Towards a Critical Constructivist Approach to Sovereignty

Paulo Rigueira University of Bath pr241@bath.ac.uk

December 2, 2009

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International relations theory regularly embraces sovereignty as the primary constitutive rule of international organization. Theoretical traditions that agree on little else all seem to concur that the defining feature of the modern international system is the division of the world into sovereign states. Despite differences over the role of the state in international affairs, most scholars would accept John Ruggie’s definition of sovereignty as “the institutionalization of public authority within mutually exclusive jurisdictional domains” (1998:54). Despite generally agreeing on what it means to be sovereign, there are different ways to assess this concept. The chapter will access the development of this institution associating it with development in International Relations (IR) theory itself. With the end of the inter-paradigmatic debate (Banks 1984), a new axis between positivism and post-positivism emerged in IR literature and theory (Smith and Hollis 1991). This was subsequently redefined and constructivism and rationalism subsequently took the place of the previous mutually exclusive debate (Katzenstein et al 1998). These evolving ways of theorizing about IR also had an impact on the concept of sovereignty. From the classical theoretical distinction between sovereignty as a fact and sovereignty as a norm, (Hinsley 1986, Jackson 1990, Walker 1990) the theoretical debate focuses nowadays on static and social constructed versions of sovereignty (Barkin and Cronin 1994, Biersteker and Weber 1996). The new theoretical divide therefore places at the centre of the discussion debates about versions that view sovereignty essentially as being pre-determined and those that aim to understand sovereignty as socially constructed moving beyond the distinction between fact and norm. In this chapter, static approaches will be divided between those that emphasize sovereignty as a fact and those that emphasize sovereignty as a norm. Social constructed approaches to sovereignty will address how a new version of sovereignty as a norm emerged dividing this discussion along three main constructivist perspectives: conventional (Hopf 1998, Checkel 1998), consistent (Fierke 2006) and radical constructivism (Diez 2001). The chapter will end by locating a particular critical constructivist approach in this debate.

1- Theories of Sovereignty: Static Approaches According to static versions of sovereignty, this concept is merely conceived as the location of supreme power within a particular territorial unit. For an international society to exist at all, members just need to demonstrate internal cohesion. Demonstrated capacity for self-government creates credibility and respect which warrants recognition. Static approaches follow the reasoning that a state can exist because it satisfies certain basic criteria translated by the Montevideo Convention. Static versions can be distinguished between those that emphasize sovereignty as a fact – realism and liberalism – and those that emphasize sovereignty as a norm – English School and normative theory. 1.1- Sovereignty as a Fact The main dividing line between those that understand sovereignty as a fact and those that understand sovereignty as a norm lies in the space for independence given for the

society of states and the rule of law. In order to understand this distinction it is important to have in mind that international law lies at the centre of the creation of International Relations. Different attitudes towards the possibility of government or constitutional order in international relations characterized this sub-discipline. The distinctive characteristic of those that emphasize sovereignty as a fact lies in the view that the creation of a society of states, should derive from the particular interests or demonstration of power by the nation-state. In other words, an international society – if it is to exist – as no independent power of its own. Those that conceive sovereignty as a fact draw on the belief that international law emanates from an act of self-limitation – a case of state willingness to do something or lack of it – and that states have the liberty to withdraw from international regimes if their interest does not provide reasons for compliance. Government effectiveness is a central ground of sovereign statehood.

Realism The state for the realists is the central point of departure in characterizing the essential problem of international relations as that of war and the maintenance of peace, played out against a background of the organized violence of military power and its potential employment. Security and order are thus the principal preoccupations. Despite different categorizations of what realism is (Mearsheimer 2003, Legro and Moravcski 1999), a distinction will be made here between classical realism and neo-realism. For classical realists such as Hans Morgenthau sovereignty is defined in legal terms as “the appearance of a centralized power that exercised its lawmaking and law-enforcing authority within a certain territory” (1968:267). This essential unit of analysis – the sovereign and unitary nation-state – is essentially being conditioned by a diplomatic-strategic environment. More specifically classical realists tend to analyse the exercise of sovereignty in terms of the will to power (Morgenthau 1968). States vary only according to their power capabilities. Power preserves the system, with each state striving to assure its own existence, while simultaneously maintaining the system of states. From this perspective, a sovereign state is an independent actor in exchange, competition and conflict with other states conditioned by a particular dangerous and strategic outside. Hence the emphasis on the distinctive power that each state has to dictate the rules of the world. There is no such thing as an international society independent from the will to power that create permanent security dilemmas in international politics for classical realists. This international sphere is locked in a fight of all against all because human nature is essentially conceived to be bad. Conceiving a part of his chapter dedicated to sovereignty to the potential emancipation of an international society and of international law, Morgenthau analyses law as the power of the weak to impose their will. He, nevertheless, does not dismiss the question of ethics altogether however. This side of Morgenthau’s thought has been explored by current revisions that aim to reconcile his realist framework with an ethical understanding of international politics (Bain ). He dismissed the question by arguing that sovereignty is only incompatible with a strong, effective, and centralized system of international law, a system that did not exist and was difficult to create. If classical realists analyse international politics in terms of the will to power, neo-realists aim to reconceptualise the debate and move from human nature to science (Waltz 1979). Following the traditional classical assumption, they combine population, territory, authority, and recognition – the principal constitutive elements of sovereignty – into a single actor: the sovereign state. Furthermore, Waltz further

developed this notion of sovereign states: these sovereign states are essentially ‘billard-balls’ with no inside crashing against one another on the outside. This static designation for the international system is consolidated by the idea that sovereign states are not only the primary actors but the only actors that characterize and influence this system. What is more substantial is how Waltz associated this view of the only actor in the system with the forces that guide them. Kenneth Waltz more specifically defines sovereignty in terms of his conception of anarchy “To say that a state is sovereign means that it decides for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems” (1979:128). Therefore, neo-realists are concerned with sovereignty principally as it manifests itself as one possible institution for managing anarchy, which is defined as the absence of formal governmental authority in the international system. That is, states are sovereign because there is no overarching governmental authority in the international system. Once the system of sovereign states is established, competition and socialization are said to produce similar units. Power balancing preserves the system, with each state striving to assure its own existence, while simultaneously maintaining the system of states. Sovereignty and its exercise are therefore characterized by the absence of a extra-territorial power that can somehow regulate the relations between actors. Recent work within what can be broadly called neo-realism has been developed to consolidate the idea that international society – and its regimes – can have some influence in the regulation of the behaviour of states (Krasner 1983). This strand of neo-realism therefore acknowledges some power to international society and its rules and, therefore, move beyond the zero-sum logic provided by previous versions of realism. But if moves beyond the rejection of international society altogether, the concession is merely allowing for a conceptualization of international society through power-based terms (Grieco 1988). But this moves as some consequences on the way sovereignty is conceptualized. The work of Stephen Krasner (1991, 1999) and David Lake (2003) aim to move beyond the classical views on sovereignty provided by previous work. In their view, international regimes have an impact on state behaviour and the changing conditions of these regimes influence the way international politics evolves. In other words, international politics changes. With the end of the Cold War a new international regime emerged characterized by a new distribution of power. Sovereignty, as an institution, also changed. Following the traditional reasoning, Waltz concluded that domestic systems are centralized and hierarchic. The parts of international political-systems stand in relations of coordination. Formally, each is the equal of all the others. International systems are decentralized and anarchic (Waltz 1979) But what the recent neo-realist reconsideration take into account is how Waltz himself acknowledged that “all societies are organized segmentally or hierarchically in greater or lesser degree. One might conceive of some societies approaching the purely anarchic, of others approaching the purely hierarchic, and of still others reflecting specified mixes of the two organizational types” (1979:114-115, quoted from Lake 2003:38). This important concession implies that variations in sovereignty and anarchy can, and possibly do, exist within the international system. It is precisely this dimension of reconciliation between anarchy and hierarchy that both Krasner and Lake aim to bring to neo-realist thought on sovereignty. Despite their differences all the above approaches to sovereignty share the view that there is no such thing as an international society that exists independently of the will of the uniform state. Sovereignty is defined differently but in all realist versions it is dependent upon a strategic-diplomatic game that characterized international politics

and that limits the possibilities for the creation of common bounds since actors are constantly and rationally fighting for survival and independence.

