An emerging “Islandian” sovereignty of non-self-governing islands
| Author | Gerard Prinsen,Séverine Blaise |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702017693260 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
International Journal
2017, Vol. 72(1) 56–78
!The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0020702017693260
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx
Scholarly Essay
An emerging
‘‘Islandian’’ sovereignty
of non-self-governing
islands
Gerard Prinsen
School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Se
´verine Blaise
De
´partement Droit-E
´conomie-Gestion, Universite
´de la
Nouvelle-Cale
´donie, Noume
´a, New Caledonia
Abstract
Comparative analyses have found that non-self-governing islands tend to have much
better development indicators than sovereign islands. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since
1983 no non-self-governing island has acquired political independence. This paper
argues that rather than merely maintaining the status quo with their colonial metropoles,
non-self-governing islands are actively creating a new form of sovereignty. This creation
of an ‘‘Islandian’’ sovereigntytakes place against the backdrop of debates on the relevance
of classic Westphaliansovereignty and emerging practices of Indigenous sovereignty. This
paper reviews global research on the sovereignty of islands and from this review, devel-
ops an analytical framework of five mechanisms that drive the emerging Islandian sov-
ereignty. This framework is tested and illustrated with a case study of the negotiations
about sovereignty between New Caledonia and its colonial metropole, France.
Keywords
Sovereignty, islands, decolonization, non-self-governing territories, Indigenous peoples,
New Caledonia
Introduction
The decolonization process of the world’s remaining 40-odd non-self-governing
islands—scattered over the globe as the reminders of colonialism—came to a
Corresponding author:
Gerard Prinsen, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Private Bag 11222,
Palmerston North, 4442, New Zealand.
Email: G.Prinsen@massey.ac.nz
halt in the 1980s. Since the 1980s, more than a dozen non-self-governing islands
have held referendums on independence and large majorities of voters on all these
islands have voted against it. On several non-self-governing islands, referendums
on independence are still being planned—New Caledonia, as a French territory in
the Pacific, is one example—but going by past results, it seems unlikely any of these
islands will vote to sever their colonial ties. However, a closer look at the relation-
ships between colonial metropoles and non-self-governing islands suggests that the
islands are not rejecting change; they are rather active in changing that relationship
and they are quite successful in doing so on their own terms. This paper addresses
the question of how non-self-governing islands are shaping their relationship with
their (neo-) colonial metropoles. It will investigate these relationships in a theor-
etical framework that takes elements from the classic concept of Westphalian sov-
ereignty as well as from the emerging concept of Indigenous sovereignty.
Today’s concept of sovereignty has its origins in the negotiations that resulted in
the seventeenth-century’s Peace of Westphalia in Europe. Arguably, the Peace of
Westphalia was the foundation for early nineteenth-century nationalism and mid-
twentieth-century decolonization, leading to today’s notion of state sovereignty.
However, accelerating globalization since the 1990s has led to various critical ana-
lyses that question the contemporary validity or relevance of Westphalian state
sovereignty. In addition to these critical analyses, the 2000s have also seen the
concept of Indigenous sovereignty become increasingly prominent, both in schol-
arly debate and in international diplomatic platforms. Against the backdrop of
these debates, the conduct of non-self-governing islands and their negotiations with
their colonial metropoles may represent yet another approach to sovereignty. In
this approach, non-self-governing islands seem to be expressing ‘‘a different appe-
tite for sovereignty,’’ in which they are negotiating ‘‘innovative autonomy arrange-
ments’’ rather than seeking Westphalian state sovereignty.
1
One of the effects of these ‘‘innovative autonomy arrangements’’ is that despite
comparable starting points in the 1960s and 1970s, the socio-economic develop-
ment indices for non-self-governing islands significantly exceed the indices for sov-
ereign island states in the 2000s. This paper expands our understanding of these
arrangements between metropole and non-self-governing islands by exploring the
political and cultural aspects that accompany, or reinforce, the relational and eco-
nomic dynamics of the arrangements. This paper also investigates the relevance for
non-self-governing islands of the efforts by Indigenous peoples to arrive at ‘‘con-
structive arrangements with States,’’ which fall equally short of sovereign
statehood.
2
This paper begins by reviewing the cumulative origins of the concept of
Westphalian sovereignty. It then outlines diverse critiques of this concept as they
1. Godfrey Baldacchino and Eve Hepburn, ‘‘A different appetite for sovereignty? Independence move-
ments in subnational island jurisdictions,’’ Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 50, no. 4 (2012):
555.
2. United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 61/295, ‘‘United Nations Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples’’ (New York: UN, 2007), 14.
Prinsen and Blaise 57
To continue reading
Request your trial