Citizens without Sovereignty

Citizens without Sovereignty
Author: Daniel Gordon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400887372

In a wide-ranging interpretation of French thought in the years 1670-1789, Daniel Gordon takes us through the literature of manners and moral philosophy, theology and political theory, universal history and economics to show how French thinkers sustained a sense of liberty and dignity within an authoritarian regime. A penetrating critique of those who exaggerate either the radicalism of the Enlightenment or the hegemony of the absolutist state, his book documents the invention of an ethos that was neither democratic nor absolutist, an ethos that idealized communication and private life. The key to this ethos was "sociability," and Gordon offers the first detailed study of the language and ideas that gave this concept its meaning in the Old Regime. Citizens without Sovereignty provides a wealth of information about the origins and usage of key words, such as société and sociabilité, in French thought. From semantic fields of meaning, Gordon goes on to consider institutional fields of action. Focusing on the ubiquitous idea of "society" as a depoliticized sphere of equality, virtue, and aesthetic cultivation, he marks out the philosophical space that lies between the idea of democracy and the idea of the royal police state. Within this space, Gordon reveals the channels of creative action that are open to citizens without sovereignty--citizens who have no right to self-government. His work is thus a contribution to general historical sociology as well as French intellectual history. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship

Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship
Author: Sigal R. Ben-Porath
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2012-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0812207483

In Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship, scholars from a wide range of disciplines reflect on the transformation of the world away from the absolute sovereignty of independent nation-states and on the proliferation of varieties of plural citizenship. The emergence of possible new forms of allegiance and their effect on citizens and on political processes underlie the essays in this volume. The essays reflect widespread acceptance that we cannot grasp either the empirical realities or the important normative issues today by focusing only on sovereign states and their actions, interests, and aspirations. All the contributors accept that we need to take into account a great variety of globalizing forces, but they draw very different conclusions about those realities. For some, the challenges to the sovereignty of nation-states are on the whole to be regretted and resisted. These transformations are seen as endangering both state capacity and state willingness to promote stability and security internationally. Moreover, they worry that declining senses of national solidarity may lead to cutbacks in the social support systems many states provide to all those who reside legally within their national borders. Others view the system of sovereign nation-states as the aspiration of a particular historical epoch that always involved substantial problems and that is now appropriately giving way to new, more globally beneficial forms of political association. Some contributors to this volume display little sympathy for the claims on behalf of sovereign states, though they are just as wary of emerging forms of cosmopolitanism, which may perpetuate older practices of economic exploitation, displacement of indigenous communities, and military technologies of domination. Collectively, the contributors to this volume require us to rethink deeply entrenched assumptions about what varieties of sovereignty and citizenship are politically possible and desirable today, and they provide illuminating insights into the alternative directions we might choose to pursue.

Semblances of Sovereignty

Semblances of Sovereignty
Author: T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674020154

In a set of cases decided at the end of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court declared that Congress had "plenary power" to regulate immigration, Indian tribes, and newly acquired territories. Not coincidentally, the groups subject to Congress' plenary power were primarily nonwhite and generally perceived as "uncivilized." The Court left Congress free to craft policies of assimilation, exclusion, paternalism, and domination. Despite dramatic shifts in constitutional law in the twentieth century, the plenary power case decisions remain largely the controlling law. The Warren Court, widely recognized for its dedication to individual rights, focused on ensuring "full and equal citizenship"--an agenda that utterly neglected immigrants, tribes, and residents of the territories. The Rehnquist Court has appropriated the Warren Court's rhetoric of citizenship, but has used it to strike down policies that support diversity and the sovereignty of Indian tribes. Attuned to the demands of a new century, the author argues for abandonment of the plenary power cases, and for more flexible conceptions of sovereignty and citizenship. The federal government ought to negotiate compacts with Indian tribes and the territories that affirm more durable forms of self-government. Citizenship should be "decentered," understood as a commitment to an intergenerational national project, not a basis for denying rights to immigrants.

Freedom Beyond Sovereignty

Freedom Beyond Sovereignty
Author: Sharon R. Krause
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2015-03-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 022623472X

What does it mean to be free? We invoke the word frequently, yet the freedom of countless Americans is compromised by social inequalities that systematically undercut what they are able to do and to become. If we are to remedy these failures of freedom, we must move beyond the common assumption, prevalent in political theory and American public life, that individual agency is best conceived as a kind of personal sovereignty, or as self-determination or control over one’s actions. In Freedom Beyond Sovereignty, Sharon R. Krause shows that individual agency is best conceived as a non-sovereign experience because our ability to act and affect the world depends on how other people interpret and respond to what we do. The intersubjective character of agency makes it vulnerable to the effects of social inequality, but it is never in a strict sense socially determined. The agency of the oppressed sometimes surprises us with its vitality. Only by understanding the deep dynamics of agency as simultaneously non-sovereign and robust can we remediate the failed freedom of those on the losing end of persistent inequalities and grasp the scope of our own responsibility for social change. Freedom Beyond Sovereignty brings the experiences of the oppressed to the center of political theory and the study of freedom. It fundamentally reconstructs liberal individualism and enables us to see human action, personal responsibility, and the meaning of liberty in a totally new light.

