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| The Sovereignty Cartel Sovereignty is the subject of many debates in international relations. Is it the source of state authority or a description of it? What is its history? Is it strengthening or weakening? Is it changing, and how? This book addresses these questions, but focuses on one less frequently addressed: whatmakesstatesovereigntypossible?TheSovereigntyCartelarguesthat sovereignty is built on state collusion – states work together to privilege sovereignty in global politics, because they benefit from sovereignty’s exclusivity. This book explores this collusive behavior in international law, international political economy, international security, and migration andcitizenship.Inalltheseareas,statesaccordrightstootherstates,regard- less of relative power, relative wealth, or relative position. Sovereignty, as a (changing) set of property rights for which states collude, accounts for thisbehaviornotasanomaly(asothertheorieswould)butinsteadasfunda- mentaltothesovereignstatessystem. j. samuel barkin is author of ten books and some fifty articles and chapters on international relations theory and international organization, andisaleadingauthorityontheoriesofsovereignty.Hispreviousbookwith CambridgeUniversityPress,RealistConstructivism:RethinkingInternational RelationsTheory(2010)wasnamedaChoiceOutstandingTitle. The Sovereignty Cartel j. samuel barkin UniversityofMassachusettsBoston UniversityPrintingHouse,CambridgeCB28BS,UnitedKingdom OneLibertyPlaza,20thFloor,NewYork,NY10006,USA 477WilliamstownRoad,PortMelbourne,VIC3207,Australia 314–321,3rdFloor,Plot3,SplendorForum,JasolaDistrictCentre, NewDelhi–110025,India 103PenangRoad,#05–06/07,VisioncrestCommercial,Singapore238467 CambridgeUniversityPressispartoftheUniversityofCambridge. ItfurtherstheUniversity’smissionbydisseminatingknowledgeinthepursuitof education,learning,andresearchatthehighestinternationallevelsofexcellence. www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781316518809 DOI:10.1017/9781009003490 ©J.SamuelBarkin2021 Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexception andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements, noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten permissionofCambridgeUniversityPress. Firstpublished2021 AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Names:Barkin,Samuel,J.1965–author. Title:Thesovereigntycartel/J.SamuelBarkin,UniversityofMassachusetts,Boston. Description:NewYork,NY:CambridgeUniversityPress,2021.|Includes bibliographicalreferencesandindex. Identifiers:LCCN2021000166(print)|LCCN2021000167(ebook)| ISBN9781316518809(hardback)|ISBN9781009010009(paperback)| ISBN9781009003490(epub) Subjects:LCSH:Sovereignty.|Internationalrelations.|BISAC:POLITICALSCIENCE/ InternationalRelations/General|POLITICALSCIENCE/InternationalRelations/ General Classification:LCCJC327.B2422021(print)|LCCJC327(ebook)|DDC320.1/5–dc23 LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2021000166 LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2021000167 ISBN978-1-316-51880-9Hardback ISBN978-1-009-01000-9Paperback CambridgeUniversityPresshasnoresponsibilityforthepersistenceoraccuracy ofURLsforexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredtointhispublication anddoesnotguaranteethatanycontentonsuchwebsitesis,orwillremain, accurateorappropriate. Contents Acknowledgments page vi 1 Introduction 1 2 Sovereignty? 17 3 Sovereign Rights 36 4 The SovereigntyCartel 55 5 The Sovereign 79 6 Sovereign Property 102 7 The Interstices ofSovereignty 124 8 Normative Dissonance 144 9 Conclusions 163 References 183 Index 199 v Acknowledgments Thisbookcollectsseveralideasaboutsovereigntyinthecontemporary states system that have been bouncing around in my head for quite sometime.Theseideashaveappearedinasufficientvarietyofdifferent papersandtalksandhavebeencommentedonbysomanypeoplethat it would be unrealistic to list them all here even if I had done an adequate job of keeping track, which I have not. My thanks to all of those people, along with apologies fornot keepingtrack. I do have some acknowledgments for assistance specifically with the book project. Beth DeSombre and Laura Sjoberg both read and provided invaluable commentary on several versions. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Swati Srivastava, as well as an anonymous referee, read and commented on the penultimate draft. The final ver- sionwould,ofcourse,havebeenbetterifI’ddoneamoreeffectivejob of taking all their advice. My colleagues in the Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance Department at the University of Massachusetts Bostonprovidedasupportiveenvironmentforthewritingofthebook. Thanks also to UMass Boston for the sabbatical leave during which much of the book was written, and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University for an institu- tional affiliation during that sabbatical. Finally,thankstothosewhohelpedwiththeeditorialsideofgetting this book published. John Haslam at Cambridge University Press waited patiently for a decade between the first time I pitched the idea of this book to him and the time I actually started writing it. William Krol copyedited the final manuscript; Kathryn Butterworth compiled the index. vi | 1 Introduction Sovereignty is often talked about as central to, even definitional of, contemporary international relations. We assume it as the source of state authority or use it to describe state capabilities. We talk about whether it is getting weaker, and occasionally about whether it is changing in some fundamental way. But rarely do we get into details about what it is, how it works, how it maintains itself, and what the effectsareofsovereigntyspecifically,asopposedtosomeotherorgan- izing principle, on contemporary international relations. In this con- text, some of the patterns of state behavior that are easy to take for grantedaspartofthesovereignstatessystemareinfactstriking.States donotjustcompetewitheachothertomaximizetheirnationalinterest orcooperatewitheachothertoprovideglobalpublicgoods.Theyalso colludewitheachothertoreinforcethecentralityofthesovereignstate as a