SGIR 7th Pan-European Conference on IR
2010 Stockholm Sweden
Oscar Larsson Ph.D. Candidate
Uppsala University
Governance and Domestic Sovereignty–
Politics of Authority in Institutionalized Uncertainty
Abstract
Sovereignty continues to puzzle scholars. One way to make sovereignty intelligible and
empirically examinable is to unbundle the concept to gain analytical insight so as to see
possible transformations and a more nuanced picture of political authority. Whereas it is
often assumed that domestic sovereignty needs to be both formal and handled by public
authorities new organizational structures opens up for the possibility that there is an
increasing informalization and politicization of sovereign powers in which the theoretical
assumptions concerning the public and formal prerequisites are brought into question. I
present and argue in this paper for a theorization of sovereignty that takes seriously the
importance of boundaries, the influence of ideas and discourses and thereby show how
profound uncertainty and new organizational structures creates new political spaces.
Domestic sovereignty could then increasingly be portrayed as the (new) politics of authority
in which central sovereign boundaries are disputed.
Keywords: Sovereignty, Sovereign Powers, Governance, Politics of Authority, Boundaries
2
Introduction
Already in the scholarly debate in the 1950th W. J. Rees stated that: “There is a tendency
among present-day political theorists to work without the aid of the concept of sovereignty”
(Rees 1950). This was, according to Rees, “...due partly to the logical difficulties inherent in
the concept, and partly to the fact that certain modern political developments, such as the
growth of democracy, federalism and public law have made the concept a difficult one to
apply in present conditions” (Ibid.). These complaints seem to be even more valid now then it
was 60 years ago and similar arguments are echoed in the contemporary debate concerning
government, governance and the role of sovereignty. For instance, Mitchell Dean states that
“[i]n most social and political narratives, sovereign power is being undermined, decentred,
flattened, deterritorialized, pluralized and conceptually displaced” (Dean 2007: 133). Yet I
agree with Raia Prokhovnik (2007) who argue that “…sovereignty still has life in it” and
believe there is a risk of losing understanding of the rule in liberal democratic states when
confusing transformation of sovereignty for its obsoleteness (Dean 2007: 134f). The paper
will present a theorization of sovereignty that emphasises the importance of ‘sovereign
powers’ by arguing for the domestic side of the concept, its political potential, the pivotal role
of organizational structures and the intrinsic importance of boundaries. Sovereign power is in
this text understood as the power over/power to those institutions that makes sovereignty
possible (for elaborations see Aradua 2009: ; R. B. J. Walker 2010: 97f; compare Verkuil
2007: 42f). The focus is also on the productive side of power. Power is argued to reflect,
influence, produce and reproduce itself as well as agents, agencies and institutions, (see Blyth
2002: Hay, 2006 #45 Schmidt, 2008 #47). One of the main arguments presented in this paper
is thus that sovereignty and its connection to sovereign powers are often misunderstood and
portrayed too narrowly. The most pressing problem seem to be the incoherence between the
fixed and absolutist understanding of sovereignty, often deployed as a borderline concept, in
the sense that it is used to define borders and political spaces and often stated as a dichotomy,
and the alterations in the organization of sovereign powers made possible by discursive and
empirical shifts in contemporary liberal democracies. Yet, in order to show these linkages and
to make sovereignty politically intelligible it is necessary to unbundle the concept (Hay 2002:
69; Prokhovnik 2007: 150). By making explicit how different discourses of sovereignty helps
3
to create and uphold boundaries and political spaces and the uncertainty that is created when
those very boundaries are brought into question the paper argues that domestic sovereignty
increasingly could be portrayed as the politics of authority (Blyth 2002: 31; R. B. J. Walker
2010: ; Prokhovnik 2007: 112).
Aim and Disposition
The aim of the paper is to present and argue for the need to anew theorize political practices
and spaces through the lens of sovereignty. There seem to be an inherent risk of losing
political understanding and precision when trying to explain new organizational structures and
order without reference to sovereign powers which in turn leads to an understanding of the
contemporary as depoliticized when it in fact could be seen as highly politicized. It is
foremost a matter of how to understand conditions where there exist a high degree of
uncertainty and the constitutive political action made possible in such situations. Mark Blyth
has dubbed such a situation, Knightian uncertainty. Knightian uncertainty is not the same as
situations of ‘uncertainty as complexity’ where political agents knows their interest but does
not know how to pursue them. It is rather a situation characterized by an uncertainty about
what kind of rules, norms and boundaries that actually apply (Blyth 2002: 33). The paper
suggests that the reason that one can reach disparate accounts of the contemporary depends
also on how one theorizes sovereignty and sovereign powers. The idea is to show that new
political struggles and processes have been made possible due to the opening of earlier closed
boundaries, both in the empirical and theoretical meaning, boundaries that were defined and
held at place by the concept of sovereignty (see Loughlin 2006: 81; Hoffman and Graham
2009). The paper will proceed in three sections:
First section will provide a new theorization of sovereignty and of sovereign powers.
