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    Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe
    Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe
    Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe
    Ebook401 pages38 hours

    Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe

    By Janice E. Thomson

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    The contemporary organization of global violence is neither timeless nor natural, argues Janice Thomson. It is distinctively modern. In this book she examines how the present arrangement of the world into violence-monopolizing sovereign states evolved over the six preceding centuries.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateJul 22, 1996
    ISBN9781400821242
    Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe

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      Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns - Janice E. Thomson

      MERCENARIES, PIRATES, AND SOVEREIGNS

      PRINCETON STUDIES IN

      INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AND POLITICS

      Series Editors

      John Lewis Gaddis

      Jack L. Snyder

      Richard H. Ullman

      History and Strategy by Marc Trachtenberg (1991)

      George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947–1950 by Wilson D. Miscamble, c.s.c. (1992)

      Economic Discrimination and Political Exchange: World Political Economy in the 1930s and 1980s by Kenneth A. Oye (1992)

      Whirlpool: U. S. Foreign Policy Toward Latin America and the Caribbean by Robert A. Pastor (1992)

      Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification by A. James McAdams (1993)

      A Certain Idea of France: French Security Policy and the Gaullist Legacy by Philip H. Gordon (1993)

      The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons by Scott D. Sagan (1993)

      We All Lost the Cold War by Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein (1994)

      Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe by Janice E. Thomson (1994)

      Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy during the Interwar Years by Beth A. Simmons (1994)

      The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change by Hendrik Spruyt (1994)

      Cooperation among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy by Thomas Risse-Kappen (1995)

      The Korean War: An International History by William Stueck (1995)

      Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History by Alastair I. Johnston (1995)

      Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies by Peter Liberman (1996)

      Satellites and Commissars: Strategy and Conflict in Politics of Soviet-Bloc Trade by Randall W. Stone (1996)

      MERCENARIES, PIRATES, AND SOVEREIGNS

      STATE–BUILDING AND EXTRATERRITORIAL VIOLENCE IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

      Janice E. Thomson

      PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

      Copyright © 1994 by Princeton University Press

      Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

      In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex

      All Rights Reserved

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Thomson, Janice E., 1949–

      Mercenaries, pirates and sovereigns : state-building and extraterritorial violence in early modern Europe / Janice E. Thomson

      p. cm. — (Princeton studies in international history and politics)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 0-691-08658-3

      ISBN 0-691-02571-1 (pbk.)

      I. Europe—Politics and government. 2. Violence—Europe—

      History. 3. Sovereignty. 4. Mercantile system—Europe—History.

      5. Mercenary troops—Europe—History. 6. Pirates—Europe—History.

      I. Title II. Series.

      D210.T53 1994

      355.3'5—dc20 93-23880 CIP

      3 5 7 9 10 9 8 6 4 2

      eISBN: 978-1-400-82124-2

      R0

      For Nomy and Jim

      Contents

      Acknowledgments  ix

      List of Tables  xi

      Introduction  3

      Chapter One

      The State, Violence, and Sovereignty  7

      The State and Violence in Theory  7

      The State and Violence in History  10

      Sovereignty in Theory  11

      The Institution of Sovereignty  14

      The Argument  18

      Chapter Two

      Nonstate Violence Unleashed  21

      Privateering  22

      Mercenaries  26

      Mercantile Companies  32

      Conclusion  41

      Chapter Three

      Unintended Consequences  43

      The Mediterranean Corsairs  44

      Organized Piracy  45

      Problems with Mercenarism  54

      Problems with Mercantile Companies  59

      Conclusion  67

      Chapter Four

      Delegitimating State-Authorized Nonstate Violence  69

      The Abolition of Privateering  69

      The Delegitimation of Mercenarism  77

      The Demise of the Mercantile Companies  97

      Conclusion  105

      Chapter Five

      Suppressing Unauthorized Nonstate Violence  107

      Piracy  107

      The Rise and Decline of Filibustering  118

      Conclusion  140

      Chapter Six

      Conclusion  143

      Explaining the Transition  146

      The State, Sovereignty, and World Politics  149

      The Future  152

      Notes  155

      Bibliography  201

      Index  215

      Acknowledgments

      THIS BOOK is the result of nearly six years’ work. During that time I have incurred many debts.

