Self-Determination without Nationalism: A Theory of Postnational Sovereignty

6. The Contemporary Revival of Sovereignty

6 The Contemporary Revival of Sovereignty The Return of the Repressed I n 1991, just after the definitive end of the Cold War, Charles Beitz wrote, “The idea of internal sovereignty plays no substantial role in contemporary political theory. So it is a striking fact that in the study of international relations, and in international political theory as well, the idea of external sovereignty is still with us.”1 It is also pretty clearly a regrettable fact from Beitz’s point of view. Yet seven years later, in 1998, Christopher Morris, no friend of the sovereignty concept, had to admit that Beitz’s claim for the absence of discussions of sovereignty in political theory was simply mistaken (or perhaps just out of date).2 What had happened? It was, on the one hand, the “new tribalism” of the ethnic nationalists and, on the other, the “new internationalism” of the United States that had brought the problem of sovereignty back for consideration by political theorists . This is where the connection can be made between the sovereignty debate and the issue of self-determination. The idea of national selfdetermination that was revived after 1960 by ethnonationalist movements and their philosophical allies has raised the following question about sovereignty : Are there ever good reasons for preserving states’ sovereignty when it comes into conflict with secessionist and irredentist claims by national groups? The more recent revival of ideas of “global governance” by nongovernmental organizations and their philosophical proponents has raised the same question from a different angle: Are there ever good reasons to advocate The Contemporary Revival of Sovereignty 147 sovereignty for local or regional communities in light of the purportedly universal scope of cosmopolitan ideas? Newer developments—the militaristic neo-imperialism of the United States, the terroristic backlash that it has spawned, the constitutional experiments of the European Union, and the promise and difficulties of the global justice movement—have only intensified discussion in the intervening years. This discussion has proceeded along three general paths, each of which is followed in this chapter. First, there is the attempt to revitalize the theory of the state through the “classical” concept of sovereignty. Much of the interest in this stems from reassertion of state prerogatives by recent U.S. administrations. More interest has been generated by efforts to formulate an appropriate constitution for the European Union. The most intriguing aspect of this attempt is the revival of interest in the chief twentieth-century exponent of classical sovereignty, Carl Schmitt. At the same time, critics of the classical paradigm have been active as well. The confrontation between these two views is considered here. Second, there is the new use of sovereignty as a reassertion of resistance to the hegemonic moves of the United States (and increasingly other major powers) in international relations. The idea that sovereignty may actually provide intellectual resources for resistance to great-power hegemony has been revived, although it clashes with an older view that sovereignty is an impediment to the pursuit of morality in international affairs. This has become, in part, a dispute about the very meaning of the term as well as about whether it can serve a useful role in international disputes. Third, there is the recent focus on reconsideration of the relation of sovereignty to nationalist and imperialist state authorities—specifically, to the anticolonial movements of the mid-twentieth century. In particular, the relation between sovereignty (as traditionally espoused by European states) and self-determination (as more recently asserted by anticolonial movements) needs exploration. These distinct lines of inquiry converge on the idea that sovereignty is now, if it has not always been, a critical tool for those challenging the rule of powerful global elites—a view that runs counter to the idea that sovereignty is itself a means of rule by elites—either within states over their peoples or by powerful states over less powerful ones internationally. A positive argument for this new conception of sovereignty is the proper subject of the next chapter. Here the groundwork for this conception is laid through a study of the reasons for reviving the sovereignty concept in the current political conjuncture. A central contention here is that sovereignty has been “repressed” in recent political philosophy, to the detriment of thought about such elementary 148 Chapter 6 notions of political life as authority and democracy. One result of such repression is the consideration of, and toleration for, radically flawed ideas...