My suggestion boils down to that in order to understand domestic sovereignty it is vital to
place emphasis on the domestic, political and organizational dimensions of sovereignty. This
is however not the only possible combination of the concept’s empirical referents. Rather, it is
an aspiration to make sovereignty intelligible and empirically examinable more than it is to be
considered as a new criterion or definition (see Kurtulus 2005: 34). The second section is
thought to make explicit how current discourses and theorization of governance displaces and
diminishes the role of sovereign power by emphasizing new steering techniques. These are
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framed as less political than the legal and coercive power that is implicitly linked to the state
and sovereignty so the possibility of exerting sovereign power in new organizational
structures is often overlooked. W. J Rees warnings seem to be relevant in relation to this
theorization; scholars try to work without the aid of sovereignty, or by a very narrow
understanding of it. Similarly, just as Rees in the 1950s identified that scholars made
references to difficulties and the seemingly inapplicability of sovereignty due to ‘certain
modern political developments’, the current debate of government and governance seem to do
the same. The only difference is that the attempt to explain order without the use of
sovereignty now goes via a whole new set of concepts but also with reference to changed
social and political conditions of ‘late’ modernity (see Stehr 2000: 4f; Dean 2007: 46f; Beck
2002: 47; Held and McGrew 2007: 20f). I would have it argued that new ways of organizing
and steering state and society could however be seen as highly political and that there is an
increasing possibility of exerting influence and power over sovereign institutions, despite the
apparent theoretical and logical fallacy. This could be portrayed as a new political space
where politics of authority is taking place. A third section concludes the paper, argues for the
applicability of a new theorization of sovereignty, theoretically and empirically, and sketches
possible ways forward.
1
Sovereignty - Unbundling to make it Intelligible
Sovereignty is in many ways one of the most central concepts and has previously served as an
organizing concept empirically, theoretically and even disciplinary (Bartelson 1995, 2001: ;
compare R. B. J. Walker 2010). Despite, or perhaps because of the consensus, that
sovereignty has a central place in our vocabulary the concept seems hopelessly hard to pin
down (Bartelson 1995: 12; Prokhovnik 2007: 8f). Yet, concepts play a crucial role in social
sciences. The centrality of concepts, concepts formation and conceptions are widely
recognized and heavily debated in the scientific community (Connolly 1993: 10f; Gerring
2001: ; Sartori 2009). Even though I recognize that the role of language and concepts are
debatable there is however, for the sake of the paper, no need to engage further in this debate
as to settle whether or not the reality exist outside language. It simply suffice to say that the
paper assumes that the reality is only intelligible and possible to mediate through language
and concepts (Connolly 1993: ; Sartori 2009: ; for elaboration Moses and Knutsen 2007: 171).
5
Furthermore, if we accept that concepts provides the maps to the ‘empirical’ reality, the
question of what we know and what is knowable in relation to the concept of sovereignty
display a very paradoxical side of empirical political science by deciding a priori definitions
(Kurtulus 2005: 18). Especially if one attempts to do a re-theorization. So the solution
proposed is that while the paper sets out to say something about alterations in the politics and
organization of sovereignty and dispute claims of its obsoleteness it needs to do so from a
partial and non-stable position.
Sovereignty, as a master concept, consists of many different dimensions and is present
in different discourses which makes it impossible to examine in its entireness (Prokhovnik
2007: 112; Dean 2007: 92). One strategy is thus to ‘unbundle’ the concept and by doing so
illuminate some parts of it in order to gain analytical clarity, albeit at the obvious loss of a
more complex whole. This is perhaps just the thing to expect from a good theorization (see
Dimaggio 1995). Further complexity lies ahead however because sovereignty could also be
understood as a borderline concept, deployed to define boundaries and political spaces and
stated as a dichotomy, either sovereign or not. The theorization should therefore also try to
make explicit the highly political function of deciding and disputing those boundaries and the
political struggles that are created when those very lines are brought into question (Bartelson
1995: 18; R. B. J. Walker 2010: 186). Raia Prokhovnik expresses the necessity but difficulties
connected to unbundling most clearly:
Modern liberal political principles, the modern realist tradition of IR and the
dominance of modern legal discourse, all work together. For instance, it is the legal
definition of sovereignty, the definition used by lawyers in domestic and in
international law, which has through the canon and its Reechstaat emphasis
overshadowed the political dimension and condition of sovereignty, that presents the
theoretical obstacle to expression more forcefully the notion of the disaggregation or
‘unbundling’ of the elements of sovereignty (Prokhovnik 2007: 112f).
There are a number of different ways to unbundle sovereignty. As sovereignty, both
empirically and theoretically seem to be squeezed out of the explanatory toolbox those
boundaries that earlier have been settled by reference to sovereignty are reopened. Such
central boundaries as the internal/external dimension, the legal/political dimension and the
dividing line between private/public spheres are increasingly uncertain (R. B. J. Walker 2010:
6
; Kurtulus 2005: 39f). The remainder of this section tries to show the importance of
understanding this uncertainty through the lens of sovereignty by emphasizing the domestic,
political and organizational aspects of sovereignty. This could be seen as my attempt to
provide an unbundling of sovereignty that makes sovereignty empirically examinable and at
the same make explicit how the politics of authority may provide new insights of how
sovereign powers still play a crucial role in political life.