Liberalism Liberals also tend to adopt a static view of sovereignty but conceptualize it differently from realists. They furthermore move beyond the mere concern with balances of power and security threaths and focus instead on the issue of transcendence and control – whether sovereign states are being undermined by a stronger international authority structure. For Liberals states are described as unified rational autonomous entities striving to maximize their utility in the face of constraints and opportunities that emanate from an anarchic although interdependent international environment. What distinguishes liberalism – and particularly neoliberal institutionalism (Keohane 1984) – from realism is its different understanding of the characteristic problem for Westphalia states therefore: for neoliberal institutionalism the problem is the resolution of market failures; for realism it is security and distributional conflict. If realists tend to emphasize strategic zero sum games, liberals emphasize welfare and the aspirations of a common life together. Sovereignty is being conditioned by these aspirations but they are driven by rational and unitary actors (Baldwin 1993). Liberals accept the existence of an international society and of the distinctiveness of the institution of sovereignty and its rules in this society. But they tend to conceptualize it as being dependent upon a aprioristic definition of state interests hence conceptualizing sovereignty as a fact. As Robert Keohane concludes “I will argue that sovereign statehood is an institution – a set of persistent and connected rules prescribing behavioural roles, constraining activity, and shaping expectations … We can understand this institution in terms of the rational interests of the elites that run powerful states, in view of the institutional constraints that they face” (1995:65). On the other hand, following the view that internal sovereignty is penetrated and as to give space to the proliferation of individual forces, at the international level “sovereignty is less a territorially defined barrier than a bargaining resource for a politics characterized by complex transnational networks” (Keohane 1995:74). In this sense, under conditions of complex interdependence (Keohane and Nye 1977) or high intensity of economic exchanges (Cooper 1972, Rosecrance 1986, Strange 1996), sovereignty is transformed in the sense that it no longer enables states to exert effective supremacy over what occurs within their territories. The assumption is that there will be a plurality of rule-making structures and institutions that can be described as a ‘polyarchy’ (Rosenau 1990) and that an international community will therefore be formed to alter the form of the nation-state. Institutions at the international level will condition the way sovereignty is conceptualized. An international government will eventually emerge to regulate and create the aspired Kantian dream of peace and commerce. But what still drives these aspirations are unitary sovereign states clashing with a prioristic self-interested definitions of what it means to be a member in international politics. There is no independent power of rules by themselves to constitute the way states relate to one another. Rules are concessions. Rules are nothing outside the will of states pursuit absolute gains in a strategic environment of competition with each another (Powell 1993). 1.2- Moving Beyond Sovereignty as a Fact:

Sovereignty as a Norm In addressing the classical distinction between sovereignty as a fact and sovereignty as a norm RBJ Walker succinctly concludes that “[A]t one extreme, one can argue that the states mechanisms respond to the assertions of autonomous states, as with attempts to apply mechanistic or utilitarian metaphors to international relations and with positivistic conceptions of international law. At the other extreme, one can suggest that states system constitutes a kind of society to which states are somehow obligated, so that the principle of sovereignty is understood to be compatible with emerging norms of international law” (1990:217). Those that conceive sovereignty as a norm depart from the assumption that a society of states has independent power to rule. This means that it is more than an expression of power or self-interest. Sovereignty is viewed here as a social status that enables states as participants within a community of mutual recognition. From this perspective, a focus on the state misleads when it treats political actors as natural or exogenous, while directing attention away from the larger community. While the world appears to be comprised of separate, discrete and ‘self-generating’ states, as reflected in the formal position that sovereignty comes from within, beyond this appearance is a tissue of shared perceptions and indeed it is only on this basis that the social institution of statehood and sovereignty can arise and be stabilized. Thus, the international society of states should be seen, not as mechanism for upholding rights that are anterior and the rights which accompany it are forged. States reciprocally constitute one another’ through mutual recognition and by subjecting themselves to a common norm of state sovereignty and non-intervention. 1.2.1- Sovereignty as a Norm As was emphasized above, against those that just observe sovereignty as government efficiency, sovereignty conceived as a norm departs from the assumption that the very foundation of the nation-state system – its diplomatic procedures, treaties, international laws, wars, and all other institutions that provide for communication and interaction among states – rests on the mutual recognition among government leaders that they each represent a specific society within an exclusive jurisdictional domain. Diplomatic recognition and legitimation are prerequisites for participation in the system as a full member. Following Robert Jackson, sovereignty as a norm can be conceived as a “game” (Jackson 1990). Departing from the assumption that sovereignty is essentially a legal order defined by rules, Jackson characterizes this game as being a rule-articulated political order constituted and regulated by rules. In his words “Constitutive rules define the game: number of players, size and shape of playing field, time of play, prohibited actions, and so on. Instrumental rules, on the other hand, are precepts, maxims, stratagems, and tactics which are derived from experience and contribute to winning play. They are prudential or opportunistic considerations put into practice by players or teams” (Jackson 1990:20). The classical sovereign game is constituted by various practices, laws, customs, conventions, and prescriptions which promote international civility and are generally acknowledged by sovereign states. Traditional public international law belongs to the constitutive part of the game in that it is significantly concerned with moderating and civilizing the relations of independent governments. Diplomacy also belongs insofar as it aims at reconciling and harmonising divergent national interests through international

dialogue. On the other hand, foreign policy is among the major instruments used by statesmen in playing the sovereign game: that is, pursuing their interests. Two positions emerge in the debate of sovereignty as norm: English School and Normative Theory on the one hand, and Marxism/Dependency Theory on the other. The differences deal with how far one can say that international law regulates the relations of states. If both versions assume that sovereign states should not be conceived as self-standing realities but, instead, by an international community same conclude that the world is a framework of jurisdictions defined according to common principles of international law and others that these common principles are of limited extension. The next section will start with the latter.

