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Global Society, Vol. 18, No. 4, October, 2004

Theories of Sovereignty: An Interdisciplinary Approach

ERSUN N. KURTULUS

Tracing the confusion surrounding the concept of sovereignty to its complex referent,to epistemological relativism, and to metaphorical uses of the term ‘‘sovereignty’’, thisarticle proposes an interdisciplinary approach as a partial remedy to this problem. Asa preliminary step, the article starts with an analysis of the intricate relationship thatexists between legal stipulations, descriptive statements and normative theories. Thisis followed by a six-fold classification of theories of sovereignty on the basis of theirunit of analysis and analytical goals. The article concludes with an attempt to identifysome of the most important linkages between these classes of theories.

Sovereignty is a confusing concept to such an extent that we do not even agreeany more whether it is essentially contested or essentially uncontested.1 In part,this confusion is due to the concept apparatus to which the term is related.In common usage, sovereignty is closely associated with and derives its meaningfrom other, equally ambiguous concepts such as state, authority, power, rightsand body politic. As long as we do not have a clear understanding of theseterms and their referents we will not be able properly to comprehend theconcept of sovereignty.2 Another reason for this confusion is essentiallyepistemological and can be traced back to those controversies about the founda-tions of knowledge, which have become a distinctive feature of contemporarysocial sciences. During the last two decades, what has been called ‘‘the conven-tional science’’ or ‘‘the disciplinary production of knowledge’’ has been chal-lenged by new currents and trends, which have their point of departure inscientific theory and philosophy of science. A particular consequence of this

1. Cf. R.B.J. Walker, ‘‘Sovereignty, Identity, Community: Reflections on the Horizons of Contempor-ary Political Practice’’, in Saul H. Mendlovitz and R.B.J. Walker (eds.), Contending Sovereignties—Redefining Political Community (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1990), p. 159; R.B.J. Walker,Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1993), p. 13. Michael Ross Fowler and Julie Marie Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State—TheEvolution and the Application of the Concept of Sovereignty (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 1995), p. 4.

2. One set of questions that the interrelationship of these concepts raises has been formulated byBarry Buzan: People State and Fear—The National Security Problem in International Relations (London:Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1983), pp. 41–42. The ambiguous and problematic relationship betweensovereignty, on the one hand, and state and political community on the other, has also been pointedout by Joseph A. Camilleri and Jim Falk in The End of Sovereignty?—The Politics of a Shrinking andFragmenting World (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1992), pp. 15–16, 18, 238–240.

ISSN 1360-0826 print/ISSN 1469-798X online/04/040347-25 © 2004 University of KentDOI: 10.1080/1360082042000272454

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shift in the scholarly attention and the adoption of post-modern and post-structuralist approaches in the context of political theory and philosophy hasbeen the emergence of a new, critical approach to sovereignty that has differentepistemological and ontological assumptions from those that have characterisedthe classical perceptions of the concept.3 A third source of the confusion sur-rounding sovereignty is conceptual—and simply man-made—to the extent thatthe concept has been and still is used to refer to phenomena that are sometimesaccidentally overlapping and sometimes intrinsically different from each other.One reason for this is the study of the juridical and political organisation, towhich the concept of sovereignty is related, by various scientific disciplinesthat do not interact with one another. Perhaps paradoxically, another reasonfor this situation is the metaphorical usage and the non-disciplinary treatmentof the term ‘‘sovereignty’’ which has accompanied such disciplinary usages andpermeated the vocabulary of scientific disciplines. As a result, in the steadilyaccumulating literature on sovereignty, epithets that political philosophers,international lawyers, constitutional theorists and political scientists haveattached to the term have proliferated and new epithets are continuously addedto the time-honoured old ones: internal and external sovereignty, positive andnegative sovereignty, de facto and de jure sovereignty, national sovereignty,state sovereignty, popular sovereignty, legal sovereignty, territorial sovereignty,technological sovereignty, cultural sovereignty, economical sovereignty, racialsovereignty and institutional sovereignty.4 Whatever value these phrases mayhave in describing and analysing various types of political phenomena, andnotwithstanding the relationship that some of them may have with the socialartefact that the term ‘‘sovereignty’’ attempts to capture at a conceptual level,the overall impact of this proliferation of adjectives in combination with sover-eignty has been to increase our confusion about a concept that is alreadyconfusing.

The underlying argument of this paper is that this confusion can be partly,

3. For such novel conceptualisations of sovereignty see, for instance, ibid., pp. 2, 59–60, 114–116and passim; Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);Cynthia Weber, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State, and Symbolic Exchange (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1995); R.B.J. Walker, ‘‘Sovereignty, Identity, Community: Reflections onthe Horizons of Contemporary Political Practice’’, in Saul H. Mendlovitz and R.B.J. Walker (eds.),Contending Sovereignties—Redefining Political Community (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1990); and R.B.J.Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993). These and similar approaches to the concept of sovereignty will not be included in theclassification undertaken in the following pages. This is due to the fact that such perspectives cannotbe regarded as theories of sovereignty as such, that is, theories that consider sovereignty as ananalytical or regulative instrument in the hands of scientists, jurists or philosophers. They mayrather be viewed as criticism of such theories with reference to the role that they supposedly play inthe definition of political society, the formation of political rhetoric and the disciplinary productionof knowledge.

4. More than three decades ago, W.J. Stankiewicz pointed out that ‘‘[s]ince the modern concept ofsovereignty was formulated by Bodin, many ‘‘types’’ of sovereignty have emerged: political, legal,internal, external, de jure, de facto, popular, coercive, influential, positive, negative, absolute, andrelative’’ (W.J. Stankiewicz, ‘‘The Validity of Sovereignty’’, in W.J. Stankiewicz (ed.), In Defense ofSovereignty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 291). As can be judged from a short glanceat the enumeration in the text, the emergence of new ‘‘ ‘types’ of sovereignty’’ has continuedsince then.

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although not wholly, remedied5 by means of an interdisciplinary analysis thatshifts the focus of attention from the general discourse of sovereignty to aspecific part of that discourse, that is, to a wide range of theories of sovereigntythat have been formulated within scientific and legal disciplines. Thus, in whatfollows, the concept of sovereignty will be surveyed in two stages. The firstphase of this process will be to classify various theories, component parts oftheories, doctrines and statements about sovereignty, which have been formu-lated within various disciplines, with respect to their unit of analysis in connec-tion to the referent of sovereignty—whether they focus on the components ofthe state, the state as an entity or the relations between states—and with respectto the nature of their relationship to empirical research—whether they describehow things are or whether they prescribe how things ought to be. This processwill result in the identification of what might be called ideal categories oftheories of sovereignty. The second stage of this method aims at redressing

5. There is also a view within politics and international relations that does not find the term‘‘sovereignty’’ illuminating and calls for discarding it altogether. The adherents of this ‘‘abandonmentthesis’’ (see John Hoffman, Sovereignty (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998) pp. 11–12) havebeen several and may be found in different periods (see, for instance, Harold Laski, A Grammar ofPolitics, 5th edn (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967), pp. 44–45; Edward Hallet Carr, The TwentyYears Crisis 1919–1939, 2nd edn (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 230, 231; Stanley I. Benn, ‘‘TheUses of ‘Sovereignty’ ’’, in Anthony Quinton (ed.), Political Philosophy (London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1967), p. 82; Richard Falk, ‘‘Sovereignty’’, in Joel Krieger et al. (eds.), The Oxford Companion toPolitics of the World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 853; and MichaelNewman, Democracy, Sovereignty and the European Union (London: Hurst, 1996), pp. 14–15). At leastthree arguments may be raised against the proposal to discard the concept of sovereignty. At thesociological level, it is probably no exaggeration to claim that the confusion and debate aboutsovereignty forms a contrast to some everyday aspects of actual political life. As Robert Jacksonremarked recently, ‘‘there is a rough and ready idea of sovereignty and non-sovereignty on the partof political leaders and people who get involved in such practical questions’’ and this usuallysignifies ‘‘recognition as an independent state’’ (Robert Jackson, ‘‘Introduction: Sovereignty at theMillennium’’, in Robert Jackson (ed.), Political Studies—Sovereignty at the Millennium (special issue),Vol. 47, No. 3 (1999), p. 424). Thus, where a clear-cut notion of sovereignty exists in the minds ofpolitical actors, from secessionist movements engaged in war to statesmen involved in internationalpeace negotiations, and to the extent that this notion refers to a clearly intelligible political demandor goal, then the ‘‘abandonment thesis’’ is tantamount to saying that the student of politics andinternational relations is unable and will never be able to have a proper understanding of a conceptwhose referent is understood and aspired to by statesmen, secessionists, terrorists and activists. Atthe disciplinary level, moreover, few, if any, central concepts of political science and internationalrelations would escape this sort of criticism. Thus, as one scholar argues, ‘‘if we were to abandon allessentially contested terms in political science the field would be severely impoverished’’ (MarcWilliams, ‘‘Rethinking Sovereignty’’, in Eleonore Kofman and Gillian Youngs (eds.), Globalization:Theory and Practice (London: Pinter, 1996), pp. 112–113). At the epistemological level, it is doubtfulwhether it is at all possible completely to avoid the problems caused by ambiguous and abstractconcepts such as the concept of sovereignty. If theoretical concepts are prone to vagueness and ifscience does not start with observation statements, because some sort of theory precedes allobservations, then the ‘‘abandonment thesis’’ is tantamount to suggesting that we swap onetheoretical and ambiguous concept for another. Consequently, the reasoning of the present article isin line with that of W.J. Rees, who, more than four decades ago, pointed out that ‘‘he traditionalquestions about sovereignty, . . . cannot be satisfactorily answered, not because they are not genuinequestions, but because each question consists of several questions which have never been clearlydistinguished. Once the proper distinctions are drawn, therefore, they may be replaced by otherquestions to which unambiguous answers can always be given’’ (W.J. Rees, ‘‘The Theory ofSovereignty Restated’’, in P. Laslett (ed.), Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell &Mott, 1956), p. 57; see also p. 66).

