Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 STATES AND QUASI-STATES
- 2 A NEW SOVEREIGNTY REGIME
- 3 SOVEREIGNTY REGIMES IN HISTORY
- 4 INDEPENDENCE BY RIGHT
- 5 SOVEREIGNTY AND DEVELOPMENT
- 6 SOVEREIGN RIGHTS VERSUS HUMAN RIGHTS
- 7 QUASI-STATES AND INTERNATIONAL THEORY
- CONCLUSION
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
3 - SOVEREIGNTY REGIMES IN HISTORY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 STATES AND QUASI-STATES
- 2 A NEW SOVEREIGNTY REGIME
- 3 SOVEREIGNTY REGIMES IN HISTORY
- 4 INDEPENDENCE BY RIGHT
- 5 SOVEREIGNTY AND DEVELOPMENT
- 6 SOVEREIGN RIGHTS VERSUS HUMAN RIGHTS
- 7 QUASI-STATES AND INTERNATIONAL THEORY
- CONCLUSION
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Summary
SOVEREIGNTY: FACT OR NORM?
There is an old controversy in international relations as to whether ‘sovereignty’ is intrinsic to states – a fact – or a status acknowledged by other statesmen. Does the world today consist of about 170 distinct and separate organized political realities called ‘states’? Is sovereignty constituted by that reality? Or is the globe a framework of jurisdictions defined according to common principles of international law? Is sovereignty a rule or rather a set of rules of an international society and therefore extrinsic to states? In short, are sovereign states self-standing realities and rugged individualists or are they constituents of an international community and responsible citizens or, again, are they somehow both at the same time?
The political entities we have come to know as ‘states’ appeared first in Western Europe. The original foundations were the region's geographical and demographic configuration as ‘population islands’ in an ocean of forest and heath. States were the ‘scaffolding’ erected on these islands by ambitious rulers facing strenuous international competition. The states-system is at the root of ‘the European miracle’ in which that continent and particularly its northwestern extremity historically outdistanced the rest of the world not only in science and technology but also in political economy and statecraft. ‘The states-system was an insurance against economic and technological stagnation … A large part of the system's dynamic was an arms race.’ Of course, European states were rarely the efficient machines rulers wanted or the equitable institutions philosophers desired.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Quasi-StatesSovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, pp. 50 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991