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Reconsidering statehood: examining the sovereignty/intervention boundary*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Cynthia Weber
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Extract

R. B. J. Walker recently noted that far from its largely accepted status as an ‘essentially contested’ concept, state sovereignty is instead an essentially uncontested concept. This is a seemingly paradoxical comment for an international relations theorist to make in light of the recent revival of academic scrutiny concerning sovereign statehood. Rather than marking an inattention to recent trends in the sovereignty literature, Walker's statement is a commentary on the way sovereign statehood has been studied. Walker writes of sovereign statehood:

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 1992 , pp. 199 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1992

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References

1 For a discussion of essentially contested concepts, see Connolly, William, Politics and Ambiguity (Madison, 1987)Google Scholar.

2 Recent investigations of the sovereign state include Carnoy's, MartinThe Stale and Political Theory (Princeton, 1984)Google Scholar, Evans, Peter et al., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Hall, John and Ikenberry's, G. JohnThe State (Minneapolis, 1989)Google Scholar, and Walker's, R. B. J.Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

3 Walker, R. B. J., ‘yGender and Critique in the Theory of International Relations’, in Peterson, V. Spike (ed). Gendered States: Feminist (Re) Visions of International Relations Theory (Lynne Rienner, 1992)Google Scholar.

4 ‘Revisiting Intervention: A Survey of Recent Developments’, Review of International Studies, 13 (1987), pp. 49–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Little characterizes the traditional notion of statehood that intervention scholars rely upon as ‘sovereign institutions which possess absolute authority over their territory’ (p. 54). These points are discussed later.

5 Thinking about state sovereignty in this way does not lead to equating the terms statehood and sovereignty. For example, during instances of intervention, sovereignty may or may not be invested in the target state. What is in question during such times is sovereignty and not statehood. States continue to exist under these conditions even when their sovereignty is in question.

6 Little suggested the sovereignty/intervention boundary as a beginning point for analysis. See Little, ‘Revisiting Intervention’.

7 For examples of works which regar d sovereignty as a practices, see, for example, Ashley, Richard K., ‘Untying the Sovereign State’, Millennium, 17 (1988), pp. 227–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ashley, Richard K. and Walker, R. B. J., ‘Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 34 (1990), pp. 367–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Campbell, David, ‘Global Inscription: How Foreign Policy constitutes the United State’, Alternatives, 15 (1990), pp. 263–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shapiro, Michael, ‘Sovereignty and Exchange in the Orders of Modernity’, Alternatives (forthcoming)Google Scholar; and Thomson, Janice E., ‘State Practices, International Norms, and the Decline of Mercenarism’, International Studies Quarterly, 34 (1990), pp. 23–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 I use the term ‘supposed international community’ to convey the notion that no unambiguous international community exists. Indeed, the very practice of justifying intervention practices to a community participates in the constitution of that community.

9 Readers familiar with semiology will recognize that my use of terms like a logic of representation, foundations, and indicators are other ways of referring to a symbolic order, signifieds, and signifiers. For a discussion of semiology, see Descombes, Vincent, Modern French Philosophy, translated by L. Scott-Fox and J. M. Harding (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar and Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis, 1983)Google Scholar.

10 For a discussion of this, see Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.

11 Brackets in original; quoted in Palmer, R. R. and Colton, J., A History of the Modern World (New York, 1971), p. 490Google Scholar.

12 Quoted in Gardner, Lloyd C., Wilson and Revolutions: 1913–1921 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982), p. 27Google Scholar.

13 See Cynthia Weber, ‘“Writing” the State: Political Intervention and the Historical Constitution of State Sovereignty’, PhD dissertation, Arizona State University, 1991.

14 Weber, ‘“Writing” the State’.

15 See Morgan, Edmund S., Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignly in England and America (New York, 1988)Google Scholar.

16 Hoffman, Stanley, ‘The Problem of Intervention’, in Bull, H. (ed.), Intervention in World Politics (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar.

17 See, for example, Higgins, R., ‘Intervention and International Law’, in Bull, (ed.), Intervention in World Politics.Google Scholar

18 See, for example, Vincent, R. J., Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar and Little, Richard, Intervention: External Involvement in Civil Wars (Totowa, N.J., 1975)Google Scholar.

19 Rosenau, James, ‘The Concept of Intervention’, Journal of International Affairs, 22(1968), pp. 165–76Google Scholar; and Rosenau, James, ‘Intervention as a Scientific Concept’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 13(1969), pp. 149–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Rosenau, ‘Concept of Intervention’.

21 Little, ‘Revisiting Intervention’. For illustrations of these discriminations in behavioural social science, see Winge, J. Van and Tillema, H., ‘Law and Power in Military Intervention: Major States after World War II’, International Studies Quarterly, 26(1982), pp. 220–50Google Scholar; Pearson, F., ‘Foreign Military Interventions and Domestic Disputes’, International Studies Quarterly, 18(1974), pp. 259–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Singer, J. David and Small, Melvin, Resort to Arms: Intervention and Civil Wars 1816–1980 (Beverly Hills, 1982)Google Scholar; and Duner, B., Military Intervention in Civil Wars: The 1970s (New York, 1985)Google Scholar. Richard Little briefly reviews much of this literature.

