| Source: De Gruyter |
Description:
Shifting Sovereignties explores practical manifestations of sovereignty from antiquity to the Anthropocene. Taking a global-history perspective and centring Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, it destabilises overly neat theoretical notions of the concept. Shifting Sovereignties shows that, in practice, sovereignty is far from absolute, perpetual, indivisible, or supreme; rather it is fuzzy, compromised, fragmented, and layered. From these observations, the authors derive a historical conceptualisation which makes change and contingency core aspects of the understanding of sovereignty. Rather than understanding sovereignty as a characteristic of individual states, Mihatsch and Mulligan propose the notion of “sovereignty regimes”: frameworks of legitimation enforced through mutual recognition. These regimes are created and managed by more or less institutionalised structures which embody what the authors call “system sovereignty.” Sovereignty regimes and system sovereignty are, like sovereignty itself, continuously changing and contingent. This process of change forms the core of the book. Shifting Sovereignties thus contributes a practical, historical perspective on a concept which is foundational in political science, international relations, and international law.
Author / Editor information
Moritz A. Mihatsch, University of Cambridge, UK; Michael R. Mulligan, Euro University of Bahrain.
I An Impractical Concept
Part 1: Many Beginnings
Introduction
II Sovereignty before Sovereignty
III The Inventors of Sovereignty
IV The Ascendance of Sovereignty
Part 2: Illusions of Coherence
Introduction
V Imperial Entanglements
VI The Fog of War
VII The Dawn of Decolonisation
Part 3: A Man in the Desert
Introduction
VIII Sovereignty on Ice
IX The (Dead) End of Sovereignty
X The Mummy Returns
XI Quo Vadis, Sovereignty?