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certain shortcomings of such a classification and the use of ideal types. As hasbeen pointed out by a renowned scholar, whether the use of such abstractionsfurthers or hinders our understanding of social phenomena is determined byour ‘‘cognitive style’’, that is, ‘‘the kind of paradigms we search out, the way weput them together, and the ambitions we nurture for their powers’’.6 Thus, inorder to capture the multifarious character of sovereignty once again, but thistime in a more systematic fashion, in this second stage the focus of the surveywill be shifted to the linkages between the ideal categories of sovereigntypreviously identified. However, as a preliminary step for such an enterprise, thefocus of attention first has to be shifted to a certain problem that is inherent tothe suggested classification.

Descriptive Accounts, Normative Theories, Legal Stipulations andSovereignty

A categorisation of different theories of sovereignty with reference to, inter alia,the nature of their approach to empirical reality poses a certain problem thatmust be addressed at the very outset. Because of its dichotomous character, adifferentiation of theories along normative and descriptive lines will have abuilt-in tendency to overlook the fact that the concept of sovereignty also has alegal dimension that makes it a subject of study in the disciplines of constitutionaland international law, where the term not only depicts a juridical status but alsothe consequences that follow from such a status. In order to circumvent thispropensity, with its undue emphasis on empirical political science and politicaltheory at the expense of jurisprudence and law, it is necessary to probe into thegeneral theoretical question of how legal doctrines are related to normative anddescriptive theories. In other words, if justice is to be done to the complexitiesinvolved, what must first be considered is how ‘‘shall’’ decrees are to beintegrated into a classification of ‘‘is’’ propositions and ‘‘ought’’ propositions.

To begin with, it should be pointed out that legal doctrines, laws and decreesare neither plain, descriptive accounts nor purely normative theories. On the onehand, there is never full congruity between the rules, provisions or stipulations ofa legal doctrine or law and the actual behaviour of individuals and institutionsthat these are intended to control. To the extent that transgression of law is acorollary of regulation by law, the adjustment of existing conduct to legal ruleswill always be a relative condition, varying on a scale where perfect or completecompliance is never forthcoming.7 Moreover, as has been succinctly pointed out,‘‘in cases where conformity between actual and prescribed behaviour can beregarded as a forgone conclusion, there can be no point in having rules at all’’.8

Thus, with a few important exceptions which will be recounted in a moment,these conditions rule out, as a matter of fact, the possibility that laws may everattain those characteristics that are intrinsically shared by descriptive accounts.On the other hand, there is not a complete discrepancy or mutual logical

6. Albert O. Hirschman, ‘‘The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding’’, WorldPolitics, Vol. 22 (1970), pp. 338, 330, 343.

7. Cf. Thomas M. Franck, The Power of Legitimacy among Nations (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1990), p. 43.

8. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society—A Study of Order in World Politics, 2nd edn (London:Macmillan, 1995), p. 131.

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independence between these two types of phenomena such that it wouldbe legitimate to consider legal provisions as purely normative propositions.Furthermore, it is possible to argue that a certain amount of uniformity betweenprescribed and actual behaviour is a necessary condition of positive law andlegal order. At the most basic level, it can be argued that a legal statement thathas no bearing upon the actual conduct of individuals or institutions may bethe result of an unsuccessful attempt on the part of government authorities tochange the behaviour of citizens or a remnant from forgotten times in the systemof statutes, or a suggestion put forward by a moral philosopher or public opinionthat has succeeded in influencing the legislature—but at all events not lawproperly so-called, that is, positive law integral to the legal system. At anotherlevel, however, such a conclusion can also be inferred from conflicting concep-tualisations of law, such as the Austinian definition that traces its origins tomight and power,9 or the Hartian notion which relates law to an ‘‘external pointof view’’ of a legal system;10 from certain basic principles of jurisprudence suchas ex factis jus oritur;11 and, finally, from ‘‘metaphorical applications of the termlaw’’.12

From this perspective, it is possible to assert that legal doctrines, juridicalstatements, laws and decrees can be placed in a normative-descriptive spectrumin accordance with the degree of congruity or discrepancy between their prescrip-tions and the actual behaviour of individuals and institutions that those prescrip-tions are expected to regulate. Such an argument about the general relationshipbetween laws and theories has two implications for the present analysis. First,those components of constitutional law that bear upon the concept of sover-eignty, such as provisions—codified or uncodified—as to the locus of sovereignpower or the authority endowed with legal sovereignty, can be regarded asidentical with descriptive accounts of them. It is probably safe to claim that thisis but a reflection of a more general feature of constitutional law, namely, thatany social behaviour constituting a breach of one or more of the main provisionsof a constitutional law, to the extent that it does not lead to a constitutionalcrisis and eventually to the collapse of the constitutional order, becomes—instantly or gradually—an incorporated element of constitutional practice, andhence, of constitutional law.13 This dynamic feature of constitutional law prob-ably accounts not only for its ability of accommodate new conditions but also

9. John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, Wilfrid E. Rumble (ed.) (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 285, 165.

10. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 89–91.11. See Hersch Lauterpacht, Recognition in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1947), pp. 427–428; and Ti-Chiang Chen, The International Law of Recognition—With SpecialReference to Practice in Great Britain and the United States, L.C. Green (ed.) (London: Stevens, 1951), pp.413–414.

12. Austin, op. cit., pp. 148–150. Expressions such as ‘‘laws of physics’’, ‘‘laws of economics’’, ‘‘lawsof nature’’, and ‘‘laws of the labour market’’ may probably be named as examples of such metaphoricalusage of the term law.

13. Ivo D. Duchacek suggests ‘‘[m]any changes in a constitutional system cannot be detected eitherin formal constitutional amendments or in informal reinterpretation of constitutional provisions byjudicial review. Time and again extraconstitutional and extrajudicial changes have affected theworking of a constitution more significantly than any formal amendment.’’ Moreover, he argues that‘‘he line between extraconstitutional (not necessarily unconstitutional) changes, on one hand, andclearly unconstitutional changes on the other, is often difficult to draw’’ (Ivo D. Duchacek, PowerMaps: Comparative Politics of Constitution (Oxford: ABC Clio, 1973), p. 224).

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for the absence of political crisis or disorder in those situations in whichstipulations of a codified constitution may be incongruous with, or directly incontradiction to, constitutional practice. Under such circumstances, where theimmediate impact of the principle of ex factis jus oritur seems to be uninterruptedby any other legal principle, constitutional law not only comprises prescribedbehaviour but is also effected by actual behaviour—hence conformity betweenprescribed behaviour and actual behaviour. In a similar vein, it is also possibleto view those rules of positive international law, which have constitutive effect,that is, those rules which create the international legal order as a matter of actualfact, as identical with descriptive theories about these facts. Amongst suchstipulations are those that institute the material sources, the subjects and theobjects of law—including sovereignty as a specific subject status under lawenjoyed by some territorial entities.

Second, those provisions of positive international law that define the con-sequences that follow from possession of sovereign legal personality, that is,those legal statements that circumscribe the scope and content of sovereignrights and obligations, can be regarded as a system of normative standards. Itseems to be widely held that there persists a certain degree of divergencebetween the behaviour prescribed by the rules of positive international law andthe actual conduct of sovereign states. In other words, the controversy amongscholars does not seem to be over the question of whether or not there existsconformity between these two phenomena—to the extent that prescribed behav-iour may be said to predict, more or less, the actual behaviour—but over theissue of the degree of their divergence.14 Furthermore, it is even possible to claimthat the inconsistency between the provisions of international law and theactual behaviour of sovereign states—and hence, the normative character of theformer—has increased during the 20th century as a result of the transformationof the doctrinal outlook of international law from one distinguished by legalpositivism to one marked by ‘‘solidarist’’ or natural law views.15

Classification of Theories of Sovereignty

Against the background of these considerations it is now possible to classifytheories, component parts of theories, doctrines and statements that deal expli-citly with sovereignty or implicitly have bearing upon the concept, along twodimensions. The first dimension concerns the unit of analysis that these accountsfocus on. It has already been remarked in the literature on sovereignty that adistinction has to be drawn between ‘‘sovereign organ within the state’’ and‘‘sovereign state’’, as these are two completely different things.16 Taking this view

14. For different views in this respect see Austin, op. cit., pp. 112, 175; Bull, The Anarchical Society,p. 131; and Georg Schwarzenberger, ‘‘The Grotius Factor in International Law and Relations: AFunctional Approach’’, in Hedley Bull et al. (eds.), Hugo Grotius and International Relations (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 310–312.

