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Beyond Hypocrisy?
It is no exaggeration to say that sovereignty is the foundation both of International Relations (IR) as a field of enquiry and of international politics as an 'actual existing' field of practice. For the former, sovereignty is the archetypal IR101 topic. Students entering the subject are informed that sovereignty emerged in Europe sometime around the mid-seventeenth century before being exported to the rest of the world, often by force of arms, over the next few centuries. There may be disagreement over sovereignty's precise point of origin (cf. Ruggie, 1983; Rosenberg, 1994; Spruyt, 1994; Krasner, 1999; Reus-Smit, 1999; Osiander, 2001; Philpott, 2001; Teschke, 2003), but the basic narrative remains intact: for IR - sovereignty is synonymous with the emergence of the modern state system and, as such, forms the generative grammar of IR as a distinct subject matter. For the latter, sovereignty is equally important. Only rarely do policy makers make a speech about international affairs without reference to sovereignty: it is at the heart of debates about intervention - potential or actual - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur and Zimbabwe; it speaks to the capacity of the European Union (EU), the International Monetary Fund, NATO and other international organisations to exert control over significant spheres of international politics; and it undergirds discussions about the legitimacy of bodies such as the International Criminal Court, the status of 'prisoners of war' in the 'global war on terror' and the juridical space occupied by US military tribunals or practices of 'extraordinary rendition'. Even when states explicitly intervene in other territories - whether through the brute fact of invasion or by subtler means of diplomacy and trade - they often do so by reference to why sovereignty can be suspended in special cases. As such, even when the norm of sovereignty is broken, it still appears as the central referent point of international politics. In short, sovereignty is a conceptual marker, normative frame and political tool without rival. It is IR's font and altar.
Given the centrality of sovereignty to IR, it is no surprise to find numerous debates circulating around it: its place as ground-rule (Bull, 1984) or gibberish (James, 1984); its spread as a fundamental institution of international society (Watson, 1992; Buzan, 2004; Buzan and Little,...