Sovereign myths in international relations: Sovereignty as equality and the reproduction of Eurocentric blindness

Abstract

The concept of sovereignty still generates a considerable amount of debate in the discipline of International Relations. Using myth as a heuristic device, I argue that part of this confusion results from a mythical understanding of ‘sovereignty as equality’. Following the myth, sovereignty is seen as playing an equalising role in international relations, while international inequalities are depicted as existing despite the norm of sovereignty (and not as a result of it). The myth of sovereignty as equality thus enables international relations scholars to separate the inequalities instituted and legitimised by sovereignty from the concept itself. As a consequence, sovereignty is considered as normatively desirable since it is the best tool to offset inequalities. This article argues that the myth rests on three interlinked building blocks and that its maintenance can be explained by its normative appeal (more than by its dubious analytical value). Indeed, even those scholars who reproduce the myth acknowledge that international relations do not conform to it. As such, an effective critique of sovereignty requires both factual disproval (to reveal what the myth contributes to hide) and the construction of an alternative, more desirable myth.

Westphalian Vs. Indigenous Sovereignty: Challenging Colonial Territorial Governance

“…Furthermore, the concept has perpetuated a myth of equality between 'sovereign' entities when political relations between these entities are clearly uneven and asymmetrical (Mathieu 2020). Applying the term sovereignty to Indigenous calls for self-determination is thus deceiving since the term implies equality while -as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples clearly outlines -the Westphalian sovereign state remains superior to selfgoverning Indigenous Peoples.…”

Paradiplomacy practices in Indonesia: Comparative analysis ofAceh‐Quebec

“…Protodiplomacy is paradiplomacy carried out to promote political identity, gain international recognition from other actors to become a sovereign state, and forward a separatist agenda within a country (Mathieu, 2020;Paquin, 2018). In his research, Mathieu (2020) showed that paradiplomacy and protodiplomacy are techniques that can simultaneously advance Canada and the provinces bilaterally and regionally.…”

“…Protodiplomacy is paradiplomacy carried out to promote political identity, gain international recognition from other actors to become a sovereign state, and forward a separatist agenda within a country (Mathieu, 2020;Paquin, 2018). In his research, Mathieu (2020) showed that paradiplomacy and protodiplomacy are techniques that can simultaneously advance Canada and the provinces bilaterally and regionally. Schiavon (2019) carried out a comprehensive comparative study of the paradiplomacy of 11 federal systems in the world by explaining why and how substate actors conduct international relations and how the patterns of relations between federal authorities and local governments coordinate in the implementation of national foreign policy.…”

Protective exclusion as a postcolonial strategy: Rethinking deportations and sovereignty in the Gambia

“…The measures through which states are conventionally understood as establishing (or performing) sovereignty internally – towards their own polities – and externally – towards other states – were shaped by the needs and interests of the states negotiating the Treaty of Westphalia at the time (see, for example, Agnew, 2005; Glanville, 2011; Walters, 2002). Westphalian sovereignty emerged in modern Europe and is centred around a particular Eurocentric form of (inter)statehood (Mathieu, 2020). A territorialized understanding of sovereignty has since survived as the conventional, de jure understanding of sovereignty (Agnew, 2005).…”

“…The current regulation of migration – including the right to exclude and/or deport – rests on historically long-established economic and political inequalities between states, including those related to rights of mobility and the customary international law regarding the exclusion of non-citizens. Mathieu (2020: 340) calls this mismatch a misleading ‘myth’, ‘providing an equal, unbiased and culturally neutral access to the same status to all the states which fulfil some supposedly universal standards’. Similarly, Bonilla (2017: 331) sees the major problem of the concept in the fact that it is used as an analytical category rather than interrogated as ‘a norm .…”