category of actor in international relations. This pattern of collusion iswhat I call the “sovereignty cartel.” Examples of this collusive behavior can be found in a wide range of international issue areas; the most obvious is legal standing. Internationallaw–thelawofstates–recognizesonlysovereignstates ashavinginternationallegalpersonhood.Inotherwords,statesrecog- nizeeachotherasthepeopleofinternationalrelationsandnooneelse. Many examples can also be found in the international political economy. Corporations need to be legally domiciled in a state, even iftheyareneitherphysically domiciled nordoasignificantamount of business there. Businesses need a state to legitimate them, even if the state plays little meaningful role in regulating or taxing the business. Ships at sea need to fly a national flag, lest they be treated as pirates. Aflagfromastatethatisdysfunctional,orfromacountrythathasno coast, legitimates the ship, but the flag of a large shipping company with a historyof responsible operation ofits ships does not. Statesalsorecognizearighttotheuseofviolenceinotherstatesthat they do not recognize with respect to any other actors. Soldiers in the 1 2 Introduction uniformofasovereignstatehave,undersomecircumstances,theright to kill people in other countries. This right may be loosely circum- scribed by principles such as proportionality and civilian immunity, but soldiers can still kill noncombatants in large numbers and remain withininternationallaw.Anyoneelsebehavinginthiswayissubjectto locallawsformurder.Thesamesortofmutualrecognitionoftheright to violence can be found in criminal justice. States will, as a general rule, allow their nationals to be incarcerated by other sovereigns, subject to due process. However, states do not accord the right to detain their citizensto any other category of international actor. These examples seem at first to be unexceptional because they are simply the way international relations currently works and the way it has worked throughout recent memory. When examined in more detail, however, they are actually inconsistent with the assumptions of many international relations scholars both about how the world works and about how the world should work. The examples all involve states according rights to other states whether big or small, rich or poor, liberal or illiberal, status quo or revisionist – rights that allowotherstatestoregulateanduseforcethatmightunderminetheir own ability to govern. These rights give small and poor states, for example, leverage in global governance and in the international political economy that they might not otherwise have. They can make it more difficult for bigger and richer states to govern illicit activities by creatingalternativesourcesoflegitimationforthoseactivities.Whydo the bigger and richer countries put up with this? What do they get in exchange forthis dilution of their own practicalability to govern? Politicalrealists,forinstance,beginwiththeassumptionsthatpower is the key currency of politics, that states are the social actors with power in international relations, and that states will act in their national interest. This set of assumptions leads to a view of inter- nationalrelationsinwhichstatescompetewitheachothertomaximize theirgain.Butintheexamplesgivenabove,stateswithmorepowerare conceding rights to states with less power, withoutanyclear quid pro quo and sometimes at significant cost to their ability to promote their ownnationalinterest.Realiststendtoeitherassumesovereignstatesas astartingpointoftheiranalysisorarguethatitisstatesthatmatterin internationalrelationsbecausetheyaretheorganizationsthathavethe powertomatter.Fromneitheroftheseperspectivesdoesitmakesense for the most powerful states to concede reciprocal rights to the least SovereigntyinInternationalRelations 3 powerful. This is particularly true of neorealists, who tend to look at great powers specifically rather than states generally, highlighting the focus on power rather than sovereignty. Nor does it make sense from liberal perspectives. These might include an institutionalist liberalism that sees states as cooperating to provide public goods, and a democratic liberalism that takes popular sovereigntytoberepresentativeofthegeneralwill.Intheformercaseit meanstheconcessionofrightstostatesthatmaynothaveameaning- fulabilitytoparticipateintheprovisionofpublicgoodsandmaynot, in fact, agree on what constitutes international public goods. Such concessionsservetocreatemorepotentialvetoplayersthatcanstymie cooperationandcreateintersticesbetweenmultiplepointsoflegitimate regulation,leadingtosituationsinwhichvariouskindsofillicitactivity canthrive.Inthelattercase,theassigningoftheserightstosovereigns as determined by the community of sovereigns can undermine, rather than express, popular sovereignty by reinforcing the position of despots of various kinds. Biggerandricherstatessupporttherightsofsmallerandpoorerones becauseindoingsotheysupporttheprincipleofsovereignright,thereby reinforcing their own claim to the exclusive right to regulate their own place in the international system. States, in other words, act not only individually to protect their own sovereignty but also collectively, as a cartel, to protect the rights of sovereignty in general and of sovereign actors as a group. They do this because they recognize (whether expli- citly or implicitly) that the social construct that is the sovereign state systemneedstobeconstantlyreconstitutedthroughpractice.Thesover- eignty cartel is part of the process of this reconstitution. This book argues that states, while they do compete with each other for power and cooperate with each other to deal with collective problems or provide collective goods, also collude with each other to protect the rightsofsovereigntyagainstallotheractors.Inotherwords,statesactas acarteltoretainforthemselvestheexclusiverighttogovern.Thiscartel acts to reproduce sovereignty in the face of pressures both from other actorsandfromchangesintheinternationalsystem. Sovereignty in International Relations Theconceptofsovereigntyholdsanawkwardpositioninthestudyof international relations. It is both ubiquitous and contested. It is