The Domestic Side – The Internal/External Dimension
Sovereignty, has almost become synonymous with state sovereignty, or as Loughling puts it:
[b]eing entirely inseperable from the state” (Loughlin 2006: 81). It is also from here the paper
takes its departure even though it will in its proceedings relate to other meanings such as ruler
sovereignty, supreme authority and sovereign power (Prokhovnik 2007: 152; Edkins and PinFat 2004: 3). The state is often understood as distinct from the international system of states
but also from domestic civil society. This has lead to the idea that the state is seen as the
ultimate source of authority within defined boundaries, and that there is no authority over and
above such sovereign units (Bartelson 2001: 149). State sovereignty, which includes the
concepts of territory, population, mutual recognition and authority (Biersteker and Weber
1996: 3) has lead way to notions of the ordered and pacified inside and the anarchic outside.
Hence, one of the most central delineation that sovereignty has served is the internal/external
divide of political space (Bartelson 2001: 149). So when Stephen D. Krasner suggests that it is
possible to discern four central ways which the term sovereignty has been used it is based on
the state as a separate unit and the inside/outside dimension. The four ways are: International
legal sovereignty, Westphalian sovereignty, Domestic sovereignty and Interdependence
sovereignty. International legal sovereignty refers to the practices associated with mutual
recognition, usually between territorial entities that have formal juridical independence.
Westphalian sovereignty refers to a political organization based on the exclusion of external
actors from authority structures within a given territory. Interdependence sovereignty refers to
the ability of public authorities to regulate the flow of information, ideas goods, people,
pollutants or capital across the border of the state. Finally, domestic sovereignty in turn refers
to the formal organization of political authority within the state and the ability of public
authorities to exercise effective control within the borders of their own polity (Krasner 1999:
4).
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The forthcoming paper zooms in on Domestic sovereignty, as presented by Krasner yet
will continue the unbundling even further since Krasner’s categorization relies on the classic
assumption that sovereignty should be both formal and handled by public authorities (Krasner
1999: 4; compare Loughlin 2006: ; Hoffman and Graham 2009). These assumptions are of
course not unrelated to the other central understandings presented by Krasner. Competing
theories of how to understand sovereignty are seldom, according to Kurtulus, “...presented in
a mode that would eliminate their effects on one another” (Kurtulus 2005: 52). Quite the
opposite, they often implicate one another. For instance, de facto control over a territory is
necessary for de jure recognition (Kurtulus 2005: 52). Yet the importance of the conceptual
function of the inside/outside remains central for sovereignty as an institution (Edkins and
Pin-Fat 2004: 3f). For instance, understandings of ‘new’ sovereignty implies the notion of
disaggregated sovereignty that in turn provoke various government institutions to adjust to the
globalized ‘New World Order’ and ideas of governance becomes a necessary response to the
implosion of the division of inside/outside (Verkuil 2007: 14; see also Dean 2007: 27; Pierre
and Peters 2000).
The Political Potential - The Legal/Political Divide
Sovereignty sometimes implies the end of politics rather than a condition of and for politics.
Sovereignty is normally used to specify the boundaries of politics, by implying its ends or
limits, specify its condition and means or its elimination by settling questions and make them
undisputable by reference to absolute and unquestionable authority. Another way sovereignty
implies the end of politics is by legality. When sovereignty is linked to the codification of
politics, in a constitution, so as to define customary ways of doing politics, sovereignty tends
to only imply rule of law, present in the version of the Rechtstaat (Prokhovnik 2007: 150;
Bartelson 1995: ; Hindess 1996). The literature concerned with sovereignty is often divided
between a political or a legal reading of sovereignty (Rees 1950: ; Prokhovnik 2007: 163).
The complexity of the distinction, and at the same time, connection between the legal and the
political is one normally settled by a priori defining it or letting one or the other stand in
focus of the theorization (R. B. J. Walker 2010: ; see also Rees 1950).
The liberal democratic state relies heavily on the notion of the supremacy of law and of
the Rechtstaat as identified by Hans Kelsen (Kelsen 2006). The legal discourse is centered
8
around formal rule-making and about the hierarchy of different kinds of law. In its most
extreme form the legal understanding disqualifies political theorizations of sovereignty
(Loughlin 2006). Sovereignty equates with supreme legal authority and draws the line
between the national and international via the constitution and divides the reality into
jurisdictions, implying that there is within each jurisdiction a supreme legal authority. State
sovereignty is often framed as legal sovereignty. There cannot be a separation between
political and legal sovereignty because sovereignty is about authority and there is no higher
authority than the legal because the laws of the state have final authority (Prokhovnik 2007:
163; Rees 1950). Such a formal understanding of supremacy of the law could on the other
hand be viewed as simplistic as it implies that there is no need for judgments, politics or
change. MacCormick argues that there is a potential space between what is formally phrased
and the practice so that: “…the state is a theatre of political power, not pure legal authority”
(MacCormick 2001: 25). Hence, state power does not “...have to be exercised in accordance
with the limits on constitutional authority...”, and is rarely or never perfectly done so
(MacCormick 2001: 26). So even if one adheres to a legal understanding of the concept of
sovereignty there is at least a possibility that there might be political influence, authoritative
or otherwise that is extra-legal. The possibility of enforcing or influencing by exerting power,
“...no matter who makes or otherwise carries out those decisions...” should perhaps therefore
also be acknowledged by scholars adhering to the legal understanding (Rees 1950).
