The absence of legislative control over semantic practice is, in one's more authoritarian moments, a matter for regret. In respect of discourse about international relations, no better ground for this reaction can be found than the use of the term sovereignty. On every hand, it seems, the term is freely introduced; and on inspection ( for writers are in this regard rarely self-conscious) it emerges that an almost equivalent profusion of concepts is being paraded. However, this situation at least provides grist for the familiar academic tasks of drawing distinctions and ± International Relations falling within the province of social science ± the establishment of categories. Concepts of SovereigntyIt may therefore be noted that, speaking very broadly, the subsequent contributions to this special number of the journal fall into three broad groups. In this they re¯ect the contemporary concerns of the discipline and the associated literature. In the ®rst place, sovereignty is used to refer to the extent to which a state is free to behave as it wishes (see the articles by Philpott, Taylor, and Wallace). This has two aspects: jurisdictional and political. Jurisdictional sovereignty has to do with the extent to which a state is under no speci®c or general international obligations regarding its internal behaviour and decision making. To that extent it is legally free to conduct itself as it sees ®t, or sovereign. 1 As these comments imply, this concept of sovereignty is not an absolute. It is not something which a state either has immutably or not at all. Rather, it is relative in nature. It is like a bundle of separable rights. Thus the bundle remains in existence notwithstanding the renunciation or involuntary loss of some of the individual items of which it is, collectively, composed. It also remains in existence even if the state is in some political disarray. The state continues to be sovereign, in the sense of having jurisdictional rights, over those areas of its aairs which are not subject to the direct requirements of international law.The other aspect of this ®rst concept of sovereignty focuses on political rather than jurisdictional freedom. 2 Like the latter, its nature is necessarily relative.

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The choice of name given to or adopted by a collectivity is often immaterial. It probably does not matter much whether a new football team, for example, is called the Braves or the Valiants. All that is needed is some distinctive terminology, by whch the group in question can easily be identified. Sometimes, however, a name may be meant to reflect some substantive qualities, aspirations, or associations which are already connected with or claimed by the collectivity. The names adopted in 1947 by the two successor states to Britain's empire on the Indian sub-continent, for instance, were seen to be significant. Both India and Pakistan had their own reasons for wishing to be so called. Burma's 1989 translation into Myanmar was perhaps indicative of the same kind of consideration.

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On the face of it, the title of this article must look rather odd, especially to any non-specialist who happens to light upon it. For ‘Realism’ surely connotes enterprises and appraisals of a realistic kind, ones which take full account of the facts and constraints of life. Accordingly, it might well be thought clearly superfluous to assert that such things, already identified as realistic, are indeed so.