; the role that something called sovereignty is playing in Brexit ; or the reluctance of states to sign up to the International Criminal Court. People engaged in genocide often defend themselves in terms of the protections that sovereignty offers. But, then there’s also the complete disregard for sovereignty and borders and territory that climate change poses. So, I think this is a really important time to encourage people to really think about what sovereignty means. And I think Krasner’s book, although it has its faults, does a good job of foregrounding different dimensions of sovereignty, and exploring how sovereignty relates to ideas of control and authority in a way that troubles an overly simplistic, but politically very convenient view that a commitment to something called sovereignty compels us into a particular course of action, such as leaving the European Union in an effort to take back control of what has never really been made clear to me. “Most of the discourse on the Leave side of Brexit seemed to be about what Krasner calls ‘interdependence sovereignty’” But Krasner’s book can help here too, I think. He sets out four ways of thinking about what sovereignty means and relates these to authority and control. So, with the case of Brexit, is the UK looking to get control over transnational movements of goods and people? Krasner calls this interdependence sovereignty. Or is the UK seeking to regain control of who or what exercises authority in the UK? This is a different kind of sovereignty—what Krasner calls Westphalian sovereignty. Another option could be: does the UK think that being in a regional organisation, like the EU, takes away the recognition of it as sovereign by other states? That’s international legal sovereignty. Or, is Brexit a way of regaining authority and effectiveness of the government domestically? So, domestic sovereignty. I think most of the discourse on the Leave side seemed to be about what Krasner calls interdependence sovereignty. And, I think the book helps show how we shouldn’t necessarily equate the loss or decrease of one of these kinds of sovereignty, say interdependence sovereignty, as a loss of sovereignty, per se. A decrease or loss of the ability to control cross-border movements might actually lead states to enter into formal agreements with each other (which itself is an exercising of sovereignty), voluntarily reduce their Westphalian sovereignty (so, allow external actors to exercise some authority), but in doing so, increase their interdependence sovereignty. There are many political actors who I think would like sovereignty to mean just one thing, but it doesn’t. And I think that Krasner’s book shows that quite well."