      Financial and administrative resources for my research and writing were provided by Stanford University, the MacArthur Foundation, the University of Washington Political Science Department and Graduate School Research Fund, and the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. I am grateful to these institutions for their generous support.

      Earlier versions of portions of this book were published as Global Transactions and the Consolidation of Sovereignty (with Stephen D. Krasner) in Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau, eds., Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books), copyright © 1989 by Lexington Books, adapted with permission from Macmillan Publishing Company; Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, in James A. Caporaso, ed., The Elusive State (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage), copyright © 1989 by Sage Publications, adapted with permission from Sage Publications; and State Practices, International Norms, and the Decline of Mercenarism, International Studies Quarterly 34 (March 1990), adapted with permission from Blackwell Publishers. The painting on the book’s cover, entitled Signing of the HBC Charter By Charles II on May 2nd, 1670 (HBCA P-379), is used with the permission of the Hudson’s Bay Company (reproduction courtesy of Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba).

      My intellectual debts are much more numerous, and I hope the following list excludes no one who has provided me with important criticisms and suggestions. First, I would like to acknowledge the helpful commentary offered by the faculty and graduate students of the political science departments to which I presented my research. These include the University of Washington, Stanford University, Northwestern University, Yale University, Duke University, the University of Minnesota, Arizona State University, and the University of Victoria. The individuals who have carefully read and commented on the book or the various chapters which comprise it include Alexander George, Jim Caporaso, George Modelski, Margaret Levi, Charles Tilly, Rob Walker, Cynthia Weber, Ellis Goldberg, Michael Taylor, Jonathan Pool, Peter Rohn, Robert Keohane, Nina Halperin, Michael Webb, Alison Brysk, Julie Strickland, Gero Lenhardt, Pat McGowen, David Lake, and David Campbell. I also received able research assistance from Veronique Bazelle, Young Choi, and Aurora Almeda, at the University of Washington.

      My greatest debts are to Steve Krasner, Rick Ashley, and John Meyer, who provided me with intellectual inspiration and support in pursuing a rather unconventional study of some unconventional international actors.

      Tables

      1.1 Analytical Framework

      2.1 Foreigners in Eighteenth-Century Armies

      4.1 Accessions to the Declaration of Paris

      4.2 Legal Restrictions on Foreign Military Service

      4.3 Leading States of the Nineteenth Century and Antimercenarism Laws

      4.4 The Latin American States and Antimercenarism Laws

      4.5 Wars in the Americas

      4.6 Foreigners in Current Standing Armies

      4.7 Foreigners in Twentieth-Century Ad Hoc Forces

      5.1 Other Nineteenth-Century Filibusters

      MERCENARIES, PIRATES, AND SOVEREIGNS

      Introduction

      WHY are global coercive capabilities organized the way they are? Why do we have centralized bureaucracies—states—that claim a monopoly on violence? Why is this monopoly based on territorial boundaries? Why is coercion not an international market commodity?

      The contemporary organization of global violence is neither timeless nor natural. It is distinctively modern. In the six centuries leading up to 1900, global violence was democratized, marketized, and internationalized. Nonstate violence dominated the international system. Individuals and groups used their own means of violence in pursuit of their particular aims, whether honor and glory, wealth, or political power. People bought and sold military manpower like a commodity on the global market. The identity of suppliers or purchasers meant almost nothing.

      The puzzle that inspired the research reported in this book is: How did we get from there to here? What made this transition possible?

      Charles Tilly’s work provides one essential part of the story. He documents the long and bloody struggle by state-builders to extract coercive capabilities from other individuals, groups, and organizations within their territory. States did not monopolize violence even within their territorial borders. Urban militias, private armies, fiscal agents, armies of regional lords and rival claimants to royal power, police forces, and state armies all claimed the right to exercise violence.¹ Authority and control over domestic violence was dispersed, overlapping, and democratized.