English School/Normative Theory English School and Normative Theory take into consideration the fact that states operate in a shared context of rules. Sovereign governments are therefore not only recognized as international legal persons but the above theories claim that international relations should be conceived as a society consisting of independent governments under common rules which apply equally and impartially to all. Sovereignty is seen as an historical constitutional arrangement of political life. A sovereign state is a territorial jurisdiction: i.e., the territorial limits within which state authority may be exercised on an exclusive basis. Sovereignty is a legal institution that authenticates a political order based on independent states whose governments are the principle authorities both domestically and internationally. In sum, sovereignty entails constitutional independence (James 1986, 1999). If these theories converge on the accessment of the basic constitutive elements of sovereignty as, on the one hand, being a juridical institution rooted in constitutional independence the main dividing line within them emerges on how to conceptualize the impact that an evolving international order has upon sovereignty. Departing from the assumption that sovereignty is a norm and, therefore, concluding that an evolving international legal order has an impact on the way states relate to one another, the question becomes on how to access the impact of an evolving order. Here two distinctions are normally raised in the literature: that between those who aspire to maintain order on international society – the pluralists – and those that aspire to recreate conditions for a more just international society – the solidarists. This debate goes to the heart of how to conceptualize the international legal order. On the one hand there are those who conclude that a societas of sovereign states is based on the value of co-existence (Jackson 1999). Sovereignty according to this perspective gives expression to the value of international legal equality i.e., equal status between independent states. The societas of states underwrites the value of political freedom on an international scale. Sovereignty is an institutional expression of the freedom of groups politically organized as states. The core values of sovereignty are therefore: international order among states, co-existence of political systems; legal equality of states; political freedom of states; and pluralism or respect for diversity of ways of life of different groups of people around the world. Sovereignty and the societas of states provides that connecting juridical framework. It is a norm that prohibits one state from acting authoritatively within another state (James 1999, Jackson 1999). In a recent rearticulation of this idea, Robert Jackson traces the development of the “Idea of Sovereignty” (Jackson 2005). After describing the historical development of the institution, he concludes succintly concludes “[T]he

institutional arrangements have changed over time but the core notion of sovereignty as political independence as remained the same” (Jackson 2005:241). On the other hand, there are those who understanding the changes in international legal order differently. For solidarists, sovereignty is more than just the right to be independent founded on the core idea of non-intervention. The conceptualization of sovereignty is in this case approaching the spectrum aspired by the natural law writers. States have some sense of common interest and communitarian aspirations and sovereignty represents an attempt to acquired and re-define international society in the process of aiming to acquire them (Taylor 1999). In the present era, this is represented by the clash between norms of non-intervention and the new humanitarian agenda that aims to condition the way sovereignty is perceived (Mayall 1991, 2007).

2- Reconceptualizing Sovereignty as a Norm: The Social Construction of Sovereignty In order to understand the macro processes that characterize socially constructed versions of sovereignty there is a need to start by addressing constructivism itself and its nature within IR literature. Constructivism emerged after the 1990s as the main contender to suppress the dominance of realism in IR theory. The literature at the time was mainly characterized by the dispute between realists, liberals and marxists (Little and Smith 1991) and was mainly focused on issues of hard politics due to the state of international relations at the time (Doyle 1997). With the emergence of constructivism a theoretical axis emerged in IR theory between positivists and post-positivists (Waever 1996). This Third Debate (Lapid 1989) was subsequently reconceptualized as constructivism came to be recognized with itsa social scientific research logic (Jorgensen and Fierke 2001; Jorgensen et al. 1999). But, overall, constructivists share the critique made towards the positivist camp. All post-positivists claim that mainstream international relations theorists are locked into a problematic way of understanding theory and reality which inhibits their ability or even desire to widen or change their existing agendas for international relations theory. In short, paradigms such as realism, pluralism and structuralism/globalism are ontologically and ideologically committed to seeing a particular picture of the international, as a result of which they are also theoretically and epistemologically constrained. In fact it is their theoretical and epistemological limitations which fundamentally structure what they see and think of as important in international relations. Briefly put, the simple structures they describe in IR are no more than reflections of simple theoretical structures in their heads (George 1994; Neufield 1994). Thinking in terms of what ideationally constitutes IR becomes important. This theoretical turn implied re-conceptualizing sovereignty and, for some, the two ideas came connected: in order to give predominance to intersubjectivity in IR, a critique towards its foundational institutions should be developed (Walker 1989, 1990). In a sense, social constructed versions of sovereignty share some of the assumptions of those who conceptualize sovereignty as a norm (Philpott 2001, Strang 1991). The main difference is how to interpret the role of recognition in the society of states. As David Strang concludes, having a more socially constructed reading on the relation between declaratory and constitutive theory, “A declaratory theory holds that states exist independent of recognition and that recognition signals that other states have become aware of a new state (formal device); a constitutive theory holds that

states have no standing in the absence of recognition, which can be said to construct them as international persons” (1996:189, text added). Along with those that perceive sovereignty as a norm, constructivist also place an important role for recognition and the social power that this process implies – the respect for certain common interests and rules of conduct. Therefore, social constructed versions of sovereignty also assume the existence of a society of states and the importance of it, However, they move beyond the merely legalistic and formal device assumed by static versions (James 1999) and instead conceptualize sovereignty as an institution made up of intersubjective meanings. Rights are not intrinsic, naturally given attributes; they are conferred upon actors through a process of social recognition that constitutes particular kinds of identities. In other words, constructivists share the assumption that the very foundation of the nation-state system – its diplomatic procedures, treaties, international laws, wars, and all other institutions that provide for communication and interaction among states – rests on the mutual recognition among government leaders that they each represent a specific society within an exclusive jurisdictional domain. Diplomatic recognition and legitimation are prerequisites for participation in the system as a full member. However the type of legitimacy is essentially a political rather than a legal or moral function. It is what international society ideationally recognizes it is and not the granting of sovereignty due to a formal procedure. To study the social construction of sovereignty is to study these intersubjective meanings. More profoundly, social construction versions of sovereignty provide a more general critique of theories of sovereignty. Here the distinction between static and socially construction version can be more broadly built (Biersteker and Weber 1996, Barkin and Cronin 1994). It is hence that social construction not only aims to reconceptualise particular views of already existent theories that share the idea that sovereignty should be seen as a norm, but also to draw a more broader distinction between static and socially constructed. One can therefore conclude that those that analyse sovereignty as a norm do not do so fully because they tend to unite the view of the state with that of sovereignty. Hence the idea put forward for all those that work from a constructivist perspective that states need to be separated from sovereignty (Biersteker and Weber 1996). Static conceptions of sovereignty - the bulk of the international relations literature – do not account for any variation in the legitimation of sovereignty. It is often not appreciated fully that sovereignty is a social construct, and like all social institutions its location is subject to changing interpretations. There is no timeless principle of sovereignty. What characterizes all the static versions of sovereignty is their view of sovereignty constructed outside interaction. These versions depart from the assumption that there is a link between state and sovereignty. Conventionally, national politics was the realm of hierarchical structures, whereas, in the international arena, anarchy rules. Sovereignty, according to static versions, is what links the international arena to the domestic by combining independence from outside interference (external sovereignty) with authority over jurisdiction (internal sovereignty). In terms of domestic versus foreign politics, this means that the former is organized through supremacy of the government (hierarchy), whereas the latter is based on formal equality among governments (a lack of supremacy – anarchy). The modern state system can hence be conceived as having a double significance: fostering a distinction between domestic and international politics, on the one hand, while providing the exclusive terms of reference to bridge the divide on the other (Carporaso 1996, Bartelson 1995). As such, from Westphalia world politics is seen as being based on the doctrine of jurisdictional