Against the legal understanding of sovereignty we find the political one that shuns any
legal view by arguing that the sovereign is the one who decides the state of exception, the
nullification of formal laws according to (Carl Schmitt 1985: 5). Carl Schmitt’s idea was that
an emergency situation, in which one person or institution invokes a ‘state of exception will
show the sovereign. This idea emphasises a political theorization of sovereignty, as above law
(Schmitt 1985: ; Prokhovnik 2007: 154; R. B. J. Walker 2010: 35). Carl Schmitt based his
political understanding of the sovereign by relating the political to the legal yet at the same
time relying on formal (legal) decision-making in extreme situations that implied that
eventually there is going to be a return to normal politics (Dean 2007: 164). I do however
believe that it is necessary to broaden the understanding of political sovereignty so as to
become sensitive to how organizational modes in which informalization and influence can
play an equally important role as formal decision-making (Greven 2005: 267). An
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organizational view can broaden both the nature of politics and the arenas of sovereign power
and such focus can help us identify the less dramatic but equally important transformatory
aspect of sovereign powers (Prokhovnik 2007: 152).
Domestic sovereignty tends to point to the rules and the locus of political authority. A
common and more conventional understanding of sovereignty suggests that it is the ‘absolute
and perpetual power of a common-wealth’ according to Bodin [1576], yet a more recent
understanding suggest that it is the quality or condition of being supreme or pre-eminent in
some particular domain (Smith 2006: 23) (Dean 2007: 139). The paradox of sovereignty is
that it is framed as unitary in its common usage and brings to mind a power that is absolute
and unlimited. Classic theorists of sovereignty, as Bodin and Hobbes, were driven by a desire
to provide an intellectual rationale for the legitimacy of some final source of authority within
the state, can thus be said to have laid the foundation of absolutist accounts of domestic
sovereignty (Krasner 1999: 11; see MacCormick 2001: 123) (compare Hobbes and Curley
1994: 110f). We can also see how Carl Schmitt follows a more absolutist understanding,
wanting to identify the sovereign (Dean 2007: 159). In the next part we shall see how a
broader understanding of political power than formal decision-making complicates the notion
of ruler sovereignty and thus opens up for a politics of authority, especially in situations of
Knightian uncertainty. In fact, this gives way for a dual understanding of domestic
sovereignty as a supreme power over a specified territory yet also something that can be
uncoupled from the absolutist account by delegation, derogation and arrogation of the
sovereign institutions (Dean 2007: 139). This highlights and gives a pivotal role to the
organizational aspects of sovereignty.
The Pivotal Role of Organization - Public/Private Divide
Both the legal and the political readings of sovereignty, although providing quite detrimental
understandings of the same concept still seem to share the notion of the sovereign, implying
that there is an identifiable highest legal or political authority within that political space.
However, if domestic sovereignty is characterized by its formality and public authority, as
Krasner would have it, it seems unavoidable that some sort of organization is necessary in
order to approximate the right and ability of sovereignty to be effective and in place (Dean
2007: 136). Hence, sovereignty implies authority on the one hand and effective control on the
10
other. The latter understanding is accompanied by a physical effectiveness; a capacity of
being able to impose a will through force. A vital part of the sovereignty concept is thus
connected to brute force and the right to use such instruments to secure certain outcomes and
order (Hindess 1996: 37f). Once again we see how statehood is intimately connected to
sovereign power by its ability to secure domestic order due to its recognized ‘right’ to use
law-upholding violence (Dean 2007: 136). Max Weber saw the state in terms of its
organization and deployment of coercion and physical force. More accurately he noted that
“…a compulsory political organization with continuous operations will be called a “state”
insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of the
legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order” (Weber 1921 in Hay et al.
2006: 8). The idea of understanding sovereignty trough organization of sovereign power is
thus hardly a novel insight. What would be novel however is the emphasis put on the
possibility that sovereign power must not be controlled by formal and public authorities as it
often is assumed (Krasner 1999: 3), compare (Dean 2007: 146; Verkuil 2007: 2). By
theorizing sovereign power, not by its loci as formal and public power, but as power
over/power to the legal and coercive powers we can see sovereign power manifested by the
ability of influencing and shaping these two (and other related) institutions of sovereignty.
But is this to take it to far, is it still sovereignty and sovereign power that are being discussed
or is just a specified kind of political power?
(Kurtulus 2005: 41) identifies such an approach as the power theory tradition of sovereignty.
The main focus within this tradition is not the supreme legal authority but the ‘supreme’
power of political agents regardless of formal status. As such, sovereign power refers to the
exercise of political influence over sovereign institutions.
W. J Rees identifies, besides the legal and political understanding of the word
sovereign, a usage that implies “...a supreme coercive power exercised by a determinate body
of persons possessing a monopoly of certain instruments of coercion”. This understanding
also acknowledge that it at times could be extra-legal dimension to such, capable of enforcing
decisions against any likely opposition, no matter who makes or otherwise carries out those
decisions. Usually, however, such a body consists of a professional police or a standing army,
and usually the decisions which it enforces are those of Parliaments, Ministries and Courts.