      The process by which control over violence was centralized, monopolized, and made hierarchical entailed not the state’s establishment and defense of a new legal order but the state’s imposing itself as the defender of that order. Societal groups vigorously resisted state-builders’ drive to monopolize political authority and the coercion on which it ultimately rested. In the process state rulers struck bargains with various societal groups in which the latter provided war–making resources in exchange for property, political, and other rights. These bargains constitute subplots in the central drama in which the state achieved ultimate authority, especially on the use of coercion, within its territory.

      There is, however, another aspect of the story that concerns the state’s monopolization of extraterritorial violence. How did the state achieve a monopoly on violence beyond its borders that emanates from its territory? What explains the elimination of nonstate violence from global politics? That is the subject of this book.

      The organization of violence is an (if not the) essential feature of any political order. Politics is about governance, about the exercise of authority. And authority is ultimately grounded in the actual or threatened use of violence. Organized violence in the contemporary world is both statist and territorial. It is a stunningly unique feature of the twentieth-century state system, distinguishing it from prior world political orders and their institutions of governance.

      This book attempts to understand this crucial, distinctive aspect of the modern state system. In so doing, it joins with students of the world system and longue durée, such as Braudel, Giddens, Wallerstein, and Mann, who have embraced the task of delineating and explaining that system’s unique features in nonteleological, nonfunctionalist, nondeterministic terms.

      I argue that the disarming of nonstate transnational activities marked the transition from heteronomy to sovereignty and the transformation of states into the national state system. The essential feature of this transformation was a new way of organizing global coercive resources. In the heteronomous system of the medieval period, violence was democratized, marketized, and internationalized. In the system characterized by sovereignty, the state could not claim a monopoly on violence within its territory and disclaim responsibility for violence emanating from that space. Thus, the transformation entailed the state’s monopolization of the authority to deploy violence beyond its borders and the state’s acceptance of responsibility for violence emanating from its territory. Violence was shifted from the nonstate, economic, and international realms of authority into the state, political, and domestic realms of authority. It was dedemocratized, demarketized, and territorialized.

      I demonstrate that the impetus for state monopolization of extraterritorial violence was systemic; it came from the collectivity of European state rulers. The delegitimation and abolition of nonstate violence was the result of interactions between state rulers. The demand for disarming nonstate actors came not from society but from other state rulers. While domestic politics did present a powerful set of constraints on state action, the state’s role as an international actor provided it with an external source of power to extract authority over coercion from society.

      In chapter 1, I discuss and critique Weberian conceptions of the state, emphasizing the analytical confusion presented by the predominant definitions of the state. I argue that while control over violence is the key distinguishing characteristic of the state, theorists have generally not recognized the distinction between internal, or domestic, violence and external, or international, violence. I argue that the national state is qualitatively different from the traditional state precisely because the national state has made good its claim to monopolize violence beyond its borders. It is, by nature, a systemic actor.

      What is at issue here is how boundaries—between the domestic and international, between the economic and political, and between the state and nonstate realms of authority—are drawn, delegitimated, and redrawn. These boundaries are neither self-evident nor eternal. My analysis demonstrates that international violence before 1900 was a creature of the international, economic, and nonstate realms of authority. During the nineteenth century, the boundaries were redrawn such that authority over the use of violence was placed in the domestic, political, and state realms of authority.

      I argue that it is useful to understand these processes in terms of the international institution of sovereignty. After discussing different conceptions of sovereignty, I present my own view, which is that sovereignty is the international institution that organizes global politics. In it are embedded the norms that specify where the lines in each of the three aforementioned authority realms should be drawn. I argue that this study provides empirical support for the argument that this institution of sovereignty is produced and reproduced by the collectivity of state rulers; it is the outcome of ongoing interactions between states in which the practically derived norms of sovereignty emerge. As such, sovereignty should be treated not as an attribute, nor as a set of normative constraints, but as an institution that empowers states vis-à-vis people.

