Sovereignty

This study seeks to better understand how notions of sovereign power as a response to terrorism are built and bolstered through use of the signifier ‘leadership’. Through a post-foundational analysis of the speeches, press conferences and writings of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, we theorise ‘sovereign leadership’ as the deployment of the signifier leadership in ways that foreclose language so as to normalise the discourse and acts of sovereign power. Our key finding is that sovereign leadership offers a (misleadingly) straightforward solution to the complex problem of terrorism through foreclosing language so that alternative responses are excluded. In exploring articulations of sovereign leadership, we illuminate its contingency, and therefore, also its contestability, within a system of discursive resources. We posit three foreclosing moments that are drawn upon to bolster the urgency, affective salience and justness of sovereign leadership: emergency, positivity and vulnerability. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our study for interpreting articulations of leadership in everyday organisational and political life.

»In einer Zeit ohne Zeit« Zur Unbedingtheit der Gabe I. Das Ereignis der Gabe Was meinen wir, wenn wir etwas eine Unbedingtheit zusprechen? Etwas kann unbedingt sein, weil es keine Bedingungen gibt, die es in seinem Anspruch einschränken. Wenn ich sage: »Ich will das unbedingt«, dann teile ich mit, dass ich mich auf keine Kompromisse einlassen möchte, dass ich so gut wie alles dafür gebe, dies haben oder tun zu können. In der Regel wissen wir, dass wir das nicht ganz wörtlich meinen, dass wir uns einer Hyperbel bedienen. Wohl sind wir stark von einem Wunsch bestimmt und halten das Begehrte für un-ersetzbar, doch schon indem wir es in Sprache fassen, führen wir es in den Bereich der sozialen Verhandlung ein. Wir offenbaren so einen Widerspruch. Etwas Einzigartiges zu besitzen und damit auch selbst einzigartig zu sein, wird erfahrbar und sozial bedeutsam erst dort, wo es diese Einzigartigkeit nicht mehr beanspruchen kann: im Feld des sozialen Vergleichs und des Austausches. Derselbe Widerspruch kennzeichnet auch die Anmaßung der Souveränität als Herrschaftsanspruch, wie ich noch etwas genauer zeigen möchte. Sie gibt sich als eine Unbedingtheit, die selbst nicht den Regeln, Gesetzen und sozialen Be-dingungen unterworfen ist. Doch ist sie gerade darin bedingt, dass sie in dieser Unbedingtheit anerkannt wird. Wir sprechen aber auch davon, dass ein Ereignis unbedingt ist. Dann hat es keine vollständig bestimmbaren und damit auch keine wiederholbaren Be-dingungen, aus denen es hervorgegangen ist. Das macht das Ereignis zu etwas Singulärem. Alle Ereignisse, die aus einem Feld an Bedingungen emergieren, das so komplex ist, dass sich das Ereignis nicht vorhersehen lassen kann, sind in dieser Weise unbestimmt. Ein Ereignis, das nicht einfach ein Geschehen ist, sondern ein Ereignis im vollen Sinne des Wortes, ist im Grunde durch diese Unbestimmtheit gekennzeichnet. Insoweit ist das Ereignis von einer Negati-vität durchzogen, weil das, was es auszeichnet, unsichtbar bleibt. Das Ereignis ist also von einem Paradox oder einem double bind geprägt: Es erscheint gerade dadurch, dass etwas Wesentliches in ihm nicht erscheint, dass es ein Geheimnis hat. Das gilt auch für das Ereignis der Gabe: Jacques Derrida, der seine Theorie

This article asks the meaning of global structural shifts today by contrasting America’s universalist tradition pursuing postmodern network sovereignty and building the liberal world order with the present populist grand strategy longing for a (re)construction of the modern sovereignty system. My research aims to predict the direction of the future world order by analyzing the contemporary historical phase in which the previous transnational/post-Westphalian vision is growingly undermined by the illiberal/continental plan of the modern state redux. In this sense, this project resonates with an emerging research question in political science, i.e, the return of populist nationalism and the rise of reactionary international politics. More specifically, the Trump phenomenon is interrogated in the general context of the West where fierce social reactions to economic and cultural dislocations caused by neoliberal globalization result in nostalgia for “retrotopia” and topos. After explaining how populists mobilize masses and spearhead the process of de-globalization by promising the impossible dream of the whole nation-state, the repercussions of such a reactionary political project on the coming international order will be discussed.

