The Edge Of Sovereignty

"How have conceptions and practices of sovereignty shaped how Chineseness is imagined? This ethnography addresses this question through the example of Macau, a southern Chinese city that was a Portuguese colony from the 1550s until 1999. As the Portuguese administration prepared to transfer Macau to Chinese control, it mounted a campaign to convince the city’s residents, 95 percent of whom identified as Chinese, that they possessed a “unique cultural identity” that made them different from other Chinese, and that resulted from the existence of a Portuguese state on Chinese soil. This attempt sparked reflections on the meaning of Portuguese governance that challenged not only conventional definitions of sovereignty but also conventional notions of Chineseness as a subjectivity common to all Chinese people around the world. Various stories about sovereignty and Chineseness and their interrelationship were told in Macau in the 1990s. This book is about those stories and how they informed the lives of Macau residents in ways that allowed different relationships among sovereignty, subjectivity, and culture to become thinkable, while also providing a sense of why, at times, it may not be desirable to think them."

The most serious threat to the sovereignty of the United States is not Islamic terrorism but the invasion of illegal aliens streaming across the southern border with Mexico. Also unchecked is the flow of drugs across the border by the Mexican drug mafia who are in business with the corrupt Mexican government. Successful Texas rancher James Braddock and a group of men expect to change this trend and protect American citizens and their children with the help of James Benton Stark, the junior senator from Virginia. In James E. Eubanks' third novel involving Stark, a member of the ultraconservative patriotic group the Virginia Militia, Stark begins an odyssey to rid the country of sanctuary cities, end illegal immigration, and restore the sovereignty of the United States. The Communist Chinese, in their hatred of the United States, form a military alliance with Mexico. President Oscar Fuchs develops a plan to overrun America with an unstoppable flood of Mexican refugees forced to go north by the Mexican government. Coupled with the millions of illegal aliens already in the country, American authority begins to break down. In The Edge of Sovereignty, a surprising alliance emerges between Mexico, Communist China, and Pakistani terrorists in what could be Armageddon for America.

To be effective, sovereignty must be secured through force or consent by those living in a territory, and accepted externally by other sovereign states. To be legitimate, the sovereignty claim must have the consent of its people and accord with international human rights. In Sovereignty: The Biography of a Claim, Peter H. Russell traces the origins of the sovereignty claim to Christian Europe and the attribution of sovereignty to God in the early Middle Ages. Transcending a narrow legal framework, he discusses sovereignty as a political activity including efforts to enshrine sovereignty within international law. Russell does not call for the end of sovereignty but makes readers aware of its limitations. While sovereignty can do good work for small and vulnerable peoples, it cannot be the basis of a global order capable of responding to the major existential threats that threaten our species and our planet. A brisk, often humorous, and personal exploration, Sovereignty: The Biography of a Claim will interest specialists and general readers alike, offering fresh insights on the limitations of sovereignty and the potential of federalism to alleviate these limitations now and in the future.

The second volume of the Transatlantic Public Policy Series comprises contributions by members of the Transatlantic Policy Consortium (TPC). The 17 provocative contributions focus on the concept of internal and external sovereignty which is critical on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not easy to articulate the domain and limits of the state's control of its resources, its capacity to coerce activities within its borders, its powers to treat other states as co-equals across a border, or even implement its own defense, trade or regulatory policies. The volume provides a unique insight into these problems from a European and US perspective.

State sovereignty has traditionally been one of the central ordering concepts in the study of international relations. This important book re-examines the theory and practice of state sovereignty against the backdrop of the rapid economic, technological and institutional changes which have shaped the modern world. The End of Sovereignty?explores the evolving pattern of interaction between national, subnational and transnational actors and the continued relevance of the notion of sovereignty to an understanding of contemporary politics. In the process, the book offers an important contribution to political theory, new insight into the emerging world political system, and a challenging analysis of the new macro-political agenda.

The concept of sovereignty is central to international relations theory and theories of state formation, and provides the foundation of the conventional separation of modern politics into domestic and international spheres. In this book Jens Bartelson provides a critical analysis and conceptual history of sovereignty, dealing with this separation as reflected in philosophical and political texts during three periods: the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and Modernity. He argues that the concept of sovereignty and its place within political discourse are conditioned by philosophical and historiographical discontinuities between the periods, and that sovereignty should be regarded as a concept contingent upon, rather than fundamental to, political science and its history.

Protecting sovereignty while advancing American interests in the global age Americans have long been protective of the country’s sovereignty—beginning when George Washington retired as president with the admonition for his successors to avoid “permanent” alliances with foreign powers. Ever since, the nation has faced persistent, often heated debates about how to maintain that sovereignty, and whether it is endangered when the United States enters international organizations, treaties, and alliances about which Washington warned. As the recent election made clear, sovereignty is also one of the most frequently invoked, polemical, and misunderstood concepts in politics—particularly American politics. The concept wields symbolic power, implying something sacred and inalienable: the right of the people to control their fate without subordination to outside authorities. Given its emotional pull, however, the concept is easily highjacked by political opportunists. By playing the sovereignty card, they can curtail more reasoned debates over the merits of proposed international commitments by portraying supporters of global treaties or organizations as enemies of motherhood and apple pie. Such polemics distract Americans from what is really at stake in the sovereignty debate: namely, the ability of the United States to shape its destiny in a global age. The United States cannot successfully manage globalization, much less insulate itself from cross-border threats, on its own. As global integration deepens and cross-border challenges grow, the nation’s fate is increasingly tied to that of other countries, whose cooperation will be needed to exploit the shared opportunities and mitigate the common risks of interdependence. The Sovereignty Wars is intended to help today's policymakers think more clearly about what is actually at stake in the sovereignty debate and to provide some criteria for determining when it is appropriate to make bargains over sovereignty—and how to make them.

This provocative and important text offers a new way of thinking about sovereignty, both past and present. Distinguished geographer John Agnew boldly challenges the widely popular story that state sovereignty is in worldwide eclipse in the face of the overwhelming processes of globalization. He argues that this perception relies on ideas about sovereignty and globalization that are both overstated and misleading. Agnew contends that sovereignty-state control and authority over space is not necessarily neatly contained in state-by-state territories, nor has it ever been so. Yet the dominant image of globalization is the replacement of a territorialized world by one of networks and flows that know no borders other than those that define the Earth itself. In challenging this image, Agnew first traces the ways in which it has become commonplace. He then develops a new way of thinking about the geography of effective sovereignty and the various geographical forms in which sovereignty actually operates in the world, offering an exciting intellectual framework that breaks with the either/or thinking of state sovereignty versus globalization.