39 2 213 PDF

International Studies Q}..
tarterly (1995) 39, 213--233
State Sovereignty in International Relations:

Bridging the Gap Between Theory and
Empirical Research
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JANICE E. THOMSON
University of Washington
This article explores many of the key theoretical and analytical issues
attending empirical research all state sovereignty. It reviews recent re-
search on sovereignty, the state, and state-building in an attempt to
summarize what we now know or think we know about state sovereignty.
Bringing the fruits of that research to bear on the concepts that define
state sovereignty, I offer some criteria from which analysts might derive
empirically testable propositions about sovereignty'S historical status and
future prospects. In conclusion, I argue that research on these issues
should be (re-)directed to the bedrock of sovereignty: rule making and
enforcemcnt authority, or what I call policing.
For ten years now International Relations theorists have been researching, -writing,
and arguing about sovereignty.l Debate among realist, liberal interdependence,
and critical theorists has rescued the concept of sovereignty from its abstract,
arcane, and sterile treatment in the fields of international law and politi(:al phi-
losophy and infused it with new meaning, theoretical significance, and practical
relevance (Walker, 1988). Sovereignty is now prominent in the International Rela-
tjons research agenda. The question this article poses is: in light of this decade of
research on sovereignty, what do we now know or think we know about the
theoretical and practical role of sovereignty in world politics? For liberal interde-
pendence theorists sovereignty is defined in terms of the state's ability to control
actors and activities within and across its borders. For realists, the essence of
sovereignty is the state's ability to make authoritative decisions-in the final in-
stance, the decision to make war. Given the two schools' focus on these different
aspects of sovereignty, it is not surprising that International Relations theorists
make conflicting and sometimes diametrically opposed claims about the status of
sovereignty in the post-Cold War era.
This article presupposes that an assessment of the current and future prospects
of sovereignty depends upon a theoretically coherent conception of sovereignty
which is both consistent with history and amenable to empirical analysis. Before
Authar'j note: An earlier vf'rsion of lhis article was prf'senled al the 1991 Annual Mt:'eling of tIlt" American Political
Science Association, Washinglon, O.C" August ~ - Seplemher 1, 1991. !>'or hf'[pful comments "nd ~\lggestions, I wish
to thank Thomas Riss<:-Kappcn, Kaz Poznanski, Gregory Gause, Daniel Deudney, Rob Walker. Michael Webb, Michael
Barnetl, (:ynthia Weher, and <:'spf'(;ially Alf'xan(j.,r W.,nrlt, and tilt rtviewtns and t--rlitors of lntemalional S~udies Quarterly.
I In this artide, international &In.limM, with inilial upppr-ca-,e If'tlen. rtlers In llw di~('ip1in.,; int<:'rnational relations
refers to the discipline's subject matter,
© 1995 Imernational Studies Association.

Puhlishcd by Blad.wcll Publishers, 238 Main Street, Camhridgc, MA 02142, L'SA, Jnd 108 Cowley Road. Oxford OX4IJF, UK.
214 State Sovereignty in International R£lalivn5
we can determine whether sovereignty is being eroded, consolidated, or something

else, we must he dear about what sovereignty is and be able to operationalize it
into measurable, ifnot quantifiable, indicators. This article reviews recent research
on sovereignty, the state, and state-building in an attempt to summarize what we
now know or think we know about sovereignty. The aim here is to mine these
literatures for indicators of sovereignty which alone, or in some combination, will
produce a conception of sovereignty on which can be grounded the kind of
empirical analysis upon which informed speculation about it" future necessarily
depends.

My major points are three. First, I contend that both realist and liheral interde-
pendence treatments of sovereignty are hampered by a unitary view of the national
state. i\ more useful approach is contained in Giddens's "non-realist [proto-]
theory of sovereignty" (Rosenberg, 1990) which emphasizes the "international"
dimension of sovereignty. Interstate relations (or slate practices) playas significant
a role in constituting the sovereign state as do the relations behveen individual
states and their societies.
Recognition of sovereignty\ external or international dimension accounts, in
part., for the demise of sovereignty in political philosophy which treated sovereignty
as a matter of state-society relations occurring in an international v.acuum. 2 Jacques
Maritain (1950:343) argued forty years ago that "political philosophy must elimi-
nate Sovereignty both as a word and as a concept .. " VVhile the devolution of
sovereignty to "the people" (at least in theory) undoubtedly contributed to the
failure of t.hat approach to sovereignty,3 it was also doomed by ignoring the integral
role of external forces in constituting, defining, and shaping sovereignty, the state,
and state-society relations. As I will argue below, the domestic-internalional dichot-
omyand the interplay between the hvo are crucial to the instit.ution of sovereignt.y.4
Second, sovereignty is best conceptualized in terms, not of state control, but of
state authority. State control has waxed and waned enormously over time, regions,
and issue-areas while the state's claim to ultimate political authority has persisted
for more than three centuries. The conceptualization of sovereignty I offer here
is as an institution which imparts to the state what I call meta-polilical authority.
That is, with the institution of sovereignty states are empowered or authorized to
decide what is political in the first place. With sovereignty, states do not simply
have ultimate authority over things political; they have the authority to relegate
activities, issues, and practices to the economic, social, cultural, and scientific
realms of authority or to the states' own realm~the polit.ical. This is not to say that
activities defined as apolitical are not intensely political but only that states will not
treat t.hem as politicaL
Finally, I suggest some crit.eria from which we might derive empirically testable
propositions about the status of sovereignty in history and in future. J argue that
a shift from sovereignty to some other form of global political organization would
entail one or more of the following: the loss of states' exclusive authority to
recognize sovereignty; transfer of meta-political authority to nonstate actors or
institutions; end of the state's monopoly on legitimate coercion; and deterritoria1i~
za(ion of states' authority claims. To illustrate both the utility of and problems with
2 For guud re"it"Wl; of this htt"rdlure we Maritain (1'l5()) , Mf'rriam (196H). and Walker (1988)
3 For f'Jolmple, Rodi,,·, (and Hohbes·s) "theories'· 01 sovereignty were largely "aspirational" as both sought to bring
order out of (what they viewed as) political turmoil by expanding the powers of the central ~t~tt" (Ferguson and
Mansbach. 199];378).
4 Sovereignty is sometiIllt"~ treat<:-d a, <I" or!l;a"i7i"g principk or a, a pmcess. For analytical purposes. I prefer to
characterize it as an institution. delined as "the [formal (e.g., laws) and informal (e.g., norms) 1 rules of [he game in
a society" (North. 1990:3). For a review of ~onll· of the promin("nt dt:flllitiuns of an instilUlion ~ee Krasner (1989:74-
77).
]ANTCV. F.. THOMSON 215
this strategy for operationali.ling sovereignty, I draw on largely anecdotal evidence

to speculate about the extent and degree to which sovereignty is under challenge.
Bringing Sovereignty Back into