      The method used in this book is historical narrative.² Application of a truly comparative methodology is precluded in this instance. The dependent variable, the elimination of nonstate violence, constitutes a single case. And while I have identified a number of forms that nonstate violence took, these cannot be treated as wholly independent cases. Within these limitations, however, I do attempt to identify the conditions under which each form was delegitimated and compare them to see how they were similar or varied. The basic method, then, is to chart change in state authority over nonstate, extraterritorial violence (the dependent variable), identify the proximate causes for those changes, and develop a theoretical explanation for the linkages between the causes and the outcome.

      I range widely over the literature on international relations theory, international law, sociology, and history. No new data are presented; rather, what is known is articulated in a new light. To the best of my knowledge, no one has treated the myriad of early state-system practices of international violence as instances of a single theoretical concept, namely, nonstate violence. There are large literatures on mercenaries and mercantile companies, for example, but they have not been grouped and analyzed as instances of a single phenomenon: the exercise of violence by nonstate actors beyond state borders.

      Chapter 2 describes the origin and evolution of the principal forms of nonstate violence in the early state system. It examines the rise of the mercantile company, privateering, and mercenarism in Europe and describes their accomplishments. Here I argue that violence was marketized, democratized, and internationalized through the actions of state rulers seeking to escape feudalism’s constraints on the exercise of violence and intent on amassing wealth and military power autonomous from their subjects and other rulers.

      The focus in chapter 3 is on the unintended consequences of the move to authorize nonstate violence. Not only was the state unable to control those it authorized, but the authorized forms gave rise to unauthorized forms. Most importantly, nonstate violence was often turned against the state itself.

      I then turn, in chapter 4, to the context in which the legitimate practices were delegitimated, banned, and eliminated. This chapter focuses on the crucial transition of the nineteenth century in which state-authorized nonstate practices were abolished. Here my analysis of the various cases is guided by a common set of questions about the delegitimation process and the implementation of proscriptive, or control, norms. The historical evidence indicates that the demise of each practice resulted from a unique set of circumstances. More importantly, the demise of nonstate violence per se was the unintended consequence of a series of ad hoc, largely unrelated instances of interstate interaction.

      In chapter 5, I examine efforts to eliminate traditional forms of unauthorized nonstate violence and trace the rise and decline of a new practice, filibustering. Eliminating this practice firmly established the principle that even under a democratic regime, the state and not individual citizens would decide on the use of force beyond a country’s borders. This consolidated the territorial basis of state authority and the boundary between domestic and international politics. The national state, then, is defined as a polity consisting of people who live within geographical borders and whose exercise of violence is subject to exclusive state authority.

      Chapter 6 summarizes the empirical results of this study, develops some of their theoretical implications, and suggests some avenues for further research. I conclude with some speculations on the status of sovereignty, the state, and violence in the post-World War II period.

      CHAPTER ONE

      The State, Violence, and Sovereignty

      THE STATE AND VIOLENCE IN THEORY

      Weberians conventionally define the state, in part, in terms of its control over coercion. According to Weber, one of the essential characteristics of the state is that it successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.¹ Similarly, Tilly includes controlling the principal means of coercion within a given territory in his definition of the state.² More recently, Giddens defines the nation-state, in part, as having direct control of the means of internal and external violence within a territory demarcated by boundaries (borders).³

      The differences in the wording of these definitions are subtle but important. First, Tilly and Giddens do not include legitimacy, as Weber does. Second, Weber speaks of a monopolization of the use of force, Tilly of controlling the principal means, and Giddens of direct control of the means of internal and external violence. These definitional differences raise a number of questions:

      1. Is legitimacy a useful concept in describing state coercion?

      2. Must the state control the use or the means of violence (coercion) or both?

      3. What is the difference between control, direct control, and monopolization?

      4. If it is the means that matter, does the state control the principal means or all the means?

      5. Must the state control the use or means of violence only internally or both internally and externally?

      I will consider each of these issues in turn.

