Review of ‘Liminal sovereignty practices’
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836720931131 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review Essay
Review of ‘Liminal
sovereignty practices’
Sergei Prozorov
Keywords
Sovereignty, liminality, governance, practices
I recommend that the article should be revised and resubmitted. This is a very well-
written and clearly argued piece that offers a systematic and analytical treatment of
the concept of liminality that the authors suggest as an alternative to the binary
inside/outside thinking that characterizes both the traditional international rela-
tions (IR) theory and its post-structuralist critique that remains fixated on the
dividing line between the inside and the outside, even as it affirms its contingency,
fluidity, haziness, and so on. While the authors’ argument, particularly their typol-
ogy of liminal practices, is very interesting and suggestive, I am not certain that it
succeeds in solving the problems the authors claim it does, at least on the level they
claim it does. Below I address three problems with the argument.
The authors argue that liminal practices challenge ‘the very ontology of modern
international relations, unsettling the inside/outside dichotomy on which the
modern concept of state sovereignty rests’. Yet the examples provided in
the article suggest otherwise: while important in their own ways, contested or
non-recognized states, indigenous groups, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and terrorist organizations have coexisted for a long time with sovereign
states without undermining them or ‘unsettling’ the overall inside/outside logic. By
definition, liminal spaces do not (easily) fit in with that logic but this does not entail
that they succeed in overcoming or transcending it. On the contrary, they may
either be subsumed by it (e.g. unrecognized states gaining recognition, indigenous
groups acquiring autonomous status within states) or coexist with it with varying
degrees of antagonism (Amnesty International, which challenges particular state
practices but not statehood as such, or ISIS, which destroys existing states in the
Corresponding author:
Sergei Prozorov, University of Jyvaskyla, YFI, Keskussairaalantie 2, Jyv€
askyl€
a, 40400, Finland.
Email: sergei.prozorov@jyu.fi
Cooperation and Conflict
2020, Vol. 55(3) 308–309
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836720931131
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