Sovereignty in a global village

• Main Author: Boucher, D. S.
• Published: Swansea University 2000
• Subjects: 327
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.636126

This thesis subjects the relevance of sovereignty in the context of globalization to critical examination, mindful of the increasing contentions today that sovereignty should either be abandoned or relegated to practical insignificance. Defined as a spatio-temporal revolution whose implications are corrosive of the assumptions upon which modern territorial sovereignty lay, the thesis recognises that sovereignty certainly faces significant challenges. Having subjected this spatio-temporal revolution and its implications for sovereignty to detailed analysis, however, it pursues what might be described as a middle way identifying the ongoing importance of sovereignty but also the urgent need for a measure of reconceptualisation. In the first instance the thesis observes that, whilst the reality of a growing extra-territorial realm is beyond question, it coexists with territoriality and thus territorial sovereignty rather than displacing it. Indeed the thesis argues that the extra-territorial realm depends on sovereign territoriality in many different ways, especially in terms of legitimacy. In the second instance, however, whilst state sovereignty is not displaced by the spatio-temporal revolution its influence is most certainly eroded. Furthermore, the reality of extra-territorial flows means that there can be no doubt that, whilst sovereignty remains a significant concept, it will be the source of much distortion if it fails to recognise those flows. This thesis responds to these observations pursuing the reconceptualisation of sovereignty in search of a new form of 'open sovereignty'. In rising to this challenge it provides a critique both of those seeking to jettison sovereignty or relegate it to insignificance and those who maintain that globalization has no impact on sovereignty. In pursuing this course the thesis exploits the spatio-temporal hermeneutic of traditional Welsh nationalism which, recognizing the new temporality of globalization in the context of an enduring spatial orientation, provides a significant conceptual frame for IR in the 21st century.