Journal of International Relations and Development

Volume 2, No. 4 (December 1999)

 

Rethinking Sovereignty and Development
By Georg Sørensen _*

 

Introduction

WE ARE USED TO THINKING OF SOVEREIGNTY AND DEVELOPMENT AS TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN, FOR SIMPLE REASONS: THE SUCCESSFUL PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT (SOCIO-ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, etc.) IN WESTERN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICAN WAS COMBINED WITH THE EMERGENCE OF THE INSTITUTION OF SOVEREIGNTY. Development and sovereign statehood went hand in hand from the very beginning; the sovereign state became the organisational format for development. Citizens today expect sovereign states to be capable of supplying core values that also have to do with development: security, freedom, order, justice, and welfare. Well-functioning sovereign states do indeed supply those values to an extent that earlier forms of political organisation (including empires or the dispersed political authority of medieval Europe) were never capable of. From a Western, historical view then, state sovereignty supported development in a broad sense, and development supported state sovereignty.

Yet the intimate, positive relationship between sovereignty and development has been increasingly questioned by the trajectory of sovereign statehood since the 1950s. First, globalisation, i.e. the intensification of all types of economic, social, political, and cultural relations across borders, appears to challenge sovereignty in fundamental ways. According to one scholar, the global system is in a process of change from a "state-centric, anarchical system", to a "multi-centric world composed of diverse, 'sovereignty-free' collectivities", that is, non-state actors, most importantly individuals, who increasingly challenge the old "state-centric" system (Rosenau 1992:282; see also Rosenau 1990). This is an indication that we are in some sense facing the "end of sovereignty" (Camilleri and Falk 1992). Second, a large number of countries that obtained sovereignty in the context of post-war decolonisation have not been able to get development under way in any meaningful sense. They remain weak, less developed, in several cases even collapsed states. In the light of these events, how should we currently assess the relationship between sovereignty and development?

The argument put forward here will reject the notion of 'the end of sovereignty'. At the same time, the author also rejects the conservative-realist view according to which nothing much has changed and the sovereign state remains largely as we know it. Sovereignty is an institution that changes over time in order to accommodate new circumstances; globalisation is one such challenge which has helped trigger a new game of sovereignty in some parts of the world. A qualitatively new format of the relationship between sovereignty and development is emerging in some parts of the developed world. As regards the post-colonial world, the author shall argue that for a number of countries, sovereignty in its present form is no longer conducive to a rapid process of development; the author shall briefly explain why that is the case. This lack of a positive relationship between sovereignty and development in large parts of the post-colonial world could pose the greatest current challenge to the global society of sovereign states.

 

Globalisation and Post-Modern Sovereign Statehood

SOVEREIGN STATES ARE NOT MERELY PASSIVE OBJECTS PUSHED AROUND BY GLOBALISATION. They are the most important actors in creating the framework within which globalisation is taking place. The United States led the way in creating the Bretton Woods system of embedded liberalism after 1945; it consisted of economic liberalisation in relation to other countries combined with social cushioning provided by interventionist governments at home (Ruggie 1994). Within that context, Western Europe and Japan were rebuilt to the extent of economically challenging the United States. And economic liberalisation led to economic globalisation, involving: (a) a global division of labour, evidenced by the great increases in intra-firm trade, that is, markets are no longer 'domestic' and 'international' in the traditional sense of those words. One consequence, for example, is that US firms produce more abroad than they export; (b) strategic alliances between firms render obsolete old notions of national industrial policies; and (c) the integration of financial markets gives a new dimension to economic globalisation as the recent crises in Asia and Russia have shown.

The process of globalisation is uneven in both intensity and geographical scope; it is also uneven in terms of relative gains. There are winners and losers in the process; both across and within countries. In general, globalisation has meant economic gain combined with increasing integration in the core countries of Western Europe, North America, and Japan, whereas increased marginalisation and fragmentation has taken place in the periphery, especially in the poorest countries (Holm and Sørensen 1995). The focus in this section is on the core countries.

Core countries have pushed globalisation because it spurred economic growth and helped provide welfare gains for their populations. But globalisation also changed the states participating in the process in ways they had perhaps not foreseen. Economies that used to be predominantly national in terms of markets, sectoral linkages and cultural foundations are now increasingly linked together in regional and global economic networks. For some countries, "the material base of the economy has become so internationalised that there would be significant costs in attempting a strategy of national autonomy" (Piccioto 1991:45). Western European economies are highly internationalised; Japan and the United States are less so, but even there it is relevant to speak of economies that are increasingly non-territorial in that the enterprises operate on a global or regional scale. Economic globalisation means that societies are becoming highly exposed to the exigencies of a global economy. In Robert Cox's formulation, the state is no longer "a bulwark or a buffer protecting the domestic economy from harmful exogenous influences", but "it is a transmission belt from world economy to domestic economy" (Cox 1992:144).