15. Hedley Bull, ‘‘The Importance of Grotius in the Study of International Relations’’, in HugoGrotius and International Relations, p. 79; Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 139–155.

16. Georg Jellinek, quoted in Hidemi Suganami, ‘‘Grotius and International Equality’’, in HugoGrotius and International Relations, p. 231. Suganami suggests that such a distinction has its roots inthe writings of Grotius, where the question of ‘‘whether a given human association can be said tobe a sovereign entity’’ is distinguished from the question of ‘‘who in that association can be said tobe sovereign’’.

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Theories of Sovereignty 353

Figure 1.

as a point of departure, it is suggested here that these two objects of analysisshould be augmented by a third one, relations between sovereign entities—aunit of analysis which is encapsulated in expressions such as ‘‘sovereigntyregimes’’ and ‘‘sovereign rights and obligations’’. The second dimension pertainsto the nature of such theoretical accounts, that is, whether they are descriptiveexplanations that depict how things are in social reality or whether they arenormative statements about how things ought to be. The combination of thesetwo dimensions generates six ideal categories, which are depicted schematicallyin Figure 1. In what follows, questions about sovereignty that are related to eachof these categories will be specified, and thereafter various theories that attemptto treat these questions systematically will be enumerated. In view of the massivebody of literature relevant to such a process, the ambition of this paper has beenlimited to illustrating each class of theories with representative examples,preferably taken from classical or reputable studies.

Descriptive Theories of Sovereignty at the Intra-state Level

The theories that fall in this category address two similar, but analyticallydistinct, questions. Where in the body politic is sovereignty located? And whichorgan of the state is sovereign in relation to all other organs, institutions andagents?17

Three bodies of legal and theoretical writing have considered these questions.In the first place, they have been addressed by codified constitutions of statesof various kinds, which answer them—directly or indirectly, but almost alwaysostentatiously—from the vantage point of organisational principles of statehoodand political society. Thus, declarations as to the locus of sovereignty and themeans by which it is exercised can be found in various constitutions, whichproclaim organisational rules for—in some cases—fundamentally incompatiblepolitical systems:

17. It has to be noted that these two questions can be elaborated in terms of various sub-questionsthat, inter alia, treat the issues of indivisibility, unlimitedness, factuality or legality of sovereignty orthe sovereign organ. In order to avoid over-burdening the present analysis, I shall refrain fromundertaking a survey of these issues in the following discussion.

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National sovereignty belongs to the people, which shall exercise thissovereignty through its representatives and by means of referendums.(1958 Constitution of France; Article 3)

All power in the People’s Republic of China belongs to the people. Theorgans through which the people exercise power are the NationalPeople’s Congress and the local people’s congresses at various levels.(1954 Constitution of People’s Republic of China; Article 2)

All power in the USSR is vested in the working people of town andcountry as represented by the Soviets of Working People’s Deputies.(1936 Constitution of USSR; Article 3)18

To the extent that such constitutional provisions faithfully reflect the constitu-tional practices of the states involved, this would warrant designating thewritten constitutions which comprise them as ‘‘power maps’’, that is, as ‘‘basicmap[s] of power organization’’.19 In such cases, stipulations of this kind identifythe institution that is the locus of sovereign power, or in other words, theyspecify the governmental organ or the political agent that is the ultimate sourceof all public power. However, it may also be the case that such declarations arethe consequence of what has been called ‘‘ ‘extraconstitutional’ reasons fordrafting constitutions’’;20 or have the purpose of paying lip service on the partof an undemocratic political actor to the celebrated moral and political values ofthe time; or are merely antiquated provisions of constitutional law nullified bysubsequent practice. In such instances, the organisational rules proclaimed areunrelated to the political reality of the country in question and irrelevant to itsconstitutional law: they are simply false statements that at best designate thebearers of nominal sovereignty.

In the second place, a considerable body of literature within constitutionaltheory, which has variously been labelled as ‘‘Austinian school’’21 or ‘‘legal theoryof sovereignty’’,22 has attempted to come to terms with these questions from theviewpoint of juridical or jurisprudential considerations. The common denomin-ator of these studies is a conception of sovereignty as ‘‘supreme legal authority’’—or the usage of sovereignty in what has been called ‘‘the legal sense’’ of thisterm23—and the key assumptions underlying this approach can be traced backto John Austin’s famous definitions of sovereignty and positive law: on the onehand, sovereignty is characterised as the property of ‘‘a determinate humansuperior’’ which is ‘‘not in a habit of obedience to a like superior’’ but which‘‘receives habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society’’. On the other hand,‘‘positive law’’ is differentiated from other types of law by its being ‘‘set by asovereign person, or a sovereign body of persons’’ to an individual or a group

18. Quoted in Duchacek, op. cit., p. 7.19. Ibid., p. 3.20. Ibid., p. 11.21. Rees, op. cit., p. 57.22. Camilleri and Falk, op. cit., p. 22.23. Rees, op. cit., p. 57; Stanley I. Benn, ‘‘The Uses of ‘Sovereignty’ ’’, in Anthony Quinton (ed.),

Political Philosophy (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 68–75.

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Theories of Sovereignty 355

of individuals that are ‘‘in a state of subjection’’ to the former.24 In what appearsto be a further elaboration of this theoretical approach, H.W.R. Wade analysesthe ‘‘basis of legal sovereignty’’ and defines ‘‘sovereign legislation’’ as that which‘‘depends for its authority on an ‘ultimate legal principle’ ’’; this is merely apolitical fact in so far as it is determined by the loyalty and conduct of thecourts.25 On the face of it, such a conceptualisation of legal sovereignty might becriticised for giving simple categorical answers to complicated legal matters.However, it is also possible to argue that by linking sovereignty and law, suchan approach provides analytical power whenever more than one legislature,with overlapping jurisdictions and possibilities of actual or potential legalconflicts, are in operation within a delimited space. This has been the case duringthe gradual dissolution of the British Empire and it is also probably the situationthat characterises the formal integration processes that are taking place withinthe European Union.

In the third place, another body of literature approaches these same questionsfrom the point of view of ‘‘power theory’’. Here, the issue under consideration isnot the supreme legal authority of certain governmental organs but the supremepower of particular political agents regardless of their formal status. Twoversions of this approach are clearly discernible in W.J. Rees’s study. The firstversion uses the term ‘‘sovereign’’ to mean ‘‘. . . a supreme coercive power exercisedby a determinate body of persons possessing a monopoly of certain instruments ofcoercion’’.26 In this sense, sovereignty may be located in an armed corpus withinthe political society, but it may also be situated in a body of coup makersor revolutionaries who have successfully seized political power. The secondinterpretation uses the term to mean ‘‘strongest political influence’’—or, in Rees’sterminology, usage of ‘‘sovereignty in the influential sense’’ of the word. Thismeaning of the concept refers to the exercise, within the confines of the delimitedterritory of a state, of ‘‘political influence’’ over the legal or coercive sovereign‘‘to a greater degree than anyone else’’. Rees merely notes that this notion ofsovereignty has been attributed by scholars to the ‘‘popular majority’’ and to‘‘electors’’.27 However, conceived in these terms, sovereignty may also be ascribedto the executive in relation to the legislature, or to a political party in relationto other political organisations, or to the bureaucracy in relation to the representa-tives of the demos. Furthermore, this notion of sovereignty helps to elucidate theextent to which the stipulations of a codified constitution diverge from theconstitutional practice reflected in the actual distribution of authority and powerwithin a state. Moreover, such a conceptualisation of sovereignty has furthergeneral implications for political science, in so far as it raises additional questions

24. Emphasis in the original. Austin, op. cit., pp. 166, 165. In this context, see also A.V. Dicey’sdefinition of parliamentary sovereignty. A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of theConstitution, 10th edn (London: Macmillan, 1959), pp. 39–40).

25. H.W.R. Wade, ‘‘The Basis of Legal Sovereignty’’, Cambridge Law Journal (November 1955), p. 189.26. Emphasis in the original. Rees, op. cit., pp. 72, 75, 58. Benn finds this conception of sovereignty

of limited utility in so far as ‘‘it is helpful in describing any but the simplest situations’’ such as‘‘coercive sovereignty is exercised by the coercive organs of the state; and after a civil war we wouldattribute it to a victorious army that remained united’’ (Benn, op. cit., pp. 78–79). There is somejustification for this criticism. However, it overlooks those situations that may arise as a result ofprolonged civil wars, where various militia groups function as ‘‘coercive sovereigns’’ within theterritory of a state.

27. Rees, op. cit., pp. 60, 75.

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such as whether or not sovereignty is located in a certain social class, a specificethnic group or a particular gender.

Normative Theories of Sovereignty at the Intra-state Level28

This category of theories deals with the normative versions of the two questionsreferred to at the beginning of the previous section; they may be reformulatedas follows. Where in the body politic ought sovereignty to be located? Andwhich organ of the state ought to be sovereign in relation to all other organs,institutions and agents?