International Relations 5
Statc-centric theories, which have dominated International Relations, arc built on
the assumption that states arc, by definition, sovereign. The point of theorizing is

to understand, explain, and predict international outcomt's resulting from interac-
tions among already existing sovereign entities-states.
In the 19705 and early 19HOs liberal interdependence t.heorists (Cooper, 1972;
Keohane and Nye, 1972 and 1977; Morse, 1976; Rosecrance, 1986) challenged this
approach to world politics. Their attacks on the state-centric paradigm implied that
state sovereignty was being eroded by economic interdependence, global-scale
technologies, and democratic politics. They argued that states can no longer
control their borders. Modern technology empowers nonstate or substate actors to
evade state efforts to control the flow of goods, people, money, and information
across territorial boundaries. Capital, especially, can flow to another state or an-
other currency to escape state fiscal and monetary policies (Cooper, 1972). Efforts
to defend cultural values or bar subversive ideas are stymied by computer and
telecommunications technologies in the hands of other states and substate and
nonstate actors. At the same time, technological advances have produced weapons
of mass destruction which preclude the state from protecting its own people or
territory (Rosecrance, 1986). As a result states cannot ensure economic or military
security.
Critics of the liberal interdependence school have challenged this view on a
number of empirical and theoretical grounds. These responses to liberal interde-
pendence arguments generally come in one of two forms. Some deny that inter-
dependence has increased and therefore that state sovereignty has eroded. Current
ratios of transborder to within-border flows of people, information, and capital are
not dramatically different from those of the late nineteenth century. If these rati()~
are reasonable measures of interdependence, then interdependence is not on the
rise and does not reflect an erosion of sovereignty (Waltz, 1970; Thomson and
Krasner, 1989).
The alternative response is to argue that, if interdependence is growing, it is a
reflection of state power and interests. Any international economic system is predi-
cated on the exercise of state power. Transborder flows can occur only if states
agree to provide the institutional framework in which markets can flourish (Carr,
1939; Gilpin, 1975, 1987). The lack of interdependence between the United States
and the Soviet Union during the Cold War attests to that (WaILz, 1979:141). As to
the argument that technological developments are eroding sovereignty boom below,
Gilpin (1987:406) reminds us of what happened to the great technological achieve-
ments of the Roman empire. Politics triumphed over technology then, and may
do so again. Still, there is the question of whether states could reassert control,
especially in the economic realm, if their interests changed. Liberals argue that it
would be prohibitively costly but, as World War I indicates, theorists and state rulers
need not agree on what constitutes a prohibitive cost (Angell, 1911).
It is important to recognize that the liberal interdependence school did not
claim that the state-centric paradigm's assumption of sovereignty is wrong per Sf•
., This phrase echoes that of Evans, Rueschcmeyer, and Skocpors Bn'nging the Slate Back In, which in turn was
in~piredby G{'orge C. HOlTIans'~ 1964 Prcskknlial Addres.; to the Amerinm Sociotogiud Aswciation, "Brinb';l1g Men
Bark In" (ban" Rueschenwyt'r. and Skocpol, 198,,,31).
216 State Sovereignty in International Relations
Rather, it )?;ranted that the assumption was appropriate in theorizing about world
politics in the past but is of decreasing utility in the tw'entieth century (Keohane
and Nye, 1972:371,375).
The liberal interdependence literature provides a useful point of departure for
a discussion of sovereignty in the International Relations literature because it
represents an early attempt to-at least inductively-treat sovereignty as a variable.
A" such, its perspective on sovereignty warrants close scrutiny.
This literature is now massive and I cannot hope to do itjust.ice here. But I want
to point to three basic problems with its treatment of sovereignty.

The most important problem wit.h liberal interdependence theory's treatment
of sovereignty is that it "measures" or operationalizes sovereignty in terms of state
conlro~ver economic policy, transborder flows, and so on. But, in point of fact,
there never was a time when state control over anything, including violence, was
assured or secure. State coO[rol over important external flows has not eroded
relative to state control over internal flows over the past 100 years (Thomson and
Krasner, 1989). In short, it makes no sense to posit that interdependence and/or
democracy has reduced state control from a level that was never actually attained.
Sovereignty is not about state control but about state authority. The question is
whether or not the state's ability to make authoritative political decisions has
eroded; that is, whether ultimate political authority has shifted from the state to
nonstate actors or institutions.
Second, there is a strong element of functionalism evident in the liberal inter·
dependence literature. This perspective suggests that the state and sovereignty are
institutions that developed to serve societal needs like economic growth and
prot.ection from military attack. The problem with this view is that there is little
evidence in the state-building literature to support it. Work hy Strayer (1970), Tilly
(1975, ]990), Giddens (1985), and others (Skocpol, 1979; Weisser, 1979; Evans
et al., 1985) suggests that. t.he state's "function" was to make war and to build power
vis--a·vis other states and society, "Society" was largely an adversary in this proces!.
as it resisted state rulers' efforts to extract resources and monopolize political and
judicial authority. True, state rulers were cmnpelled to make bargains with various
societal actors. In exchange for a reliable supply of money and military manpower,
states granted or agreed to respect civil, political, and property rights. But the point
is that it is ahistorical to suggest that states are losing control, that sovereignty is
eroding, because states cannot now fulfill functions they never had, or have as·
sumed only recently.
The third set of problems is logical. First, liberal interdependence writers are
not clear about the relationship between sovereignty and interdependence. Is
increasing interdependence the cause of declining sovereignty or vice versa? That
is, are interdependence linkages reducing the state's ability to control its borders,
or is the state's declining ability \.0 control its borders-presumably due to techno·
logical developments-facilitating the proliferation of ties of interdependence?
This issue is further confused by those who treat interdependence as a prescription,
viewing it as a means of ameliorating :;;ome of the more unattractive consequences
of sovereignty, most especially interstate conflict and war. Much of this literature
evidences a normative stance in which interstate cooperation (or multilatcralism)
is, by definition, desirable; interdependence, to the extent that it compels such
cooperation, is preferable to unilateral state actions associated with sovereignty. In
short, the normative and the empirical have become so entangled that the basic
theoretical argument is now obscured. Clarification of the logic behind the inter-
dependence-sovereignty relationship must precede any assessment of whether or
not sovereignty is really eroding.
The second logical problem is probably more important. If interdependence is
JANICE E. THOMSON 217
eroding state sovereignty, why did states initiate, support, or at least adapt to it in
the first place? More tellingly, why do they continue to SUppOH it? How do we
explain the state's interest in undermining the very basis of it'! rule-namely,
sovereignty? One answer is (hat the economic benefits of interdependence out-
weigh the cost'! associated with reduced sovereignty. The problem with this notion
is that, apart from the fact that it is impossible to put a price tag on sovereignty,
the argument cannot explain why most states have apparently failed to make the
proper calculus, preferring sovereignty to the benefits of interdependence (Kras-
ner, 1985).

