Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty by Aihwa Ong

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The Creation of States in International Law

Review of: The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 White, Richard

https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/annals-of-iowa/article/7831/galley/116549/download/

The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815

/pdf/justice-legitimacy-and-self-determination-moral-foundations-42oti4v140.pdf

Justice, Legitimacy and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law

This thesis addresses the question of how states, meaning organised political communities, were historically able to secure their sovereignty through gaining the recognition of other states. As sovereignty refers to the presence of a state’s authority, its existence is premised on states and other internal and external actors recognising claims to sovereignty. Therefore, states, such as the Ottoman Empire, which historically had a different understanding of legitimacy, faced challenges to their sovereignty following the emergence of new global understandings of sovereignty in the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman Empire was distinct in that it was the only Islamic state that was not subject to and was able to avoid completely falling under the influence of then-dominant European states. However, the Ottoman Empire still experienced European intervention and there was a desire to end forms of European extraterritorial jurisdiction. Ottoman elites, who were affiliated with the reformist Young Turks, sought to secure recognition of their state’s sovereignty by reconstituting it along novel international standards of legitimate statehood. These standards were based on the concepts of “civilised”, “militarist”, “popular” and “national” statehood, and were reinterpreted by the Young Turks in the course of their efforts to secure the recognition of European powers. These efforts included diplomacy with European powers, institutional reform and conceptual innovation. However, it also involved engaging in practices associated with sovereignty such as the control of territory. In all of these areas, the Young Turks reinterpreted aspects of the existing Ottoman legacy of statehood and international norms, to secure their claim to sovereignty. Therefore, the Ottoman state elites sought to convey an impression of governing a state that could be recognised as sovereign by other European powers. Ultimately, the remnants of the Young Turks, secured international recognition of their state, reconstituted as the nation-state of Turkey in 1923.

Reconstituting sovereignty: the Young Turks’ efforts to secure external recognition and the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, 1908 - 1923

Against conventional approaches that tend to minimize the importance of sub-state diplomacy, this article argues that this reality is presently undergoing a process of legal and political normalization throughout the world and deserves greater attention from both diplomatic practitioners and experts. This process, which is embedded in wider structural transformations, is driven simultaneously by two competing forces that are present in virtually all states: first, international mobilization of sub-state governments themselves, since they increasingly pursue relevant political objectives in the international field through their own methods and instruments; and second, the various attempts to limit and control that activism deployed by central governments through various legal and political instruments. After a brief discussion on the notion of normalization in critical social theory and its validity for diplomatic studies, this article examines the normalization of sub-state diplomacy through four, closely interconnected conceptual lenses: normalization as generalization; normalization as regionalization; normalization as reflective adaptation; and, finally, normalization as contentious regulation. Normalization enables the diplomatic system to operate in an increasingly complex environment while simultaneously affirming its own hierarchical structure. The limits of that normalization process, as well as its wider implications for diplomatic theory and practice, are also discussed.

On The Normalization Of Sub-State Diplomacy

Plural Diplomacies: Normative Predicaments and Functional Imperatives

(1999). Diplomacy and paradiplomacy in the redefinition of international security: Dimensions of conflict and co‐operation. Regional & Federal Studies: Vol. 9, Paradiplomacy in Action: The Foreign Relations of Subnational Governments, pp. 40-57.

Diplomacy and paradiplomacy in the redefinition of international security: Dimensions of conflict and co‐operation

The idea of a perfect national political community, entirely confined within the contours of a corresponding state, is one of the foundational fictions of global modernity. Its formal crystallisation in the legal grammars of the right to self-determination has been however, particularly in the post-colonial era, highly problematic and full of ambiguities. Drawing on this background, this article contends that diplomacy offers frequently a more promising venue for dealing with the challenge of political pluralism than appealing to either the unstable grammars of the right to self-determination or a reified understanding of the principle of territorial integrity of states. In so doing, firstly, the right to self-determination is critically examined. Instead of attempting to articulate its formal content, the malleability of its legal grammars and political realities, will be emphasised. Secondly, based on the discussion of a variety of historical cases, the notion of ‘constituent diplomacies’ will be advanced, aiming to show how the agonistic accommodation of political and territorial pluralism through diplomacy was crucial not only in the formative processes of modern sovereign states but also nowadays. Finally, this relational understanding of the historical forms of governance of political pluralism within and beyond state boundaries will be re-examined, beyond its ethno-political dimensions, through the prism of the complex interplay between the material and ideational conditions for the co-production of sovereignty in the context of new global capitalism.

Beyond self-determination: norms contestation, constituent diplomacies and the co-production of sovereignty

The ability to conduct diplomatic relations is generally considered an exclusive attribute of sovereign states, but the participation of local and regional governments in international relations is becoming increasingly important worldwide. This phenomenon, also known as “paradiplomacy” has important historical antecedents but has acquired in recent decades a new prominence, as a result of the transnationalization of the global economy and the rise of global connectivity. Despite the initial reluctance of central/federal governments to accept this new reality, paradiplomacy is rapidly gaining institutional and legal recognition by states and international organizations in the most diverse geopolitical contexts. Beyond its instrumental value, paradiplomacy is always a form of political agency that facilitates the representation of collective identities at a global scale, expressing generally a will of greater political autonomy and sometimes even the aspiration to create a new independent state. In those cases in which this latter ambition prevails over any other possible political design, “paradiplomacy” mutates in to “protodiplomacy.” But protodiplomacy rarely produces the results expected by its proponents, namely to secure significant international support for a secessionist process, being more frequently conducive to international isolation and ethnopolitical conflict with the consequent economic, social, and political costs.

Noé Cornago

Papers

On The Normalization Of Sub-State Diplomacy

Plural Diplomacies: Normative Predicaments and Functional Imperatives

Diplomacy and paradiplomacy in the redefinition of international security: Dimensions of conflict and co‐operation

Beyond self-determination: norms contestation, constituent diplomacies and the co-production of sovereignty

Paradiplomacy and Protodiplomacy