These questions were addressed, first and foremost, by some of the mostcelebrated political philosophers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries and it wasnothing other than their attempts to give authoritative answers to them thatcharacterised much of the debate about the concept of sovereignty during thefirst two centuries of its modern history. The discussion was based on more orless similar premises: a contractual conception of the origins of political society,which encompassed the idea of a social contract, or the notion of a contract ofrulership between the ruler and the ruled, or both.29 However, despite thiscommon conceptual ground, and regardless of the nature of the contract under-lying the assumption of each theory, the outcome of the controversy crystallisedinto two distinct and diametrically opposed answers to the normative questionsabout the location of sovereignty: some political thinkers argued that sovereigntyought to be embodied in the ruler—the idea of ruler sovereignty—while othersasserted that it cannot be bestowed on anyone or on any institution except thepeople in its entirety—the notion of popular sovereignty.30

Among the proponents of ruler sovereignty was Jean Bodin, who is consideredto be the first political theorist to formulate a systematic theory of sovereignty.Writing against the background of the religious and civil strife of 16th-centuryFrance, Bodin argued that only an authority with central and unlimited power,an authority that was superior to positive law, could bring political disorder toan end. The sovereign power of this authority came from God, its exercise wasindependent of the subjects’ consent, and, consequently, misrule did not justifydisobedience or opposition. It was true that the body politic was composed ofboth the ruler and the ruled, but in any contractual relationship between them

28. In this section I have relied heavily on F.H. Hinsley’s classical study (F.H. Hinsley, Sovereignty,2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) rather than referring to the original worksof Bodin, Hobbes, Althusius and Rousseau. A similar but more recent interpretation of these classicalpolitical theorists can also be found in Camilleri and Falk, op. cit., pp. 18–21.

29. According to one particular interpretation, resort on the part of these classical thinkers to ‘‘thefiction of a social contract’’ or to ‘‘some sort of natural law’’ had the function of distinguishingsovereignty from absolutism by means of setting limits on the former (W.J. Stankiewicz, ‘‘In Defenseof Sovereignty: A Critique and an Interpretation’’, in W.J. Stankiewicz (ed.), In Defense of Sovereignty(New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 9). Seen from such a vantage point, social contract andnatural law are yet a further normative element in these theories; an element that concerns itself notwith the question of who in the body politic is to be endowed with sovereignty but with the issueof the scope and limits of that sovereignty.

30. It has to be noted in this context that there is also a substantial number of theories that haveattempted to synthesise these two standpoints. An analysis of these theories of what has alternativelybeen called ‘‘limited’’, ‘‘partial’’, ‘‘double’’ or ‘‘mixed sovereignty’’ is undertaken in Hinsley, op. cit.,pp. 135–140.

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the powers that were transferred from the ruled to the ruler constituted anirreversible alienation and not merely a concession that could be withdrawn.With such premises as a point of departure, Bodin made a case for monarchicalsovereignty, but in order to distinguish it from absolutism he specified two typesof limitations to the power of the sovereign monarch: those restrictions thatderived from divine and natural law and those constraints that were imposedby the customary laws of society and by the property rights of its citizens.31

Writing against a similar background of political turmoil, this time in 17th-century England, Thomas Hobbes arrived at similar conclusions about thelocation of sovereignty—at least as regards the practical consequences of histheory. It is true that Hobbes formulated what was probably the first normativetheory of sovereignty at the state level. But viewed from the vantage point ofthe component parts of the body politic—i.e. from an intra-state perspective—what followed from Hobbes’s conception of sovereignty was an implicit vindica-tion of ruler sovereignty. Nowhere is this tension clearer than in his way ofreasoning: on the one hand, Hobbes totally abandoned the notion of a contractof rulership between the people and the ruler, by substituting for it the idea ofa social contract, by means of which individuals agreed to submit their rights tothe state in exchange for security. Thus, sovereignty resided not in the ruler orthe people but in the state, which, rather than being a participant in this contract,was the outcome of it. On the other hand, however, Hobbes argued, like theadvocates of ruler sovereignty, that the supreme power of legislation ought tolie with the ruler and refused to concede any right to the people. The practicaloutcome of this theoretical approach to sovereignty was, especially during theperiod in which it was formulated, a standpoint in favour of ruler sovereignty.The abstract notion of state sovereignty, limited solely by its duty to protect thelives of individuals, could have only one actual manifestation, namely theconcrete sovereignty of the ruler, which was indivisible, unrestricted and almostomnipotent, and into which the personality of the people was fully merged.32

In contrast to these accounts, which explicitly or implicitly argued thatsovereignty ought to reside in the ruler, other theorists, notably Althusiusand Jean-Jacques Rousseau, formulated normative theories which asserted thatsovereignty was located irrevocably with the people. Althusius, who was the firstto formulate a systematic doctrine of popular sovereignty, based his argument, ina manner not different from that of Bodin, on the notion of the contract ofrulership between the people and the ruler. But in contrast to Bodin, Althusiusargued that sovereignty inalienably and absolutely resided in the people whoheld the right to resist any ruler who violated the contract. Moreover, Althusiusclaimed that this sovereign power, now located in the people as a whole, waslimited not only by natural law—as had been claimed by Bodin as regards thesovereign ruler—but even by positive law.33

The doctrine of popular sovereignty probably received its most elaborateexplication in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In a manner similar to thatof Hobbes, Rousseau totally eliminated from his argument the idea of a contractof rulership between the ruler and the people, and replaced it with the notion

31. Ibid., pp. 71, 120–124, 131.32. Ibid., pp. 141–145.33. Ibid., pp. 132, 134–135.

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of a single contract between the individuals. By means of this social contract,which was based on the free consent of all individuals, and which ended thestate of nature, each person agreed to submit absolutely and permanently to thestate’s will. Thus, the state, whose task it was to revive in the body politic theliberty and equality of the state of nature, was endowed with absolute andunlimited sovereignty. However, unlike Hobbes, Rousseau equated the sovereignstate with the body politic of the people and reduced the rulership and thegovernment to ‘‘a mere commission’’. Thus, the people continuously exercisedthe power to dismiss the government, which was ‘‘merely the non-sovereignexecutor of the legislative commands of the sovereign community’’, and virtuallysuspended its commission whenever it assembled. Moreover, the sovereignty ofthe people was not restricted by any constitution or positive law and its exercisecould not be transferred to any governmental organ by way of representation.34

This is probably the doctrine of popular sovereignty in its most radical andpristine form, and it has to be noted that as a normative theory of sovereigntyits influence is substantial even in our own time.35

Descriptive Theories of Sovereignty at the State Level

The theories that fall in this category focus on states and similar entities, and ingeneral they concentrate their efforts on grappling with one single, broadquestion: which types of political—or territorial—entities are, as a matter of fact,sovereign? This question has been addressed by two separate bodies of theoreti-cal writing that can be differentiated from each other on the basis of theirunderlying assumptions about the essence of sovereignty.

Theories belonging to the first sub-category have a legal conception of sover-eignty as their common denominator, since they share the presumption that theterm merely denotes a juridical status—or a precondition of that status—whichmay be derived from endogenous or exogenous factors but which almostinvariably results in the possession of rights and obligations. Thus, operatingwithin the confines of the main tenets of constitutional law or the constitutivestipulations of public international law, when these theories attempt to distin-guish, on an empirical basis, those entities that are sovereign from those that arenot, they have given—and in one case simply implied—three different answersto the issue of state sovereignty. The first type of answer asserts that sovereignstatus is a consequence of a specific internal legal quality which is related to theconstitutional law of states and similar entities. Although the roots of this notioncan easily be traced back to Austin’s original definition of sovereignty, arudimentary conceptualisation of the term along these lines was first formulatedby C.A.W. Manning, who viewed the sovereignty of states as ‘‘an aspect of theirnature as organizations constitutionally insular’’.36 In a more detailed and elaborate

34. Ibid., pp. 153–154.35. At this level of analysis, it is also possible to find normative theories that reject sovereignty as

a form of political organisation. For example, Jacques Maritain conceptualises sovereignty, inter alia,as transcendent supremacy, claims that it is intrinsically associated with absolutism, and proposesthat both concepts should be discarded. Jacques Maritain, ‘‘The Concept of Sovereignty’’, in In Defenseof Sovereignty, pp. 51, 56, 61–64.

36. Emphasis in the original. C.A.W. Manning, ‘‘The Legal Framework in a World of Change’’, inBrian Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers—International Politics 1919–1969 (London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1969), p. 307; C.A.W. Manning, The Nature of International Society (London: Bell, 1962 andMacmillan, 1975), p. 166.

