Four Types or Meanings of Sovereignty

527 Words3 Pages
1. Domestic sovereignty: the effective organization of authority within the territory of a given state; 2. Interdependence sovereignty: the ability of a state to regulate movements across its own borders; 3. International legal sovereignty: the fact of recognition of an entity as a state, established by states; 4. Westphalian sovereignty: the exclusion of external authority structures from the decision-making processes of a state. Second, a state can accept some limitations on external (or Westphalian) sovereignty without giving up all sovereignty. The different types of sovereignty do not necessarily go together. Members of the European Union, for example, have lost some interdependence and Westphalian sovereignty, but they retain domestic and international legal sovereignty. Third, even the most powerful states accept some limitations on their external sovereignty (as the US does by submitting to WTO dispute settlement). Thus ‘unbundling sovereignty’ is not only for troubled societies – it is a reality for all states. But there are variations across regions. In Western Europe for example, ‘unbundled’ sovereignty is the norm rather than the exception. In the EU, there are institutional arrangements that build limitations on sovereignty into authority structures that all the major players accept. Fourth, intervention and reconstruction is likely to be more effective in countries that border ‘good neighborhoods’ than bad. In good neighborhoods, the boundaries of the region can be redefined to include the troubled societies. Thus for example, intervention in the Balkans has a good chance of success because European institutions can be extended to include those countries, and it is in the interest of the major European powers to do so. Intervention in ‘bad neighborhoods’ is more difficult. A policy implication is that one of the best ways to promote peace and
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