State sovereignty is an inherently social construct. The modem state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the

Transcription

1 State sovereignty is an inherently social construct. The modem state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the production of a normative conception which links authority, territory, population (society, nation), and recognition in a unique way, and in a particular place (the state). Attempting to realize this ideal entails a great deal of hard work on the part of statespersons, diplomats, and intellectuals. The ideal of state sovereignty is a product of the actions of powerful agents and the resistances to those actions by those located at the margins of power. The unique contribution of this book is to describe, theorize, and illustrate the practices which have socially constructed, reproduced, reconstructed, and deconstructed various sovereign ideals and resistances to them. The contributors analyze how all the components of state sovereignty - not only recognition, but also territory, population, and authorityare socially constructed and combined in specific historical contexts.

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3 CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: 46 State sovereignty as social construct Editorial Board STEVE SMITH (Managing editor) CHRISTOPHER BROWN ROBERT W. COX ANNE DEIGHTON ROSEMARY FOOT JOSEPH GRIECO FRED HALLIDAY MARGOT LIGHT ANDREW LINKLATER RICHARD LITTLE R. B. J. WALKER International Political Economy ROGER TOOZE CRAIG N. MURPHY Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of Cambridge University Press and the British International Studies Association (BISA). The series will include a wide range of material, from undergraduate textbooks and surveys to research-based monographs and collaborative volumes. The aim of the series is to publish the best new scholarship in International Studies from Europe, North America and the rest of the world.

4 CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 46 Thomas f. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds.) State sovereignty as social construct 45 Mervyn Frost Ethics in international relations A constitutive theory 44 Mark W. Zacher with Brent A. Sutton Governing global networks International regimes for transportation and communications 43 Mark Neufeld The restructuring of international relations theory 42 Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.) Bringing transnational relations back in Non-state actors, domestic structures and international institutions 41 Hayward R. Alker Rediscoveries and reformulations Humanistic methodologies for international studies 40 Robert W. Cox with Timothy J. Sinclair Approaches to world order 39 ]ens Bartelson A genealogy of sovereignty 38 Mark Rupert Producing hegemony The politics of mass production and American global power 37 Cynthia Weber Simulating sovereignty Intervention, the state and symbolic exchange 36 Gary Goertz Contexts of international politics 35 James L. Richardson Crisis diplomacy The Great Powers since the mid-nineteenth century Series list continues after index

5 State sovereignty as social construct Edited by Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber CAMBRIDGE : : : UNIVERSITY PRESS

6 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Information on this tide: Cambridge University Press I996 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published I996 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data State sovereignty as social construct I edited by Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber. p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in international relations: 46) ISBN o 52I X (he). - ISBN o 52I (pb) r. Sovereignty. 2. Social contract. 3. International relations. I. Biersteker, Thomas J. II. Weber, Cynthia. III. Series. JX404r.S73 I I'5-dc CIP ISBN Hardback ISBN Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy ofurls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work is correct at the time of first printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter.

7 Contents List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgments page ix x xii 1 The social construction of state sovereignty 1 Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber 2 Contested sovereignty: the social construction of 22 colonial imperialism David Strang 3 Beyond the sovereignty dilemma: quasi-states as 50 social construct Naeem Inayatullah 4 The sovereign state system as political-territorial ideal: 81 historical and contemporary considerations Alexander B. Murphy 5 Sovereignty and the nation: constructing the 121 boundaries of national identity Roxanne Lynn Doty 6 Sovereignty, nationalism, and regional order in the 148 Arab states system Michael Barnett 7 Binding sovereigns: authorities, structures, and 190 geopolitics in Philadelphian systems Daniel Deudney 8 Hierarchy under anarchy: informal empire and 240 the East German state Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim vii

8 Contents 9 Reconstructing the analysis of sovereignty: concluding 278 reflections and directions for future research Cynthia Weber and Thomas/. Biersteker Index 287 viii

9 Figures 4.1 Dominant views of the nature of sovereignty page 88 as a principle governing relations between states 4.2 Dominant views of the appropriate political territorial structure for international society Tendencies in a territorial system that has a substantial degree of legitimacy Elements of system theory Alternative sovereignty configurations Impacts of foreign policy practices upon sovereignty Congruent deep, unit, and system structures Systemic structures ix