What does globalisation mean for sovereignty? In one sense, not much has changed; in formal, juridical terms, sovereign states retain their constitutional independence; they remain the supreme political authority of a population within a defined territory. This is the form of political organisation normally considered to have been born in 1648 when the Peace of Westphalia undermined the power of the church and strengthened secular power. What happened at that time was that the choice between Catholicism and Protestantism became the privilege of local rulers; that is the principle of cujus regio ejus religio. The corresponding secular principle gives the King authority over his own realm; Rex in regno suo est Imperator regni sui. Dispersed medieval authority was replaced by centralised modern authority, the King and his government. None of this happened overnight in 1648; elements of the old system remained in place for a long time. But Westphalia was crucial in heralding sovereign statehood as the new dominant form of political organisation.

Since 1648, many sovereign states have grown immensely strong; they have vastly expanded their capacities for control and surveillance of their populations (and their external environment). In terms of domestic extraction and regulation, the state is stronger than ever. At the same time, the organisational principle of sovereign statehood has outcompeted all other forms of political organisation although significant remnants of (colonial) empire and various forms of dependencies characterised the international system right up to the mid-twentieth century. But the very globalisation that is pushed by states themselves for reasons of economic and welfare gain also poses new challenges. When societies are internationalised via a complex network of economic and other interdependencies, it becomes much more difficult for states to control what is going on within their designated territories. Basic conditions concerning, e.g., economic growth, including interest rates, level of prices and inflation, relative accessibility of financial resources for investment, and so on, are decided by forces outside of the full control of the single state. Such lack of control is of course especially felt in small and medium sized states, but even the larger ones are subject to significant external influences outside the scope of their control. Decisions made by firms and a host of other actors, and decisions made by other states now have a critical impact within one's own boundaries.

States have various possibilities of reacting to these changed circumstances. As already indicated, a mercantilist strategy of increased national autonomy is not seriously considered by most states anymore because it would be too costly in growth and welfare terms. The preferred strategy of response by core states appears to be regional co-operation (Hettne 1997). Some forms of regional co-operation are not new; they continue the tradition of creating regimes on an inter-state basis, that is, with limited commitments from the participants. But the question is whether such conventional, limited forms of co-operation are sufficient to respond to the challenges of globalisation. The countries involved in the European Union (EU) do not think so. They have expanded their co-operation in ways bringing consequences for sovereignty.

What happens in the EU is that states bargain with their sovereignty in the sense that they allow other states to influence the regulation of their domestic affairs in return for influence over the domestic affairs of those other countries (cf. Keohane 1995). In other words, states agree to put constraints on the exercise of sovereignty in their own domains; those constraints take the concrete form of regulatory powers at the supranational EU level that the states promise to observe. In compensation, they obtain some influence on that supranational level, that is, they are themselves participants in the groups of states that decide what those supranational regulations are going to contain. As a result, states have achieved some substantial influence over that external environment which in a globalised world is so crucially important for what happens within their own borders. This is what is sometimes called multilevel governance. Instead of purely or mainly national political regulation, there develops a complex network of supranational, national, and subnational regulation.

Let us briefly consider the consequences of these changes for three important issues: first, formal, juridical sovereignty; second, the substance of sovereign statehood; and third, for the process of development. As regards juridical sovereignty, constitutional independence remains intact. Constitutional independence is an absolute condition; it is either present or absent. Other juridical categories share that quality; a person is either married or not, there is no legal status of being seventy-five percent married. A person is either a legal citizen of a country or not, there is no legal status of being seventy-five percent Swedish. The same goes for sovereignty; a state either has juridical sovereignty or it does not. There is no halfway house, no legal in-between. The changes in sovereignty described above amount to changes in the way in which the sovereignty game is played; we might call it changes in the regulative rules of sovereignty (cf. Sørensen 1999). The constitutive element of sovereignty, constitutional independence, remains in place. Countries dissatisfied with EU development can discontinue their membership if they wish, precisely because they retain the constitutional independence to do so.

The substance of sovereign statehood significantly changes in the context of the transformations described here. Changes on the economic level concern the move away from a national towards an international or transnational, globalised economy. Changes at the political level concern the move from national to multilevel governance. Changes at the social level concern the new conditions for the daily lives of individuals incurred by these developments (one pertinent analysis here is by Ulrich Beck 1992/1986). All this provokes changes in national identities. Compared with the modern, Westphalian nation-state, the community of people defined by the nation now has other concepts of community emerging stronger next to it, in particular local identities and supranational identities. This need not lead to a transfer of loyalties from one level to another; in Europe, for example, it soon appears to lead towards a more complex set of identities and loyalties. Political community is no longer exclusively defined by the state, but by a new context of multilevel governance and processes of globalisation.

What about development? It is clear that the classical economic development goal, the creation of an autocentric economic structure complete with producer- and consumer-goods industries, is changing in the context of the transformations recorded here. Economic and social development must now take place in an environment which is immediately much more international, meaning regional as well as global. Strategies of development are now less designed towards the goal of creating a national, autocentric system, and more directed towards the creation of a favourable national position in the context of a globalised economy. It remains unclear what that will precisely mean in the longer run. Are we, for example, moving towards a more regionalised world where other regional organisations will follow the lead of the EU, or will the global networks be stronger? What will the distribution of economic power be in such a system, and how should development success be appraised in a situation where we must expect increasing disparities, also within countries? These questions cannot be addressed here. But it is clear that the core countries are now moving into post-modern or late modern statehood with significant implications for both sovereignty and development.

 

Sovereignty and Development In The Post-colonial World

LET US TURN TO THE PERIPHERY. One body of (dependency) theory claimed that post-colonial countries were more or less doomed to underdevelopment as a consequence of their inferior status in the global capitalist system. Within this view, economic globalisation has been a characteristic of the system for quite some time and it has spelled underdevelopment and dependency at the periphery. As indicated above, it is true that globalisation is uneven and that there have been losers at the periphery. But it is not true that post-colonial status or even a low initial position in the global capitalist hierarchy in itself involves being condemned to underdevelopment. When it comes to the poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, they have certainly not been underdeveloped by global capital, because global capital has not invested there; markets and production facilities have simply not been sufficiently attractive. By contrast, the successes of Taiwan, South Korea and others demonstrate how it was possible for newly-independent countries to exploit opportunities in the world for development success. Appropriate domestic conditions are critical here and it is the combination of specific domestic and international circumstances that decides what the development outcome will be.

Formal independence, i.e. juridical sovereignty, means that local rulers are conferred substantial powers when deciding what the domestic conditions will be. Formal independence is often downplayed by dependency theorists but that is a mistake. Juridical sovereignty is of the utmost importance. At the moment of independence a new political, economic, social and cultural sphere is created which has some substantial amount of autonomy. This new 'inside', the domestic sphere, can still be much influenced by external forces, of course, but the conditions of operating are very different from before. On the one hand, there is a new need on the part of the outsider to find domestic allies; that implies some sort of bargaining situation between insiders and outsiders. Mobutu of Zaire, for example, was not simply the puppet of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), he bargained with them: you do this for me, I do this for you; he had substantial bargaining autonomy. At the same time, intervention in sovereign states cannot be conducted in complete ignorance of the rules of international society. After all, the basic norm of juridical sovereignty is non-intervention which means that acts of intervention have to be justified. So in both the domestic and international spheres the rules of the game change in ways which provide increased autonomy to domestic actors.

It was noted above that development and sovereignty went hand in hand in the core countries of the North. Why has the achievement of juridical sovereignty not led to a process of rapid development in the post-colonial countries of Sub-Saharan Africa? External dependency may be able to explain some of it; these countries have faced constraints in terms of export market access, of not being able to lure foreign investment, and perhaps most importantly, of taking orders from the international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) that were not always conducive to rapid development. But as already indicated, world market constraints in themselves are not a sufficient explanation; it may not even be a necessary one. In what follows, the 'external dependency' argument will in a sense be turned on its head: lack of development in Sub-Saharan Africa is an insignificant measure due to the lack of external constraint rather than due to the presence of it.

In order to develop this argument it is necessary to go back to the process of decolonisation and compare what happened then to the emergence of sovereign statehood in Western Europe. European sovereign statehood was achieved by kings in a successful struggle against competing authorities, including emperors, the church, and various groups of feudal lords. It was also achieved in a competitive struggle with other sovereigns who attempted to expand their power and territorial control. Out of the around three hundred participants in the Westphalian meetings in Münster and Osnabrück, only a minority survived in that struggle. Many were swallowed up by stronger and more efficient rivals. Being successful in achieving enduring sovereign statehood, in other words, meant that sovereigns had passed a number of critical tests. They had been able to muster sufficient military power to defend and expand their realm. That in turn demanded the extraction of resources, including taxes, from the population. It also demanded the creation of domestic order without which military power could not be freed to be projected externally. Order and the extraction of resources, in turn, meant that the King needed a measure of legitimacy, of popular belief in his right to rule. Legitimacy is required for the creation of infrastructural power, that is, "the institutional capacity of a central state ... to penetrate its territories and logistically implement decisions. This is ... 'power through' society, co-ordinating social life through state infrastructures" (Mann 1993:59). In short, to achieve permanent juridical sovereignty in Europe, rulers first had to demonstrate substantial capacities for domestic rule, including the creation of order, the extraction of resources, and the creation of legitimacy and infrastructural power.

No such demands were visited upon the rulers who achieved independence in the context of decolonisation. The 1960 United Nations declaration on colonial independence explicitly rejected any requirement for state substance as a pre-condition for independence: "inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence" (quoted in Jackson 1990:77). What emerged from decolonisation was a new type of very weak player in the international system. Ex-colonies became independent, that is, they were granted juridical sovereignty in spite of the fact that they contained very little in terms of substantial statehood, politically, economically, or as regards cultural and political community.

Decolonisation, then, had nothing to do with the demonstration of substantial capacities for self-rule. The iron law that underpinned European state formation - prove yourself in competition with the others or fall by the wayside - had been replaced by a new principle: ex-colonies have the right to independence. The emergence of that right took place in the context of the Second World War. Before that war, the dominant view in Western Europe was that the colonies were comprehensively unready for independence. As late as 1946, an official British report announced four obstacles to "early and effective government"; (a) the colonial populations were "too unaware" of the operations of modern government to be capable of citizenship; (b) there was no national unity; (c) there was no economic basis which could support a modern state; and (d) a number of colonies were simply too insubstantial to allow for "anything more than a limited internal self-government" (Margery Perham, quoted in Jackson 1990:90). As an alternative to independence, the British suggested a diverse range of forms of semi-autonomy which were seen as appropriate for the different levels of development of the colonies.

Against this background, how could the right of independence for colonies become the accepted norm so quickly after the war? A number of different sources combined to produce that change; the decisive element was probably the new distribution of power in the world. The old colonial motherlands no longer controlled the international agenda and the new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were much more ready to support decolonisation. That process amounted to a significant change in the rules of admission to the exclusive club of sovereign states. The traditional principle of demonstrated substantial statehood as a precondition for formal, juridical independence had perhaps not always been enforced to the letter, but with decolonisation it was definitely abandoned. Status as a colony was now a fully acceptable ticket to sovereignty.

It now ought to be clear in what sense there is a lack of external constraint on post-colonial states. According to the new international norms developed after the Second World War, borders are sacrosanct. They can only be changed with the consent of the affected parties. That new norm amounts to a kind of life insurance for weak states. No matter how weak, they will never be swallowed up by stronger states. For this reason, political elites in these states strongly embrace the institution of formal sovereignty; it is their right to continued existence as states. ₁ Yet this can also be a free pass for predatory state elites to run states into the ground: no matter what the extent of misery and dissolution, a given state does not cease to exist; it continues to possess formal, juridical sovereignty. Even at the peak of violent disintegration, for example, the international society continued to pretend that there was such a thing as a Somalian state. The weak are not taken over by the strong, they are merely allowed to disintegrate. In other words, the realist logic of states having to successfully compete for survival in an anarchic international system where the strong consume the weak is replaced by a new logic according to which predatory state elites can go to any extreme in terms of creating chaos and violent conflict and lack of development without paying the ultimate price: termination of the state. In that basic sense, the new rules of sovereignty for ex-colonies have created a situation of absence of external constraint and that absence appears to be highly counterproductive in development terms.

External Threat and Development

How could it get to that? Why did a large number of the post-colonial state elites become predatory and self-serving? The classical theory of sovereigns is not very helpful in approaching that question. Thomas Hobbes famously claimed in Leviathan that WITHOUT the sovereign there could be no protection; people would live in the 'state of nature' where anarchy would reign, because egoistic humans will always get at each other's throats. Law and order is absent; life will be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" (Hobbes 1960/1651:82). But WITH the state, why would there be protection, security and development? Why would the state elite not be as self-interested and power-loving as anyone else? Unfortunately, Hobbes assumes away the problem through a strict specification of demands on the sovereign for protection of people and property. But given the egoistic nature of humans, why would the sovereign meet these demands?

One plausible answer to this question has already been indicated; it is connected to the presence of the perennial external threat in an international system of states which is anarchic. That view comes out of the realist tradition of international relations. States have to look after themselves; the system is one of self-help. States unable to provide protection from external threat not only put their populations but also their rulers at risk. Domestic order is required in order to face external threat. Because of the constant external threat in an anarchic international system, state elites will seek to create such domestic order and civility that the state - and thus the regime - will be able to weather external threat.

It was argued above that such a mechanism was indeed at work in the creation of sovereign states in Europe. More recent examples of this realist logic can be found in East Asia. Japan is one relevant example. The elite which came to power in the context of the Meiji restoration in 1868 was convinced of one thing: without comprehensively reforming Japanese society, Japan would fall behind the Western powers and be forced to continue to live under the unequal treaties which gave foreigners a privileged position in their own country. In other words, the only alternative to foreign penetration and dominance was to create an efficient state that could spearhead a process of rapid modernisation.

Taiwan under Guomindang rule is another case of a state elite pulling itself together against the background of external threat. Guomindang rule on mainland China, and even on Taiwan between 1945 and 1947, had every attribute of the arch-typical predatory state; it was violently repressive, inept, reactionary and corrupt. Yet it turned around in a surprisingly short time and started seriously promoting development on Taiwan (Gold 1986; Sørensen 1991). External threat was a vital factor in this process. Jiang Kaishek emerged from the utter humiliation of defeat by the communists with the realisation that, for the Guomindang Nationalists to stand up to the communists and even entertain the idea of reconquering the mainland, a solid basis had to be built on Taiwan: "the party had to be fundamentally cleansed and the people of Taiwan given an incentive to support it" (Gold 1986:57). If the threat from communist China on the mainland was the 'push factor', there was also an external 'pull factor' involved in Taiwan's case. It was the influence of the United States. The Americans had propped up Jiang with increasing disgust during his last years on the mainland; now, they demanded an efficient state machinery and structural reforms furthering economic development on Taiwan in return for their continued military and economic support.

In sum, there have been special situations even in the post-war period where external pressure has helped push a process of rapid economic development. We may conclude that external pressure is not by definition negative or counterproductive in development terms. It need not lead to underdevelopment. It can indeed lead to development. External pressure in itself is not the problem. It all depends on the specific content of that pressure.

The post-colonial states in Africa faced no serious external pressure. To the extent that there was external involvement in context of the Cold War, it most often had to do with leading states of the North pursuing their own narrow interests. That frequently involved support of predatory state elites following the logic of 'he's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch'. American support for Mobutu of Zaire is a textbook example. Such support had very little to offer in terms of development. The ruling elite in Zaire was called a 'kleptocracy' because of its overriding interest in unproductive self-enrichment and the maintenance of status quo which allowed it to retain its privileges. Security and order, not to mention development, has not been a major concern of the regime beyond the concern of keeping the elite in power. In sum, external pressure has either been lacking in Sub-Saharan Africa, or it has predominantly had a content which was counterproductive in development terms.

Yet we still need to explain why post-colonial elites could become predatory in the first place. In order to do this, it is necessary to look at the domestic situation in the newly-independent states. It was indicated earlier that there was a lack of substantial statehood in these countries. The most important element here appears to be the lack of cultural and political community. Independence meant independence for colonial territories, upholding colonial borders. The people inside those borders were communities only in the sense that they shared a border drawn by others. Their idea of nationalism was a negative one: get rid of the colonisers. When that project succeeded, there was no positive notion of community left over. Political elites made some attempts to construct such a notion, e.g. Nyerere's Ujamaa socialism, Kenyatta's Harambee and Mobutu's authenticité. There was a measure of success in a few countries, but in general the project was a huge failure: it was extremely difficult to knit together diverse ethnic groups with different languages, beliefs, and ways of living. And the state elites quickly gave up trying. What emerged instead was, in Clapham's terminology, monopoly states, exploited by the ruling elites for their own benefit (Clapham 1996). Political community was thus not created; the communities that prevailed were the different ethnic sub-groups which competed for access to state power and resources. State elites based themselves on patron-client relationships involving a select minority of such groups, shutting off the others from influence and resources. The predatory system was in place.

What happened in large parts of the post-colonial world, then, was a perversion of the relationship between sovereignty and development: 'life insurance sovereignty' for ex-colonies became the basis for ineffective regimes based on patron-client relationships. More often than not those regimes are a source of danger, including mortal danger, for their populations, instead of a source of security, order, and welfare. Underdevelopment is combined with a special form of post-colonial sovereignty.

Is There a Way Out?

The unfortunate situation for the populations that suffer the consequences of comprehensive underdevelopment has of course led to much frustration among scholars and in many other groups as well. Is there a way out of that situation? Some forty years of attempts to promote development via aid programmes combined with a selection of different development strategies have certainly not led to impressive results. Current debates have focused on three possible approaches to what could be called the 'life insurance sovereignty-underdevelopment' dilemma.

First, it is possible to mingle with the institution of sovereignty in itself and thus help create entities that are more conducive to a process of development. It was indicated earlier that the international society is very conservative in its practice of recognising new sovereign entities. A new practice with more readiness to recognise new countries (e.g. former British Somaliland) could be combined with an explicit criterion of success: permanent recognition will only follow if order, stability and some measure of development is created. Another possibility is to consciously attempt to promote closer regional co-operation in Sub-Saharan Africa; that might be combined with recognition by the international society of subnational groups or territorial units. The promotion of development thus to a much higher degree becomes the responsibility of supranational (i.e. regions) and subnational entities (for further discussion see Herbst 1997). This is basically a suggestion for multilevel governance and it immediately looks attractive; on the one hand, subnational groups could get a higher level of autonomy and that should restrain ethnic conflict; on the other hand, regional co-operation would create economically much more viable units. But it must also be said that successful regional co-operation depends on the effectiveness of its component parts, so the proposal is certainly no panacea.

Second, constructive external pressure on existing states could be created or re-constructed. Optimum external pressure is that which provides maximum push and pull in the right direction. One item is stopping all support for predatory state elites for reasons of narrow national economic and political interests, and providing additional support for state elites moving in the right direction. Such policies are at least partially forthcoming under the umbrella of 'good governance'. Increasing use of political conditions in the context of giving aid are an improvement; at the same time old friendships die hard. Yet the overall tendency after the Cold War is at least for a somewhat more consistent support than earlier to state elites conducting decent attempts to promote development.

Third, predatory rulers can be disciplined by their own populations. This is the liberal answer to the dilemma addressed here. Ideally, democracy assures that state elites turning predatory will not remain in power and that elites who are in power are subjected to the rule of law. On this view, democratisation is the solution. Unfortunately, it has proved extremely difficult to graft democracy upon weak states lacking the proper institutions and a level of trust and mutual acceptance among contending groups of the elite as well as of the general population. In several cases, early democratic openings have led to more rather than to less violent conflict in the countries concerned (e.g. Angola, Sudan, Algeria). In a world of sovereign states, however, this solution may be the only long-term viable one. Sovereignty means that development becomes the responsibility of the people and their leaders themselves. Outsiders can help or hinder that process, but they always take second place compared to insiders.

 

Conclusion

SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE WAS INTIMATELY CONNECTED WITH THE INSTITUTION OF SOVEREIGN STATEHOOD. Today, sovereignty is the single dominant principle of political organisation; but the institution of sovereignty has changed in important ways and so has its relationship to development. Globalisation means a radically changed context, both for development and for sovereign statehood. Western European states have responded by adapting their sovereignty game in ways that involve more intense regional co-operation in order to reclaim at the supranational level some of those regulatory powers that have been lost at the national level. As a consequence, development is now much less a purely national project and the institution of sovereignty is being adapted to reflect that situation.

The granting of formal sovereignty in the context of decolonisation led to the universalisation of sovereignty as the victorious structure of political authority. But it also reversed the historically positive relationship between sovereignty and development. Post-colonial sovereignty and underdevelopment have gone hand in hand. There does not seem to be on the agenda any viable alternative to sovereignty as the preferred form of political organisation. Scholars speculate about such alternatives, but they appear to have preciously little political support. The 'life insurance sovereignty-underdevelopment' dilemma is perhaps the greatest challenge to the institution of sovereignty in its more than 350 years of existence. Presently, there are no straightforward solutions to that dilemma. Insofar as any can by found, they may very well involve additional profound changes to the institution of sovereignty.

October 1999

 

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Endnotes

*:  Georg Sørensen is Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark.Back.

Note 1:  In the North, by contrast, state elites are busy creating multi-level governance which circumvents the traditional norm of non-intervention connected with juridical sovereignty. These different patterns reflect the differences in substantial statehood in North and South.Back.

 

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