exclusivity. And this institution of sovereignty simultaneously provides the parameters for interaction between independent states. By separating state from sovereignty, socially constructed versions of sovereignty aim to assess how the meaning of sovereignty is negotiated out of interactions within intersubjectively identifiable communities; and the variety of ways in which practices construct, the state and sovereignty. Constructivists understand sovereignty to be an international institution of mutual recognition of governmental authority over a particular territory or territories. Sovereignty is not an analytic assumption but reflects instead intersubjective shared understandings about territoriality, autonomy, and recognition. If this set of ideas unites all socially constructed versions of sovereignty, there is a debate going on within different versions of constructivism on how to read this process of social construction and recognition. Two main debates should be emphasized: a macro debate and a micro debate. Within the macro debate two issues are raised: first, the debate of whether social interaction exists prior or in process. This will lead to discussions of whether we can fully overcome the distinction between an inside and an outside and, therefore, think about a world not just of sovereign states but instead opening the possibility for the existence of different layers of authority; secondly, whether sovereignty itself should be considered a constitutive institution of international society defining rules for membership or whether these are just a result of demonstration of argumentative power. On the other hand, the micro debate is concerned with the nature and emergence the intersubjective meanings. In other words, whereas the macro-debate emphasizes broader meta-theoretical discussions as they refer to different conceptions of sovereignty, the micro-debate aims to address processes of institutionalization and socialization. Three versions of constructivism will be distinguished: conventional, consistent and radical. 2.1- Sovereignty, Constructivism and Intersubjectivity: Macro Processes In the analyses of the macro-processes that characterized many varieties of constructivist work on sovereignty, it is necessary to stress that constructivism can be seen as an inteplay between two core concepts – culture and identity – upon which other three relevant ideas rest – interests, identities and institutions. It is therefore important to stress that issues of sovereignty as a concept deal directly with questions of the interplay between interests, identity and collective identity formation. As was emphasized above, through a constructivist perspective we cannot just exclude thinking about identities without thinking about the culture environment that surrounds these identities in the first place. But sovereignty deals mainly with identity issues. Therefore, we can conclude that the institution of sovereignty is dependent upon some intersubjective meanings that define who can count as a member of international society. These intersubjective meanings differ from a particular historical stage to another but they are all produced and reproduced by state actors recognizing each other as sovereign, and to that extent they exists only by virtue of social process. This reflects a mechanism of appraisals at work. Actors learn to see themselves and thereby acquire social identities as a function of how others treat them rooted as this process is in broader ideational structures. They then engage in practices of mutual recognition designed to confirm their identities since it is through these that they give meaning to their existence and define who they are. This interaction – and formation of distinct identities – will in turn generate actors’s interests. How this is

particularly understood by conventional, consistent and radical constructivists will be analysed next.

Conventional Constructivists Following constructivism assumptions, the institution of sovereignty is conceived to be produced and reproduced by state actors recognizing each other as sovereign, and to that extent it exists only by virtue of social process. Conventional constructivist theories (Checkel 2006, Hopf 1998) provide a particular understanding of this process. More particularly the work of Alexander Wendt will be analysed here as an example of this theory. Wendt dedicated a number of works to the issue of state sovereignty and its conceptualization (Wendt 1994, Wendt and Friedheim 1996, Wendt and Barnett 1994). In the work developed with Daniel Friedheim (1996) and Barnett (1994) Wendt explores the nature of what underpins the construction of contemporary sovereign states. This emphasizes how sovereignty is being socially constructed by a particular institutional framework of meanings. More particularly, sovereignty seems to be dominated by two games of sovereignty – one that characterized the conflict between Great Powers “rooted in anarchical competititon between relatively equal states possessing domestic legitimacy, which meant that militarization could be understood primarily in terms of the political realist focus on security dillemmas and action-reaction dynamics” (Wendt and Barnett 1994); and another between the dominant Great Power of our time – the United States – and the Third World characterized by weak regimes that are dependent on the world economy that lead to capital-intensive militarization (Wendt and Barnett 1994). The predominance of the last regime is creating structures of informal empire throughout the world making a world state (Wendt 2005). If these issues were already stressed in the first chapter, this chapter is more concerned with how sovereignty is being conceptualized in this process. Wendt attempt is to create a social theory of international politics (Went 1999) and in this process he is mainly interested in the formation of different intersubjective cultures and the collective processes that lead to them. According to Wendt it is the intersubjective, rather than the material aspect of structures which influences behaviour. Intersubjective structures are constituted by collective meanings. Actors acquire identities, which Wendt defines as “relatively stable, role-specific understandings and expectations about self”, by participating in collective meanings. Identity is “a property of international actors that generates motivational and behavioral dispositions”. Thus identities are significant because they provide the basis for interests. Interests, in turn, develop in the process of defining situations. Identities are the basis for interests and therefore more fundamental. Wendt discusses how different kinds of anarchy are constructed in interaction between states. What kind of anarchy prevails depends, according to his argument, on what kind of conceptions of security actors have, on how they construe their identity in relation to others. Notions of security differ ‘in the extent to which and the manner in which the self is identified cognitively with the other, and ... it is upon this cognitive variation that the meaning of anarchy and the distribution of power depends”. Accordingly, positive identification with other states will lead to perceiving security threats not as a private matter for each state but as a responsibility to all. If the collective self is well developed, security practices will be to some degree altruistic or prosocial. Wendt therefore discusses whether which conditions identities are more collective or more

egoistic (Wendt 1994; Wendt 1999:336-69). Depending on where state fall on the continuum from positive to negative identification with other states, they will be more or less willing to engage in collective security practices. Crucially, conceptions of self and other, and consequently security interests, develop only in interaction. Therefore identity is the key to the development of different security environments and cultures of anarchy. If Wendt is mainly concerned with cultures of international politics, his conception of identity conditions the development of his argument. The key question to understand how Wendt conceptualizes state sovereignty becomes his view on how identities are constructed. Two concepts are important to retain in Wendt’s conceptualization of state sovereignty: corporate identity and social identity. According to Wendt, sovereignty only deals with what is denominated as social identity. Corporate identity is only part of the state's overall identity. Social identity is defined as “sets of meanings that an actor attributes to itself while taking the perspective of others, that is, as a social object” (Wendt 1994:356). Wendt argues that conceptions of self and other come out of interaction between states. State actors, which always have an international legal order, the claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of organized violence, sovereignty, a society and territory (Wendt 1999:202-14), exist prior to interaction. Independent of social context, states have four ‘national interests’ – to preserve and further they physical security, autonomy, economic well-being and collective self-esteem. On the other hand, social identity is defined as “sets of meanings that an actor attributes to itself while taking the perspective of others, that is, as a social object” (1994: ). A states's social identity is what is being produced through interaction with other states. Collective identity formation is conceptualized by Wendt as developing from a strict division between a corporate and a social identity. According to conventional constructivism, neither the corporate identities of states nor the interests derived from them are either altered or defined through interaction. Corporate identity is exogenous to international politics. It represents only one aspect of a state’s identity. It is the ‘site’ or ‘platform’ for other identities (Wendt 1999:225). In Social Theory Wendt distinguishes three other such identities – types, role, and collective. What is important to the argument is the distinction between one pre-given corporate identity and other aspects of identity, made through the process of relating to other actors, which can take multiple forms simultaneously within the same actor. Briefly, the process whereby a state defines its interests and goes about satisfying them depends partially on its notion of self in relation to others, that is, social identities or roles. Actors have several social identities but only one corporate identity. Social identities can exist only in relation to others and thus provide a crucial connection for the mutually constitutive relationship between agents and structures. As Wendt concludes when defining social identity “[I]n contrast to the singular quality of corporate identity ... social identities have both individual and social structural properties, being at once cognitive schemas that enable an actor to determine ‘who I am/we are’ in a situation and positions in a social role structure of shared understandings and expectations” (1994: emphasis added). Being both individual and structures, social identities define the terms of what it means to be a sovereignty state in world politics. There is another dimension to Wendt’s conceptualization of social identity that needs to be stresses. For Wendt, identities and interests are not only created in such interactions, they are also sustained that way (Wendt 1999:331). Through repeated interactive processes stable identities and expectations about each other are developed. Thereby actors create and maintain social structures (Wendt 1992:405)