Yet, the decisions “…may be analogous decisions of persons who have no legal authority to
11
make such decisions, although such persons may acquire such legal authority in virtue of their
decisions being enforced” (Rees 1950: 498). It is still implied however, also within the power
theorization, that one remain interested in identifying, the strongest political influence that
would then be distinguished from legal authority and from coercive powers. In a democratic
regime, for instance, we would want the majority of the parliament, to be able to exercise such
influence. But this is of course an empirical question, where sovereignty in the influential
sense may be found and to what extent such influence may be fixed or shifting (Rees 1950: ;
Smith 2006). Conceived in these terms, sovereignty may be ascribed to the executive in
relation to the legislative, to a political party in relation to other groups or to the bureaucracy
in relation to the representative of the demos, or perhaps to other ‘experts’ and professional
consultants (Kurtulus 2005: 42). Such a focus would highlight and put emphasis on the
possibility that public and private spheres and the boundary between is not a prerequisite for
sovereignty as often is implied (Krasner 1999: 4; Loughlin 2006: ; Hoffman and Graham
2009). Rather, sovereign power, both execution and the power over/power to sovereign
institutions becomes sensitive to the institutionalization of influence from a variety of social
agents, an increasing possibility as cooperation or ‘network governance’ of central state
functions is both promoted and deployed to handle policy issues (Verkuil 2007: 5).
I do however see certain problems with Rees’ insights of sovereignty as influence. It
tends to remain fixed on decisions, legal authority possessed or acquired, and the possibility
of identifying an actor as having the strongest political influence. It should be noticed (that
with Rees helpful insights) the paper has moved from a legal to a political understanding, unto
an organizational and from there to a power theoretical focus of sovereignty. Despite the
conceptual terrain covered so far, I think it is necessary to broaden the scope even further.
Because, if informalization is an accurate description of the contemporary political climate,
and that authority is in fact politicized we can no longer rely on an understanding of the
political as one-dimensional decision-making, or the importance of legal authority possessed
or acquired. Further, if we see the contemporary at least partly described as Knightian
uncertainty, it becomes necessary to include other explanations then actor-oriented (Blyth
2002: 33; Lukes 2005: ; Hay 2002: 73f). Ideas and discourses might always be present but in
situations of high uncertainty it is often assumed that their role becomes more visible (Hay
2006: 67). Actors appropriate a world supplied with institutions, formal, informal and
12
ideational. Political actor’s perceptions about what is”…feasible, legitimate, possible and
desirable are shaped by the institutional environment in which they find themselves and by
existing policy paradigms and world-views (Hay 2006: 65). Therefore, also the notion of
sovereignty as the most influential actor might be a misleading one. Sovereign power should
also be analyzed by emphasizing the constituting and productive aspect of power and the
possibility of shaping agents and their perceptions as well as structures and institutions.
Sovereign Power as Politics of Authority
The theorization in the paper has so far landed in the power theory tradition in which
sovereign power implies power over/power to institutions of domestic sovereignty. The paper,
despite the conceptual terrain covered still identified some problems within the power theory,
the focus on (formal) decision-making, and obsession with the legality, and the interest in an
identifiable actor as the influential sovereign. These are in many ways symptoms of how
closely inter-related sovereignty is to our understanding of the political and vice versa (for
elaboration see Prokhovnik 2007: 150f). Nevertheless, even scholars who hold on to an
understanding of sovereignty as the supreme ruler exercising its power by formal decisionmaking, either legally or politically, or sovereignty understood as the organization of coercive
power by public authorities, would benefit from adhering to a more dispersed and politicized
understanding of sovereignty. It is not only a play with words. The paper will in the next
section try to show how discourses and empirical shifts increase the uncertainty around
central boundaries that sovereignty once help to settle. The contemporary political climate
could thus be characterized as Knightian uncertainty concerning central boundaries. I suggest
that it is more likely that there is a greater uncertainty today of competence and
appropriateness which in turn gives way for politics of authority (R. B. J. Walker 2010: 14).
Furthermore, this paper has suggested that power imitate, influences, produces and reproduces
itself but there is also a transformatory capacity connected to agents and institutions. So even
if little change seems to have appeared formally or constitutionally it is important to see that
there is an increasing possibility to exert influence over those who hold formal
office”(MacCormick 2001: 25). For instance, when Paul Verkuil identifies four central
sovereign powers it is not only the execution of sovereign power that matters. Complementary
to military force, national domestic security, policing and incarceration is the right and ability
to define security through the analysis function of policies and programs (Verkuil 2007: 24).
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Hence, a very central sovereign power is to discriminate, to draw the line, to decide what is
and what is not, what entitles and does not entitle, particular in relation to other sovereign
powers, the deployment of force, urgency, and exceptions from the normality. Discrimination
as a function of analysis is ultimately an expression of political power and when it relates and
give rise to the possibility of deploying other sovereign powers it should be considered as
exerting strong influence over institutions of sovereignty (R. B. J. Walker 2010: 97f; compare
Verkuil 2007: ; Edkins and Pin-Fat 2004).