Alternatively, liberal interdependence theorisL<; might argue that this can be
explained in terms of the development and spread of political democracy-that is,
popular sovereignty. Presumably capitalists, at least, vote for freedom of transbor-
der movement. But this simply leads to another question, which is: if interdepend-
ence is eroding sovereignty and the people are sovereign, does not the decline of
sovereignty mean an erosion of democratic control? Kaiser (1972), Rosecrance
(1986), and Gilpin (1987) have all noted this possibility,6 but almost no one has
systematically explored the relationship bcrnreen political democracy, economic
interdependence, and sovereignty.7
Liberal interdependence theory is confused about whether sovereignty is erod-
ing or simply being shifted from the central state to the people. One reason for
this is, as Halliday (1987:217) suggests, that International Relations theorists-re-
alist and liberal interdependence theorist.;; alike-take a holistic view of the state.
They equate the state v{ith the country, failing to distinguish between the state,
government, society, and so on. 8 The stat.e may represent society in the sense that
it purports to speak for society in international relations, but this is quite different
from claiming that the state represents societal wishes or needs. 9 In failing to
disaggregate the society, state, and government, International Relations theOlists
leave themselves open to Halliday's charge that they accept the latter view, an
ideological (liberal) perspective on state-society relations.
Liberal interdependence theory does raise the interesting question of how much
control the state could lose and still make authoritative decisions. At what point
does an erosion of control translat.e into an irreversible decline in the capacity to
make authoritative decisions? I will return to this important question later in this
article.
To summarize, liberal interdependence theory rightly makes problematic some-
thing state-centrists assume to be true-namely, state sovereignty. But interdepend-
ence theorists' conception of sovereignty is ahistorical and wrongly focuses on
control rather than authority. Moreover, their arguments about the relationship
o Rosecranee (1986:39), eiting Kaiser, acknowledges that 'the operalions of the multinalional corporation and
movements of funds from country to country are thus in one sense a derogation from democracy, for democratic
dectoratr.s no longer haw: the means of controlling their own fMe~." Gilpin\ work al~o implir..~ lhal inlernational
economic relation~ mcrea.~iIlgly undermine dt>mouatk control. With Irddiuonal barners to tradt> diminishing in
importance, remaining barriers are really dome~tic legal, tllllllral, and social inslitutions. This is particularl), true in
the case of V.S.-Japan economic relationship. As Gilpin (1987:389-394) puts it, "The question of ..... hether statist
SO,:iO:"lies 5hollld h~(·omt> more liberal, liberdl so6etit"8 should become more statist, or, alo most econumi8L' aver, dumeslic
strucmre-, do not really maller has b<-corne celltral 10 an e'"dluation of thO:" problem p05ed by the inher<-nt conflict
between domestic autonomy and international norms ..· And, we might note, the stateS to which Gilpin refers are all
''tkmonacin. "
7 Two excepllons are sdlOlafS who fOCll~ on the effe(t~ of tran~naliunali~m ur inlt"rllationalisrn OIl dernocr<tl"y (se"
PicdollO, I<JH8; and Held, 1991)
RThis charge is not trUe of Krasner (1984) who has developed a realist theory of State-society relations (statism)
which sees the state as confronted with an '\1> vo. them" situation in which us is the state and the-m is both other &tates
and domestir sudety.
~ For a prime example of this. see Frohlich and Oppenheimer (1970:104). who argue. in the first paragraph of
their P'lper, that '·a state is first of all an organi7atioIl lhat pro\'ide~ public goods fur iL~ members. the citizens
between interdependence and sovereignty are confused. Still, theorists of world

politics are indebted to this school of thought for challenging sovereignty as the
taken-for-granted basis of the state-centric paradigm.
In contrast with this inductive approach to sovereignty, recent work by both
realists and critical theorist..;; has taken to task the state-centric paradigm's treatment
of sovereignty in theoretical terms. John Ruggie's (1983a) "Continuity and Trans-
formation in the World Polity: Toward a Nearealist Synthesis" and Richard Ashley's
(1984) "The Poverty of Neorealisrn" highlight the historicity and variability of
sovereignty as well as its intersubjective quality.

Ruggie and Ashley argue that sovereignty is not a timeless attribute of the slate
but a way of ordering global politics unique to the modern state system. to World
(or at least European) politics in the medieval period were based not on sover-
eignty but on heteronomy. Ruggie (1983a:274-275) describes the medieval heter-
onomous system as follows:
This system of rule was inherently "international." To begin with, the distinction
between "internal" and "external" political realms, separated by clearly demarcated
"boundaries," made litlle ~eI\se until late in the day.. ",And the feudal ruling class
was mobile in a manner not dreamed of since-able to travel and assume govern-
ance from one end of the continent to the other without hesitation or difficulty
because "public telTitorics formed a continuum with private estates,"
By contrast, sovereignty "differentiates units in terms of juridically mutually exclu-

sive and morally self-entailed domains" based on single-titled or exclusive, fixed
territoriality (Ruggie, 1983a:280),
As Ruggie (1983a:273) argues, neorealist international relations theory cannot
explain the transition from heteronomy to sovereignty, a transition he terms "the
most important contextual change in international politics in this millennium, , . ,"
In taking sovereignty as an assumption, neorealism becomes, not a universal theory
of global politics, but a theory of relations among modern stat.es.
Ashley argues, however, that Ruggie fails to acknowledge the inherently rela-
tional and practical nature of sovereignty. Sovereignty "involves not only the pos-
session of self and the exclusion of others but also the limitation of self in the
respect of others, for its authority presupposes the recognition of others who, per
force of their recognition, agree to he so excluded~ (Ashley, 1984:272-273,
n. 101) .11 It is simply a matter of logic that the claim to exclude others presupposes
the existence of others against whom the claim must be made. 12 Sovereignty,
Ashley suggests, is not about who has the physical power to make such claims but
about who "is to be a power" in global politics. Put differently, "sovereignty is what
makes a territorial entity eligible to part.icipate in international relations" (James,
1986b:92). In addition, Ashley (1984:272-273, n, 101) argues that the criteria for
sovereign recognition are variable: "In effect, sovereignty is a practical category
whose empirical contents are not fixed but evolve in a way reflecting the active
practical consensus among coretlective statesmen. .," So, ultimately, sovereignty
is a product of an intt'rsu~jective consensus among state leaders. Sovereignty is
what some collectivity of state leaders says it is.
Ruggie and Ashley thus suggest that a more encompassing theory of world
politics would have to dispense with the assumption of state sovereignty. Ruggie's
II) Neorealism is also a theory not of international relations but of interstate relations (see Klink, 1990:38-39).
11 Th;; statement wa.~ ill rtspOIlSt to RUl,'gie'5 argument that sovereignty and private property are parallel instltu·
llons
12 Thus the hisLory of diplomacy can be interprcttd as the practical attempt to mediate the alienation attendant
to sovCTeignty (Der Derian. 1987).
work indicates that we should treat it as one of at least two possible ordering
principleso A,>hley's arguments suggest that sovereignty, while distinct from hetero-
nomy, is itself variable and a product of state practices. Ruggie and Ashley spurred
many International Relations scholars to rethink sovereignty both theoretically and
empirically. How should we conceptualize sovereignty? How should we measure it
empirically so we can determine its status-past, current, and future? How much
and what kind of change in world politics is consistent with sovereignty?

Toward an Empirically Useful Conception of Sovereignty
Theoretical and empirical work on sovereignty and the state over the past ten years
or so has come to grips with many of the issues raised by theorists, sllch as Ruggie
and Ashley, as well as by the earlier liberal interdependence critique of the state-
centric paradigm. In this section I draw upon an eclectic literature on sovereignty,
the state, and state-building to propose a synthetic conceptualization of sovereignty
amenable to empirical research. A working definition of sovereignty with which
most theorists would not take (strenuous) issue is: Sovereignty is the recognition
by internal and external actors that the state has the exclusive authority to inter-
vene coercively in activities within its territory.13 This follows on the classical
international law definition, with the addition of the recognition criterion. The key
elements in this definition are recognition, the state, authority, coercion, and
territory. In what follows, each of these is closely examined, with the aim of
translating these definitional components into empirical indicators.
The Dimensions of Sovereignty
Recognition. Sovereignty is not an attrihute of the state hut is attributed to the

state by othel slates or slate rulers (Ashley, 1984:239, 259, 269, 272; Miller, 1984,
]986). Recent work, most notably by RobertJackson (1990), is quile persuasive in
demonstrating the state's dependence on other states for its authority. In the "real
world," Latvia and Croatia would surely not disagree with this view.
The modern state system is unique in that its members recognize one another
as equal authority claimants. "Most state systems have been comprised of a domi-
mmt empire ringed by client states"; that is, they rested "on the concept of asym-
metric relations of dominance and subordination" (Strang, 1991a:148). In the
modern, sovereign system, states are recognized as being juridically equal, despite
vast differences in size, power capabilities, and empirical st.atehood (Jackson and
Rosberg, 1982). Each is recognized as having the final and exclusive authority to
use coercion within its territorial borders.
This recognition dimension of sovereignty entails !:\VO principal empirical ques-
tions: whose recognition is required?, and what are the criteria for recognition?
The first question concerns identification of those who have the power to
designate the state as the repository of ultimate political authority within a given
territory. Ashley (1984) posits a community of competent statesmen; Meyer (1980),
a world polity of transnational elites; while others suggest it is the European or
Great. Powers who constitute the regime of sovereignty (Bull and Watson, 1982;
Strang, 1991a; Thomson, 1994). So while theoretical and empirical work persua-
sively demonstrates the crucial role external recognition plays in constituting state
sovereignty, it remains unclear just who must do the recognizing-a majority of
l~ J am ind(Obted to one of the reviewer" for helping me to clarify this definition.