The enclave state of Lesotho served as a labor reserve for South Africa's mining industries for more than a century before the the migrant labor economy declined dramatically in the 1990s. The Lesotho government has since hung its hopes on becoming another kind of reserve for South Africa: a water reservoir. A treaty between the two countries initiated the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a multibillion‐dollar effort to dam and divert water from the mountains of Lesotho to the arid industrial areas south of Johannesburg. Just as the infrastructure of South African apartheid‐era labor reserves required “upstream” engineering, whether material, social, or symbolic, so too does its water reservoir. One example of symbolic engineering, described here, includes the construction of Lesotho as a place defined by water abundance. Elites in Lesotho have sought to deploy water as a symbol of national identity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity, integrating rivers, dam reservoirs, and hydroelectric infrastructure into its national iconography. But while it is true that water is abundant in rivers that flow out of the highlands, the country is plagued by regular droughts and spotty water access. Everyday notions of water in Lesotho emphasize these contingent, capricious, and even destructive qualities. Scrutinizing contradictions between the representation of water and local realities, I show that the production of water commodities entails more than water's disarticulation from its meaningful cultural contexts, as depicted in literature on water commodification elsewhere. Water commodification in Lesotho—and therefore Lesotho's status as a water reservoir for South African industry—is dependent on water engineers' ability first to link water to those local contexts. That is, engineers generate a type of water that is locally emplaced but unfamiliar to local people. In conclusion, I show how everyday notions of water in Lesotho call into question anthropological depictions of the “harmonious” water threatened by commodification.

Borders are changing in myriad and multifaceted ways. After 9/11, states redoubled efforts at shoring up their perimeters and building walls. But borders are not merely increasingly securitized, they are also becoming thicker and bi-national. This new ‘zonal’ border emerging worldwide radically shifts the debate about borders and sovereignty. If sovereignty is indivisible, unitary and final, how can it be shared between states at their mutual perimeters? Is this really evidence of sovereignty waning? In this article, I suggest we are stuck at this conceptual impasse because of two conflations. The first one involves two aspects of sovereignty: authority and control. Looking at borders as thin jurisdictional lines, we observe only their legal authority (de jure); instead, by examining changing modes of control, we can see how new securitized borders actually reinforce state strength. The second conflation revolves around the conceptual linking of borders, states and sovereignty. This article argues that as borders thicken, they start to resemble frontiers, and sovereignty starts to resemble imperium – a Roman designation for political authority that is territorially unbounded. This disrupts the border/state dyad and situates borders (lines) and frontiers (zones) on a continuum. In doing so, it reveals how sovereignty is not waning, but changing shape – a worrisome geopolitical conclusion given the possibilities of neo-Imperialism due to power asymmetries between neighbouring states.

Borders sit at the center of global politics. Yet they are too often understood as thin lines, as they appear on maps, rather than as political institutions in their own right. This book takes a detailed look at the evolution of border security in the United States after 9/11. Far from the walls and fences that dominate the news, it reveals borders to be thick, multi-faceted and binational institutions that have evolved greatly in recent decades. The book contributes to debates within political science on sovereignty, citizenship, cosmopolitanism, human rights and global justice. In particular, the new politics of borders reveal a sovereignty that is not waning, but changing, expanding beyond the state carapace and engaging certain logics of empire.

Another appraisal of Aristotle´s configuration of potentiality and actuality and the latter as a division between Entelecheia and Energeia may open up a new consideration of being and power. Through it, we may dispel Agamben´s interpretation of power that shrouds political action in impotence. When we read Energeia as power without transcendent finality, contingency, as the order of the political, is released and with it the possibility of becoming-other is open anew. Contingency means that only when beings exist, not as a necessity, is the meaning of being necessary.

This essay discusses how states close off putative territory against ‘the other’ but contradict such paradigms through their precarious dispossession of local actors, 'poachers' and 'traffickers', whose territoriality and exploitation of resources undermine the true authority of the state. The influence of colonial and neo-colonial norms and interventions presents a major introspective predicament for the modern post-colonial state.

Отсутствие общепринятых однозначных формулировок ключевых понятий политических наук является важным препятствием при урегулировании проблем сепаратизма. В статье рассматривается два аспекта: суть проблемы разграничения понятий и отражение столкновения понятий в документах международных организаций. Также проиллюстрировано как существование разночтений влияет на практику разрешения конфликтов, в результате чего возникает возможность применения «двойных стандартов».

