The Practice of Sovereign Statehood in Contemporary International Society
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00212 |
| Published date | 01 August 1999 |
| Author | Alan James |
| Date | 01 August 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Practice of Sovereign Statehood in
Contemporary International Society
ALAN JAMES
The absence of legislative control over semantic practice is, in one's more
authoritarian moments, a matter for regret. In respect of discourse about inter-
national relations, no better ground for this reaction can be found than the use
of the term sovereignty. On every hand, it seems, the term is freely introduced;
and on inspection ( for writers are inthis regard rarely self-conscious) it emerges
that an almost equivalent profusion of concepts is being paraded. However, this
situation at least provides grist for the familiar academic tasks of drawing
distinctions and ± International Relations falling within the province of social
science ± the establishment of categories.
Concepts of Sovereignty
It may therefore be noted that, speaking very broadly, the subsequent con-
tributions to this special number of the journal fall into three broad groups. In
this they re¯ect the contemporary concerns of the discipline and the associated
literature. In the ®rst place, sovereignty is used to refer to the extent to which a
state is free to behave as it wishes (see the articles by Philpott, Taylor, and
Wallace). This has two aspects: jurisdictional and political. Jurisdictional
sovereignty has to do with the extent to which a state is under no speci®c or
general international obligations regarding its internal behaviour and decision
making. To that extent it is legally free to conduct itself as it sees ®t, or
sovereign.1As these comments imply, this concept of sovereignty is not an
absolute. It is not something which a state either has immutably or not at all.
Rather, it is relative in nature. It is like a bundle of separable rights. Thus the
bundle remains in existence notwithstanding the renunciation or involuntary
loss of some of the individual items of which it is, collectively, composed. It also
remains in existence even if the state is in some political disarray. The state
continues to be sovereign, in the sense of having jurisdictional rights, over those
areas of its aairs which are not subject to the direct requirements of
international law.
The other aspect of this ®rst concept of sovereignty focuses on political rather
than jurisdictional freedom.2Like the latter, its nature is necessarily relative.
#Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Political Studies (1999), XLVII, 457±473
1This approach can be traced back to Bodin's well-known assertion, made in 1577, that
`sovereignty consists of absolute and perpetual power within a state': quoted in F. H. Hinsley,
Sovereignty (London, Watts, 1966), p. 22.
2One well-known approachto sovereignty which is rooted in the idea of political independence is
that of J. H. Herz, who argues that impermeability isthe essence of the traditional sovereign state:
see, generally, J. H. Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York, ColumbiaUniversity
Press, 1959).
Even a state with huge political assets ®nds thatthere are many circumstances in
which, as a practical matter, it cannot do what it would like to do. Lesser states
are likely to ®nd themselves more circumscribed although there are also
occasions on which, paradoxically, their smaller size may give them a greater
immediate freedom. Nonetheless, constraint is the general factor of which
participants in the international political game are perhaps most aware.Only up
to a varying point (which varies with the hour and by the issue) are states
sovereign in the sense of being politically free.
As colleagues will later make clear, there have been large developments in the
second half of the twentieth century which have notably diminished the freedom
of the state, and hence (in this sense) its sovereignty. In some cases the emphasis
has been on legal restrictions; in others, on political. Either way, the outcome is
that states tend, at the millennium, to be less free than they generally were
50 years ago; and there is no compelling reason to believe that this process has
now reached its end. But it must be remembered, especially insofar as legal
restrictions are concerned, that an obligation is often accompanied by a
corresponding right or advantage.
The second broad approach to sovereignty which ®nds expression in these
pages focuses not on the activity of sovereign states but on the identity of those
who control its decision-making processes (see Clapham's article). Instead of
analysing the position or predicament of the state in relation to its individual
fellows or to the collectivity of states as a whole, it probes into the distribution
of power within the state. It asks, who rules ± or, who is sovereign? In so doing,
it echoes a famous de®nition of politics as the business of deciding `who gets
what, when, how'.3This issue is, of course, always of supreme importance to
those who are engaged in the domestic political con¯ict. But where there is an
agreed or accepted constitutional structure within which the battle takes place,
the appearance of a new set of rulers is rarely described as a switch of sover-
eignty. Such governmental changes as occur are, in keeping with the democratic
ethos of the age, seen as normal and fair ± and hence not requiring the emotive
depiction which tends to be associated with the use of the term sovereignty.
Where, however, a grouphas succeeded in riding roughshod over the indigenous
democratic procedures, it is likely that there will be references to it having
`seized' sovereignty, to the sovereignty of the state having been `captured' by a
minority. State sovereignty, in other words, will bewidely deemed to have fallen
into tainted hands. At the turn of the millennium, such situations are not
uncommon, albeit less so than has often been the case since 1945.
In contrast to the ®rst two concepts of sovereignty, which concern the state's
international freedom and the use made of its internal procedures, the third
concept approaches the state only indirectly. It rests on the premise that
sovereignty is an immediate attribute not of the state but of the nation
(see Mayall's contribution). It then asserts that a legitimate state is one which
can plausibly claim to be acceptable to its national constituents, which is their
genuine representative.4In other words, the legitimacy of the state depends on
3This was the title of a famous book by H. D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How,
(New York, Whittlesey House, 1936).
4For two recent expressions of this approach,see: J. S. Barkin and B. Cronin, `The state and the
nation: changing norms and the rules of sovereignty in international relations', International
Organization, 48 (1994), 107±30; and G. Starovoitova, Sovereigntyafter Empire. Self-Determination
Movements in the Former Soviet Union (Washington, DC, United States Institute of Peace, 1997).
458 Sovereign Statehood in Contemporary International Society
#Political Studies Association, 1999
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