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explication of this notion, Alan James defines sovereignty as ‘‘constitutionalindependence’’ which, in turn, means that ‘‘a state’s constitution is not part of alarger constitutional arrangement’’. On this basis James claims that sovereignty isa legal, absolute and unitary condition which, according to current internationalpractice, makes a state ‘‘eligible to participate fully and regularly in internationalrelations’’ and, moreover, renders it qualified for possession of sovereign rights.37

The second type of answer—which indeed is more of an implication than ananswer—also emphasises the role of endogenous factors but maintains thatsovereignty is a legal status enjoyed by entities that possess attributes ofstatehood. Proffered exclusively by such international lawyers as Hall, Brownlieand Crawford, this proposition is the logical conclusion of two types of premisesthat are to be found in their work: first, they define sovereignty in terms of thelegal personality of statehood38 or a bundle of rights possessed by states,39 and,second, they determine the legal criteria of ‘‘state’’ or ‘‘statehood’’, mainly orexclusively, with reference to empirical attributes.40 In other words, the emer-gence of marks of statehood in the international sphere puts, ex hypothesi, thelaw of nations in operation, one consequence of which is that the entity whichfulfils the legal criteria of statehood by possessing these marks attains sovereignjuridical personality or, depending on the terminology employed, enjoys sover-eign rights under that law. Furthermore, since the conclusion of the MontevideoConvention on Rights and Duties of States in 1933, the legal criteria of statehoodare usually specified with reference to the empirical indicators encapsulated inArticle 1 of this accord as ‘‘a permanent population’’, ‘‘a defined territory’’,‘‘government’’, and ‘‘capacity to enter into relations with other states’’.41 Seenfrom the vantage point of the present analysis, such a detailed designation oflegal criteria brings the purported relationship between empirical attributes ofstatehood and sovereign status of states out in sharp relief, and turns the centralassumption of this approach into a falsifiable empirical statement. Finally, thethird type of answer to be found in this sub-category of theories maintains thatsovereign status is enjoyed by those entities that have a certain external quality,namely recognition as a state by the international community. The key assump-tions of this exogenous explanation—an approach that seems to be almostconsensually adopted by the students of political science and internationalrelations—can be traced back to the constitutive doctrine of recognition in

37. James, Sovereign Statehood, pp. 25, 40, 45–49, 54, 203; Alan James, ‘‘The Practice of SovereignStatehood in Contemporary International Society’’, in Robert Jackson (ed.), Political Studies (specialissue), Vol. 47, No. 3 (1999). Apparently the definition of sovereignty as ‘‘constitutional independence’’has also been adopted by Robert H. Jackson in a recent study (Robert H. Jackson, ‘‘Continuity andChange in the State System’’, in Robert H. Jackson and Alan James (eds.), States in a Changing World—A Contemporary Analysis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 347).

38. Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, 4th edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990),p. 108.

39. William Edward Hall, A Treatise on International Law, 8th edn, A. Pearce Higgins (ed.) (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 55; James Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 26, 88.

40. Ibid., pp. 36–74; Hall, op. cit., p. 17; Brownlie, op. cit., pp. 71–79.41. Montevideo Convention quoted in Brownlie, op. cit., p. 72; see also the interpretation of this

criterion in Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, ‘‘Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empiricaland Juridical in Statehood’’, World Politics, Vol. 35 (1982), pp. 3–16.

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international law, where it constitutes a source of controversy.42 Once again,however, and in a fashion similar to the previous explanation, in the classicalmonographs that treat the subject—such as those of Oppenheim, Kelsen andSchwarzenberger—the relationship between sovereign status on the one handand the act of recognition as a state on the other is implied rather than expressed:on the one hand, sovereignty is associated with ‘‘qualities’’43 or ‘‘rights andobligations’’44 of states, and on the other recognition is seen as constituting thesetraits either directly45 or indirectly by way of instituting legal or ‘‘international’’personality.46 It must be noted in this context, however, that such a conceptualis-ation of legal sovereignty as a function of recognition raises several interrelatedquestions. Whose recognition, in concrete terms, is required? How manyinstances of recognition are required for legal personality to come into existence?Are the sovereign rights and obligations relative only to the recognising state?And, finally, are there any empirical criteria for recognition?47 The proponentsof the constitutive doctrine in international law may appropriately have atendency to leave the settlement of such issues to the autonomous judgement ofthe international lawyer, who is to make an independent decision in eachparticular case. However, the scholars of political science, probably because ofthe requirements of their discipline, have been obliged to address at least thefirst of these questions. Thus, it has been argued that recognition that has sucha constitutive effect is granted by ‘‘a world polity of transnational elites’’, ‘‘theEuropean or Great Powers’’,48 or that it is the reflection of an ‘‘active practicalconsensus among coreflective statesmen’’.49

The common denominator of the second sub-category of theories is a concep-tion of sovereignty that assumes that the term refers not only to a legal statusbut to an actual condition as well. Thus it is suggested that the issue of whetheror not an entity is sovereign according to some juridical standard has to becomplemented with the question of to what extent—or whether or not—thatentity exercises sovereignty in practice. Apart from this common point of

42. Janice E. Thomson, ‘‘State Sovereignty in International Relations: Bridging the Gap betweenTheory and Empirical Research’’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2 (1995), p. 219; RichardK. Ashley, ‘‘The Poverty of Neorealism’’, International Organization, Vol. 38 (1984), p. 272; Robert H.Jackson, ‘‘Juridical Statehood in Sub-Saharan Africa’’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 46, No. 1(1992), p. 7; Murray Forsyth, Union of States—The Theory and Practice of Confederation (New York:Leicester University Press, 1981), p. 11. For a recent example see Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty—Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 3, 7, 9, 14 and passim. For aclear exception in this respect see James, Sovereign Statehood, pp. 271, 147–148. See also GeorgSorensen’s study which relates recognition to the ‘‘regulative rules’’ of sovereignty that are to bedistinguished from ‘‘constitutive rules’’ (Georg Sorensen, ‘‘Sovereignty: Change and Continuity in aFundamental Institution’’, in Robert Jackson (ed.), Political Studies, (special issue), Vol. 47, No. 3(1999), pp. 595–596, 591–597).

43. Lassa Oppenheim, International Law—A Treatise, 8th edn, H. Lauterpacht (ed.) (London:Longman, Green, 1955), p. 286; Hans Kelsen, Principles of International Law, 2nd edn, revised andedited by Robert W. Tucker (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. 249.

44. Georg Schwarzenberger, A Manual of International Law, 6th edn (Abingdon: Professional Books,1976), p. 52.

45. Kelsen, op. cit., pp. 392, 394.46. Oppenheim, op. cit., pp. 125–126; Schwarzenberger, A Manual of International Law, pp. 54–56.47. Brownlie, op. cit., p. 90; Thomson, op. cit., p. 219.48. See J. Meyer, Hedley Bull, Adam Watson, Janice E. Thomson and David Strang, referred to in

ibid., p. 219.49. Ashley, op. cit., p. 273.

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departure, however, this body of theoretical reasoning displays considerableterminological differences. Robert H. Jackson, for instance, makes a distinctionbetween the formal-legal condition of ‘‘negative sovereignty’’, which he defines as‘‘freedom from outside interference’’, and the substantive condition of ‘‘positivesovereignty’’, which ‘‘presupposes capabilities which enable governments to betheir own masters’’.50 David Held, in turn, distinguishes ‘‘de jure sovereignty’’from ‘‘de facto sovereignty’’ and remarks that this distinction ‘‘is sometimes madein order to separate out problems facing a state due to loss of aspects of legalsovereignty from problems which stem from a loss of political and economicautonomy’’.51 Finally, to give a last example, Hedley Bull suggests that sover-eignty of states exists both at ‘‘a normative level’’ and at ‘‘a factual level’’, thatis, states not only assert but, in varying degrees, also actually practise supremacyand independence, which are the hallmarks of sovereignty.52 Although thesetheories highlight, from an empirical point of view, a crucial aspect of statesovereignty, they stop short of developing an analytical instrument, by meansof which sovereign entities, in the factual sense of this term, can be distinguishedempirically from non-sovereign entities.53

Normative Theories of Sovereignty at the State Level

This category of theories deals with the normative version of the previousquestion which, accordingly, may be reformulated as follows: which types ofpolitical—or territorial—entities ought to be sovereign?

One answer to this question is to assert that sovereignty should simply belocated in the state. At face value this is a trivial statement, since, in so far assovereignty is an attribute of the state, the proposition that sovereignty oughtto reside in the state does not say much. But what makes this assertion morethan an uninteresting tautology are the arguments that are usually presented forits justification. It has already been noted above that Hobbes’s conception ofsovereignty was probably the first normative theory of sovereignty at the statelevel. The idea that sovereignty ought to reside not in the ruler or the ruled butin the state in its entirety was sustained in Hobbes’s theory by what may becalled the security argument: on the one hand, sovereignty was necessarilylocated in the state because of the nature of the single contract through which

50. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 27–29. A similar terminology, but with somewhatdifferent content, is also employed by Georg Schwarzenberger (see Schwarzenberger, A Manual ofInternational Law, pp. 53–54).

51. David Held, Political Theory and the Modern State—Essays on State, Power and Democracy (Oxford:Polity Press, 1989), pp. 228–229. Held seems to use ‘‘de jure supreme power’’, ‘‘de jure sovereignty’’and ‘‘sovereignty’’ on the one hand, and ‘‘de facto supreme power’’, ‘‘de facto sovereignty’’ and‘‘autonomy’’ on the other, synonymously (ibid., pp. 216, 228).

52. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 8.53. There is also a somewhat less representative body of literature, where the concept of sovereignty

is conceived of in exclusively non-legal terms. Kenneth N. Waltz, for instance, asserts that ‘‘o saythat a state is sovereign means that it decides for itself how it will cope with its internal and externalproblems’’ (Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979),p. 96), while Robert Gilpin maintains that ‘‘he state is sovereign in that it must answer to no higherauthority in the international sphere’’ (Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 17).

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all individuals agreed to submit to the state, ‘‘but in which the state necessarilysovereign, necessarily took no part’’, and on the other hand the basic purpose ofthis contract was nothing but the preservation of the lives of the individuals.54

Thus, it follows that, if the security of the individuals was to be provided for,they were obliged to enter into a covenant, the inevitable outcome of which wasthe sovereignty of the state. Furthermore, according to another interpretation ofHobbes, the sovereignty of the state ought to be ‘‘self-perpetuating, undividedand ultimately absolute’’ if the state is to safeguard ‘‘the safety of the people’’.55

The proposition that sovereignty ought to be located in the state as an entitymay also be justified by what might be called the democracy argument. Thisaspect of sovereignty has recently been made an important issue as a result ofthose processes of transgovernmental or transnational integration which havesupposedly come to reshape the international sphere in general, and WesternEurope in particular. On the one hand, the existence of a rightful democraticunit is generally regarded as a prerequisite to a democratic process and onecertain criterion for the justification of such a unit is that its ‘‘domain and scopecan be clearly identified’’.56 On the other hand, it is precisely the boundaries andthe scope of the democratic unit which are allegedly being undermined byformal transgovernmental integration such as that in the European Union. Thistension between the criteria for a democratic process and the perceived realityof supra-national integration is probably one of the sources of what, in the EUcontext, has been labelled as the ‘‘democratic deficit’’. In this context, twoconflicting solutions have been presented; that democracy can be preserved andthe problem of the ‘‘democratic deficit’’ can be solved by establishing a demo-cratic supra-state (the standpoint of the ‘‘federalists’’) and that this can beaccomplished only by abandoning supra-statism (the view of what may be called‘‘the proponents of the nation-state’’). Ironically, both solutions have the sameassumption as their point of departure: the state—federal or unitary, national ormultinational—ought to be sovereign, if democracy is to be realised.57

Another answer to the same question is to suggest—often implicitly—thatnations ought to be sovereign. This, for instance, is usually—but not always—the underlying assumption of nationalism in general and its doctrinal expression,the principle of national self-determination, in particular.58 The idea that nationsand sovereign states ought to coincide with one another is an intrinsic elementof nationalism and is discernible in various definitions given to the concept.According to Ernest Gellner, for instance, ‘‘nationalism is primarily a politicalprinciple, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congru-ent’’, or in other words, it is ‘‘a theory of political legitimacy which requires that

54. Hinsley, op. cit., pp. 142–143.55. Emphasis in the original. Held, op. cit., p. 221.56. Robert Alan Dahl, Democracy and its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 207.57. Here, I draw partly on a lecture given by Sverker Gustavsson at the University of Stockholm,

Department of Political Science, on 19 February 1997.58. It may be objected that the proposition that ‘‘nations ought to be sovereign’’ is derived in my

argument from the proposition that ‘‘nations ought to establish their own states’’, and that there isno necessary connection between these two statements. This objection is certainly justified. But asMacCormick points out, ‘‘the evident need that the nation be free to express its will leads logicallyto the view that there must be self-determination of nations and that, since the sovereign state is thesupreme form of politico-legal order, each nation must be or become a sovereign state’’ (NeilMacCormick, Legal Right and Social Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 255).

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ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones’’.59 More specifically, NeilMacCormick identifies a ‘‘nationalist’’ principle that is ‘‘the principle that thosewho belong to distinct nations ought to have distinct governments based upontheir own distinctive laws and customs’’.60 David Miller, in turn, observes that‘‘[h]istorically, the sovereign state has been the main vehicle through whichclaims to national self-determination have been realized, and this is not just anaccident’’. But he quickly adds that ‘‘national self-determination can be realizedin other ways, and . . . there are cases where it must be realized other thanthrough a sovereign state, precisely to meet the equally good claims of othernationalities’’.61 Here the important point for the present analysis is that, whennational self-determination is to be achieved by other means than through theestablishment of a sovereign state, the justification for doing so is not based ontheoretical considerations but on practical necessities, such as the non-viabilityof the proposed state, re-production of the problem of national self-determina-tion, the existence of an ambivalent national identity, or some combination ofthese.62

Descriptive Theories of Sovereignty at the Inter-state Level

Taking the sovereignty of states as a given, the theories that fall into this categoryfocus on the international sphere and concentrate on one general question: whatis the nature—i.e. the basic characteristics—of the relations between sovereignentities?

These theories all contrast the existence of sovereignty at the state level withthe lack of any such institution at the inter-state level. While the domestic realmis ordered hierarchically, the basic feature of the international domain is theabsence of any authority above the states that might regulate relations betweenthem. However, the conclusions that may be drawn from this single premisevary considerably and indicate at least three different answers to the questionunder consideration.

First, it is possible to regard the relations between sovereign entities asconstituting a sovereignty regime, which is to a certain extent regulated bynorms, rules, and conventions. This is, for instance, the conception of sovereigntypresented by some of the proponents of the institutionalist theory. In oneexplication of this approach, Robert H. Jackson makes a distinction between ‘‘theold’’ and ‘‘the new sovereignty game’’. The former is characterised by the‘‘empirical statehood’’ of the participants, who are ‘‘governments which hadsuccessfully asserted sovereignty in the past, had never surrendered it orsuccumbed to another state, and consequently had a strong historical right toplay the game’’. The latter, the new sovereignty game, which has come to changethe nature of inter-state relations during the post-war period, embodies rulesthat ‘‘apply to many political entities which have not met traditional tests ofempirical statehood and probably would not exist as sovereign states otherwise’’.Jackson maintains that this new sovereignty game ‘‘involves basically two

59. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), p. 1.60. MacCormick, op. cit., p. 260.61. David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 11.62. Ibid., pp. 116–118.

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normative innovations: self-determination of ex-colonies, and development enti-tlements of impoverished countries’’. Thus, on the one hand, the basic principleof the new sovereignty regime is that of non-intervention, whereby the domesticrealm of the decolonised states, which are often empirically weak ‘‘quasi-states’’,and whatever happens in that realm, including abuses of human rights, becomesimmune to intervention from other states. On the other hand, within theframework of this regime, these states are conceived to be entitled to aid andmaterial assistance—in Jackson’s words ‘‘sovereignty plus’’—while at the sametime the donor countries are impeded by the principle of non-intervention fromhaving any say on the effective use of such aid. As a result, what characterisesthe new sovereignty regime is not reciprocity and equal rights, as is the case withthe old regime, but ‘‘an unprecedented form of international nonreciprocity’’.63

Second, relations between sovereign entities may be regarded as forming whatmight be called a sovereignty system, which is substantially unregulated but byno means merely contingent. The order that these relations display is not due toparticular institutional devices, as is the case with sovereignty regimes, but theresult of factors operating at the systemic level. In an elaboration of thistheoretical approach from a structuralist-realist standpoint, Kenneth H. Waltzproceeds from the assumption that the component parts of international-politicalsystems are states and he claims that the structure of these systems is mouldedby the interactions of states.64 Furthermore, states are considered as ‘‘like units’’in the sense that ‘‘each state is like all other states in being an autonomouspolitical unit’’, which is ‘‘another way of saying that states are sovereign’’.65

Thus, the constituent parts of the international-political systems ‘‘stand inrelations of coordination’’, and the absence of hierarchy among them explainsthe ‘‘decentralized and anarchic’’ character of the international systems. Waltzgoes on to point out that, in so far as structure is an ‘‘organizational concept’’,such an understanding at once raises the question of how ‘‘structure’’ is to bereconciled with ‘‘anarchy’’ or, in his own words, ‘‘the problem is . . . how toconceive of an order without an orderer and of organisational effects whereformal organization is lacking’’. According to Waltz the solution to the problemlies in the fact that international-political systems function in a fashion similarto that of markets, whereby the reciprocal actions of self-regarding ‘‘like units’’create a structure that constrains and affects them all. Thus, order is a functionof the action of states in limiting and constraining each other.66

63. Jackson, Quasi-states, pp. 38–49, 3–5, 7, 198–199.64. Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘‘Political Structures’’, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 87, 90, 84–85. It has to be noted that Waltz’sanalysis is not unambiguous as regards the latter point: on the one hand, Waltz argues that

to define a structure requires ignoring how units relate with one another (how theyinteract) and concentrating on how they stand in relation to one another (how they arearranged or positioned). Interactions . . . take place at the level of the units. How unitsstand in relation to one another, the way they are arranged or positioned, is not a propertyof the units. The arrangement of units is a property of the system. (Ibid., p. 71)

On the other hand, he maintains explicitly that ‘‘states are the units whose interactions form thestructure of international-political systems’’ (ibid., p. 90).

