Table Of Content|
The Sovereignty Cartel
Sovereignty is the subject of many debates in international relations. Is it
the source of state authority or a description of it? What is its history?
Is it strengthening or weakening? Is it changing, and how? This book
addresses these questions, but focuses on one less frequently addressed:
whatmakesstatesovereigntypossible?TheSovereigntyCartelarguesthat
sovereignty is built on state collusion – states work together to privilege
sovereignty in global politics, because they benefit from sovereignty’s
exclusivity. This book explores this collusive behavior in international
law, international political economy, international security, and migration
andcitizenship.Inalltheseareas,statesaccordrightstootherstates,regard-
less of relative power, relative wealth, or relative position. Sovereignty, as
a (changing) set of property rights for which states collude, accounts for
thisbehaviornotasanomaly(asothertheorieswould)butinsteadasfunda-
mentaltothesovereignstatessystem.
j. samuel barkin is author of ten books and some fifty articles and
chapters on international relations theory and international organization,
andisaleadingauthorityontheoriesofsovereignty.Hispreviousbookwith
CambridgeUniversityPress,RealistConstructivism:RethinkingInternational
RelationsTheory(2010)wasnamedaChoiceOutstandingTitle.
The Sovereignty Cartel
j. samuel barkin
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Contents
Acknowledgments page vi
1 Introduction 1
2 Sovereignty? 17
3 Sovereign Rights 36
4 The SovereigntyCartel 55
5 The Sovereign 79
6 Sovereign Property 102
7 The Interstices ofSovereignty 124
8 Normative Dissonance 144
9 Conclusions 163
References 183
Index 199
v
Acknowledgments
Thisbookcollectsseveralideasaboutsovereigntyinthecontemporary
states system that have been bouncing around in my head for quite
sometime.Theseideashaveappearedinasufficientvarietyofdifferent
papersandtalksandhavebeencommentedonbysomanypeoplethat
it would be unrealistic to list them all here even if I had done an
adequate job of keeping track, which I have not. My thanks to all of
those people, along with apologies fornot keepingtrack.
I do have some acknowledgments for assistance specifically with
the book project. Beth DeSombre and Laura Sjoberg both read and
provided invaluable commentary on several versions. Patrick
Thaddeus Jackson and Swati Srivastava, as well as an anonymous
referee, read and commented on the penultimate draft. The final ver-
sionwould,ofcourse,havebeenbetterifI’ddoneamoreeffectivejob
of taking all their advice.
My colleagues in the Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and
Global Governance Department at the University of Massachusetts
Bostonprovidedasupportiveenvironmentforthewritingofthebook.
Thanks also to UMass Boston for the sabbatical leave during which
much of the book was written, and the Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs at Brown University for an institu-
tional affiliation during that sabbatical.
Finally,thankstothosewhohelpedwiththeeditorialsideofgetting
this book published. John Haslam at Cambridge University Press
waited patiently for a decade between the first time I pitched the idea
of this book to him and the time I actually started writing it. William
Krol copyedited the final manuscript; Kathryn Butterworth compiled
the index.
vi
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1
Introduction
Sovereignty is often talked about as central to, even definitional of,
contemporary international relations. We assume it as the source of
state authority or use it to describe state capabilities. We talk about
whether it is getting weaker, and occasionally about whether it is
changing in some fundamental way. But rarely do we get into details
about what it is, how it works, how it maintains itself, and what the
effectsareofsovereigntyspecifically,asopposedtosomeotherorgan-
izing principle, on contemporary international relations. In this con-
text, some of the patterns of state behavior that are easy to take for
grantedaspartofthesovereignstatessystemareinfactstriking.States
donotjustcompetewitheachothertomaximizetheirnationalinterest
orcooperatewitheachothertoprovideglobalpublicgoods.Theyalso
colludewitheachothertoreinforcethecentralityofthesovereignstate
as a category of actor in international relations. This pattern of collu-
sion iswhat I call the “sovereignty cartel.”
Examples of this collusive behavior can be found in a wide range
of international issue areas; the most obvious is legal standing.
Internationallaw–thelawofstates–recognizesonlysovereignstates
ashavinginternationallegalpersonhood.Inotherwords,statesrecog-
nizeeachotherasthepeopleofinternationalrelationsandnooneelse.
Many examples can also be found in the international political
economy. Corporations need to be legally domiciled in a state, even
iftheyareneitherphysically domiciled nordoasignificantamount of
business there. Businesses need a state to legitimate them, even if the
state plays little meaningful role in regulating or taxing the business.
Ships at sea need to fly a national flag, lest they be treated as pirates.