states, the Great Powers, all states, a core of elites, a hegemonic power, or some-
thing clsc.
What an entity must do to be recognized as a sovereign state is the second
empirical question. Waltz's (1979:96) claim that the essence of sovereignty is that
the state "decides for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems"
suggests that capabilities arc cent.ra1. Stat.es are recognized as sovereign when they
present a fact of sovereignty; that is, states recognize another's sovereignty when
the latter has achieved the capability to defend its authority against domestic and
international challengers. European history largely supports this argument but the

post-World War II period of decolonization does not. By no stretch of the imagi-
nation is it possible to explain the existence of the vast majority of today's sovereign
states in terms of their empirical power capabilities. Most cannot defend against
either external or internal challengers (Jackson and Rosberg, 1982;Jackson, 1990).
But if recognition -without power capabilities characterizes most contemporary
states, cases of power capabilities -without recognition exist as well. For example,
most of the Great Powers did not recognize the Soviet state's sovereignty in the
Baltic region. This lack of recognition meant nothing as the Soviet state simply
went ahead and exerted sovereignty there for a half-century. It had the physical
capacity to make good on its claims to sovereignty despite other states' refusal to
recognize it. Recognition (or the lack of it) did not matter. Arguably, Taiwan fits
in this category, too, as it has developed a rich and powerful national state -without
enjoying recognition as a sovereign state.
This suggests that power capabilities arc equally as or more important than
outside recognition. It may be, and this will be discussed below, that sovereignty is
limited to those who possess the material resources to defend it while the less
powerful are nominally sovereign but in fact are subject to heteronomy. Evidently,
the relationship between sovereignty, recognition, and power is exceedingly com-
plex. Nevertheless, empirical research on sovereignty requires a better under-
standing of the relative importance of power capabilities and external recognition
in empowering and legitimizing the sovereign state.
The State. In international relations t.heory, sovereignty resides with the state. 14
One problem with this assumption is that it is not clear what international relations
theorists mean by "the state." Halliday (1987:217) claims that they take a holistic
view, treating a "country as a whole and all that is \vithin it: territory, government,
people, society" as a state. Although neorealism does display this tendency, liberal-
interdependence theorists, who use the terms state and government interchangeably
(Keohane and Nye, 1972:ix), are arguably more sensitive to the distinctions be-
tween country and state. The state-building literature provides historically
grounded bases for distinguishing between the state and society and for theorizing
about the state's role and functions.
First, the state is a bureaucratic apparatus separate from and potentially in
conflict -with society. Society or the nation was created by the state out of the
"arbitrary assemblages of people" (Halliday, 1987:220) caught -within a set of
territorial boundaries. As Hinsley (1966:10) writes, the "first emergence of the state
reflects not the desire of a society for its kind of rule but an urge in men to possess
14 It is importam to note that this refl"CL~ a hias loward thl;" conlinl;"nml Eurnp"'an Systl;"ITL In 8Oml;" cases--Rritain,
Holland, and thc Unitcd Slales, among others-"the people" are sovereign. Treating sovereign states as identical
emities (or individuals as ralionai utiiity-rn.;xirnizcrs, as in economic theory) does obscure such diffnence5, But
international reiauons theory is baM-d "PUll the dilim eitlwr that the explanatory or predi([ive payoff from empha-
sizing similarity is greater or that difference.1 arE" reduced tu tlworelitaI illsignificance lhruugh processes of social inti on
",ilhin the state system (sec Waltz, 1979).
its kind of power." In Europe the modern national state emerged only after long
and bloody struggles in which "society" strenuously and often violently resisted
state-builders' efforts to monopolize authority and violence (Tilly, 1975). It is only
when the state monopolizes coercion both internally and externally that the na-
tional state, in which the state is equivalent to the polity, emerges (Tilly, 197.1):638;
Giddens, 1985:121).
Empirically, what seems to have occurred in Europe is a series of bargains
between state-huilders and wealth-producers. As the costs of war-making escalated,
state-builders were compelled to grant political and economic rights to individuals

in exchange for revenue (Tilly, 1990:84-91). Plunder gave way to taxation. Later
states made bargains with ordinary people (political rights and social programs) in
exchange for their service as soldiers (Tilly, 1990:122). "The core of what we now
call 'eitizellShip,' indeed, consists of multiple bargains hammered out by rulers and
ruled in the course of their struggles over the means of state action, especially the
making of war" (Tilly, 1990: 102).
Clearly state sovereignty is consistent with a wide range of relationships with the
"private sector" and a capitalist economy. State control over the economy has varied
with each permutation of the state: the early state and mercantilism. the modern
state and laissez-faire, and the national state and embedded liberalisrn. 15 But the
salient point is that historically, state control of the economy was not meant to be
functional to society but to the stale's war-making capabilities. F()r most of its
history, the state has spurred economic growth in the interest of augmenting its
war-fighting capabilities and securing domestic order. In a later section I will argue
that, if any function can be legitimately attributed to the state, it is policing.
Finally, from the beginning the state-building process and state-society relations
were permeated with outside influences. "Far from the int.ernational constit.ution
of states and societies being immune, at least until recently, to international phe-
nomena it can be asserted that the international dimension provided the context
and formative influence for these states ... " including European states (Halliday,
1987:220). Modern states are, in part, constituted by the internat.ional system. In
Tilly's memorable words, 'War made states and states made war." Tilly's view, which
implies that competition and war were the extent of the international system's
contribution to the state-building process, ignores or understates the contribution
of cooperative and peacetime interstate relations. The state is a product of both
internal and external competition, of conflict and cooperation.
Once we acknowledge that the state and society are not equivalent, that the
relationship between them is potentially (if not inherently) conmetual, and that
state-society relations are influenced by interstate relations, interstate cooperation
t.akes on an added dimension. Put bluntly, states can cooperate against societies.
That is, states may have a common interest in placing similar controls on individu-
als or may be compelled hy more powerful states to adopt such controls. In neither
case does the impetus for these controls come from society and, in some instances,
may be directly opposed to societal beliefs or 'Wishes. 16
In summary, then, the state is the central bureaucratic apparatus claiming a
monopoly on organized coercive forces. To the extent that it has assumed the role
of defending societal rights, ensuring economic: development, or providing collec-
tive goods, it is a consequence of state-society bargains made in the context of the
state's quest for money and security. The analytical distinction behveen state and
15 On the rormer. .>ee Viner. 19f17; on the lauer two, ~e(' Ruggie. 1983b.
16 This form of interstate cooperauon again~t indhiduals is nicely illustrated by the decline of mercenarism
(Thomson. 1990) and of nonstate violence in general (Thomson. 1994)
222 State Sovereignty in international Relations
society17 opens up the possibility for a distinctive form of interstate cooperation,

one based on states' common interest in controlling nonstate actors.
AUlhmity. I want to suggest that, with sovereignty, states claim and are recognized
as having the authority to define the political, the political being that which is
subject to state coercion (Wolfe, 1989:1-23). This is not to say that states cannot
delegate authority to other actors or institutions. It is to say, rather, that once that
authority is deleg-ated, it is no longer treated a<; political; it is private, social,
economic, religious, cultural, and so on.

