Rethinking the Nation-State: The Many Meanings of Sovereignty

Closely related to "international legal sovereignty" is Krasner's last definition, which he labels the "Westphalian model." It rests on two principles: "territoriality and the exclusion of external actors from domestic authority structures." Reduced to one word, it is the principle of nonintervention.

"Westphalian sovereignty" is a bit of a misnomer. For it suggests -- wrongly -- that back in 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years' War, the European powers agreed in Munster and Osnabruck to stop intruding on one another's domestic politics. It is true that the peace recognized the territorial sovereignty of the member states of the Holy Roman Empire, leaving about 300 princes in exclusive charge of their turfs. It also reaffirmed the principle cuius regio, eius religio, meaning that the ruler's faith became the official denomination of his state. Krasner calls this a system of "organized hypocrisy," and right he is, for states have never stopped interfering in the domestic affairs of other states -- especially when they had the appropriate clout.

But Krasner also sets up something of a straw man, as a closer look at the Westphalian system actually designed reveals. To begin with, cuius regio, eius religio was compromised from the start by the principle of religious tolerance. Although those 300 sovereigns were the top dogs in their state churches, they were bound to respect the freedom of worship and conscience of their religious minorities. More important was the realpolitik of the settlement. The two victors and guarantors of the peace, France and Sweden, were granted the right of interference in the affairs of the Holy Roman Empire. Sweden even gained a formal right of participation in the Imperial Diet (as Krasner actually points out elsewhere in his book). So 300 years before the settlements of World Wars I and II, there was already a heavy whiff of Versailles and Potsdam in the Westphalian air: a massive dose of international supervision over the future internal arrangements of Germany. Plus ca change....

Still, "Westphalian sovereignty" is what we should mean when we say "sovereignty" -- as long as we concede that there is a large "ought" concealed in the concept's core. We ought to treat other states as hard-shelled entities by respecting their territoriality as well as their right to noninterference. Empirically, of course, that has never been the case. Since Thucydides, the history of international politics has been the history of intervention, and Krasner's book provides a well-nigh exhaustive survey of how it has been done -- when, where, by, and to whom.

As Krasner puts it,

"principles [of noninterference] have been enduring but violated. Rulers in more powerful states have justified violations of Westphalian principles by invoking alternative norms such as the illegitimacy of revolutionary regimes (the Holy Alliance), the provision of national security (the Platt Amendment imposed on Cuba by the United States), problems of drug running (the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama) or the protection of the Soviet commonwealth (the Brezhnev doctrine)."

The list is endless.

METHOD IN THE MADNESS

So what? Krasner's real project is not taxonomy, but theory. How best to understand a world of so-called sovereign states? What, if anything, has changed? Krasner's problem is not easily cracked. How do we wield a concept that is both normative and empirical, that describes both the "ought" and the "is?" On the inside of states, "domestic sovereignty" is clearly a reality; there is in the United States, for example, a president who is the supreme commander; there is a Treasury Department that alone may print bills and mint coins. On the outside, "international legal sovereignty" is also for real. We do treat other states, vast or measly, as juridical equals; we accept their right to representation in the United Nations; to them alone do we grant the authority to sign contracts and conventions.

But the issue becomes tricky when we turn to "Westphalian sovereignty." Under this system, all states are pledged to the billiard-ball model, to noninterference and nonintervention, and there is a vast apparatus of international law to go with it. Except not only do they ignore that "ought" in the crunch (if they have the wherewithal). They also undercut the principle voluntarily, by allowing others to penetrate their hard shells in myriad ways. They conclude conventions such as the one Francis I of France and Suleiman the Magnificent signed in 1538, which, as Krasner notes, provided for the exemption of foreigners from Ottoman taxation and for them to be tried under the laws of their home countries in consular courts.

Later on, in Vienna in 1815, minority protection was extended to ethnic groups such as Poles living in Prussia, Russia, and Austria. After World War I, minority treaties were even embedded in national law. So the breach of the Westphalian model was never just a matter of coercion or imposition; it also involved contract and convention. Add to this the more recent human rights conventions of the United Nations, voluntarily shouldered by states, which seek to constrain rulers from inflicting their nasty habits on hapless subjects. This leads to something of a paradox: "The very fact," notes Krasner, that "rulers could freely sign such agreements [limiting their domestic sovereignty] is an affirmation of their international legal sovereignty" -- of the fact, in other words, that "they are recognized by other states as competent to enter into international accords."