65. Ibid., p. 90. It has to be noted in this context that Waltz never uses the term ‘‘sovereigntysystems’’. However, the point of departure in his theory is systemic approaches to the relationsbetween sovereign entities.

66. Ibid., pp. 81–85, 90.

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Third, relations between sovereign entities might be considered to be deter-mined by a state of nature in which disorder is the rule and order the exception.This conception appears to be, for instance, one of the central assumptions ofwhat some scholars have labelled as the ‘‘Hobbesian tradition’’ in internationalrelations, and as a descriptive theory it may well be regarded as an outdatedrelic belonging to the history of ideas.67 Concisely—if somewhat crudely—expressed, this approach argues that the relations between sovereign entities arecharacterised by conflict and rivalry, in which the interests of each state arediametrically opposed to the interests of any other state. Accordingly, what isinvolved in these relations is a zero-sum game, where the gains of any state areequivalent to the losses of some other state or states. Subsequently, internationalrelations are characterised by continuous struggle, and war persists as the usualform of interaction between states. In this view, peace is nothing other than ‘‘aperiod of recuperation from the last war and preparation for the next’’.68 Thus,in the chaotic situation that arises there is no space for norms, rules andconventions which may more or less regulate the relations between sovereignentities; there is no room for ‘‘organizational effects’’ that emanate from structuralmechanisms and put limits on the actions of states. The only rules that maycircumscribe the behaviour of sovereign entities in their relations with oneanother are those of caution and expediency—such as preserving the balance ofpower between them—and these are dictated by raison d’etat.69

Normative Theories of Sovereignty at the Inter-state Level70

Given that the nature of the relations between sovereign entities is what it is,this category of theories shifts the focus of attention to the issue of how theserelations may be changed in a fashion that is more congenial to the well-beingof societies and individuals. Thus, the question that these theories highlight is,in general terms, what the nature of the relations between sovereign entitiesought to be.

One way of answering this question is to suggest that these relations oughtto be regulated by means of legal rules and juridical principles that determinethe content and scope of sovereign rights and obligations. This, for instance,appears to be the basic assumption of public international law, which attemptsto monitor the conduct of states through the employment of a body of rules thatare considered to have the status of law.71 However, such an approach immedi-ately raises a crucial question: in the absence of any world authority withlegislative functions, how and in what manner are international lawyers sup-

67. This concept is closely related to a three-fold division of theories about international relationsthat has been introduced by Martin Wight. In the following presentation of the central themes ofthis tradition I draw on those summaries that have been provided by Hedley Bull and RobertJackson ( Jackson, Quasi-states, pp. 164–165, 168; Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 23–24).

68. Ibid., p. 23.69. It is true that the basic premises of this theoretical tradition display notable similarities with

the central assumptions of the previous theory about the sovereignty systems—hence the tendencyto regard both theoretical approaches as sub-species of so-called ‘‘realist theory’’.

70. In this section I draw almost exclusively on the summaries of these theoretical approachespresented by Hedley Bull and Robert Jackson (Bull, The Anarchical Society; Jackson, Quasi-states).

71. Cf. Bull’s definition of ‘‘international law’’, in Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 122, 122–130.

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posed to stipulate legal rules and juridical principles? Or, in other words, whatare the sources of valid international law? At the risk of oversimplification, it ispossible to identify two types of general answers that can be traced back to twodifferent schools of legal thought within the discipline of international law.

The proponents of the positivist school maintain that the only valid source oflaw is the consent of states, which may be given explicitly by means ofinternational treaties and conventions or implicitly as is the case with inter-national customary law.72 Moreover, according to this school of legal thought,states are the only subjects of international law, that is, the only agents on whichthe law confers duties and rights. Taken together, these two tenets imply arestrictive view of international law and suggest a doctrine on the regulation ofinter-state relations that has a weak normative character: in so far as those whodetermine the substance of rights and obligations and those who are the bearersof them are the same agents, the regulation of inter-state relations becomescontingent upon a minimal agreement between states. As a result, the positivistdoctrine interprets the content and scope of sovereign rights in broad terms,while it gives a narrower definition to that of sovereign obligations.

In contrast to the positivist view, the advocates of the ‘‘solidarist’’ school arguethat the true sources of international law embody not only the consent of statesbut consensus among the members of international society. Those rules, inrelation to which international opinion has reached a certain degree of consensus,have the status of law, it is argued, even if they are not accepted by some states.Furthermore, the subjects of international law are considered to comprise notonly states but other agents such as international organisations and individualsas well.73 Thus, on the one hand, the rules that are supposed to regulate inter-state relations are not considered to be totally dependent on the approval of allstates, with the consequence that a state may be required by the law to follow aprescribed behaviour, to which it has never given its consent. On the other hand,it is supposed that the conduct of states is further circumscribed through legalobligations to observe the rights of other, non-state subjects—for instance the‘‘human rights’’ of individuals. What these tenets amount to is a doctrine that isexuberantly normative: it does not stop at regulating relations between sovereignentities but also includes those between sovereign entities and their subjects. Itfollows from these propositions that ‘‘solidarist’’ doctrine, in contrast to positivistdoctrine, tends to interpret the content and scope of sovereign obligationsbroadly, while defining that of sovereign rights more narrowly.

Another way of answering the question of what the nature of relationsbetween sovereign entities ought to be is to propose that these relations shouldbe radically transformed and transcended beyond sovereignty. The starting pointof this kind of reasoning is the assumption that the state system is ‘‘dysfunc-tional’’, in the sense that ‘‘it has ceased or is ceasing to be capable of fulfillingthe basic ends or goals of man on earth’’. This, it is argued, is due to the factthat the system of sovereign states is unable to provide peace and security, toaccomplish the goals of economic and social justice, or to tackle worldwideecological problems.74 The proposals that are, and may be, formulated on the

72. See ibid., pp. 141–142; Hinsley, op. cit., p. 190; Brownlie, op. cit., pp. 1–30.73. Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 124, 139–143.74. Ibid., pp. 272–273; Jackson, Quasi-states, p. 175. It might be noted that Bull discusses these

theories in the context of the issue of ‘‘world order’’, while Jackson approaches them from the pointof view of ‘‘quasi-states’’.

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Theories of Sovereignty 367

basis of these and similar assumptions display considerable variation and cannotbe discussed in full here; nor is there any need to do so. But what has greatrelevance to the purposes of the present analysis is the tendency of these theoriesto reject, on normative grounds, the institution of sovereignty as a form ofpolitical organisation appropriate to the interests of mankind. The basic assump-tions of this view can be traced back to what has been labelled the ‘‘Kantian oruniversalist tradition’’ in international relations. According to this line of thought,the cardinal feature of international politics is ‘‘the transnational social bondsthat link the individual human beings who are the subjects or citizens of states’’.But while ‘‘the interests of all men are one and the same’’, the interests of statesand the governing elites of states are not. Moreover, the freedom of mankind isincompatible with the absolute freedom of states, and in the ensuing conflictbetween the well-being of ‘‘the community of mankind’’ and the continuingexistence of the current state system the former has moral superiority over thelatter. From here it is but a short step to the conclusion that the ‘‘moralimperatives in the field of international relations . . . enjoin not coexistence andco-operation among states but rather the overthrow of the system of states andits replacement by a cosmopolitan society’’.75

Linkages between the Classes of Theories of Sovereignty

Theories of sovereignty are seldom clearly demarcated from each another andthey are rarely presented in a mode that would eliminate their effects on oneanother. Moreover, some of the theories that have been referred to in the previoussections are theories of sovereignty only by way of implication: nationalism, forinstance, is a doctrine that only presupposes some understanding of sovereignty,while popular sovereignty, to give another example, is much more a theory ofdemocracy than sovereignty. Similar observations can probably be made evenabout other theories that have been categorised in the previous pages.

Thus the analytical device which is the outcome of the classification oftheories of sovereignty is not without some important shortcomings. First, anycategorisation of things—regardless of whether these things are physical objectsor abstract theories—necessarily simplifies reality by emphasising the similaritieswithin the categories: on the one hand, to highlight one or a few aspects of athing, in accordance with which the category is defined, is to leave other aspectsin darkness, and, on the other, any attempt to capture these other aspects byfurther dividing categories into sub-categories inevitably comes to an end afterperhaps several, but nevertheless a finite, number of levels. This general defi-ciency of classifications is probably inevitable and must be accepted. As Waltzeloquently expresses it in a discussion about considering ‘‘states’’ as a category:

[s]tates are alike, and they are also different. So are corporations, apples,universities, and people. Whenever we put two or more objects in thesame category, we are saying that they are alike not in all respects butin some. No two objects in this world are identical, yet they can oftenbe usefully compared and combined.76

75. Cf. Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 24–25; Jackson, Quasi-states, p. 174.76. Waltz, ‘‘Political Structures’’, p. 91.