In the contemporary world, we make easy distinctions between economics and
politics. We assume that
the production and, above all, the acquisition of [the means of consumption and
productionl normaily lakes place without threat or use of physical or militLiIy
violence. Nothing is less self-evident. For all warrior societies with a barter econ-
omy-and not only for them-the sword is a frequent and indispensable instru-
ment for acquiring means of production. and the threat of violence an
indispensable means of production. (Elias, 1982:149)
An economic realm of choice distinct from a political realm of coercion is not, as

liberalism presupposes, natural and timeless but is a product of history and prac-
tice. In the Middle Ages, "military action, and political and economic striving, are
largely identical, and the urge to increase wealth in the form ofland comes to the
same thing as extending territorial sovereignty and increasing military power"
(Elias, 1982:43). The contemporary differentiation between the state's realm-poli-
ties-and the economy is itself a product. of the modern interstate system and the
meta-political authority imparted to it by the institution of sovereignty.
Meta-political authority, of course, is not unique to the modern sovereign state.
Empires, for example, claim the right to decide what social relations are subject
to coercion and which are not. What is distinctive with sovereignty is that., globally,
this meta-political authority is pluralistic and mutually recognii'ed as such. That is,
states mutually recognize each other's meta-political authority, which means that
the boundaries between spheres (political, economic, religious, cultural, etc.) are
not only the subject of domestic politics but of interstate relations as welL There
is no central decision-making locus at the global level to finally decide where the
boundaries separating them are to be drawn.
To illustrate my notion of meta-political authority, consider the U.S. state's
definition of drug issues. The U.S. central state does not deploy its political
authority over the production, sale, and consumption of cigarettes. Instead, these
aClivities are left 10 the private, individual, and market. realms of authority. State
coercion is not deployed except in regulating smoking in public places. 18 In
contrast, almost the entire apparatus of the state is geared tcrward abolishing the
production, distribution, and use of cocaine. The state has defined smoking ciga-
rettes as a (domestic) health issue; cocaine as a (transnational) political issue. 19
But the effects of U.S. state decisions are not confined to U.S. domestic politics
or territory. Defining the production and use of cocaine and tobacco in this way
has enormous consequences f01" international relations: tobacco is su~ject to a free
trade regime while cocaine is subject to an international prohibition regime
(Nadehnann, 1990). Because the exercise of meta-political authority by one state
allows or prohibits various transborder flows, many if not all other states feel the
17 For a discussion of the prohlems associaled Wilh making this analytical dlstinclion see Mitchell. 1991.
lH Some U.S. states, of course, regulate the sale of lobacco producl'> to minors.
19 For an explanation of this outcome sec Thomson. 1992
impact. Liberal interdependence analysts are right to claim that economic policy
makin?; is increasingly "interdependent." They are wrong to assume that what is
defined as economic is somehow clear, static, and uncontested. The politics of
international economic relations includes or is preceded by the politics of deciding
what-for example, cocairw and tobacco-falls into the realm of economics or
politics in the first place.
Since I contend that in examining sovereignty our focus should be on the state's
meta-political authority claims rather than on control, it is important to be clear
about what I mean by the terms authority and control. The distinction I want to make

is between the claim to exclusive right to make rules (authority) and the capability
of enforcing that claim (control) .20 In short, authority concerns rule-making and
control, rule-enforcement.
I should emphasize at this point that my conception of authority is rather
different from the traditional Weberian one in at least two respects (Weber, 1964).
First, my concept concerns interstate rather than state-society relations. 21 vVhereas
Weber was concerned almost exclusively with dominant (ruler)-subordinate
(ruled) relationships, the authority I am talking about here applies to a pluralistic
group of equals none of which claims a monopoly on the legitimate usc of coercion
at the global level. Second, whereas there is an element of legitimacy to interna-
tionally recognized authority, those doing the recognizing are not "societies" (the
ruled) but other states (rulers). As such, my conception of authority is closer to
that of Stinchcombe, who says that "the person over whom power is exercisI'd is not
usually as important as other power-holders" (quoted in Tilly, 1985:171). This means
that, 1.0 paraphrase Tilly, "legitimac.y is the probability that other stat.es will act to
confirm the decisions of a given state" (Tilly, 1985: 171).
Authority and control are analytically separable but their empirical relationship
is of crucial importance in understanding and measuring sovereignty. Authority, as
the working defmition offered earlier suggests, is contingent on recognition; con-
trol depends on concrete capabilities to monitor and enforce compliance with the
rules that are made under that authority. For example, the new African states which
are not empirically sovereign are still sovereign by 'virtue of the interstate system's
recognition of their claims to sovereignty (Jackson and Rosberg, 1982). Indeed,
capabilities may be supplied by other states or international institutions, as in the
contemporary case of Somalia or the earlier case of the Congo, where international
intervention is aimed at building the state's pm...·er capabilities, especially the
security and police forces.
It may well be that the central problem in defining and measuring sovereignty
is to understand the relationship beClNeen authority and control.
One \\'3y to think about this relationship is in terms of a cross-sectional and/or
longitudinal, quantitative research design. As a first cut, we might posit the rela-
tionship as positive and monotonic. As control (measured in terms of capabilities)
increases, authority (or sovereignty) expands, or vice versa. This aptly captures the
state~building process from the end of the medieval period, when states made
minimal authority claims and had few capabilities with which to enforce them, to
W These concepts are clearly related hUI tlw analytic distinction is crucial for empincal work. As Ruggie (l983b:198)
argues, "the prcvailmg interpretauon or international authoritv focuses on power only; It Ignores the dimension of
social purpose." If my In\erpretadon 01 Ruggte'S argument is corren, he is urgmg a distinnion between power as
capahiliti{:~ and Ihe "nds to whid, Ihal 1'00wr is deployed. My con,epts ofaUlhorit~ and conlrol arc meant 10 address
Rugg,~'s conc .. rn somE'whal dill .. rf'1l11y_ COIllrol m .. asm .. d in lenll.', 01 capabilitif's i\ prohahly not dillerenl Irom what
Ruggie terms "p"Wf'r." On Lh .. other hand, my concept of autl,orit}' concerns lhos(' who have the right to make the
rules, while Ruggie '5 "social purpose" seems to fE'fE'f to the content of those rule"
~I For a In.'n(hanl critiqut, of We her's (OIlC"pt of authonty see Rlau, 1\lfi3
the contemporary period, when some states possess the capabilities to enforce
totalitarian claims to authority.
Alternatively, the relationship between authority and control may be a step-func-
tion. Once a particular threshold of capabilities is crossed, sovereignty is achieved.
This would seem to characterize the post-mandate case in which tutelary powers
prepared (or were supposed to prepare) colonial regions for the exercise of
sovereignty by building the minimal police, military, and political institutions
necessary for self-government. Conversely, at an identifiable point, loss of control
would mean loss of sovereignty. This is arguably the case in the realm of int.erna-