which subsequently constrain choices. One structure of identity and interests have been created they are not easy to transform because the social system becomes an objective social fact to the actors. Actors may have a stake in maintaining stable identities, due to external factors such as the incentives induced by established institutions and internal constraints such as commitment to established identities. In Social Theory Wendt speaks of the logic of the self-fulfilling prophecy which sustains identities and interests created in interaction. More specifically, Wendt creates a weak constructivism through his use of symbolic interactionism and the distinction developed between the ‘I’ and the ‘we’. The pre-social nature of state corporate identity is particularly evident in Wendt's involved discussion of states in the state of nature before their first encounter and the exchange between the ideal agents ego and alter encountering each other for the first time. Ego and alter exist prior to interaction with a particular corporate identity (Wendt 1992). Furthermore, Ego presents alter with a new identity which alter either takes or refuses. There is no contestation over the process of acquiring the identity and in the terms of social relationship. This understanding of state sovereignty is furthermore consolidated by an opaque view of the state itself. Identity change is merely about shifting from one relative stable identity to another. States are unitary actors with minds, desires and intentions. Wendt’s therefore conceptualizes the state with typical and static Weberian unitary assumptions as the absolute monopoly over violence. In arguing that the identities of states cannot be considered independently of context, Wendt points out that there is no agency independent of socialization; anarchy cannot presuppose actors that somehow exist prior to the system. The interactions on world politics only exist between state actors. Wendt asks us to assume two actors, ego and alter, who then come to interact only after we have imagined them on their own. This starting point, he tell us, is an ‘interactionist convention (1999:328). Analogously, we have to imagine states as prior to and independent from social context in order to follow his argument. The exclusion of the process of the construction of the state as a bearer of identity and of domestic processes of articulation of state identity are part of the problem. This reduces identity to something negotiable between states. It is not surprising, that Wendt is mainly concerned with the boundaries rather than the content of theories about the self. Wendt addresses identity as the question of who is considered part of the self. If other states are considered part of the notion of self, in other words, if the boundary of the self gets pushed outward beyond the boundary of the state, Wendt argue that there exists a collective rather than egoistic notion of identity Wendt’s argument therefore, despite bringing the possibility to conceptualize sovereignty ideationally, does not move beyond static assumptions. For Wendt states are opaque and have pre-determined interests. It is precisely the attempt to open interaction to agency that consistent and radical constructivist approaches bring to the debate.

Consistent Constructivists Consistent constructivists (Fierke 2006) stress how analysis should not be wedded to existing legal structures or political organizations as ‘units of analysis’ per se. Rather they focus on human practice, the contingency of practice and the mutual relationship between agents and structures. The international system is understood as an interacting collection of human-made institutions. Institutions are settled or routinised

practices constituted and regulated by norms (Kratochwil 1988). Departing from this assumption, sovereignty is conceptualized as an institution whose existence is dependent upon the reproduction of particular sets of human-based practices. Consistent constructivists hence re-conceptualize the interplay between institutions, identities and interests in a way that brings agency back into play. For consistent constructivism, cultures play a constitutive role in determining the nature of world politics. Cultures structure the nature of politics by determining what an appropriate action is in a certain moment and what particular kinds of actors are suppose to do in a particular situation (Lapid 1996). However, this process is not conceptualized as if actors acquire a particular identity by structurally assimilating the roles implied in social structures. Instead, this process is contested. Culture assimilation derive from a number of practices involved in the processes of identity and collective identity construction. To view international politics as distinct from domestic politics, and thus to argue for an autonomous discipline, is based on mistaking the historically brief period of the balance of power for a paradigm of international politics in overcomed by consistent constructivists (Kratochwil 1993, Kratochwil and Lapid 1996). Cultures – and patterns of interaction on the system level – result from various domains of institutionalization. As Kratochwil develops “One, there is the issue of the individual’s link to relevant others, including co-patriots. This is the realm of self-identification and membership in a community. Two, there is the problem of allocating rights and duties, and thus delineating the status of the individual within that community, as well as the circumstances in which public concerns can override individual interests… The third domain concerns the autonomy of certain spheres which become organized as separate systems of action” (Kratochwil 1993:24). Therefore, for consistent constructivists, actors are not suppose to interact with pre-determined interests in a process where only their social identity is changed with a pre-determined culture that conditions the process of interaction itself. In other words, social interaction does not function in a zero-sum game of role acquisition or rejection and punishment. Instead, institutions are essentially human-made practices developed and produced by different practices and by different actors and based on a process of mutual acceptance and dialogue (Onuf 1989, Kratochwil 1989, Fierke 1998). This has implications for how to understand state sovereignty. Starting with institutions, for consistent constructivists sovereignty still has the function to serve as the mechanism upon which rules of diplomacy and international law serve as regulators of interactions and the creation of membership in a society of states. This approach agrees with conventional versions therefore and the idea that there is a core meaning of sovereignty that regulates the society of states. Sovereignty should be seen as a ‘constitutive principle’ and its regimes should be analysed in themselves and by the values they promote. Human subjectivity assumes various forms, but it cannot just take any form at any given moment – it is socially determined. Illuminating these historical social determinations should open up the way for the particular understanding consistent constructivists produce of sovereignty and, therefore, should open the way for the manner in which agency exists (Onuf 1991). Hence, the idea promoted by conventional constructivists – and the Wendtian theory –that sovereign states are being socialized to an evolving understanding of what it means to be member of international society. What changes is the way in which collective identity formation and the relationship between identities and these intersubjective meanings are conceptualized. The strict border between an inside and an outside developed by Wendt and all the static versions is questioned by consistent constructivists. This means that they admit

changes in the scope of application of state sovereignty and in the range of activities allowed within its domain. The state is not an opaque entity and, therefore, states are permanently reconstituting one another in the interaction process. As Rey Koslowski concludes “Not simply a legal entity or formal organization, the constitution of state soveriegnty is an assemble of normatively constituted practices by which a group of individuals forms a special type of political association. This political association is perpetuated by reproduction of the constituent individuals into successive generations of members of the association as well as by the reproduction of the normatively constituted practices of individual members” (Koslowski 1999:566). If one understands both the international system and the state sovereignty in terms of the reproduction of a given set of normatively constituted practices, international and domestic politics are not hermetically sealed within their own spheres. Political practice is divided into these two realms only by the historical fact of the state as the institutional set-up that organizes politics. Therefore, politics need not be understood as only taking place either inside or outside of the state and world politics encompasses more than the interactions between states. With regards to the first debate – that of whether state sovereignty is to be conceptualized as unity or fragmented – thereofore, consistent constructivists adopt the later perspective. In a analysis of consistent constructivist posture both towards sovereignty as an institution and the place of sovereignty in international society, Rey Koslowski succinctly concludes “the mutual recognition of those boundaries through the conventions of sovereignty and the institutionalization of boundaries through the reproduction of practices of societies constitute sovereign states, whose diplomacy and foreign policy actions are recognized as legitimate ‘statecraft’ by the rest of international society” (1999:567). In bringing the reconceptualization of the domestic space beyond the opaque view of the state promoted by conventional constructivists and in particular by Wendt, consistent constructivists move the debate in interesting dimensions. State sovereignty should not be seen as the clash between opaque states ruled by the structural power of a dominant culture. Instead, multiple actors contribute to the production of a sovereign state as they contribute to the constitution of international society itself. This thesis will adopt their critique but, as will be seen bellow, modifying not this macro-argument but, instead, the micro-foundations upon which it can rest and how it was theorized in the past.