10 Contributors Michael Barnett is associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He is the author of Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State, and Society in Egypt and Israel, and of publications on international relations theory, the United Nations, and Middle Eastern politics. He is currently a MacArthur International Peace and Security Fellow and is completing a book titled Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order. Thomas J. Biersteker is director of the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies and the Henry R. Luce Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Brown University. His research focuses primarily on international political economy and North-South issues. His most recent books include Dealing with Debt: International Financial Negotiations and Adjustment Bargaining. Daniel Deudney is the Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on international relations theory, political theory, and environmental politics. Roxanne Lynn Doty, assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University, is the author of Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North/South Relations. Her articles have been published in International Studies Quarterly, Millennium, and Review of International Studies. She focuses her current research on race and international relations, sovereignty and national identity, and global immigration. Daniel Friedheim is a visiting instructor in government at Dartmouth x

11 Contributors College. His dissertation, "Democratic Transition through Regime Collapse," is on the peaceful East German revolution of He has published related articles in Shain and Linz's Between States, as well as the journals German Politics and East European Politics and Society. Naeem Inayatullah is an assistant professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. His recent publications include articles in Review of International Studies and Alternatives, as well as numerous book chapters on cultural aspects of international political economy. He is coeditor of The Global Economy as Political Space. His current project explores the role of European projections of non-europeans in the construction of classical and modem political economy. Alexander B. Murphy is associate professor of geography at the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Regional Dynamics of Language Differentiation in Belgium and numerous articles and book chapters on territorial aspects of international relations and on the political and cultural geography of Europe. David Strang is associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Cornell University. His publications include articles in International Organization and American Sociological Review. Cynthia Weber is associate professor of political science at Purdue University. She is the author of Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State, and Symbolic Exchan s e, also published in the Cambridge Studies in International Relations series. Her current research project is a gendered reading of US-Caribbean relations from the 1959 Cuban Revolution to the recent US-led intervention into Hai t i. Alexander Wendt, associate professor of political science at Yale University, has published articles in International Organization, Review of International Studies, and American Political Science Review. He is currently finishing a book manuscript, Social Theory of International Politics, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. xi

12 Acknowledgments Like sovereignty, the construction of this edited book involved extensive consultation, constant negotiation, and a variety of different forms of intervention. Recognition is crucial to the social construction of sovereignty, and at this stage we would like to turn our attention to those who most merit recognition. We would like to begin by thanking the Social Science Research Council for its generous support of the two conferences that produced the papers contained in this volume. The Watson Institute at Brown University and the Jackson School at the University of Washington also made financial and other important logistical contributions that made the two conferences successful. We benefited from our collaboration with Janice Thomson of the University of Washington, who played an important role in our thinking about sovereignty at the initial stages of the project. She also played a central role in organizing the initial conference at Silverdale, Washington at which the draft memos were produced that eventually became the papers collected in this volume. But we owe a special debt of gratitude to each of the authors included in this collection. Our intense and frequent interactions with each of them over the past three years have contributed significantly to our knowledge and understanding of the social construction of sovereignty. Each of their chapters was strengthened by the comments they received from their colleagues and home institutions, as indicated in their separate acknowledgments. However, their individual contributions and. the project as a whole benefited significantly from the insightful and reflective comments provided at the Brown conference by John Agnew, Hayward Alker, Jarat Chopra, James Der Derian, Sohail Hashmi, Yuen Foong Khong, Craig Murphy, Donald Puchala, Richard Smoke, Celeste Wallander, Thomas Weiss, and Albert Yee. The xii

13 Acknowledgments conference planning (and post conference analysis) phase of the project was also strengthened considerably by the suggestions of Lori Gronich and Kent Worcester of the Social Science Research Council staff. The project as a whole benefited greatly from the comments and suggestions provided by a number of international relations scholars, including Richard Ashley, Peter Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, Stephen Krasner, Friedrich Kratochwil, Timothy Luke, John Odell, and Rob Walker. Steve Smith and an anonymous reviewer for Cambridge University Press also provided extremely helpful advice which both strengthened and de-parochialized yet another North American theoretical enterprise with global pretensions. A number of individuals on the staff of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University deserve special mention for their assistance with the project in its various stages. Jean Lawlor of the conference staff played a crucial role organizing the Brown University conference. Fred Fullerton, Mary Lhowe, and Amy Langlais of the Institute publications staff worked painstakingly (and extremely effectively) in preparing a consistent and highly readable copy-edited manuscript for John Haslam and his staff at Cambridge University Press. Jennifer Patrick at the early stages and Susan Costa at the final stages played critical and greatly appreciated roles in keeping the project organizers and participants in constant (and almost instantaneous) communication. Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber Providence, R.l. and West Lafayette, Ind. xiii