2
Empirical and Theoretical Shifts that Displaces Sovereignty
Even though the power theory may in itself be seen as a theoretical shift that relocate
sovereignty I would rather see this tradition as providing the theorization that makes politics
of authority intelligible. One of the problems stated in the beginning of this paper was that
sovereignty and its connection to sovereign powers are often misunderstood so whilst there
are alterations in the organization of sovereign powers made possible both by discursive and
empirical shifts, these are often not seen as expressions of sovereign power. This section is
thought to discuss such empirical and discursive shifts that further disperse sovereign power.
The paper has also suggested that contemporary political climate is characterized by
Knightian uncertainty concerning the inside/outside, the political/legal and the public/private.
This second section will continue the theorization around these central lines.
Empirical Phenomenon and the Discourse of Governance
I use for the sake of the argument, the collective name of governance on the literature where I
have found substantial theorization that inflict on the central boundaries discussed. It should
be noted however that the literature, debate and contestation over what governance is, how it
is best characterized and its desirability is vast and diversified (Pierre and Peters 2000: 12).
However, the conception of governance as ‘steering’ is a unifying one (Pierre and Peters
2000: 23; Kjaer 2004: 3). This is a good departure for discussing the problematic relationship
and possible misunderstandings between government, governance and sovereign powers.
Within accounts of ‘governance’ central boundaries and their reopening are asserted and
at times even welcomed (Aalberts 2004). First is the notion of Globalization that blurs the
14
image of a clear cut boundary of the civilized inside and the anarchic outside (Krasner 1999),
(Bartelson 1995: 17). Secondly, it is the legal/political divide that relates to shifts in the
steering of the state and society. Thirdly, the paper will discuss how governance contests the
image of the Liberal Democratic state as having a clear boundary between the public and the
private sphere (Bartelson 2001: 35f).
The Internal/External Divide – Globalization
The currents of Globalization entail elements that are argued to displace sovereignty (Rhodes
2000: 71). There exists a comprehensive debate about the nature and to what extent
globalization and internationalization affect statehood and state sovereignty (Sorensen 2006: ;
Grande and Pauly 2005). The concept implies that social, political and economical activities
are increasingly extended across national borders (Devetak and Hughes 2008: 2). Yet, it still
remains an open question what impact globalization has had on the state. Several scholars
nonetheless argue that the substance of states has been transformed, partially or fully due to
globalization (Held and McGrew 2007: 20). Sceptics on the other hand argue that these
processes actually does not inflict on the statehood. Sovereignty as a legal institution remains,
and changes brought about have little to do with states ability to control their own territory
(Cohen 2006: 16). Louis W. Pauly & Edgar Grande stress in the book Complex Sovereignty –
Reconstituting political Authority in the Twenty-first Century that: “Considerable conceptual
confusion surrounds contemporary debate on the nature and implications of new forms of
governance and their institutionalization”(Grande and Pauly 2005: 6). Yet, at the same time it
remains an empirical fact that changes are occurring in both the internal and the external
dimensions of state sovereignty, as it classically has been understood. But rather than leading
to a diminishing role of sovereignty it has contributed to a “...significant deepening in the
complexity of sovereignty” (Grande and Pauly 2005: 6). Remember here Krasner’s four
definitions of how sovereignty has been used. It is thus not necessarily so that changes
occurring in relation to one of these understandings naturally inflict on the others (Krasner
1999: 3).
Theorizations of ‘new’ sovereignty, or postmodern sovereignty, often uses references to
globalization and states’ ability to control borders and autonomy towards international flows
and institutions to show a diminishing role of state sovereignty (Aalberts 2006: ; Hooghe,
15
2003 #64 for a longer review see Kurtulus 2005: 141f). Even though such theorization mainly
talks of a different set of referents and advances a particular understanding of state
sovereignty mainly as autonomy, it helps to enforce the notion of diminishing sovereignty, in
every sense of the concept. With reference to an interdependent world and somehow less
governable political context this tend to provoke, empirically and normatively, the need for
various government institutions to adjust to the globalized ‘New World Order’ and the need to
move to a governance structure (Verkuil 2007: 14; see also Dean 2007: 27; Pierre and Peters
2000).
R. A. W. Rhodes, for instance, gives two examples of how globalization relates to a
shift from state-oriented hierarchical rule to governance mode of public policies. One is the
hollowing out-thesis that implies that state authority is eroding because of international
interdependence limits the autonomy of the state. The nation-state capacity to govern has
weakened and globalization thereby creates within the state a need to find new ways of
steering. The other is also related to interdependence and implies that effective steering must
today go via multi-level governance (Rhodes 2000: 57) The state is forced to give away
power, both upwards to the international level and downwards to the local level as the
assumption that the state is “…too big to solve the small problems and too small to solve big
problems” (Bell in Pierre and Peters 2000: 16). These assumptions and analyses of the
modern state, sovereignty and governance are susceptible to two short-comings, according to
(Grande and Pauly 2005: 9). They tend to conceptualize sovereignty in absolutist terms, i.e.
either as fully present or entirely absent from a given political structure, we see here how
sovereignty is used as a borderline concept or to treat modern states as fully evolved entities
where the state - sovereignty linkage is invariable and any evidence of change must be
associated with state decline and thus also a decline of sovereign power (Grande and Pauly
2005: 9; Dean 2007: 16).
