11 - Sovereignty

Summary

The time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty … has passed; its theory was never matched by reality.

UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Like all relationships, political balances are endlessly in a process of becoming. Sometimes the process is erratic and sometimes it is unerring, but it is always evolving and is never fixed as each point on the evolutionary trend-line subsumes dynamics that generate immediate or eventual movement on to the next point. To assess the nature of a prevailing political balance is thus to focus on a convergence of diverse causal streams, a convergence that is bound to change as the streams sustain their momentum into the future.

The law introduces a degree of intermittency into the evolutionary nature of political balances. When a particular balance is codified and legally sanctioned, the evolutionary process enters a period of intermittent pause, a period that lasts as long as the new legal codes are effective and sustain the balance between the opposing forces that press for a resumption or reversal of the prior trend-line. Viewed in this way, codified legal arrangements are end-points of numerous and diverse nonlegal developments. Their codification reflects the premises that underlie those moments of convergence wherein past changes are synthesized in the hope of achieving a respite from uncertainty and a measure of stability. And for a while the law does stabilize relationships and institutions as its precepts evoke compliance and introduce regularity into public affairs. But eventually the political side of the balance resumes its evolution, at which point habits of compliance begin to attenuate, ambiguity begins to spread, and the legal arrangements begin to undergo recodification.