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15 1 The social construction of state sovereignty Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber During the last several years, there has been a virtual explosion of scholarly interest in sovereignty.1 This interest transcends all of the major divisions within the study of international relations, and it engages scholars across the globe. There has been a comparable increase in the level of attention given to sovereignty within the popular media.2 Much of this concern with sovereignty can be explained at least in part by the end of the Cold War and the possibilities of a "New World Order," which have raised questions about many old assumptions, including those made about state sovereignty. Moreover, the dramatic fragmentation and dismemberment of major states such as Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, along with the potential fragmentation of many others, have led to renewed questions about the location of sovereignty - whether it lies in a population, or within a contiguous territorial space - and about the criteria for recognition as a sovereign state. As questions begin to be raised about the criteria for recognizing the modem state, can challenges to the traditional idea of sovereignty be far behind? Traditionally, sovereignty has been characterized as a basic rule of coexistence within the states system,3 a concept that transcends both ideological differences and the rise and fall of major powers,4 and it is frequently invoked as an institution that must be both protected and defended. Sovereignty provides the basis in international law for claims for state actions, and its violation is routinely invoked as a justification for the use of force in international relations.5 Sovereignty, therefore, is an inherently social concept. States' claims to sovereignty construct a social environment in which they can interact as an international society of states, while at the same time the mutual 1

16 Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber recognition 'of claims to sovereignty is an important element in the construction of states themselves. In spite of the agreement on some of these basic issues, sovereignty remains an ambiguous concept. Attention to sovereignty tends to raise more questions about international relations than it answers. Is the relationship between sovereign recognition and political identity always constructed in the same way, or does it change with changing historical contexts from the colonial and postcolonial to the post Cold War international setting? Are the legal criteria for external recognition of a state's legitimate domination equivalent to a practical definition of sovereignty?6 If so, where does sovereignty ultimately reside: in an apparently homogeneous people (such as the Bosnian Muslim population), among the residents of a territorially bounded entity (called Bosnia-Herzogovina), or elsewhere? Or are de jure claims to sovereignty dependent upon de facto capabilities of states, ranging from a monopoly on legitimate uses of domestic violence to meeting the economic needs of a citizenry? Consideration of the social construction of state sovereignty should not be limited to analyzing processes of mutual recognition. Highlighting how state sovereignty is enmeshed in systems of social relations is clearer when we separate concepts like state and sovereignty analytically, rather than collapse the two into a single ideal of "state sovereignty."7 As a starting point, therefore, we provisionally define the "territorial state" as a geographically-contained structure whose agents claim ultimate political authority within their domain.8 We consider "sovereignty" as a political entity's externally recognized right to exercise final authority over its affairs. Even though we recognize the importance of both the internal and the external dimensions of sovereignty (where "internal" refers to the existence of some ultimate authority over a particular domain and "external" refers to the recognition of that authority by others), we begin our analysis with a focus on the external.9 We consider these definitions to be provisional, not because we cannot agree on them, but because we cannot use definitions to capture the essence of a subject we believe is so deeply contested and undergoing change. Disputes over fundamentally contested concepts cannot be brought to closure by means of a definition. We agree with R.B.J. Walker when he writes "the very attempt to treat sovereignty as a matter of definition and legal principle encourages a certain amnesia about its historical and culturally specific character."10 In his recent 2

17 The social construction of state sovereignty book on sovereignty, Jens Bartelson makes a similar point, following Nietzsche, that only that which has no history can be defined. Defining a concept such as sovereignty, Bartelson argues, freezes that concept's meaning in the present, thus neglecting the rich history of the concept, which enabled its particular present meaning to emerge.11 One of the goals of our research is to understand why the contested nature of the state and sovereignty has been obscured or submerged by an apparent 300-year-old agreement to disagree on definitions in order to get on with the business of diplomacy and theory. By proposing provisional definitions of principal concepts, we are attempting to clarify how international relations theory has narrowed the investigation of the territorial state and sovereignty, thus providing common reference points for ourselves, our readers, and the others included in this volume. But rather than stop there, the project of this volume is to investigate how these present understandings of the territorial state, sovereignty, and their relationships were and continue to be socially constructed. We agree with other scholars interested in sovereignty, that territory, population, and authority - in addition to recognition - are important aspects of state sovereignty. Unlike most scholars, however, we contend that each of these components of state sovereignty is also socially constructed, as is the modem state system. The modem state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the production of a normative conception that links authority, territory, population (society, nation), and recognition in a unique way and in a particular place (the state). Attempting to realize this ideal entails a great deal of hard work on the part of statespersons, diplomats, and intellectuals: to establish and police practices consistent with the ideal, its components, and the links between them; to delegitimate and quash challenges or threats; and to paper over persistent anomalies to make them appear to be consistent with the ideal or temporary divergences from the diachronic trajectory toward a pristine Westphalian ideal. The ideal of state sovereignty is a product of the actions of powerful agents and the resistances to those actions by those located at the margins of power. The unique contribution of this volume is to describe, theorize, and illustrate the practices that have socially constructed, reproduced, reconstructed, and deconstructed various sovereign ideals and resistances to them. This entails analyses of how all of the components of state sovereignty- not only recognition, but also territory, population, 3