Radical Constructivism A distinction is normally made between radical versions of constructivism and post-structuralism. This distinction is mainly rooted in the committment to social scientific research developed by radical constructivists (Diez 1999) against a radicalization of the theoretical work in IR between an extreme version of explanation and an extreme version of understanding (Smith 1999, Smith and Hollis 1989). In their commitment to the social construction of reality project, radical constructivists have a particular understanding of the interaction between interests, identities and institutions. For radical constructivists, identities are essentially narratives. As Erik Ringmar has put it, narrative conceptions focus on the ways in which identities are constructed, maintained, and transformed through the telling of ‘constitutive stories’ (Ringmar 1996). These narratives provide a context of meaning within which an actor’s identity, the situation within which they are located, and the actions deemed reasonable or appropriate to both, are joined together within a coherent whole. Second, narratives of

identity are by no means merely private constructions, In other words, as Michael Williams et al. conclude “it is not enough merely to claim an identity: for that identity to have a degree of internal stability (not being subject constantly to challenge) and for it to have a degree of social effectiveness (enabling the actor to act socially in accordance with the identity), the identity itself must be acknowledged as legitimate by others, and the adoption of the identity by a particular actor must be recognised by other actors” (2000:363). Thirdly, if on the one hand, the self-perceived identity of the actors is central to their understanding of what is appropriate action in a given situation and, on the other, the logic of appropriateness is intrinsically social and relational – what counts as appropriate action is determined in the context of a social structure within which the actor is located and on the judgement of others –; a particular kind of action is viewed as appropriate for a given kind of actor in a specific situation. Following other versions of constructivism in their understanding of culure, for radical constructivists to be recognized as a certain kind of actor is to adhere to recognised behaviour deemed appropriate to the situation, and thus to be a legitimate actor within it. However, this approach stresses the structures of power that underpin this socialization process. The linking of certain kinds of identity to specific set of roles and its analogous forms of action is a fundamental structure of social power. More particularly it is stressed how different actors with different identities possess unequal capacities to engage in these struggles and to influence the structures of social knowledge through which practices are articulated. A central element in this process is the way in which organizations provide a locus for the accreditation of authoritative identities and for the articulation of claims (Neumann 1996; 1999). Following from the reasoning that state sovereignty questions deal essentially with the interplay between identities and collective identity formation, radical constructivists developed work stressing how this can be more precisely accessed. Against consistent constructivists, radical versions however analyse state sovereignty as a concept without foundations (Walker 1989, 1990, Bartelson 1995). Sovereignty and recognition are always dependent on power and the analysis of the language behind it. In other words, departing from a linguistic meta-theoretical understanding of the relation between agent and structure (Doty 1997), radical constructivists analyse sovereignty as permeable constantly subjected to the mobile effects of practice. In an essay that would serve as a guide for future work, Richard Ashley (1988) developed the main guiding lines for radical constructivists. According to him, the anarchic problematique was essentially a discourse and one should read it with an eye on two questions “First, I want to ask how it works, how it gains significance in our culture, how it comes to be recognized as a powerful representation. Second, I want to ask how this discourse has exposed its own rhetorical strategies and undermined the very foundations of the perspective it asserts, thereby opening up potentially productive avenues of inquiry closed off by it” (1988: ). What underpins the analysis is the development of a non-foundational approach to sovereignty in both the dimension of what it means as an ideational institution and, on the other hand, its operative functions with regards to identity formation. Therefore, on the one hand, sovereignty is seen as an ideal descriptive of modern political authority relations that most probably will never take practical political form. It’s volatile, unstable, dependent. As Roxanne Doty concludes “[S]cepticism must be brought to the possibility of speaking of sovereignty and statehood without imposing an answer onto the question of state sovereignty” (1996:27). For radical constructivists, the cultures of anarchy that contribute to make sovereignty a socially constructed process therefore are cannot be conceptualized as an end in themselves. In

other words, whereas other versions of constructivism view the process of state formation in itself as the emergence of a society of states and, more particularly, as the development of certain notions of what being modern means that find expression in particular sovereignty normative structures, radical constructivists adopt a non-foundational perspective on these matters. There is never an international society and a project of modernization independent from structures of power hence, there are never foundations to think about the system of states. What this means in more practical terms is that there are no common narratives that can guide a certain process of modernization – in the contemporary sovereignty normative structure represented by the Kantian strategy of democratization – that can be independent by themselves and have a value in itself. The question for radical constructivism becomes not one of having different views on how this Kantian project is being promoted and, therefore, promote different versions of the project, but, instead, stress its oppressive origins rooted as they are in discourses of domination and power. In her work on the historical development of sovereignty, Cynthia Weber illustrates this position. On the other hand, radical constructivists share with consistent constructivists the view of the development of the state system is one that aims to redefine the state in a manner able to incorporate multiple scales. In other words, the boundaries between an inside and an outside should be questioned. But whereas consistent constructivists aim to reconstruct the nature of sovereignty and hence aim to incorporate the critique towards statist version with an eye in theory construction, radical constructivists mainly aim to stress how hegemonic conceptions of sovereignty led to oppression of voices at the national level. As RJB Walker concludes “We may aspire to be a good citizen and an exemplary expression of the species. Alternatively, we may resist claims about species that are issued as the conceits of hegemonic powers by privileging the particular struggles of national citizenship or liberation. ... Dislodged from the Great Chain of Being and pitched into the empty spaces of modernity, we claim autonomy and identity as particulars – individuals and nations – ever in search of reconciliation with the universal, or even resigned to the unhappy condition in which reconciliation is known to be impossible.” (1990: ). Summing up radical constructivist assumptions, Cynthia Weber concludes “Not only must boundaries, competencies, and legitimacies of states be regarded as permeable, mobile effects of practice and sovereignty as an ideal descriptive of modern political authority relations that most probably will never take practical political form, but also a scepticism must be brought to the possibility of speaking of sovereignty and statehood without imposing an answer onto the question of state sovereignty” (1995:29). The non-foundational assumptions of radical constructivists should therefore be seen as its worst weakness. When everything is a ‘random succession of events’ we are unable to isolate any key moment, and to delineate the form that human agency takes in a particular time and place. Why, for example, is sovereignty a definitive form of collective subjectivity in modernity? Because, it is the form politics takes under the specific historical conditions of capitalism. Human subjectivity assumes various forms, but it cannot just take any form at any given moment – it is socially determined (Onuf 1989). Illuminating these social determinations should open up the ways in which agency exists, is limited by existing forms, and can potentially transcend these contraints through politics. Post-structuralist theories cannot, therefore, grasp subjectivity, because subjectivity emerges consciously, and not randomly, in response to concrete historical circumstances. The theory of sovereignty as the basis for international politics is grounded in real historical experience: the modern state