Aflagfromastatethatisdysfunctional,orfromacountrythathasno
coast, legitimates the ship, but the flag of a large shipping company
with a historyof responsible operation ofits ships does not.
Statesalsorecognizearighttotheuseofviolenceinotherstatesthat
they do not recognize with respect to any other actors. Soldiers in the
1
2 Introduction
uniformofasovereignstatehave,undersomecircumstances,theright
to kill people in other countries. This right may be loosely circum-
scribed by principles such as proportionality and civilian immunity,
but soldiers can still kill noncombatants in large numbers and remain
withininternationallaw.Anyoneelsebehavinginthiswayissubjectto
locallawsformurder.Thesamesortofmutualrecognitionoftheright
to violence can be found in criminal justice. States will, as a general
rule, allow their nationals to be incarcerated by other sovereigns,
subject to due process. However, states do not accord the right to
detain their citizensto any other category of international actor.
These examples seem at first to be unexceptional because they are
simply the way international relations currently works and the way it
has worked throughout recent memory. When examined in more
detail, however, they are actually inconsistent with the assumptions
of many international relations scholars both about how the world
works and about how the world should work. The examples all
involve states according rights to other states whether big or small,
rich or poor, liberal or illiberal, status quo or revisionist – rights that
allowotherstatestoregulateanduseforcethatmightunderminetheir
own ability to govern. These rights give small and poor states, for
example, leverage in global governance and in the international polit-
ical economy that they might not otherwise have. They can make it
more difficult for bigger and richer states to govern illicit activities by
creatingalternativesourcesoflegitimationforthoseactivities.Whydo
the bigger and richer countries put up with this? What do they get in
exchange forthis dilution of their own practicalability to govern?
Politicalrealists,forinstance,beginwiththeassumptionsthatpower
is the key currency of politics, that states are the social actors with
power in international relations, and that states will act in their
national interest. This set of assumptions leads to a view of inter-
nationalrelationsinwhichstatescompetewitheachothertomaximize
theirgain.Butintheexamplesgivenabove,stateswithmorepowerare
conceding rights to states with less power, withoutanyclear quid pro
quo and sometimes at significant cost to their ability to promote their
ownnationalinterest.Realiststendtoeitherassumesovereignstatesas
astartingpointoftheiranalysisorarguethatitisstatesthatmatterin
internationalrelationsbecausetheyaretheorganizationsthathavethe
powertomatter.Fromneitheroftheseperspectivesdoesitmakesense
for the most powerful states to concede reciprocal rights to the least
SovereigntyinInternationalRelations 3
powerful. This is particularly true of neorealists, who tend to look at
great powers specifically rather than states generally, highlighting the
focus on power rather than sovereignty.
Nor does it make sense from liberal perspectives. These might
include an institutionalist liberalism that sees states as cooperating to
provide public goods, and a democratic liberalism that takes popular
sovereigntytoberepresentativeofthegeneralwill.Intheformercaseit
meanstheconcessionofrightstostatesthatmaynothaveameaning-
fulabilitytoparticipateintheprovisionofpublicgoodsandmaynot,
in fact, agree on what constitutes international public goods. Such
concessionsservetocreatemorepotentialvetoplayersthatcanstymie
cooperationandcreateintersticesbetweenmultiplepointsoflegitimate
regulation,leadingtosituationsinwhichvariouskindsofillicitactivity
canthrive.Inthelattercase,theassigningoftheserightstosovereigns
as determined by the community of sovereigns can undermine, rather
than express, popular sovereignty by reinforcing the position of
despots of various kinds.
Biggerandricherstatessupporttherightsofsmallerandpoorerones
becauseindoingsotheysupporttheprincipleofsovereignright,thereby
reinforcing their own claim to the exclusive right to regulate their own
place in the international system. States, in other words, act not only
individually to protect their own sovereignty but also collectively, as a
cartel, to protect the rights of sovereignty in general and of sovereign
actors as a group. They do this because they recognize (whether expli-
citly or implicitly) that the social construct that is the sovereign state
systemneedstobeconstantlyreconstitutedthroughpractice.Thesover-
eignty cartel is part of the process of this reconstitution. This book
argues that states, while they do compete with each other for power
and cooperate with each other to deal with collective problems or
provide collective goods, also collude with each other to protect the
rightsofsovereigntyagainstallotheractors.Inotherwords,statesactas
acarteltoretainforthemselvestheexclusiverighttogovern.Thiscartel
acts to reproduce sovereignty in the face of pressures both from other
actorsandfromchangesintheinternationalsystem.
Sovereignty in International Relations
Theconceptofsovereigntyholdsanawkwardpositioninthestudyof
international relations. It is both ubiquitous and contested. It is