The Legal/Political Divide–Shifts in the Steering
Even though the currents of globalization lend support to a shift in favour of governance
structure to handle public affairs we can find other empirical and discursive shifts taken place
in the internal environment of modern states. To a large extent such arguments relates to the
need and the desirability of ‘new ways of steering’ that implies de-politicization (Rhodes
16
1997: 15f; Pierre and Peters 2000: 15). Here it becomes evident how closely confined
sovereignty is to state, the legal and the coercive means within the discourse of governance.
Governance solutions in which new types of steering are promoted tend therefore to be
framed as less- or non-political in relation to hierarchical and legal-based steering by the
government. Yet by following the argument of the paper, governance structures could be seen
as highly political and even exerting sovereign power.
The way governance structure is seen as indispensible can be divided into two main
categories, empirical assessment when stating how things are, and normative assessment of
how to best organize government and state bureaucracy. Normative assessment not only
argues for the desirability of an organization in which state powers, i.e. sovereign and
coercive powers have none, or a minimal role to play. They also argues for the benefits of
market based and flexible solutions of governance as a structure that allocates resources and
solves authoritative allocations of values more efficiently and justly (see Rhodes 1997: 19f)
(Kooiman 2000: 139; Hooghe and Marks 2003). Governance is then often presented as
flexible, voluntarily and efficient ways of dealing with public problems, often contrasted to
government framed as the rigid, inefficient and clumsy cousin from the country (see Hooghe
and Marks 2003: 239f).
Also scholars who argue for a state-centric view within governance literature, most
notably Pierre & Peters, assumes that there is a changing relationship between state and
society to the extent that there is a growing reliance on less coercive policy instrument (Pierre
and Peters 2000: 12; see also Aalberts 2004). Rather than arguing for state erosion they
emphasis the transformation of the state’s role, from constitutional power defined as lawbased rule backed up by coercive means i.e. sovereign power, towards an important but nonprivileged role based in coordination and fusion of public and private resources (Pierre and
Peters 2000: 25). This is not so remarkable after all, since sovereignty and the state have
frequently been defined in terms of each other (Rees 1950), or according to pure legal-based
understanding, inseparable from each other (Loughlin 2006). The merging of state
sovereignty and sovereign powers are by now so clear-cut and indispensible that it has
received practically ontological status within mainstream political science (for elaboration see
Bartelson 2001: 30).
17
Therefore, the concept and framework of governance tends then to lead to a covering of
new organizational form of sovereign powers by assuming it to be a power that is exclusive to
the state. In fact, few scholars explicitly try to understand sovereignty and sovereign powers
from a governance perspective. Tanja Aalberts argues that governance seems to be an
attractive approach in explaining the dispersal of authority yet often fall short because of the
lack of explicit analytical focus on power within governance. With notions such as
‘overlapping authorities’ and ‘shared competencies’ among a ‘variety of actors at a variety of
levels’, sovereign power very easily becomes redundant, if it remains to be theorized as
exclusive for formal and public authority (Aalberts 2004: 25; compare Hooghe and Marks
2001). However, governance empirically and normatively often sees to the informalization of
politics, that is, a move away from an understanding steering by only legal and coercive
means. A wider understanding of sovereign power and the political that could accompany the
informalization would perhaps come to other conclusions and see how looser organization
actually creates politics of authority rather than simply politics by authority. The key to such
understanding is the impact that sovereign power has in situations characterized by Knightian
uncertainty.
The Public/Private Divide –Trademarks of the Liberal State Revisited
Often in political science the term ‘government’ refers to formal and public institutions of the
state which also implies the presence, right, and as a final resort, the deployment of sovereign
powers (Stoker 1998: 17; see also MacCormick 2001: 25). Governance is often argued to be a
complementary outlook dealing with public purposes that are conventionally associated with
government (Donahue and Richard 2006: 508). The notion of ‘steering’ society is still central
in theories of governance so power should remain in the picture. Yet the literature of
governance has been fairly quiet on who defines the objectives of the steering and more focus
has been placed on the relationship between the actors involved in governance (Pierre and
Peters 2000: 23). This is often accompanied with terms such as small scale and flexibility,
informal exchange rather than formal control and rules, sharing power and competence rather
than trying to maintain a strict division between private and public (Rhodes 1997: 20; Pierre
and Peters 2000: 23).
18
Since the 1980s, a wave of public sector reforms has taken place in many liberal
democracies. These reforms entail privatization by outsourcing and contracting, NPM, and
different accounts of decentralizations. Also, in many western countries, corporations and
civil society organizations have become more involved in the delivery of public services. The
consequences are increasing fragmentation and complex political systems in which the sharp
distinction between public and private that characterized traditional public administration
theory and liberal democratic theory becomes indistinct to say the least (Kjaer 2004: 4f; Hirst
2000: 21). According to Gerry Stoker this might be one of the central baseline agreements of
the governance concept, “…the development of governing styles in which boundaries
between public and private sectors have become blurred” (Stoker 1998: 17). Jan Kooiman, for
instance argues that interests are shared between the spheres earlier hold separate by the
concept of sovereignty to the extent that “…public as well as private actors aim at solving
societal problems or create societal opportunities, and aim at the care for societal institutions
within these governing activities take place” (Kooiman 2000: 139). Sovereignty has earlier
provided a dividing line domestically between the public and private spheres (Krasner 1999:
4; Loughlin 2006: ; Hoffman and Graham 2009). Yet, governance as theory and practice,
characterized among other things, by the institutionalization of mixing private and public
spheres, tend to create situations which is characterized by uncertainty and the need to, on a
case-to-case basis, draw boundaries between the public and the private so as to decide what
kind of competence and ‘steering’ that is appropriate. This might be called institutionalization
of Knightian uncertainty and is further elaborated on in the third and final section.