The Sovereignty Cartel

The Sovereignty Cartel
Author: J. Samuel Barkin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2021-08-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1009007580

Sovereignty is the subject of many debates in international relations. Is it the source of state authority or a description of it? What is its history? Is it strengthening or weakening? Is it changing, and how? This book addresses these questions, but focuses on one less frequently addressed: what makes state sovereignty possible? The Sovereignty Cartel argues that sovereignty is built on state collusion – states work together to privilege sovereignty in global politics, because they benefit from sovereignty's exclusivity. This book explores this collusive behavior in international law, international political economy, international security, and migration and citizenship. In all these areas, states accord rights to other states, regardless of relative power, relative wealth, or relative position. Sovereignty, as a (changing) set of property rights for which states collude, accounts for this behavior not as anomaly (as other theories would) but instead as fundamental to the sovereign states system.

Neoliberalism as Exception

Neoliberalism as Exception
Author: Aihwa Ong
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2006-07-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780822337485

DIVA successor to FLEXIBLE CITIZENSHIP, focusing on the meanings of citizenship to different classes of immigrants and transnational subjects./div

Immigration and the Constraints of Justice

Immigration and the Constraints of Justice
Author: Ryan Pevnick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2011-02-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139496611

This book explores the constraints which justice imposes on immigration policy. Like liberal nationalists, Ryan Pevnick argues that citizens have special claims to the institutions of their states. However, the source of these special claims is located in the citizenry's ownership of state institutions rather than in a shared national identity. Citizens contribute to the construction and maintenance of institutions (by paying taxes and obeying the law), and as a result they have special claims to these institutions and a limited right to exclude outsiders. Pevnick shows that the resulting view justifies a set of policies - including support for certain types of guest worker programs - which is distinct from those supported by either liberal nationalists or advocates of open borders. His book provides a framework for considering a number of connected topics including issues related to self-determination, the scope of distributive justice and the significance of shared national identity.

Sovereignty Under Challenge

Sovereignty Under Challenge
Author: Nathan Glazer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2017-09-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351488627

Sovereignty-the authority of a state to wield ultimate power over its territory, its citizens, its institutions-is everywhere undergoing change as states respond in various ways to the challenges posed, from above and below. "Above" the state is the widening net of international institutions and treaties dealing with human rights, trade, investment, and monetary affairs; and "below" it are rising claims within states from long-resident groups discontented with the political order and from new migrants testing its authority. Sovereignty under Challenge deals with a range of such challenges and responses, analyzed in authoritative studies by leading scholars. The introductory chapter sets forth the theme that sovereignty is asserted clearly, but often unpredictably, when governments respond to challenge. It suggests ways of classifying these responses as variables that help explain the changing nature of sovereignty. Part 1, "The Citizen and the State," treats the rising tide of dual citizenship and the concerns this arouses in the United States; the work of national human rights commissions in Asia; and the challenge posed to the state by the Falungong movement in China. The two chapters in Part 2, "The Government as Decision-Maker," examine Japan's response to global warming and the problems of the World Health Organization in orchestrating collaboration among Southeast Asian states in implementing infectious disease control. Part 3, "Sovereignty and Culture," looks at conflicts engendered by outside change on indigenous economic, cultural, and legal institutions in India, Fiji, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The chapters in Part 4, "Sovereignty and the Economy," analyze the economic and cultural instability induced by Chinese migration to Russia's far east; the impact on state sovereignty brought about by transnational regulatory campaigns and social activism; the question of indigenous land rights in the Philippines; and the impact of transnational corporations on information technology in Asia. A concluding chapter offers a global assessment of the current status of state sovereignty.

Sovereign Citizens

Sovereign Citizens
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2020-06-17
Genre:
ISBN:

The sovereign citizen movement combines radical anti-government activism with well-placed lies and carefully structured conspiracy theories about the origins of the United States. Inside, the author exposes the strange, the interesting, and the dangerous, and deconstructs, decodes and deflates the global sovereign citizen movement. The most elaborate conspiracy theories often contain a morsel of truth. This is certainly the case when it comes to the sovereign citizen movement. This movement is not structured, and it has no leader. Yet its ideas have spread around the world in the past thirty years. From the United States to the United Kingdom and all the way to Singapore, you can find instances of sovereign citizen activists splashing the headlines and popping up on YouTube. Most often, sovereign citizens defy the police when they are pulled over for breaking traffic laws. A sovereign citizen will tell the police that they have no lawful authority, no rightful jurisdiction and that they work for a "corporation" known as the United States. Usually, this does not end well for the sovereign citizen. Sovereign citizens will also spread their anti-government activism in YouTube videos, in fraudulent court filings and through elaborate moneymaking schemes where they pose as lawyers and judges. These con artists have swindled millions of dollars from the United States government and perhaps much more money from regular citizens. This book explores the origins of the movement, the conspiracies that form the foundation of the movement and the common words and actions that sovereign citizens adopt and use. Joe Pometto is a licensed attorney in Pittsburgh, PA and a United States Air Force veteran. He also has a YouTube channel called "Attorney Audits Agitators" where he analyzes encounters with sovereign citizens and other movements that brush up against the law.