tional finance where, for whatever reasons, states allowed the development of the
Eurodollar markets which eventuated in the states' loss of control over capital
markets (Strange, quoted in Webb, 1991:328). In this instance, states no longer
exercise sovereignty; authority claims are largely empty or meaningless (but see
Kapstcin, 1991/92).
Working at this level of aggregation may be reasonable and even necessary in
performing these types of quantiL.1.tive analyses, bUl, in my view, the authority-con-
trol relationship is much more complex. First, this relationship may, in some
instances, he inverse. That is, the scope of authority claims may narrow despite no
change or even an increase in enforcement capabilities. Much of international law
since about 1800 has entailed states "negotiating" the appropriate authority claims
vis-a.-vis nonstate actors.
Not surprisingly, one of the first things sLates agreed on was that they had a
responsibility to curtail private military expeditions launched from their territories
against other states (Thomson, 1994). Later they agreed that the state's nationali-
zation (\Vilh compensation) of private property was a legitimate exercise of state
authority (Krasner, 1985: 190). In these and other cases, authority and control
positively covaried, although assertion of authority preceded (caused? legiti-
mated?) development of capabilities.
But in a whole range of other issue-areas the trend, especially since World War
II, seems to be the reverse. International human rights and humanitarian law
proscribe genocide, torture, slavery, and so on, despite the fact that states generally
possess the capabilities to perpetrate them. However, my interpretation of what is
occurring here is not a challenge to the state's claim to exclusive authority within
its territory, but a redefinition of what means the state can legitimately use in
exercising that authority.
In this regard, it is perhaps useful to think of authority along two dimensions:
the const.it.utive and the functionaL Sovereignty constitutes the state system as the
meta-political authority in world politics. The functional dimension delineates the
precise range of activities over which st.ates can legitimat.ely exercise their authority
(extensiveness). Wiulin t.his range, variable across issue-areas and actors, the depth
of state authority-or, put dinerently, the degree to which stale authority pene-
trates society (intensiveness)-may vary. These need not covary. Indeed, it appears
that the breadth of contemporary sovereignty is diminishing in some areas, par-
ticularly the "economic" sphere where decision-making authority is being relegated
to the market. At the same time, the state's intrusion into formerly "private" aspects
of people's lives is reaching astonishingly high levels perhaps especially in the
United States (Meyer et ai., 1984; Marx, 1986). A question that bears further
investigation is the degree to which the decline of state authority and control in
the economic realm may be contingent on an enhancement of its authority and
control in other realms.
It is also important to recognize that control is a function of capabilities defined
much more broadly than simply in terms of coercion. Monitoring, surveillance,
prevention, and other proadive, sophist.icated means of controlling behavior are
at the state's disposal. In a "pacified" society, rules may, in fad, be self-enforcing,

or enforced by nonstate actors. I will return to this issue later in the article.
To summarize my argument here, sovereignty imbues states with the meta-
political authority to decide which issues, activities, and practices fall within their
authority realm-the political-and which lie in the province of nonstatc authority.
The question is whether rules governing various activities are to be made and
enforced by states or left to private or nons tate actors. It is this deeper level of
authority, joined \. . ith territoriality, that constitutes the basis of state power under
sovereignty.

My claim is that the end of sovereignty would entail the end of the states'
monopoly on meta-political authority. "What some observers take as signs of eroding
sovereignty are merely changes in the norms or rules delineating the legitimate
forms of functional authority and means of enforcing those rules. Sovereign states
must effectively patrol territory, but the meaning of effectiveness, as well as thc
means of achieving it, changes as the global environment changes. Rising interdc-
pendence may threaten states' ability to assert and make good on their authority
claims, but it may also provide an inducement to move beyond unilateralism toward
the homogenization of authority claims and interstate cooperative policing.22
Coercion. In the Weberian tradition, a monopoly on the major, organized forces

of violence is the hallmark of the state (Weber, 1964:154). Even non-Weberians
suggest that "effectively-patrolled territory" is a prerequisite for recognition as a
sovereign state (Ashley. 1984:272). Yet, for the first 200 years of the modern state
system, states did not monopolize coercion, although they claimed and were gen-
erally perceived to be sovereign (Thomson and Krasner, 1989; Thomson, 1994).
History is littered with countless cases of states racked by civil Wdr and yet accorded
recognition as sovereign entities. Rebels, terrorists, criminal organizations, and
private corporations have persistently challenged the state's monopoly on coercion,
yet the state's sovereignty was not questioned. Moreover, empirical analysis demon-
strate~ that states did not achieve a monopoly on externally directed coercion until
the late nineteenth century (Thomson, 1990). Nevertheless, it would be absurd to
claim that the state did not exist or did not claim sovereignty until 1900.
So while it seems reasonable to define sovereignty in terms of the statc's monop-
oly on the use of violence domestically, there is plenty of empirical evidence, both
historical and contemporary, to the contrary. To what degree-actually, on the
ground-is the U.S. state sovereign in south-central Los Angeles or the British state
in Northern Ireland? In terms of a monopoly on violence, are the Russian and
Georgian states sovereign and, if so, where? Beyond this is the extent to which the
state can exclude other states from intervening coercively in its territory. Great
Powers have persistently intervened militarily in Third World states without the
latter losing their sovereignty.
Undoubtedly, coercion is key t.o sovereignty because, ultimately, the exercise of
authority depends on it (Blau, 1963:313). Still, it is not clear the extent to which
state control over coercion can be eroded or challenged by internal or external
actors and still be consistent with sovereignty.
The state's prime "function" has always been policing territory and people.
Conflict and war with competing rulers were largely responsible for the develop-
ment of the modern state and state system (Tilly, 1975). The state's policing
activities depend on its monopolization of the major organized means of violcnce
within its territory. This entails both the exclusion of other states and the extraction
221n this rcgard. Nadchmmn's (1993) rCSCiifch on intcrnational law enforcement is exemplary and merits emula-
tion
226 State Sovereignly in International Relations
of coercive capabilities from domestic competitors. This monopoly, which was

achieved by the late nineteenth century, was facilitated by an international institu-
tional structure reflecting states' common interests in building power and exerting
control vis-a.-vis nonstaLe actors. The international system lends domestic autonomy
to the state through institutions such as international law and diplomacy, which
empower the state to overcome societal resistance to its policing practices.
The state's policing role, in the narrower sense of law enforcement, is complex
and ambiguous. An extensive literature on social control indicates that fs0licing
and surveillance arc everywhere being rapidly privatized and socialized. 3 Main-

taining order through traditional Jaw enforcement, a function states assumed in
the nineteenth century, is increasingly confined to the criminal element and the
lower classes. Behavioral control of the broader society is increasingly aimed at
prevention, requiring more subtle and more pervasive surveillance-by corporate
security bureaucracies over workers in the workplace, over workers and customers
in privately owned public places such as shopping malls and amusement parks, and
over the middle class in the marketplace for eredilo It appears, then, that the state's
policing functions, at least in North America, have been both expanded and
differentiated so that now
the poor and minorities may be subject to much more personally and physically
intrusive policing by regular public police and welfare workers, whereas the middle
classes (in fact, most wage earners) may be subject to much greater, but less visible,
policing by the I.R.S. and credit agencies. (Nalla and Newman, 1991:544)
The complexity of this relationship between state and private policing docs not
lend it'ielf to any easy conclusions about its consequences for sovereignty. Some
argue that "North America is experiencing a 'new feudalism'; huge tract'! of prop-
erty and associated public spaces are controlled-and policed-by private corpo-
rations," which raises the "possibility of sovereignty shifting from the state directly
to private [national and transnational] corporations" (Shearing and Stenning.
1983:503-504). However, it is also clear that this privatization of surveillance, at
least in the United States, was a result of state authorization.
The federal Trademark and Counterfeiting Act of 19R4 gave businesses expanded
powers to protect their property and profits, induding the right to conduct inde-
pendent investigations, obtain search warranL", seize evidence, arrest suspects and
pursue private criminal justice prosecutions. (Trojanowkl and BucquerOtlX,
1990:131)
Perhaps the most warranted conclusion is that Foucault's (1977) disciplinary