3 Institutionalisation of Knightian Uncertainty
This paper has argued that sovereignty still has analytical insights to offer scholars of politics,
despite the often echoed arguments of its inapplicability in the present context of ‘late’
modernity. The paper presented a different theorization of sovereignty by emphasising the
concept’s domestic side, its political potential and the pivotal role of organizational structures.
The importance of central boundaries such as the internal/external, legal/political and
public/private that earlier were settled by reference to sovereignty was argued to be either
empirically and/or theoretically displaced in the alleged absence of sovereignty. Yet, instead
of accepting that sovereignty and sovereign power becomes obsolete in the deficiency of
19
absolutist state control and autonomy, the paper argued that sovereign powers, if understood
as power over/power to sovereign institutions, provides an understanding of the contemporary
as politics of authority rather than politics by authority. New politics of authority was claimed
to be made present by the incoherence between the fixed and absolutist understanding of
sovereignty that sees it by necessity handled by formal and public state authorities and the
alterations in the organization of sovereign powers made possible by discursive and empirical
shifts in contemporary states. As central sovereign boundaries, the internal/external, the
legal/political and the public/private becomes displaced by empirical and discursive shifts,
situations of Knightian uncertainty is argued to become more likely and thus make politics of
authority an increasing possibility. In fact, the contemporary climate could via the
theorization of sovereign power and the Knightian uncertainty then be seen as highly political
rather than, as it sometimes is claimed, depoliticized.
How then, can the theorization of this paper be of assistance to theoretical and empirical
investigations of political science? Foremost I believe that is useful to expand the
understanding of political power beyond mere formal decision-making, the ‘legality’
possessed or acquired, or the idea that it is necessary to find the actor, a sovereign ruler.
Instead focus should be drawn to how power produces and reproduces itself in relation to the
institutional context. If the contemporary political climate is indeed characterized by a greater
informality in combination with increasing blurring of central political boundaries,
investigations need to be attentive to how such uncertainty enables and produces new
collaborations and politics of authority. A central sovereign power was in the paper identified
as the function and ability to discriminate, to draw new lines, particular in relation to other
sovereign powers. One policy field that is especially apt to gain political insights and see the
possibility of new politics of authority is Security Policies since this policy field has a natural
connection to sovereign institutions (see Verkuil 2007: 24; Buzan et al. 1998: 3f). Most new
types of threats are not self-evident nor directed to the state itself and can very seldom be
combated with military or physical strength. It is therefore very likely that investigations
concerned with security policies are likely to show politics of authority deploys a
discriminatory function of politics in relation to other sovereign institutions.
Another usage is to scrutinize policy networks and their constitutive power. Policy
networks are said to consist of a variety of different actors, state institutions, organized
20
interests, voluntarily organizations and so on. Networks do however vary considerable with
regard to cohesion, scope and influence. Yet, policy networks often facilitate coordination of
public and private interests and resources (Rhodes 1997: ; Pierre and Peters 2000), yet little
attention has been laid on the impact on related boundaries and the re-drawing of boundaries
that such constellation can create.
Now, networks and their influence over politics is by no means a novel feature of
political life. Iron triangles and more loosely constituted issue networks (Heclo 1992), policy
communities (Rhodes and Marsh 1992), advocacy coalitions (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith
1993) and even epistemic communities (Haas 1992) have been around, identified and
theorized for decades. What would be more novel is the new and extreme form that these
networks can take in situation characterized by Knightian uncertainty. Networks have earlier
been described as self-regulatory structures within their own policy sector (Pierre and Peters
2000: 20) yet with the theorization of this paper attention could be drawn to how such
networks reconstitute political spaces and that more politics is concerned with boundaries
rather than being confined within boundaries.
So far my suggestions concerns the application of the theorization of sovereign power in
combination with uncertainty as to see how and when politics of authority could be present
and the expressions such politics may take. However, politics of authority was also claimed to
be sensitive to the institutional context. For instance, Donahue & Zeckhauser tries to show the
many pitfalls of analyzing private-public collaboration without a proper framework that
provides precision and relevance (Donahue and Richard 2006: 508). It might be fruitful to
further investigate how central organizational dimensions may have an impact on the
institutional context itself and the path-dependency created by different organizational modes.
The level of formality, duration, focus, diversity of participants, stability and discretion as
suggested by Donahue & Zeckhauser (2006) is a good start but without theorizing the level of
discretion in relation to central boundaries it might not be possible to understand the impact
and in-reversibility certain organizational and structural arrangements may have on the
institutional context. By focusing on the interplay between the institutional context, central
boundaries and the organization of sovereign power we would be in a better position to
analyze the politics of authority and to be able to identify the conditions where
institutionalization of Knightian uncertainty takes place.
21
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