system developed as political communities actively pressed their own claims, from revolutionary France right through the struggle of colonized peoples for national liberation, who forcibly proved their colonial overlords what they had been insistently denied, namely a political existence as collective subjects. In this sense, the right of self-determination and the sovereign rights of independence are therefore the legal registration of a political fact. This fact of sovereignty exists not in the sense of a timeless given, but as a historical product, emerging through specific struggles. But it is no less real for being historical. We need no further than the transformation of states system through decolonization to see that sovereignty really is a constitutive factor of international politics. 2.2- Sovereignty, Constructivism and Intersubjectivity: Micro Processes If the macro-distinction leads this piece to emphasize the nature of social interaction, the micro-distinction aims to address how different versions of constructivism address the nature of these intersubjective meanings. In other words, the micro-foundations that allow for particular identities to be constructed. They therefore aim to understand more particularly how processes of institutionalization take place. As Daniel Philpott argues, there has not been a huge dedication in work on sovereignty to address the micro processes that underpin broader discussion on the social construction of sovereignty. In his words, referring to constructivist work, Philpott argues “though they recognize the importance of sovereignty as a constitutive norm, typically treat it as a determinant and context, not a product, of state identities and behaviour” (2001:27). This section will address how particular works assess the development of sovereignty with an eye on this dimension of how to conceptualize its social micro-processes. Weak constructivists propose mainly two forms on how to analyse the micro-dynamics of social construction rooted in both a logic of appropriateness (Wiener 2006). Tanja Aalberts (1995) adopts a top-down approach to reading this process whereas Daniel Philpot (2001) and Michael Barnett (1996) prefer to understand the social construction process has deriving from a bottom-up perspective. The difference between these two views is whether to understand norms as being the result of a process of social learning at a particular organizational level (Checkel 2001) or, instead, as resulting from particular conceptions of identities that – in gaining social power within the leading structure of the state and thus creating ‘roles’ – emerge as the main ‘cognitive scripts’ upon which statesmen draw their future decisions. In either of these versions the state is conceived as being an opaque entity. Rooted in structural conceptions of sociological institutionalism (), the creation of ‘roles’ implies a structural fixation of meaning. Against this view, both radical constructivists and consistent constructivists aim to bring agency back in. Following a similar crique as radical constructivists but aiming to maintain some foundations, consistent constructivists share the assumption that one cannot see the state and the nature of recognition derived strictly from the clash of opaque entities. As Nicholas Onuf concludes, “[I]n principle the state is the land, its people, and a regime of laws. In practice the state is indistinguishable from the agents authorized to act for the state, and respect invested in the state as sovereign falls to its chief agents. They give life to the state even as they become larger than life themselves” (Onuf

1995:49). The version of consistent constructivists stressed here is the one developed by Onuf and Kurt Burch (1998). They use a particular view of conceptual history to give content to a consistent constructivist approach. The idea is that as Burch emphasizes “Property was a central element – a constitutive principle – around which actors organized their worldviews” and, more particularly “I investigate how legal thinkers, policymakers, bankers, and financiers more than three hundred years ago used changing conceptions of property rights and consequent property rule to help construct a novel, modern world and worldview” (1998:23). This view is therefore different from a static version or from a weak constructivist version. These later approaches “Dealing as they do with ensembles of concepts, they search for general statements, or theories, that fix meaning for the ensemble until the next such statement is forthcoming” (Onuf 1991:276). Sovereignty is conceived as volatile, constructed by many actors but still considered a ‘constitutive principle’. This is lost in the version proposed by radical constructivists. For radical constructivists it is not possible to talk about the state as an ontological being – as a political identity – without engaging in the political practice of constituting the state. Put differently, to speak of the sovereign state at all requires to engage in the political practice of stabilizing this concept’s meaning. The work of Cynthia Weber (1995) addresses more particularly a way of how to understand this fixation of meaning. For Weber “sovereignty marks not the location of the foundational entity of international relations theory but a site of political struggle. This struggle is the struggle to fix the meaning of sovereignty in such a way as to constitute a particular state – to write the state – with particular boundaries, competencies and legitimacies available to it” (1995:22). More particularly, emphasizing the micro-processes that lead to the stabilization of meaning, Weber emphasizes how there is the need to have a view of what the link between the state and the society is. The first meaning of representation is political representation – “which refers to an exchange that is supposed to occur between the state and its domestic community” (1995:6) –, the second is symbolic representation where “language is always tied to some empirical referent, foundation or ground that is always the basis for speech” (1995:7). But at the same time that is concluded that “For a logic of representation to work, a signified or ground must exist” it is also said that “‘Finding’ answers concerning who foundational authorities are may not be enough to make a logic of representation work; a more successful strategy is to prevent such questions from ever being raised” (1995:8). In the end this rejects the existence of a stable relation between a state and its representatives. Everything is about the sites of political struggle rooted as they are in practices and changing forms of language. There isn’t a possibility of having rules governing the agents that speak for the state. Even at the level of micro-processes, the analysis of sovereignty is rooted in non-foundational assumptions.

3- Towards a Critical Constructivist Approach to Sovereignty In order to promote a critical constructivist approach to sovereignty the next section will revise both the macro processes and the micro processes that characterize socially constructed versions of sovereignty. In order to do so, the first part of this section will start by re-conceptualizing the macro-processes. In doing so it will focus on the contribution that critical constructivism can given to International Relations theory.

Second, a particular critical constructivist approach to sovereignty will be developed. This second section will address a reconceptualization of the micro-processes. 3.1- On Critical Constructivist: Giving Meaning to Social Practices This section will start from the difference in approaching the sub-discipline of International Relations and move on to stress what this implies for the a view on the function of norms in international society. The overall emphasis given by consistent constructivists (Fierke 2006) to speech acts and the rules that derive from them, produces a view of institutionalization that stress how language constitutes meaning. The context of this process are not assumed as fixed as in conventional forms of constructivism, they change and are specific, but the idea is that speech acts socialize actors with a particular meaning and this leads to rule-following. The relation between rules and a particular understanding of language and this interplay in specific social context presents itself as the main type of work developed by consistent constructivists (Onuf 1989, Kratochwil 1989, Fierke 1998, Buzan et al 1998). Supplementing this view one needs to stress the role played by critical constructivism. As Reus-Smit stresses, “Constructivism is divided, however, between those who remain cognizant of the critical origins and potentiality of their sociological explorations, and those who have embraced constructivism simply as an explanatory or interpretative tool” (Reus-Smit 2003:234). What distinguished the work developed by critical constructivists is the way they “would emphasize the role of intersubjectivity and the implications of contingent and contextual interaction for both societal change and the advancement of theory (Schwellnus 2006, Niessen and Herborth 2007). They focus on theorising interaction with regard to the normative structure and its institutionalised principles and procedures in world politics as the core of any debates about fair and democratic governance beyond the state (Koskeniemi 2002)” (Wiener 2006b:13). More substantively, “[I]f interaction constructs meaning, the interpretation of norms is conditioned by those who participate in the norm-setting debate. It follows that the meaning of norms will differ pending on which actors contributed to discuss the rule in practice. That is, normative meaning stems from interactive international relations that are both carried out in the legal and in the political realms of world politics, respectively, with both spheres increasingly overlapping under conditions of transnationalisation” (Wiener 2006b:23). The second issue this section needs to address is what this position specifically implies for a view on the function of norms in international society. Following the division made above between the empirical and the normative aspects of studying the influence of law in international relations, these two dimensions will be analysed here as well. Critical constructivist main goal is to understand the link between the social and the legal aspect of norms. This dimension is often neglected because scholars of International Relations tend to diminish the role of process in their understanding of order (Kratochwil 1989, Onuf 1989). It therefore, and broadly speaking, aims to trace the “empirically observable process of norm construction and change” (Shaw and Wiener 1999:8). Wiener, drawing on the distinctions made by Jurgen Habermas but not following his universalism, further explores the aims of critical constructivism in the distinction established between the facticity and validity of norms. As she concludes “[B]y bringing sociology in the behaviouralist perspective has introduced two action theoretic logics i.e. the logics of appropriateness and arguing. Both do, however, ultimately consider the stable quality of norms or the facticity dimension as