      Legitimacy does not appear in Tilly’s or Giddens’s definition, presumably because of its normative implications. The obvious question is: Legitimate for whom? Early state-builders’ use of violence was not viewed as legitimate by the majority of the people who for centuries resisted their drive for control. And the exercise of coercion in the vast majority of states in the twentieth century has certainly not been viewed as legitimate by much of their own and other populations. Tilly, following Stinchcombe, argues that legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the decisions of a given authority. It is not clear whether Tilly’s other authorities are domestic actors or other states.⁴ However, if we take states themselves as the assessors of legitimacy, it is clear that the state is the legitimate deployer of coercion. Rebel groups, separatist movements, and transnational groups are not viewed as legitimate deployers of coercion by the states or statesmen as a group.⁵

      TABLE 1.1

      Analytical Framework

      The next three questions concern how much control the state exerts over what aspects of violence. The confusion over whether the state controls the use or the means of violence stems from a blurring of three analytically distinct dimensions of control: decision-making authority, allocation, and ownership. State control over the use of violence implies decision-making authority over the deployment of violence—the authority to decide the ends to which violence is deployed. As table 1.1 indicates, the alternative to state authority is nonstate authority. However, as the table also suggests, whether the decision-making authority chooses to allocate its coercive capabilities authoritatively or through the market is a separate issue.

      Authority to decide on the use of coercion may be claimed by the state or be left to nonstate actors. Where the state claims the authority, the allocation of coercive resources may be made authoritatively or left to the market. Authoritative allocations are generally based on noneconomic considerations. An example of an authoritative allocation (box 1) is a state that supplies troops to an ally for political or ideological reasons. This practice predominates in the twentieth-century state system. Market allocations, while never purely apolitical, are based more on economic incentives. The pre-nineteenth-century practice of poor states leasing or selling armies to rich states is an apt example of this type of state-authorized, market-based allocation (box 2).

      Nonstate deployers of violence may also allocate violence authoritatively or through the market. The international brigades of the Spanish Civil War are one example of nonstate actors that authoritatively allocate violence (box 3). These volunteers supplied coercive resources to the Republican side not for profit but for ideological reasons. The classic soldier of fortune who kills for money is probably the purest case of a market allocation of violence (box 4).

      Control over the means of violence is a separate issue, and suggests a third dimension, as indicated in table 1.1. Exercising coercion requires two basic resources: labor and property. Labor includes mental labor, such as leadership and technical skills, as well as the physical labor of the soldier. Property includes the armaments and money required to sustain a coercive project. Ownership of and decision-making authority over these resources may reside with the state or nonstate actors.

      The modern standing armed forces are an example of case 5. States both own their military forces and assert decision-making authority over them.⁶ The sixth set of cases, where the state asserts decision-making authority over resources owned by nonstate actors, is nicely illustrated by the practice of privateering. Here the state authorized nonstate actors to deploy their individually owned armed naval vessels against foreign shipping. Individuals who engaged in this activity without state authority were labeled pirates (box 8).

      Examples of nonstate actors exerting decision-making authority over state-owned resources (box 7) are more difficult to find. One possibility is certain nineteenth-century military expeditions that were mounted by private individuals and groups in the United States but that employed U.S. Army officers, soldiers, and equipment. The current arrangement between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is perhaps another example. Pakistan provides troops to Saudi Arabia in exchange for economic aid, a practice that is not unusual. What is unusual, however, is that many of the Pakistani troops are fully integrated into the Saudi forces, even wearing Saudi uniforms. Thus, Saudi Arabia exercises decision-making authority over labor resources that are owned by the Pakistani state.

      This brief analysis suggests that state control over violence is not only multidimensional but highly variable. Whether the state exerts control, direct control, or monopolistic control over the use, means, or principal means of violence is an empirical question. This book describes the process by which violence was removed from the realm of nonstate decision making (boxes 3, 4, 7, and 8), nonstate ownership of armies but not armaments (box 6),⁷ and market allocation (box 2). By 1900, states monopolized decision-making authority and ownership of the means of violence, and allocated violence authoritatively rather than through the market (boxes 1 and 5).

      The final question that is raised in comparing the three definitions of the state—Must the state control the use or means of violence only internally or both internally and externally?—points to yet another dimension of the state-control problem. Only Giddens’s definition includes control over the means of external as well as internal violence, because it is a definition of the nation-state, which he argues differs in fundamental respects from pre-nineteenth-century state forms.

