The Republican Road Not Taken: Humanitarian Intervention and Sovereignty

• In Event: Rethinking Space in World Politics: States, Sovereignty, Territoriality

Abstract

Most readings of sovereignty discussed in the context of humanitarian intervention view the former as compromised or distorted by the human rights regime. These interpretations operate with a conception of sovereignty inspired by Bodin and Hobbes – who envisioned sovereignty as a center of authority meant to establish order after the French and English civil wars. This paper argues that understanding sovereignty as a republican political order leads to a more complex understanding of the functional rather than the destructive role of the human rights regime, including in cases of uses of force in the name of humanitarianism.

Understanding sovereignty as a composite rather than as a unitary concept helps evade the dual understandings of humanitarian intervention as either a realpolitik endeavor or a liberal crusade. Pufendorf described the sovereign body as irregular and composed of unequal parts that participate rather than impede order and governance. This shapes the contours of a republican reading of sovereignty as formulated rather than dismantled by the various institutional webs that describe humanitarian interventions.

Author

• Oana-Cosmina Mihalache, SNSPA, Bucharest