22 Mitchell, C. R., ‘Civil Strife and the Involvement of External Parties’, International Studies Quarterly, 14(1970), pp. 116–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; F. Pearson, ‘Foreign Military Intervention and Domestic Disputes’; Weede, E., ‘U.S. Support for Foreign Governments or Domestic Disorder and Imperial Intervention 1958–1965’, Comparative Political Studies, 10(1978), pp. 497–527CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Siverson, R. M. and Tennefoss, M. R., ‘Interstate Conflicts: 1815–1965’, International Interactions, 9(1982), pp. 147–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raymond, G. A. and Kegley, C., ‘Normative Constraints on the Use of Force Short of War’, Journal of Peace Research, 23(1987), pp. 213–27Google Scholar; and Gurr, Ted, ‘War, Revolution and Growth of the Coercive State’, Comparative Political Studies, 21(1988), pp. 45–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Pearson, F., ‘Foreign Military Intervention and Domestic Disputes’, p. 261Google Scholar.

24 Little, , “Revisiting Intervention’, p. 51Google Scholar.

25 Raymond and Kegley's analysis of the international system is a particularly good illustration of this. See Raymond and Kegley, ‘Normative Constraints on the Use of Force Short of War’.

26 Little, , ‘Revisiting Intervention’, p. 53Google Scholar.

27 Vincent, , Nonintervention, p. 13Google Scholar.

28 Vincent, , Nonintervention, p. 14Google Scholar.

29 See, for example, Little, Intervention; Bull, Intervention in World Politics; and Thomas, C., New States, Sovereignty, and Intervention (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

30 Falk, Richard, Law, Morality and War in the Contemporary World (London, 1963)Google Scholar.

31 Vincent, , Nonintervention, p. 15Google Scholar.

32 (New York, 1973).

33 Geertz acknowledges that he is borrowing these terms from Gilbert Ryle's writings. See Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; and Ryle's, The Concept of Mind (New York, 1949)Google Scholar.

34 Geertz, , Interpretation, pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

35 Geertz, , Interpretation, p. 12Google Scholar.

36 Geertz, , Interpretation, p. 24.Google Scholar

37 Geertz, , Interpretation, p. 10.Google Scholar

38 Geertz, , Interpretation, p. 17.Google Scholar

39 I discuss the notion of a supposed international community as an interpretive sight of judgement in traditional studies of intervention below.

40 My brackets; Little, , ‘Intervention Revisited’, p. 54Google Scholar. Little's complaint is that what constitutes a challenge to state sovereignty—intervention—is too narrowly defined in international relations theory. It must be broadened to include economic as well as military intervention, for example.

41 Little, , ‘Intervention Revisited’, p. 59Google Scholar.

42 Little's blindness to this point is due to his own work on intervention from a traditional perspective. In his book, Intervention: External Involvement in Civil Wars, Little breaks with the traditionalists who view intervention as a form of deviance and instead regards intervention ‘as a result of autistic thinking: a systematic distortion of reality’ (p. xii). Even so, underlying this autism is the norm of nonintervention which is attributable to both an international society (p. 18) and a stable notion of sovereignty.

43 For a discussion of ‘site s of judgement’, see Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Ne w York, 1977)Google Scholar.

44 Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, p. 18Google Scholar.

45 That traditional analyses of intervention do not escape a logic of representation is not surprising when one reconsiders Geertz explanation of culture as a semiotic concept. For Geertz, a logic of representation still applies. What Geertz adds is an awareness that different symbolic orders function simultaneously in different historical and geographical locales. For behaviour to be meaningful, one must access those symbolic orders which convey meaning. For Geertz, indicators do represent foundations within a symbolic order. To this extent, Geertz arguments adhere to a logic of representation.

46 Baudrillard, Jean, Simulation, translated by P. Foss, P. Patton, and P. Beitchman (New York, 1983), p. 4Google Scholar.

47 Baudrillard, , Simulation, p. 4Google Scholar.

48 Baudrillard, , Simulation, p. 5Google Scholar.

49 In this passage, Baudrillard notes both a Western reliance on a logic of representation and on God as that which grounds this logic—God who serves as the ultimate foundation. With the rise of Enlightenment thinking, God was replaced as the ultimate foundation by man.

50 Italics in original, ibid., pp. 10–11. Baudrillard, , Simulation, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

51 Baudrillard, , Simulation, p. 25Google Scholar.

52 Baudrillard, , Simulation, p. 27Google Scholar.

53 Baudrillard, , Simulation, p. 36.Google Scholar

54 See Weber, ‘ “Writing“ the State’.

55 While the terms ‘political’ and 'symbolic’ are used to distinguish these two types of representation, it should be understood that both types of representation are intensely political practices.