      While these three definitions are all Weberian, their differences do not simply reflect the distinctiveness of their authors. What appear to be synchronic differences are indicative of diachronic changes in the very nature of the state. Thus, legitimacy drops out, territoriality creeps in, and external violence suddenly appears. In short, these definitional differences reflect fundamental change in the organization of violence.

      THE STATE AND VIOLENCE IN HISTORY

      State control over the use of violence in the international system today is substantially greater than it was as recently as the midnineteenth century. In the eighteenth century, all the major European armies relied heavily on foreign mercenaries for troops. Half the Prussian army was comprised of mercenaries.⁸ Foreigners constituted one-third of the French army.⁹ Britain used 18,000 mercenaries in the American War for Independence and 33,000 mercenaries in its 1793 war with France.¹⁰ The presence of large numbers of mercenaries in eighteenth-century armies suggests that military labor was internationalized. Mercenarism was a legitimate practice in the state system for about three centuries. Today, the vast majority of armies are composed of citizen soldiers. What accounts for this change?

      Privateers played an important role in eighteenth-century naval warfare. British and American privateers captured more than 2,000 prizes during the War of the Spanish Succession.¹¹ French privateers nearly put an end to slave trade between Africa and British colonies in the Americas. In its War for Independence, the United States commissioned more than 2,500 privateers, who captured 2,300 prizes from the British. French privateers seized 2,100 English vessels between 1793 and 1796. In the War of 1812, one U.S. privateer captured or destroyed $5 million worth of English property.¹² Privateering was a legitimate practice in the state system for nearly six centuries. How do we explain its demise?

      The transition from private to state naval warfare was marked by the rise and demise of a new and unique force—the naval fleets of the mercantile companies.¹³ Mercantile companies were based on a state-granted monopoly on trade between the home country and regions outside of Europe. Though they were financed largely with private capital, they were not private organizations in the modern sense. They possessed military, judicial, and diplomatic power. For example, the charter of United East India Company of the Netherlands granted it the power to make war, conclude treaties, acquire territories and build fortresses.¹⁴ These companies made treaties with each other and with foreign governments, governed subjects of their home states, raised armies,¹⁵ and even coined their own money.¹⁶ Initially, their trading activities were nothing more than acts of piracy.¹⁷ The mercantile company as an institution was obsolescent by the early nineteenth century and defunct by 1870.¹⁸ The mercantile companies thrived for nearly three centuries; what accounts for their demise?

      These practices suggest that little more than a century ago, the state did not monopolize the exercise of coercion beyond its borders.¹⁹ This means that the state, portrayed in theory as monopolizing coercion, is distinctively modern. It emerged only after some three hundred years of state-building. This new state form, which I will call the national state,²⁰ reflected a redrawing of authority claims such that authority over the use of violence was moved from the nonstate, economic, and international domains and placed in the state, political, and domestic realms of authority. What requires explanation, then, is this fundamental restructuring of authority over coercion. These changes in authority claims, as I argue below, are indicative of changes in the institution of sovereignty.

      SOVEREIGNTY IN THEORY

      Authority, violence, territory, the state, sovereignty: these are the stuff of global politics. As such, one might well expect them to be central to international relations theory. Yet, until recently, international relations specialists have treated them as uncontested concepts, relegating them to the realm of assumption.²¹

      Realism, the dominant theory of international relations, treats sovereignty as an attribute of the state qua state. States are, by definition, externally sovereign because there is no higher authority in the international system. States are internally sovereign because they monopolize violence and, therefore, political decision-making authority. In short, sovereignty is an assumption of neorealist theory. It presupposes sovereign states and then theorizes relations between them.²²

      In the 1970s, liberals launched an attack on this theoretical edifice, arguing that such a state-centric theory was ill-equipped to explain global politics in a world increasingly characterized by economic interdependence, democratic government, and weapons of mass destruction. They amassed an impressive body of empirical evidence indicating that the state and sovereignty are not parameters of but variables in world

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