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Second, to the extent that the domain of a categorisation does not constitute asub-class of a more general category, any categorisation of things also necessarilyinvolves an emphasis on the dissimilarities between the categories. To say that‘‘apples are apples and oranges are oranges’’ is to tone down the possibility thatthey may also be considered as ‘‘fruit’’. Owing to the infinite number of possiblehigher—or broader—categories, this shortcoming of categorisations is notepistemologically inevitable and it can be remedied to a certain extent. Thus, inorder to redress this type of simplification and to recapture some aspects of themultifarious character of sovereignty, the focus of attention will now be shiftedto a brief survey of those linkages that exist between the ideal categoriesidentified above.

It is possible to distinguish three such types of linkages between differentclasses of theories of sovereignty. In the first place, there are what may becalled epistemological linkages that cut across the normative and descriptivedimensions. These linkages are somewhat trivial but deserve a brief mention. Onthe one hand, any normative theory about how things ought to be presupposes adescriptive theory about how things actually are. Thus, to say, for instance, thatsovereignty ought to be located in the people is to imply that it is in realitylocated elsewhere; to argue that nations ought to be sovereign is to maintainthat some other entities than nations—for example de facto sovereign politicalentities—are sovereign in reality. On the other hand, any normative theory thatachieves its goals gradually transforms into a descriptive theory, where theexpression ‘‘ought’’ loses much of its normative force. For instance, at the timeof its explication during the 16th century, Bodin’s theory of ruler sovereigntywas clearly a normative theory, partly due to the fact that it was formulatedagainst the background of civil strife in France and partly owing to the featuresof the political organisation of 16th-century Europe, which still had traces ofmedieval heteronomy. But during the two following centuries, which witnessedthe ascendancy of absolute monarchies in Europe, the theory of ruler sovereigntywas more or less a description of the political reality then prevailing on theContinent; and it could retain its force as a normative theory only to the extentthat it was mobilised against the opponents of absolutism—such as the adherentsof popular sovereignty—who challenged the legitimacy of this political reality.

In the second place, as regards the unit of analysis, the descriptive theoriesthat are formulated at one level of analysis have a tendency to presuppose atheory of sovereignty at the next lower level. In other words, the descriptivetheories of sovereignty that are formulated at the inter-state level may assumesome conception of sovereignty at the state level while those that are formulatedat the state level may presume some conception of sovereignty at the intra-statelevel. These connections between the descriptive theories of sovereignty can besummarised as follows:

(i) At the state level, the definition of sovereignty as ‘‘constitutional indepen-dence’’ presumes a conception of sovereignty as ‘‘supreme legal authority’’.To say that those political entities which have constitutions that are notsubordinate to other constitutions are sovereign is to assume that amongthe institutions of such an entity there is one institution with ultimate legalauthority which is not subordinate to any other authority77—hence the

77. Cf. James, Sovereign Statehood, p. 59; Austin, op. cit., pp. 166–167.

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Theories of Sovereignty 369

linkage between James’s theory of sovereignty and the legal theory ofsovereignty. A similar connection is also discernable in the view put forwardwithin international law that conceptualises juridical sovereignty at thislevel as a consequence of acquisition of empirical traits of statehood, interalia, of independence.

(ii) In a similar manner, those theories at the state level which considersovereignty as a factual condition (such as conceptions of de facto sover-eignty or positive sovereignty), or as a legal status that follows from afactual condition (such as the empirical attributes of statehood), presupposeat the intra-state level a conception of sovereignty as ‘‘supreme coercivepower’’—hence the linkage between these theories and Rees’s conceptionof ‘‘coercive sovereignty’’.

(iii) At the inter-state level, Jackson’s theory of ‘‘the new sovereignty regime’’ isderived explicitly from a distinction at the state level between ‘‘positive’’and ‘‘negative sovereignty’’, inasmuch as the basic feature of this regime isthe fact that it comprises participants that have negative sovereignty butlack positive sovereignty.78

(iv) In a similar vein, but much less explicitly, in his structuralist re-inter-pretation of systemic approaches to the relations between sovereign entities,Waltz presumes a factual conception of sovereignty at the state level wherepolitical autonomy is considered to be the hallmark of sovereignty.79 Sucha linkage is also discernible in the Hobbesian conception of these relations,where ‘‘the state of nature’’ that supposedly characterises the internationalsphere is the inevitable consequence of the fact that it is composed ofentities—i.e. states—that are sovereign.In the third place, as regards the unit of analysis, there are also connectionsbetween different normative theories on sovereignty. However, it is perhapsnot surprising that, in contrast to the links between descriptive theories,these linkages do not seem to follow any specific pattern and are apparentlysomewhat contingent. Here, it is possible to point out two such linkages:

(v) There is a discernible linkage between popular sovereignty at the intra-statelevel on the one hand, and nationalism and the doctrine of national self-determination at the state level on the other. To say that sovereignty oughtto reside in the people raises the question of how ‘‘the people’’ is to bedefined. This question may be resolved by regarding ‘‘the people’’ and ‘‘thenation’’ as identical entities,80 whereby the statement that ‘‘sovereigntyought to be located in the people’’ becomes an equivalent to the propositionthat ‘‘nations ought to be the sovereign entities’’.

(vi) There seems to be a negative connection between those normative theorieswhich assert that sovereignty ought to be located in the state and thosewhich maintain that state sovereignty should be transcended, since thesetwo kinds of theories logically exclude each other. It is moreover possibleto conceive of situations where this contradiction may be reflected incontroversy about, or ambiguity in, other concepts, such as the concept ofcitizenship. Critical theories which attempt to develop alternative, non-state

78. Jackson, Quasi-states, pp. 40–47, 34.79. Waltz, ‘‘Political Structures’’, p. 90.80. Miller, op. cit., pp. 29–30; MacCormick, op. cit., pp. 254–255.

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models of citizenship and which view sovereignty as an obstacle in thatrespect have their logical antithesis in those normative theories that counterthis approach by asserting that the concept of citizenship is meaningfulonly within the framework of a democratic sovereign state.81

Conclusions

A classification of theories of sovereignty and an identification of linkagesbetween the classes on the basis of an interdisciplinary approach clarifies, tovarying degrees, those three aspects of the confusion surrounding the conceptsthat were mentioned at the very beginning of this article. Some of this impact isindirect. As noted, the underlying assumption of the applied method is adistinction between the scientific/legal term ‘‘sovereignty’’, which refers to aphenomenon that is, in so far as its own, ontologically separate existence isconcerned, independent of that term,82 and the political word—or the rhetoricaldevice—‘‘sovereignty’’, which can be a legitimate object of study in its own right.This approach has the side-effect of transforming the confusion caused byepistemological relativism into confusion about various, but equally important,objects of study. In other words, what is involved here is a distinction between,on the one hand, whatever it is that compels us to pay taxes, do military service,carry passports and appeal only to specific courts and, on the other, the wordthat affects, mobilises, signifies, reflects or constitutes. Furthermore, such adelimitation of the referent of sovereignty, identical with the domain of theclassification, draws a demarcation line between what may be called the‘‘terminological uses’’ and the ‘‘metaphorical and other uses’’ of sovereignty.

These indirect benefits notwithstanding, the most tangible advantages of thisapproach are to be gained in relation to the confusion caused by the complexreferent of the concept of sovereignty. If the argument of the previous pages isconvincing, the resulting classification clarifies matters in at least two ways. Inthe first place, the categorisation of theories provides a tool by which the conceptof sovereignty might be analysed at two levels through questions related to theempirical object as such and the properties of that empirical object, respectively.In other words, what is involved here is a differentiation between, on the onehand, descriptive and normative questions as to the locus of sovereignty withinan entity, the sovereign entity as such, and the relationships between sovereignentities and, on the other hand, descriptive and normative questions aboutsovereignty as a factual, legal, divisible, indivisible, unitary, limited, unlimitedor illimitable (etc.) property. Answers to the latter set of questions as to theproperties of the object presuppose, and vary in accordance with, the answersgiven to the former group of questions as to the object as such. Thus, to give oneexample, depending on the object chosen for study, the statement ‘‘sovereignty islimited’’ may denote at least the following things: a strong political influence onthe part of interest groups (intra-state/descriptive); the rule of law (intra-state/

81. I am indebted to Professor Mervyn Frost, King’s College London, for drawing my attention tothis possibility.

82. Even propositions such as ‘‘the term constitutes the phenomenon or ‘the term effects thephenomenon’ presuppose independence, in terms of existence and logic, between these two typesobjects, an independence that makes such causal statements possible.

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Theories of Sovereignty 371

normative); limited legal personality under international law or a loss of freedomof action due to interdependence (state/descriptive); institutionalised—andhence patterned and restricted—relations between states and similar entities(inter-state/descriptive); and restricted reserved domain or legal freedom (inter-state/normative). In the second place, to the extent that a classification oftheories of sovereignty like that presented above deviates significantly from acategorisation based on their disciplinary nexus, such a mode of analysis wouldmake possible a cross-disciplinary treatment of various aspects of sovereignty.Those theories that are formulated in different disciplines, although they dealwith the same aspects of sovereignty, will fall into the same category where theycan be tested in relation to each other. One such example concerns theories aboutthe relationship between sovereignty and recognition: as mentioned above, thereappears to be a consensus in political science and controversy in internationallaw over this issue. There does not seem to be any reason to regard this case assolitary or aberrant.

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