Legitimate People, Legitimate Territory? Critical Perspectives on Sovereigntism

Session Submission Type: Full Submitted Panel

Session Description

The legitimacy of sovereign communities and their right to take unilateral decisions on their civic boundaries (political membership, citizenship) and territorial borders is increasingly put into question in contemporary political theory. This panel assembles analyses of crucial political controversies that are often framed from a ‘sovereigntist’ perspective – irregular migration, land grabbing, and investor citizenship – to highlight the limits of this dogma of democratic sovereignty and to discuss alternative approaches to both membership and territorial politics.

The contribution of this panel to contemporary debates in political theory is threefold. First, the panel questions the sovereigntist dogma in membership politics and territorial politics from four distinct and innovative theoretical perspectives. Each contribution focuses on a specific instance of sovereign politics and shows how it fails to provide legitimacy. By revealing how irregular migration, land grabbing, citizenship duties and investor citizenship are commonly framed, the papers highlight the ambivalent potential of sovereign politics. Although the papers agree that self-governed political communities have democratic value, they show how the sovereigntist dogma leads to exclusion, marginalization, and deprivation.

Second, going beyond this critical perspective, the panel provides alternatives to sovereign politics by discussing the potential of cosmopolitan framings. When it comes to questions of migration, citizenship, or territorial borders, states and democratic communities are increasingly under pressure to justify their decisions to non-members and the international community. However, the contributions do not defend an unquestioned ideal of global cosmopolitanism. Instead, they invoke a ‘critical cosmopolitan’ perspective to shed light on the specific political controversies at hand: How could a “No border” approach be justified? How can territorial self-determination be theorized without invoking the problematic notion of sovereignty? What could cosmopolitan membership politics entail – who has to be included in non-sovereign boundary-making?

Third, the panel is a contribution to the emerging methodological debate on International Political Theory. By combining topics such as migration, citizenship and territory, it questions the givenness of national boundaries and borders – thus going beyond what has been criticized as ‘methodological nationalism’. In addition, the contributions make room for participatory politics from below and question the idea of theoretical blueprints. Instead of discussing methodological questions separately, however, the papers contribute to this methodological debate by exemplifying four versions of Critical International Political Theory ‘in action’.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 2: FOUNDATIONS OF POLITICAL THEORY

Individual Presentations

• Beyond Sovereign Boundary-making: Cosmopolitan Citizenship Politics - Svenja Ahlhaus, University of Hamburg

• From Closed Borders to No Borders: “The Problem” of Irregular Migration - Anne McNevin, The New School

• Land Grabbing and the Contradictions of Sovereign Territoriality - Anna Jurkevics, University of British Columbia

• Why Place Matters: Place-Specific Duties and Citizenship Rights - Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Haverford College

Chair

• Cristina Lafont Northwestern University

Discussants

• Rainer Baubock European University Institute

• Claudio Lopez-Guerra Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas