Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T09:17:32.056Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated regime of sovereignty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Minda Holm  and
Ole Jacob Sending
Minda Holm*
Affiliation:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)
Ole Jacob Sending
Affiliation:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The symbolic structure of the international system, organised around sovereignty, is sustained by an institutional infrastructure that shapes how states seek sovereign agency. We investigate how the modern legal category of the state is an institutional expression of the idea of the state as a liberal person, dependent on a one-off recognition in establishing the sovereign state. We then discuss how this institutional rule coexists with the ongoing frustrated search for recognition in terms of sociopolitical registers. While the first set of rules establishes a protective shield against others, regardless of behaviour, the second set of rules specify rules for behaviour of statehood, which produces a distinct form of misrecognition. States are, at one level, already recognised as sovereign and are granted rights akin to individuals in liberal thought, and yet they are continually misrecognised in their quest to actualise the sovereign agency they associate with statehood. We draw on examples from two contemporary phenomena – fragile states, and assertions of non-interference and sovereignty from the populist right and non-Western great powers, to discuss the misrecognition processes embedded in the bifurcated symbolic structure of sovereignty, and its implications for debates about hierarchy and sovereignty in world affairs.

Keywords

MisrecognitionSovereigntyLiberalismUnited NationsFragile StatesHierarchy
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 44 , Special Issue 5: Special Issue on Misrecognition in World Politics: Revisiting Hegel , December 2018 , pp. 829 - 847
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Ringmar, Erik, ‘How the world stage makes its subjects: an embodied critique of constructivist IR theory’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 19:1 (2016), pp. 101–125 (p. 101)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; similarly, Weber, Cynthia, ‘Performative states’, Millennium, 27:1 (1998), pp. 77–95 (p. 78)CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Our reference is, of course, to the seminal text introducing social-theoretical work on relationalism into IR: Jackson, Patrick J. and Nexon, Daniel H., ‘Relations before states: Substance, process and the study of world politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 5:3 (1999), pp. 291–332 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

2 This is also a direct response to Emirbayer and Mische’s account of relationalism, where they were explicit about their framework not accommodating corporate actors such as the state. Emirbayer, Mustafa and Mische, Ann, ‘What is agency?’, American Journal of Sociology, 103:4 (1998), pp. 962–1023 (p. 974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

3 As such, we propose a different take on misrecognition than the one offered in a recent piece by Rebecca Adler-Nissen and Alexei Tsinovoi, where misrecognition is defined as ‘a gap between the dominant narrative of a national Self and the way in which this national Self is reflected in the “mirror” of the international Other’, that is, in continuation with the Self–Other literature in IR. Adler-Nissen, Rebecca and Tsinovoi, Alexei, ‘International misrecognition: the politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy’, European Journal of International Relations, Online First (January 2018), pp. 1–27 Google Scholar .

4 See Epstein, Charlotte, Lindemann, Thomas, and Sending, Ole Jacob, ‘Frustrated sovereigns: the agency that makes the world go around’, Review of International Studies, 44:5 (2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar , introduction to the Special Issue. See also Sahlins, Marshall, Apologies to Thucydides (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 156 Google Scholar ; Sending, Ole Jacob, ‘Agency, order, and heteronomy’, European Review of International Studies, 3 (2016), pp. 63–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

5 On state performativity, see Campbell, David, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992)Google Scholar ; Weber, ‘Perfomative states’; Ringmar, ‘How the world stage makes its subjects’.

6 Epstein, Lindemann, and Sending, ‘Frustrated sovereigns’.

7 Markell, Patchen, Bound by Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 22 Google Scholar .

8 Vázquez-Arroyo, Antonio Y., ‘Re-cognizing recognition: a commentary on Patchen Markell’s Bound by Recognition ’, Polity, 38:1 (2006), pp. 4–12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

9 See Butler, Judith, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (Columbia, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012 [orig. pub. 1987])Google Scholar ; for a good overview and discussion, see Epstein, Charlotte, ‘Who speaks? Discourse, the subject and the study of identity in international politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 17:2 (2010), pp. 327–350 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

10 See Hurd, Ian, How to Do Things with International Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar . See also Aalberts, Tanja, ‘Misrecognition in legal practice: the aporia of the Family of Nations’, Review of International Studies, 44:5 (2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar , this Special Issue. For an overview, from within international law, see Koskenniemi, Martti, ‘The politics of international law’, European Journal of International Law, 1:1 (1990), p. 4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Koskenniemi, Martti, ‘The politics of international law – 20 years later’, European Journal of International Law, 20:1 (2009), pp. 7–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . For an analysis at the interstices of international law and international relations, see Rajkovic, Nikolas M., Aalberts, Tanja, and Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas (eds), The Power of Legality: Practices of International Law and Their Politics (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

11 Craven, Matthew, ‘Statehood, self-determination, and recognition’, International Law, 3 (2010), pp. 203–251 Google Scholar ; Pufendorf, Samuel Freiherr von, Of the Law of Nature and Nations: Eight Books (London: J. and J. Knapton, 1728), digital version available at: {https://archive.org/details/oflawofnaturenat00pufe Google Scholar }.

12 Hall, William Edward, A Treatise on International Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: H. Frowde, 1895), p. 22, digital version available at: {https://archive.org/details/treatiseonintern00hallrich Google Scholar }.

13 With Alexander Wendt for example arguing for a psychological conception of state personhood for the purpose of accountability – the very reason personhood was construed in international law. Wendt, Alexander, ‘The State as Person in international theory’, Review of International Studies, 30:2 (2004), pp. 289–331 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . A notable but dated exception is Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1939)Google Scholar .

14 Oppenheim, Lassa, International Law: A Treatise (London: Longmans, 1905), p. 110, digital version available at: {https://archive.org/details/internationallaw01oppeuoft Google Scholar }.

15 Ibid., p. 122.

16 Ibid., p. 124.

17 Klabbers, Jan, ‘The concept of legal personality’, Ius Gentium, 11:35 (2005), p. 5 Google Scholar .

18 Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, Vol. 22 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press)Google Scholar .

19 Schmitt, Carl, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 33–34 Google Scholar , emphasis added.

20 Ibid., p. 47.

21 See Portmann, Roland, Legal Personality in International Law, Vol. 70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 250 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . This is the perspective of the state as a ‘fact’, whereby legal personality is defined through a set of criteria mirroring the development of sovereignty, codified through The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States in 1933, which states that ‘a state exists when it possesses ‘(a) a permanent population, (b) a defined territory, (c) government, and (d) capacity to enter into relations with other States’.

22 Weber, ‘Performative states’, p. 78; see also Ringmar, ‘How the world stage makes its subjects’, p. 101; Jackson and Nexon, ‘Relations before states’, p. 293.

23 Oppenheim, International Law, pp. 168, 170, 171, emphasis added.

24 The state as a person is based on an analogy, but it is also real, in the sense that the unified thinking of statehood as a Person/entity permeates how both scholars and political actors think, organise, and act in the international realm. In contrast to human embodiment, then, the juristic category is indeed an ‘as if’, but it is one that real consequences for how statehood is performed. The legal-historical background and thus implications of which are largely bypassed in the otherwise excellent discussion of ‘state as person’ in this journal; see Jackson, Patrick T., ‘Forum introduction: Is the state a person? Why should we care?’, Review of International Studies, 30:2 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

25 Simpson, Gerry, ‘Two Liberalisms’, European Journal of International Law, 12:3 (2001), pp. 537–572 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . See also Schlesinger, Stephen C., Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations: A Story of Superpowers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies and Enemies, and Their Quest for a Peaceful World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004)Google Scholar ; Mazower, Mark, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

26 Simpson, ‘Two Liberalisms’, p. 556.

27 Ibid., pp. 540–1.

28 Crawford, James, The Creation of States in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 152 Google Scholar , 155.

29 Simpson, ‘Two Liberalisms’, pp. 554–5, emphasis added.

30 Barnett, Michael, ‘The new United Nations politics of peace: From juridical dovereignty to empirical sovereignty’, Global Governance, 1:1 (1995), pp. 79–97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; International Commission on Intervention, State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001)Google Scholar ; Evans, Gareth, The Responsibility to Protect (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 15–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

31 See, for example, Orford, Anne, International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Donnelly, Jack, ‘Human rights: a new standard of civilization?’, International Affairs, 74:1 (1998), pp. 1–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Koskenniemi, Marti, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960, Vol. 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

32 McConaughey, Meghan, Musgrave, Paul, and Nexon, Daniel H., ‘Beyond anarchy: Logics of political organization, hierarchy, and international structure’, International Theory, 10:2 (2018), pp. 181–218 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

33 Ibid., p. 187.

34 Ibid., p. 189.

35 See Jackson and Nexon, ‘Relations before states’, p. 304; Emirbayer and Mische, ‘What is agency?’; and McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon, ‘Beyond anarchy’.

36 MacDonald, Paul K., ‘Embedded authority: a relational network approach to hierarchy in world politics’, Review of International Studies, 44:1 (2018), Online First, pp. 1–23 (p. 19), available at: doi:10.1017/S0260210517000213 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

37 Ibid., p. 21.

38 Chowdhury, Arjun and Duvall, Raymond D., ‘Sovereignty and sovereign power’, International Theory, 6:2 (2014), pp. 191–223 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

39 Ibid., p. 206.

40 See also Benjamin de Carvalho, Niels Nagelhus Schia, and Xavier Guillaume, ‘Everyday sovereignty: International experts, brokers and local ownership in peacebuilding Liberia’, European Journal of International Relations (2018).

41 Bayart, Jean-François and Ellis, Stephen, ‘Africa in the world: a history of extraversion’, African Affairs, 99:395 (2000), pp. 217–267 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

42 For an overview, see Rosenau, James N., ‘Governance in a new global order’, in Anthony McGrew and David Held (eds), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 70–86 Google Scholar ; Sassen, Saskia, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

43 For a recent discussion on this, see Minda Holm, ‘What, when, and where, then, is the concept of sovereignty?’, in Julia Costa Lopez, Benjamin De Carvalho, Andrew A. Latham, Ayşe Zarakol, Jens Bartelson, and Minda Holm, ‘Forum: In the beginning there was no word (for it): Terms, concepts, and early sovereignty’, International Studies Review, 20:3 (2018).

44 Bartelson, Jens, Sovereignty as Symbolic Form (London: Routledge, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar , kindle loc. 405–18, emphasis added.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., p. 81.

47 Ibid., p. 87.

48 Ibid.

49 Aalberts, Tanja, ‘Rethinking the principle of (sovereign) equality as a standard of civilisation’, Millennium, 42:3 (2014), pp. 767–789 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Krasner, Stephen D., Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Krasner, Stephen D., ‘Sharing sovereignty: New institutions for collapsed and failing states’, International Security, 29:2 (2004), pp. 85–120 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Biersteker, Thomas J. and Weber, Cynthia, ‘The social construction of state sovereignty’, in Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds), State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 1–2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Sassen, Saskia, Losing Control? Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization (Columbia, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996)Google Scholar .

50 See also Nexon, Daniel and Musgrave, Paul, ‘American liberalism and the imperial temptation’, in Noel Parker (ed.), Empire and International Order (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 131–149 Google Scholar . Nexon and Musgrave speak of the ‘two extremes’ of liberal ideas of governance – liberal enlargement, and liberal intergovernmentalism – but stop short of discussing how these are also institutionalised within the very concept of state subjectivity in the international system, and thus what consequences they have for broader ideas of sovereignty.

51 Laruelle, Marlene (ed.), Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015)Google Scholar ; Shekhovtsov, Anton, Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir (London: Routledge, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

52 Website of the Hungarian Government, ‘Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Speech at the Closing Event for the National Consultation’ (29 June 2017), available at: {http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-closing-event-for-the-national-consultation}, our highlight.

53 Adler-Nissen, Rebecca, ‘Stigma management in international relations: Transgressive identities, norms, and order in international society’, International Organization, 68:1 (2014), pp. 143–176 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Zarakol, Ayşe, ‘What made the modern world hang together: Socialisation or stigmatisation?’, International Theory, 6:2 (2014), pp. 311–332 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

54 Aris, Stephen, ‘The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: “Tackling the Three Evils”: a regional response to non-traditional security challenges or an anti-Western bloc?’, Europe-Asia Studies, 61:3 (2009), pp. 457–482 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

55 Gleb Bryanski, ‘Putin likens UN Libya resolution to crusades’, Reuters (21 March 2011), available at: {https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-russia-idUSTRE72K3JR20110321}.

56 Official Internet Resources of the President of Russia, ‘70th Session of the UN General Assembly’ (28 September 2015), available at: {http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50385}, emphasis added. The paradox, of course, is that this vision also coexists with an idea of Russia having a particular ‘right’ of influence in its ‘Near Abroad’, echoing geopolitical ideas of Schmitt and others.

57 See Broome, André and Quirk, Joel, ‘Governing the world at a distance: the practice of global benchmarking’, Review of International Studies, 41:5(2015), pp. 819–841 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Cooley, Alexander and Snyder, Jack (eds), Ranking the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Neumann, Iver B. and Sending, Ole Jacob, Governing the Global Polity: Practice, Rationality, Mentality (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

58 Roland Paris, ‘Competing Conceptions of World Order: The Ideational Dimensions of Power Transition’, paper presented to the ISA Conference, San Francisco (5 April 2018). While ‘Westphalia’ and its principles are debated (cf. Stéphane Beaulac, The Power of Language in the Making of International Law: The Word Sovereignty in Bodin and Vattel and the Myth of Westphalia (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004), the UN Charter has a unquestionable role in laying down the principles discussed here.

59 On this, see Neumann, Iver B. and Pouliot, Vincent, ‘Untimely Russia: Hysteresis in Russian-Western relations over the past millennium’, Security Studies, 20:1 (2011), pp. 105–137 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

60 Markell, Patchen, ‘Tragic recognition: Action and identity in Antigone and Aristotle’, Political Theory, 31:1 (2003), pp. 6–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Honneth, Axel, ‘Integrity and disrespect: Principles of a conception of morality based on the theory of recognition’, Political Theory, 20:2 (1992), pp. 187–201 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Taylor, Charles, The Ethics of Authenticity (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar .

61 See Jackson, ‘Forum introduction’.

62 Reus-Smit, Christian, ‘Cultural diversity and international order’, International Organization, 71:4 (2017), p. 879 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

63 Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1979), p. 88 Google Scholar .

64 As such, we disagree with Wæver in seeing it as a Weberian ideal-type; for Weber, ideal-types had to be explicitly historical, while Waltz is here trying to make a transhistorical claim. Wæver, Ole, ‘Waltz’s theory of a theory’, International Relations, 23:2 (2009), pp. 201–222 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

65 Wendt, Alexander, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics’, International Organization, 46:2 (1992), p. 400 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

66 Ibid., p. 412.

67 Ibid., p. 413.

68 Zarakol, ‘What made the modern world hang together’; Zarakol, Ayşe and Mattern, Janice Bially, ‘Hierarchies in world politics’, International Organization, 70:3 (2016), pp. 623–654 Google Scholar .