the make or break point for the power of norms, establishing whether norms are followed by a group of actors who consider them as either appropriate or legitimate … Overall, the separation between norms and values came at the cost of eliminating agency from the process of norm origin and change” (2006:15). Bringing agency means studying the logic of contestedness, “it requires a perception of the contexts in which norms work and the social practices that are constitutive for their meanings” (2006:17). From the latter one can understand how this can be analysed in two ways: tracing the emergence of norms (empirical), and understanding norm compliance (normative). Studying the emergence of norms means conceptualizing the formal resources, that is, the shared legal and procedural aspects, as embedded in a social environment. Informal resources such as ideas and social norms emerge in this environment through practices and routinization. These social norms potentially contribute to the formulation of legal stipulations, or the emergence of legal norms, if they materialize. In sum, the formation of informal resources, such as social norms, and the stipulation of formal resources, such as legal stipulations, do not develop in a linear way. They are interrelated through practices. Analytically, this implies identifying informal resources, routinized practices, and formal resources based on analysis of public discourse. This approach shares the assumption that socialization matters to analyses of political-decision making. Taking norms as the starting point, it follows the observation that social meanings are discursively constructed. As such discourse reflects institutional structures and helps to construct them in the process. As Josephine Shaw and Wiener conclude, “Public discourse hence offers a crucial medium to assess the link between social and legal norms, or for that matter, the materialization of social norms in the legal sphere” (1999:8). That is, communication about norms establishes their meaning and subsequently their impact. The normative side of the study aims to move beyond the mere study of emergence of norms and focuses on the nature of compliance. The understanding of the process of socialization and institutionalization therefore needs to be broadened to include further processes. In Wiener’s words “[W]ith a view to assessing the political consequences of compliance situations students of global politics then need to incorporate two factors, first, the meaning which norms develop through communicative action in negotiation situation in transnational arenas, and secondly, the contexts into which the meaning created through norm validation spills back into domestic arenas” (2006:28, see also Wiener 2008). In other words, against the view that claim that actors comply based on logic of appropriateness or arguing where actors are socialized to fit particular norms or debate the presumed and established validity of a certain norm, integrating contestation means viewing this process as a result of different social practices that carry difference and that are potentially disruptive of cohesion. Norms are not generated without the understanding of the meaning that is implied in the social practices. 3.2- A Critical Constructivist Approach to Sovereignty: Reconceptualizing the Micro Process Following from the distinctions made above within the debates on constructivism it has to be concluded that a critical constructivist approach to sovereignty follows consistent constructivist views on the major macro debate. In this sense it emphasizes how sovereignty can be thought of in a multi-perspective manner and how one should not go all the way and conclude that sovereignty is just a discourse.

Viewing sovereignty as an institutional arrangement for organizing international politics helps scholars to conceive of ways in which sovereignty is comprised of distinct and interrelated features. Undoubtedly, sovereignty has a norm-generative effect, but it is likewise shaped by changing norms. Norms isolate single standards of behaviour and can obscure the distinct and interrelated elements of social practices. Such a conceptualization facilitates the study of how sovereignty has transformed over time, and draws attention to the way in which the addition and contestation of norms in international relations discourse create new patterns of politics. This understanding follows from the view already put forward by Kathleen Claussen and Timothy Nichol that stress how “[T]he institution of sovereignty is embedded in a broader matrix of socio-political and legal practices. These practices generate categories of meaning through which we conceive and explain applications of sovereignty” (2008:2). The goal is to understand how social practices help to capture the conditions in which sovereignty norms are generated, legitimated, exemplified, contested and modified. They further develop a model that illustrates in a very succinct manner the argument that is also going to me followed here1.

(from Claussen and Nichol 2007) The horizontal plane represents the normative dimension of sovereignty and can be divided into two groups of norms. First, sovereignty is premised on a collection of underlying assumptions that have gained wide acceptance in the course of history. These are referred to in the diagram as the “normative consensus,” which is the reasonably stable set of norms that underpins the institution. This represents the dominant background conditions that are prevalent at a certain point in history. After 1945 this normative consensus has been rooted in a particular juridical understanding of sovereignty that triumphed mainly after the decolonization process. This normative

1 The model needs to be modified not only substantively - generally corresponds to a reconfiguration of the work developed by Robert Keohane on sovereignty translated into critical constructivist terms – but also theoretically.

consensus roots sovereignty in a number of premises. They include: the shared value of international order among states; the shared importance of a system of membership in a society of states; acceptance of the co-existence of the political freedom of states; and, finally, respect for diversity of political systems. Thus, the normative consensus comprises the strongest constitutive elements of sovereignty. The norms of this set are less susceptible to change and contestation as a result of their widespread acknowledgment within international relations. Other sovereignty norms, placed on the opposite end of the normative plane, reflect and build upon the preceding set of foundational norms. This second set of norms is referred to as “contested norms”; we find ample evidence both in support of and against them. Some of the most prominent contested norms today are: non-intervention (territorial integrity); equality among states; and mutual recognition that creates the boundaries between nominally independent states. The strength and relevance of these norms are constantly debated; they enjoy less consensus in political and scholarly discourse, though their importance should not be underestimated. The contested nature of these norms allows for the evolution and reconstruction of the institution of sovereignty. In more precise terms, what we see today is the reconstruction of sovereignty from a juridical regime to an empirical regime. This empirical understanding stresses how important it is to reconceptualize the view of sovereignty internally to give more importance to the nature of internal sovereignty. The question is how to understand, from a critical constructivist approach, the transformation from an emphasis on juridical sovereignty to the contested transformation of the present day that stresses empirical sovereignty. Sovereignty norms are debated, modified and validated or discarded on the vertical plane. This plane represents the actions, practices and rhetoric of states as well as non- governmental organizations, intergovernmental actors and international relations scholars. Both legal and political manifestations of sovereignty norms are located on this plane. Multiple feedback processes challenge and redefine the meaning of sovereignty, as identified by the overlapping arrows in Figure 1. Norms on the horizontal plane are generated and validated through manifestations on the vertical plane. In the same manner, the normative dimension has an influence on the political and legal expressions. This relationship between planes denotes the dual quality of norms. Norms both structure and construct, such that the properties of the institution are “the medium and the outcome of practices that constitute it” (Wiener 2007). Thus, the validity of sovereignty is dependent on both the normative consensus and the contestation of the norms within political and legal spheres. Therefore the goal of this approach is to study the nature of changing beliefs. A critical constructivist approach leads one to study the nature of these changing beliefs on two fronts. These are the two realms in which sovereignty is contested. The first can be identified in public discourse, such that the term itself acquires a nuanced subtext of understandings. The second refers to the evolving institution in academic and political discussions, as represented in the previous diagram. This take on critical constructivism provides a departure to assess the nature of changing meanings of the institution of sovereignty. This framework is therefore important in order to assess empirical access the development of a certain normative framework.

4- Conclusion

A structural distinction was established in this chapter: that between static versions of sovereignty and socially constructed version. Static versions were further distinguished between sovereignty as a fact and sovereignty as a norm. With the advent of the Third Debate, sovereignty suffered further re-conceptualization. How more precisely to analyse country ownership as a function of different theories of sovereignty? Alongside the distinction made in the essay, what will also be argued in the piece is that in order to more clearly view the construction of liberal sovereignty states in processes of country ownership, a distinction needs to be made between those approaches that view this process has essentially impling the construction of a bureaucratic and state-centric view, and all those that aim to bring process and agency to the debate. Marxism in the pre-Third Debate phase was the only approach to emphasize the power of agency. Conventional Constructivism is the post-Third Debate phase is the only to emphasize the power of structure.

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