society has arrived, marking the state's shift from despotic to infrastructural (Mann,
1986:477-483) or administrative (Giddens, 1985:172-197) power. If we define
sovereignty more narrowly as the state's ultimate authority to decide the social
order (Shearing and Stenning, 1987:12-13), state sovereignty has not declined; it
has simply changed in form.
Empirical analyses of the state-building process reveal that. state authority and
control vary over time and across both states and issue-areas. The slate-centric
paradigm's state has never existed anywhere but in t.heory. \Vhile not determinant,
the level of state control over the exercise of violence is a principal explanation
for this vdriance.
To summari7.e, the state's function is policing. States have a common interest in
monopolizing coercion within their territories. States can and do cooperate against
210n the IJmted States, see Cunningham and Tavlor, 1~85; on the United Kingdom, see Filiott, 1991; on Israel,
see Ceva, 1989; on Canada, see Shearing and S[cnning, 1983; on Peru, see Brooke, J 991; on Germany and Switzerland,
see Urban Innovation Alrro(ui, 1980.
JANIel!. E. THOMSON 227
societal actors who challenge this monopoly. The disarming or pacification of

nonstate actors is a product of three centuries of state-building and interstate
interaction.
Territoriality. Most analysts agree that sovereignty describes the unique basis
upon which modern world politics is ordered. With sovereignty, political authority
is linked with territory. Put differently, political authority is vested in "a set of
administrative, policing, and military organizations headed, and marc or less well

coordinated by, an executive authority" (Skocpol, 1979:29)-the state. Its scope is
limited to the people and resources found within a set of geographical boundaries
(Klink, 1990:2). Sovereignty delineat.es authority according not to functions but to
geography. This is the key difference between sovereignty and het.eronomy.
Despite broad agreement on the territorial basis of sovereignty, even this is
subject to challenge as inherently Euro-centric. Most scholars argue that sover-
eignty has been extended to non-European areas so that global politics are now
organized around sovereignty (Bull and Watson, 1982:2, 123; Miller, 1984:285;
Strang, 1991a, 1991b). Even political authorities lacking the empirical hallmarks of
European slat.e sovereignty are given juridical sovereignt.y Oackson and Rosberg,
1982; Jackson, 1990). In this, the dominant view, sovereignty is now universal.
An alternative view is that sovereignty applies only in the northern tier of states;
politics behveen the north and south is characterized by heteronomy. Wendt and
Barnett suggest that the juridical authority structure of the contemporary states
system, "which is 'anarchic' in terms of Weber's bureaucratic-legal definition of
authority, is overlaid by informal authority struct.ures that conespond to something
more like 'feudal' authority (and which in those terms are not 'anarchic')" (Wendt
and Barnett, 1993:335; see also Onuf and Klink, 1989:164-170). This claim bears
further investigation. The point I wish to make is that, although sovereignty's
globalization has become something of a t.ruism, there are very real questions
about the sovereignty of non-European states in the contemporary system. While
there may be degrees of sovereignty, we must be careful to distinguish between a
situation of tenuous sovereignty and one of heteronomy. More research is needed
here, but it is dear that even in the south political authority is based on territori-
ality.
At one level, tenitory is simply a geographic space whose limits are defined by
physical borders-lines on a map. With sovereignty, however, states mutually rec-
ognize one another's exclusive authority over what is contained in that space. 24
The essence of the state-building process has been the state's drive t.o penetrate,
exploit, and mobilize those resources for interstate competition and war. One of
those resources, of course, is the people who live within the state's borders, and
part of the state·building process-still incomplete in most of the world-entails
creating a "society" or nation out. of t.hese people; t.hat is, forging their loyalty to
and identification with the state.
So the territorial dimension of sovereignty entails not just the defense of geo-
graphic boundaries but. tight linkages between the state and people. As states
struggle to attain a secure supply of money and manpower with which to compete
with other states, they arc compelled to make bargains with the owners of that
wealth and labor, granting rights and privileges to societal groups in exchange for
the obligation to provide needed resources to the state. Although space precludes
an in-depth discussion here, it may well be that these bargains, unique to each
national state, shape personal identities. Mter all, these highly institutionalized
bargains are the stuff of citizenship. The point is that human beings are separated
24 all tcrritori<llity, sce Sack, 1981. On territory as property, see Onuf and Klink, 1989, and Kratochwil, 1992.
228 State Srwereignty in International Relations
not. just by geographic boundaries, but by a set of unique relationships with their
respective states.
The preceding discussion surely highlights the great challenges entailed in
moving from the received definition to an empirical analysis of sovereignty. What
constitutes recognition and who has to grant it? What arc the relative weights of
recognition and power capabilities in constituting sovereignty? To what degree is
the territoriality of Third World states real? How much devolution or erosion in
state control over violence is consistent with sovereignty?
All of this suggests that sovereignty is largely in the eye of the beholders. That

is, Illost states are sovereign because other states recognize them as such. The
question then becomes, How do statesmen, the hegemon, or the world polity know
sovereignty when they see it? This brings us back to the question of recognition
criteria.
The Changing Norms of Sovereignty

Ruggie (1983a:280-281) suggests that, presumably in different historical eras, there
exists what he terms the "hegemonic form of state-society relations." Similarly,
Ashley (1987:45) proposes a "hegemonic exemplar of a normalized sovereignty."
The implication is that in a given historical era (however drawn), there is a
standard or norm of sovereignty. Neither Ruggie nor Ashley is particularly clear
about whether the form around which consensus is forged is hegemonic because
it reflects the hegemon's own institutional structures 25 or because dominant states
agree on the form that works best or most clearly serves their interests. Neverthe-
less, external recognition as a sovereign state is contingent on some set of criteria,
and the question is how those who do the recognizing define the criteria. Clearly,
these norms change; for example, traditional things like respecting borders have
been joined by democracy, free markets, and human rights.
"Effectively patrolled territory" (A'ihley, 1984:272) is ambiguous in that it is not
clear whether the state must be able to defend its territory from external incursions
or to control the people within its borders, or both. With regard to the latter, Meyer
(1980:119) argues that
once a population is incorporated into complete citizenship, a nation-state is given
almost complete authority to subordinate the populaTion. It can expropriate, kill,
and starve with relatively little fear of external intervention.
Clearly this is overstated; states have from the beginning intervened in one an-
other's "internal" affairs to prevent the persecution of particular groups. Still,
Meyer's contention is true in the sense that states have failed to intervene in
numerous cases of mass repression, slaughter. and even genocide which presum-
ably occurred in the course of the state's effectively patrolling its territory. In the
1990s, despite argumenl'i that respect fC)f human rights has become an important
prerequisite for sovereign recognition, Saddam Hussein's treatment of the Kurds
has not (yet) resulted in a loss ofIraqi sovereignty in the Kurdish region. 2fi Nobody
did much of anything to prevent the genocide in Rwanda.
By way of contrast, both the European Community and the United States stated
that recognition of new states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
25 Nadclmann·s (1993:11-12) work supports the latter \icw. He claims that "the internationalization of U.S. law
enfon:ement during the t.. entieth century has shaped tlw evolution of criminal jmtire systems in dozens of olher
countries_ No other government has pursued ilB intemalionaI law enforcement agenda in as aggressIVe and penetrative
a manner or devoted so much effort to promoting its own eriminaljustice norms to others.~
2(; Tbc 1993 Amn<.:My International annual report on human right~ says tbat bum"n right~ abuso around tbe world
in 1992 reached Illf> hIghest lfOvelm the organiIation\ Ihirty-two-year hislory (MeislfOr. 1991).
JA:>.'ICF: E. THOMSON 229
would depend not only on their respect for borders and control of nuclear weap-
ons, but also on democratization and respect for ethnic minorities (as well as
assumption of international debt obligations of their former countries) (Friedman,
1991; Tagliabue, 1991). It could be argued that these criteria constitute the norms
of contemporary sovereignty. Still, whether or not the capacity to effectively police
territory in a prescribed way constitutes a norm of sovereignty is ambiguous.
Perhaps because they are Europeans in a European-dominated state system, the
East Europeans are held to a different standard than extra.Eumpean states like
Iraq.

