Prokhovnik - Sovereignty History and Theory

Title page

SOVEREIGNTY

HISTORY AND THEORY

Raia Prokhovnik

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Copyright Raia Prokhovnik, 2008

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.

Originally published in the UK by Imprint Academic

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Originally published in the USA by Imprint Academic

Philosophy Documentation Center

PO Box 7147, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7147, USA

2013 digital version by Andrews UK Limited

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Dedication

For Leigh

Preface

This book arises out of a desire to clarify in detail some of the theories taken to be canonical in the discussion of the concept of sovereignty. I wanted to do this both for conceptual clarification and because this context forms an important but under-explored part of the background and framework for the contemporary discussion of the reconceptualisation of sovereignty. As always, Quentin Skinner and Conal Condren are intellectual touchstones for my thinking.

The book also owes much to the inspiration of discussions with Rob Walker, Jef Huysmans, Neil Walker and others. I would like to thank colleagues in the Feminist Reading Group at the Open University for debates, discussions and friendships over the past seven yearsKath Woodward, Stephanie Taylor, Rachel Thomson, Jane McCarthy, Wendy Hollway, Gillian Rose, and Elizabeth Silva.

I would also like to thank Gary, Eleanor, and Conal Browning, Anna Prokhovnik, Madeline, Kaz, and Mia Cooper-Ueki, Nick Prokhovnik, Alan, Hilary, and Stuart Browning and Jen Hardwick, David Blair, Scott Pitman and Susan Danseyar, Angela Radcliffe, Lorraine Foreman-Peck, Caroline Thompson, Anne Markiewicz and Ian Patrick, and Jane Wedmore for their sustaining love and warm friendship.

Raia Prokhovnik

Introduction

Sovereignty is sometimes regarded as a concept with a fixed meaning, as something that can only be kept or lost, and which at the present time is under threat from globalisation, the erosion of the nation state, and European integration. This book develops a strong argument for sovereignty as a robust concept with many conceptualisations in the past, and capable of further fruitful reconceptualisation in the future (taken up in Prokhovnik 2007). As such it clarifies a strong new direction for contemporary debate, especially within political theory and international relations, about the meaning of sovereignty.

The subheading of the book signals one of its distinctive properties. The two elements of the subheading, History and Theory , point to the way in which there is both a history of the concept, reflected in a range of conceptions and a canon, and a discourse on sovereignty as a political concept within political theory. The method followed in this book takes as crucial the nuanced way in which, in the study of the history of political thought, the historical examination of the concept and the conceptual analysis of sovereignty are interdependent. Here the canonical status of the different theories is not at issue. The subheading also registers how, in a second sense, history and theory are both crucially involved in each of the constructions of sovereignty dealt with in the book, in terms of present concerns and questions. Here the canonical status of the different conceptions is part of what is under investigation. The argument, in full, is built upon the understanding that each conception of sovereignty not only has a history and is contextually-grounded, but can also be recognised as a theory contributing to Europes intellectual history and potentially having a direct (though not causal) effect upon the structures of practice in organising the political community and relations with other polities in the contemporary world. The debate about the construction of the meaning of sovereignty in the European Union is a prime example.

The book begins by setting out the scope of the project. This Introduction examines in general terms some of the problems and opportunities of integrating historical and conceptual work, combining the methods of the history of political thought with political theory. It goes on to explore the sense in which it is helpful to refer to general features of sovereignty, and then utilises the concept/conception distinction to elucidate the diversity of conceptions of sovereignty found in the modern period. The chapter also addresses the question of the range of theorists studied here and outlines the contents of the different chapters.

Integrating historical and conceptual work

The idea that the meaning of sovereignty is fixed can be very effectively challenged by demonstrating the historical malleability of the concept over time. The dominant notion of the meaning of sovereignty as fixed can be unpicked into a set of propositions about sovereignty, of which four are briefly considered here. The first proposition is that sovereignty means absolute power and/or authority and relatedly that sovereignty is indivisible. However, the history of the concept of sovereignty gives us several different meanings of the absolute quality of sovereignty and so the import of this proposition depends crucially upon whether it is, for instance, Bodins, Hobbess or Kants meaning of absolute which is being used. The supposedly indivisible quality of sovereignty is disputed very effectively by both Spinoza and Kant. The second proposition is that sovereignty is the location of final and supreme authority. However, we can see for instance in the case of Lockes theory, that final authority is not an active category in the way it is in other conceptions. There is not a final authority in a positive sense in Locke.

The third proposition is that the distinction between legal and political sovereignty (legal supremacy and law-making power on the one hand and legitimate power to rule on the other) sets up the primary framework for discussing sovereignty. However, I argue elsewhere that the salience of this distinction depends in particular on examining sovereignty in the modern liberal tradition, with its distrust of government, disaggregation of the source of (popular) sovereignty in the people from government power to make law, its public/private distinction, and its depoliticised understanding which reduces politics to matters of government. The liberal tradition in important ways redefines political sovereignty in terms of legal sovereignty, reduces politics to the implementation of law, and so works with a depleted notion of might be called ruler sovereignty. There is scope for a reinvigorated notion of political sovereignty which fully recognises the political functions that we ask the concept of sovereignty to perform for us (Prokhovnik 2007). The fourth proposition is that sovereignty necessarily has two mutually-exclusive dimensions, internal and external sovereignty, from which the monopoly of internal legitimate force within a specified territory, and of external war- and peace-making derive. Elsewhere (Prokhovnik 2007) I build on Rob Walkers highly-influential critique of this dichotomy, demonstrating its indebtedness to the specifically modern state conception of sovereignty and so releasing the reconceptualisation of sovereignty from its grip.

The theories outlined in Chapters 15, then, demonstrate how dynamic and mutable the meanings of propositions such as these are. Moreover, we can see from studying the history of the concept of sovereignty that it is a history of reconceptualisation rather than a history of progressive refinement towards a final and fixed meaning. Indeed the historicity of sovereignty leads to the recognition of the necessary multiplicity of its conceptions. There will always be a place in the political vocabulary of a polity for something like the concept of sovereignty, among other things to define the scope of politics (whatever content is given to it), distribute political powers (whatever source of legitimacy is invoked), and set the limits of the political (however those boundaries are envisaged), and to perform these functions slightly differently with respect to the domestic and international realms, however defined and whatever the perceived relationship between them. Prokhovnik (2007) goes on to argue that the fixed view of sovereignty (both its features and its problems) can be identified with a modern Western state-centric, realist IR, liberal model. When unpicked, we are free to recognise the richness of the tradition of thinking on sovereignty and reconceptualise it in a way that fits contemporary ideas and political practices such as in the EU.