18 Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber and authority - are socially constructed and combined in specific historical contexts. Recent treatments of sovereignty in the theoretical literature We are by no means the first to examine this issue. We are, however, the first to place an empirical consideration of the social construction of sovereignty at the center of analysis. In doing so, we are making an effort to build upon the insights of other scholars who have grappled with this difficult subject, and to redirect scholarly attention to an area we regard as fruitful for further research. Although theoretical disagreements over sovereignty did not preoccupy most scholars of international relations writing after World War II and up until very recently, their relative lack of attention to the issue has nevertheless had some important consequences for their research. Realist accounts Writing in the middle of the twentieth century, a number of scholars who described themselves as taking a "realist" approach to the scientific study of international relations produced important statements about the meaning of sovereignty. Although he continued the classical practice of reifying the nation-state (and was subsequently criticized for doing so),12 Hans Morgenthau did not assume the existence of sovereignty and devoted an entire chapter of his classic textbook to the subject.13 In it, he defined sovereignty in legal terms as "the appearance of a centralized power that exercised its lawmaking and law-enforcing authority within a certain territory."14 Morgenthau stressed the continuity of the "doctrine" of sovereignty throughout the modem era (since its origins in the late sixteenth century), and suggested that the idea of popular sovereignty legitimized the contemporary national democratic state.15 One of Morgenthau's principal concerns was whether international law provided a decisive challenge to the principle of state sovereignty by imposing legal restraints on sovereign states. He dismissed the question by arguing that sovereignty is only incompatible with a strong, effective, and centralized system of international law, a system that did not exist. Indeed, for Morgenthau, "national sovereignty is the very source of [international law's] decentralization, weakness and ineffectiveness."16 Not all mid-twentieth-century realists shared Morgenthau's confi- 4

19 The social construction of state sovereignty dence about the continuity of state and sovereignty. E.H. Carr concluded his study of the interwar years with the observation that, "Few things are permanent in history; and it would be rash to assume that the territorial unit of power is one of them."17 He went on to predict that the concept of sovereignty "is likely to become in the future even more blurred and indistinct than it is at present."18 For Carr, sovereignty was never anything more "than a convenient label" for the independent authority claimed by states after the breakup of the medieval system.19 Contemporary neorealists are usually identified as writing in the same realist tradition as Carr and Morgenthau, and can be characterized as clarifying some of the conceptual ambiguity (and attempting to raise the scientific standards) of the postwar realists.20 In the process, however, most appear to have lost interest in the problematic nature of sovereignty. Neorealists tend to combine population, territory, authority, and recognition - the principal constitutive elements of sovereignty - into a single, unproblematic actor: the sovereign s ate.21 This conflation of state and sovereignty enables them to abstract from, or simply ignore, problems in the domestic domain and to leave the assessment of problems of internal sovereignty to others. Because of their preoccupation with the anarchy of the international system and the ways in which this anarchy influences, socializes, and constrains the behavior of states, most neorealists have relatively little interest in sovereignty and even less interest in its potentially problematic nature. They are concerned with sovereignty principally as it manifests itself as one possible institution for managing anarchy, which they define as the absence of formal governmental authority in the international system.22 Kenneth Waltz essentially defines sovereignty in terms of this conception of anarchy: "To say that a state is sovereign means that it decides for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems."23 That is, states are sovereign because there is no competing (overarching) governmental authority in the international system. What neorealists fail to recognize, however, is how extensively the socially constructed practices of sovereignty - of recognition, of intervention, of the language of justification - contribute to the structures of international society that exist beyond the realm of neorealist analysis. As many recent constructivist critiques of neorealism have argued, there is a great deal of order within anarchy.24 Perhaps statecraft is not primarily about relations between different state units, but about the construction and reconstruction of the units 5