Apparently, the most analysts can do is infer the criteria for sovereign recogni·
tion from practices characteristic of different historical eras.
Measwing Sovereignty
Using the criteria developed here, a transition away from sovereignty to something
else (e.g., neo-heteronomy) would require one or some combination of the follow-
ing:
L A change in the authority empowered to recognize sovereignty;

2. The diffusion of meta-political authority to alternative institutions (e.g.,
religious organizations, transnational corporations, international institu-
tions) whose membership would be exclusively non-state actors;
3. The state's loss of its monopoly on coercion; and
4. The deterritorialization of state authority claims.
An assessment of the current status of sovereignty awaits systematic cmpirical

analyses of these aspects of sovereignty. Nevertheless, I seriously doubt that any
changes have occurred to an extent sufficient to say that sovereignty is in danger.
First, the states' recognition power is, if anything, more secure than ever. States
emerging from the breakup of the Soviet empire and Yugoslavia are clearly de--
pendent on other states for diplomatic recognition and admission to international
institutions.
Territorial borders seem, if anything, more secure than ever (James, 1986a).
Despite the proliferation of international organizations and the increasing activism
of the UN, these are institutions built on state sovereignty which is enshrined in
the UN's charter. Multilateral institutions are not above or apart from the state
system; states dominate them. There are no signs that individuals are smtching
their loyalties to some institution other than the state. True, there is some evidence
that Europeans (especially young people) are increasingly identifying themselves
with Europe, but the European Union is hardly a nonstat.e actor.
Collective decision making in interstate organizations such as the League of
Nations, the UN, NATO, and the European Union may well mark a decline in
democratic control over policy making or a homogenization of legal structures but
is not indicative of an erosion of the state's sovercignty. The end of the Cold War
has brought increasing calls for collective intervention in behalf of human rights.
Yet, Great Powers have always violated the nonintervention norm when it was in
their interests to do so, acting collectively when possible (Holy Alliance, UN
Security Council) but unilaterally when necessary. The decision to intervene coer-
cively is taken by states whose aim is not to destroy a sovereign state but to prop
up or depose a particular government.
The monopolization of coercion is more problematic. \Vhile states clearly con-
t.inue 10 monopolize the major, organized coercive forces, there has also heen a
substant.ial growth in private coercive activities. Resides the proliferation of private
230 State Sovereignty in international Relations
security forces, nonstate groups engaged in "illicit" activities have created private
armies formidable in size, organizational sophistication, and weaponry. Nonethe-
less, private armies have always existed so it is not clear that contemporary forms
represent a new or unique challenge to state sovereignty.
Does the contemporary delegation of policing functions to societal actors con-
stitute an erosion of sovereignty, or does it merely reflect the adaptation of sover-
eignty to a new division of policing labor in post-industrial capitalist economies?
The state may retain a monopoly on the use of violence, but that rnay he irrelevant
when control over people and the protection of property are proactive and based

on nonviolent sanctions, especially the denial of access to private property re-
sources such as "recreational and shopping facilities, housing, employment, and
credit" (Shearing and Slenning, 1983:502). International Relations theorists have
always concerned themselves with tlw possihle formation of a supra-state, world
policing body. More attention should be paid to ttw potential devolution of coer-
cive authority to the "private sector."
Conclusion
If nothing else, this article highlights the complexity of sovereignty and suggests
that the quest for empirical measures of sovereignty may well be quixotic. Never-
theless, it docs suggest that in assessing the current status and future prospects of
sovereignly, attention should be (re-)directed to (he issue of rule-making and
enforcement. Ultimately, sovereignty locates and centralizes these authority and
policing functions in a territorially based, bureaucratic structure-the state-but
at the same time disperses them into a multiplicity of juridically equal states.
If my arguments have any merit, then the bottom line is not whether or not
states can pursue autonomous economic, human lights or environmental policies
in an interdependent world, but if and how interdependence (or anything else) is
affecting the states' recognized claim to monopolize the coercive and policing
function upon which their meta-political authority rests.
A transition away from sovereignty to something else (e.g., neo-heteronomy)
would require the deterritorialization of legitimate violence or the dispersal of
legitimate (i.e., recognized) coercive capabilities to nonstate actors. In short, the
state's meta-political authority would be diffused as its (universally recognized claim
to a) monopoly on coercive activity in its territory was broken up and dispersed to
nonstate actors.
The rather spare conclusion of this exercise in thinking through sovereignty is
that empirical research on issues concerning sovereignty should focus on the
organization and use of violence and how that mayor may not be changing.
Although the evidence is not decisive, I am skeptical that state sovereignty has
eroded. In some respects, sovereignty appears to be under effective challenge OJ
increasingly irrelevant; in others, it is clearly on the rise. But this has always been
the case. Just as states crumble or disintegrate into smaller units (Soviet Union)
while others coalesce into larger ones (European Union), sovereignty grows both
weaker and stronger. Rased on anecdotal evidence, I would argue that states
increasingly exercise sovereignty in multilateral, international institutions which
are distanced from societal control. State bargaining with society is bypassed and
legitimated by multilateralism. It is this externally induced, state-led derogation of
democratic control that is commonly mistaken for the erosion of sovereignty and
which merits further systematic, empirical research. "Democratization" of the state
system may not mark the demise of state sovereignty but the demise of its most
effective legitimation.
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International Studies Q}..

tarterly (1995) 39, 213--233

State Sovereignty in International Relations:

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© 1995 Imernational Studies Association.

we can determine whether sovereignty is being eroded, consolidated, or something

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this strategy for operationali.ling sovereignty, I draw on largely anecdotal evidence

Bringing Sovereignty Back into

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between interdependence and sovereignty are confused. Still, theorists of world

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By contrast, sovereignty "differentiates units in terms of juridically mutually exclu-

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The Dimensions of Sovereignty

Recognition. Sovereignty is not an attrihute of the state hut is attributed to the

l~ J am ind(Obted to one of the reviewer" for helping me to clarify this definition.

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society17 opens up the possibility for a distinctive form of interstate cooperation,

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An economic realm of choice distinct from a political realm of coercion is not, as

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at the state's disposal. In a "pacified" society, rules may, in fad, be self-enforcing,

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Coercion. In the Weberian tradition, a monopoly on the major, organized forces

of coercive capabilities from domestic competitors. This monopoly, which was

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Perhaps the most warranted conclusion is that Foucault's (1977) disciplinary

societal actors who challenge this monopoly. The disarming or pacification of

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The Changing Norms of Sovereignty

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L A change in the authority empowered to recognize sovereignty;

An assessment of the current status of sovereignty awaits systematic cmpirical

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