Sovereignty the Origin and Future of a Political and Legal Concept

Grimm`s analysis offers a rich history of sovereignty in a compact narrative that situates the emergence and development of the concept as essential to some of the most critical moments in world political history: the decline of feudalism, the American and French revolutions, the founding of the United Nations, etc. The numerous footnotes and references with which Grimm bases his analysis trace these extended historical threads through the works of many important European and American political intellectuals of the last three centuries. The text is impressively far-reaching and makes a nuanced but compact contribution to the importance of sovereignty for power and governance today. Those dealing with post-structural political theorists who deal with related issues (e.g., Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, et al.), will be disappointed, as this is beyond the intended scope of Grimm`s text. [2] One area where sovereignty has perhaps benefited most from such an undertaking is to question the nature of power itself and to use a relational rather than a discrete and transactional understanding of power. Such perspectives have been used most effectively throughout critical policy research to shift political analysis of sovereignty, citizenship, and territory from a state-centered focus. [3] Grimm`s History of Sovereignty could have raised broader questions about the nature of contemporary territoriality or transnational political culture by approaching the history of sovereignty from a more relational perspective. Such a theorization, however, falls outside of Grimm`s stated intention in this book. Anyone who wants to better understand changes in global governance in a historicized context will find an extremely useful guide in Grimm`s concise, clear and rigorously researched text.

Please list any fees and grants, employment through advice, co-ownership or close relationship with an organization at any time during the previous 36 months whose interests may be harmed by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would like to know in relation to the submitted work. This applies to all authors of the play, their spouses or partners. Grimm constructs his argument in three broad sections. In “Part A: Sovereignty in a Time of Changing State,” Grimm contextualizes the meaning of “sovereignty” as variable and controversial throughout history and across regions. Starting from the political milieu of the Middle Ages and the emergence of nation-states to the current questions of the future of the European Union, Part A examines the contradictory conceptualisations of sovereignty from a comparative and historical perspective. Through this analysis, Grimm argues that contemporary sovereignty as a concept of government is eroding. Grimm sees this as a result of the increased security and regulatory needs of technological and military forces around the world, as well as the response of supranational government institutions to these needs. The final section of Grimm`s text, “Part C: Sovereignty Today,” explores this last question of a possible post-sovereign era. While acknowledging that contemporary forms of constitutional democracy depend on direct articulations of popular and external sovereignty within a global system of territorial states, Grimm concludes that “the most important function of super-sovereignty today is to protect the democratic self-determination of a politically united society with respect to the order that best suits it.

Today, sovereignty protects democracy” (p. 128). For Grimm, sovereignty is a concept that changes over time. Therefore, while sovereignty is not an inherent or indispensable concept of global political stability, it remains essential to the current world order, and we should not dismiss the study of sovereignty (and its history) too quickly. As Grimm notes in the preface, the intention of his text is not to offer a complete history of sovereignty in practice or as a concept. Rather, Grimm seeks to know whether sovereignty retains analytical value in a globalized world of states, supranational entities, and countless political forces working against the global order. These efforts aim to counter ahistorical approaches to the idea and to base its examination of sovereignty on political events. Based on his historical analysis, Grimm answers affirmatively to his own question, arguing that while sovereignty is not essential to global political stability, it is a key tenet of our time.