This article analyses the dynamics of official and unofficial religious nationalism in the Vietnamese border town of Lào Cai. In  it was one of many Vietnamese towns that were reduced to rubble during the short but bloody war between Vietnam and China. The normalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations in  allowed a booming border trade that let Lào Cai prosper, while the painful memory of this war continued to haunt the town and the daily experiences of its residents, both humans and gods. Since the Vietnamese state forbids any official remembrance of the war, Lào Cai residents have found a religious way to deal with their war memories that skilfully evades state control. By analysing narratives about the fate of the gods and goddesses that reign in the Father God Temple and the Mother Goddess Temple-two religious institutions located right next to the border-this article shows that it is in the symbolism of the supernatural that one can find memories of the war and of the changing social landscape of Lào Cai and reconstruct its history.

Digital platforms are reshaping the geometry of the world. Their wide adoption by the population worldwide for an increasing number of activities, confer them a dominant position, which challenges established powers. Their control over the global flow of data and their algorithmic treatment leads to new asymmetries of power. New systems emerge, that unlike the Westphalian States do not correspond to territories on a map, but to complex networks controlling sectors of activities at a global scale. It is a real challenge and a necessity to reinvent a grammar of territories, to be able to grasp the new objects and their dependencies, and address the related issues of social justice and sustainable interaction with our planet.

This essay seeks to analyse the play of plural sovereignties in settler colonial frontier societies to explore the various means through which settlers invade, occupy and appropriate native lifeworlds. This essay will break down the concept of sovereignty into a number of distinct but interconnected registers. This plurality of overlapping sovereignties, operating in unison and discretely have played a formative role historically in settler colonial structural invasion. After identifying these various regimes of sovereignty and their intimate relation to the post-Enlightenment concept of self-determination I will chart their course through the destruction of native societies on the frontier. This essay will be broadly comparative in nature, after touching on the case of pre and post-revolutionary America I will finally focus on the case study of contemporary Palestine/Israel as an example of the institutionalization of what has been in the past an ad-hoc and chaotic process. I will show how the state of Israel and its settlers in the Occupied Territories utilize the radical decentralization of state sovereignty as a technology of structural invasion through which they strangle, unsettle and ultimately seek to end Palestinian social reproduction on the land.

This Independence Day, most people will not want to reflect on the triumph of the Nationalist movement as it defeated  British Imperialism, but will rather be planning a pleasant day at the beach. Is this a problem? What does it mean? Are we ungrateful? Is Independence anything to celebrate?
Reflecting on their own country’s experience, Michael Witter and Omar Davies (1989) have bemoaned that Jamaica is more dependent today than it was at the beginning of Independence. While I agree, I do not find it necessarily lamentable. For this situation is not particular to Jamaica, the Caribbean, or “the South”. It is the condition of the entire contemporary world. And while not all good, it is not all bad either. As Peter Drucker noted in 1986, all countries of the globe have become more dependent on the world economy -- including the United States, England and Japan. Not just our Nation-States, but all Nation-States are crumbling. A story on CNN (which I gladly receive through my cable subscription) related that a child was asked the question, “Do you know why we have a holiday on Independence Day?” The answer was given, “That’s the day we defeated the aliens.” Well. The idea that somehow we in the West Indies are more prone to forgetting our history than others, or that the Third World been spellbound into abandoning patriotism by cunning imperialist overlords is both inadequate and small-town. Our situation of weakened Nation-States and waning National sentiment is not the result of imperialist designs. It is the condition of the contemporary world. And not only is this true of economics. It is true of politics and culture as well. Farewell to age of  the Nation and Independence.

Abstrak Kedaulatan adalah merupakan kekuasaan absolut atas suatu wilayah tertentu. Kekuasaan absolutas wilayah tersebut menjadi dasar bagi pembentukan negara. Namun, adanya kebijakan bebas visa kunjungan yang disalah gunakan oleh warga negara asing (WNA) dapat mengganggu kedaulatan negara Indonesia. Rumusan masalah yang diambil dalam penulisan ini adalah Bagaimana penegakkan hukum kebijakan bebas visa kunjungan terhadap kedaulatan negara. Penulisan ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui dan menganalisis penegakan hukum terhadap warga negara asing (WNA) yang menggunakan bebas visa kunjungan dan untuk mengetahui dampak yang ditimbulkan atas penggunaan bebas visa tersebut terhadap kedaulatan negara. Jenis penulisan ini menggunakan metode normatif empiris dan yuridis. Data penulisan diperoleh melalui analisis ilmiah dan studi pustaka, sedangkan proses pengolahan data melalui