CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Radnoti, Andras |
|---|---|
| Title | The Sovereignty Conundrum: Between Territory and Authority in Contemporary Global Politics |
| Summary | This study explores the conceptual macrostructure of international politics. It argues that sovereignty is a condition of legitimate authority, as it alone delineates the boundaries of the authority’s jurisdiction, that is, the group of the authority’s subjects. That sovereignty should do so on the principle of territory, not some other principle, and that the territorially sovereign instances should be states as currently constituted, are merely contingent facts – yet in the given empirical circumstances, they present a grave moral problem. Globalisation drives power to migrate above states, meaning that authority is bound to the wrong level. Deterritorialisation drives the emergence of power agents not bound to territory in any substantive way, meaning that authority is bound to the wrong principle. Both empirical processes therefore drive the rule of non-sovereign, that is, illegitimate, rule. The thesis discusses the cures presented for the same broad problem by cosmopolitan and other writers, but finds all – except for an implausible, fully-fledged world state – inadequate as inattentive to the limits imposed upon political reality by the conceptual structure. Finding that this structure – specifically, the contingent link between sovereignty and territory – needs to be challenged if a solution is to be found, the thesis sketches the contours of a possible solution: a movement towards a functional, rather than territorial, principle of sovereignty. It argues that a muted shift towards functional sovereignty has already taken place within the EU, and that such movement is inevitable more broadly, assuming that the desire for legitimate rule is sufficiently broadly shared. |
| Supervisor | Kis, Janos |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/radnoti_andras.pdf |
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