By Alabbas F. Alsudani
Sovereignty has long occupied a foundational place in the study and practice of international relations. One of its earliest systematic formulations was offered by Jean Bodin, who defined sovereignty as the “absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth,” a conception that emphasized ultimate authority and non-interference (Franklin, 1992). This understanding later became embedded in the legal architecture of the modern international system, most clearly through Article 2(1) of the United Nations Charter, which affirms the juridical equality of states and their exclusive authority over internal affairs. Together, these formulations have elevated sovereignty to a core organising principle of international order.
Yet despite its formal centrality, sovereignty has long been criticised as being honoured more in rhetoric than in practice. Empirical patterns of intervention, coercion, and conditional recognition reveal a persistent gap between sovereignty’s legal definition and its political operation (Bartelson, 2016). Rather than functioning as a fixed or uniformly applied rule, sovereignty appears increasingly contingent-invoked, suspended, or reinterpreted depending on context. This suggests that sovereignty operates less as an inviolable doctrine than as a historically constructed and politically mediated institution.
This article argues that sovereignty in contemporary international politics functions as a selectively applied principle within a hierarchical global order. Far from constituting a universally guaranteed right, sovereignty operates as a conditional privilege shaped by power asymmetries, institutional authority, and dominant normative frameworks. To develop this argument, the article proceeds in three analytical steps. First, it draws on realist and neoclassical realist perspectives to show how strategic interests, and geopolitical hierarchies normalise breaches of non-intervention, rendering sovereignty contingent on great-power calculations (Taliaferro et al., 2009). Second, it examines how global governance and evolving norms, such as human rights regimes and the Responsibility to Protect, redefine sovereignty as responsibility, drawing on insights from institutionalist and constructivist scholarship (Keohane, 1984; Wendt, 1999). Finally, it engages critical and post-colonial approaches to highlight how these transformations result in unequal recognition and the selective protection of sovereignty across the international system.
Power Asymmetries and the Conditionality of Sovereignty
Realist and neoclassical realist approaches begin from the premise that the international system is anarchic, lacking a central authority capable of enforcing rules uniformly (Waltz, 1979). Yet although realism emphasises the absence of a central authority above states, scholars have shown that this formal anarchy does not prevent hierarchy from shaping how power and rules operate in practice. Scholars have argued that hierarchy persists beneath the formal equality of states, shaping how rules are applied in practice. Hedley Bull (2012), for example, observed that while the international system is formally anarchic, it operates as a society of states governed by shared rules and institutions that nevertheless generate hierarchical patterns of authority and influence. In this context, sovereignty does not eliminate hierarchy, but coexists with it, structuring relations of dominance and dependence.
Stephen Krasner (1999) develops this insight by describing sovereignty as “organised hypocrisy,” in which legal norms of equality coexist with persistent practices of hierarchy and intervention. From a realist perspective, sovereignty is therefore neither absolute nor uniformly protected. Instead, its practical force is closely tied to material capabilities. Strong states enjoy effective sovereignty, while weaker states experience it as conditional and vulnerable. This logic aligns with offensive realism, which holds that great powers are driven to maximise relative power and pursue regional dominance, constrained less by international law than by strategic calculation (Mearsheimer, 2001). Within this framework, norms of non-intervention tend to restrain weaker states far more than they constrain powerful ones.
Neoclassical realism reinforces this argument by emphasising how domestic politics and elite perceptions mediate the exercise of power. Rather than treating sovereignty violations as automatic responses to systemic pressures, neoclassical realists highlight the role of threat perception, national identity, and domestic political incentives in shaping decisions to override the sovereignty of others (Lobell et al., 2009). The United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 illustrates this dynamic. Conducted without explicit United Nations authorisation, the intervention was justified through a combination of self-defence claims, threat inflation, and liberal order-building narratives. From a realist standpoint, however, the invasion reflected less a commitment to legal norms than an attempt to consolidate unipolar dominance and manage perceived future threats (Deudney & Ikenberry, 2017). Iraq’s sovereignty was violated not as an aberration, but as a predictable outcome of asymmetric power relations.
A similar logic underpinned Russia’s intervention in Georgia during the August 2008 war. Neoclassical realists argue that Russian leaders sought to reassert great-power status following the perceived humiliations of the post-Soviet period, using military force to reinforce domestic legitimacy and national identity (Tsygankov & Tarver-Wahlquist, 2009). Notably, Moscow framed its actions using justificatory language previously employed by Western states, invoking humanitarian necessity and the protection of civilians (Burai, 2015). This rhetorical symmetry underscores a central realist insight: sovereignty is respected or violated not according to universal legal principles, but in line with power, capability, and strategic interest.
Taken together, realist and neoclassical realist perspectives offer a compelling explanation for why sovereignty violations are both frequent and unevenly condemned. They illuminate how asymmetrical capabilities normalise breaches of non-intervention and why similar practices are judged differently depending on the identity of the intervening actor. However, while realism is effective in explaining when and why sovereignty is violated, it offers a more limited account of legitimacy and normative justification. This limitation becomes particularly visible in the differential treatment of cases such as Russia’s actions in Georgia and Ukraine, which are widely condemned, compared to U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, which are often normalised within counterterrorism discourse.
Redefining Sovereignty through Norms and Institutions
While realist approaches explain sovereignty violations primarily through material power and strategic interest, institutionalist and constructivist perspectives offer an alternative account centred on ideas, norms, and governance structures. From this viewpoint, sovereignty is not disappearing but being redefined. Rather than functioning as an absolute right of non-intervention, it is increasingly understood as a conditional responsibility tied to state performance, legitimacy, and compliance with international standards (Evans, 2008). This shift reflects the growing influence of human rights norms, humanitarian imperatives, and international institutions that claim authority to act when states fail to meet accepted thresholds of conduct.
Liberal institutionalism emphasises how international institutions constrain state behaviour through rules, reciprocity, and reputational costs. Institutions such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court (ICC), the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund embed sovereignty within regimes of governance that limit autonomy in exchange for cooperation and stability (Keohane, 1984). Within this framework, sovereignty is not overridden arbitrarily, but conditionally restricted in the name of collective security, justice, or economic order. Moral arguments further reinforce this logic, most notably in Michael Walzer’s (1977) claim that non-intervention becomes morally indefensible when states perpetrate or permit severe human rights violations (Nardin, 2013).
The ICC’s intervention in Kenya following the 2007–2008 post-election violence illustrates how sovereignty is reframed through institutional authority. After more than one thousand deaths and widespread displacement, the Court initiated investigations against senior political figures, including then-president Uhuru Kenyatta. Despite resistance from the Kenyan government and the African Union, both of which framed the prosecutions as violations of sovereign integrity, the ICC proceeded on the basis that accountability for mass violence constituted an international responsibility (Johnson et al., 2014). From an institutionalist perspective, this episode demonstrates not the erosion of sovereignty, but its conditional application: states retain formal equality, while their autonomy becomes contingent on adherence to shared norms.
Constructivist approaches complement this account by conceptualising sovereignty as a socially constructed institution sustained through processes of recognition and legitimacy. Because norms evolve, sovereignty itself is subject to reinterpretation as new moral expectations gain acceptance (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998; Wendt, 1999). China’s shifting position during the Darfur crisis illustrates this dynamic. Initially, Beijing strongly defended Sudan’s sovereignty and opposed external intervention. Over time, however, mounting international pressure and reputational concerns reshaped China’s stance. By abstaining on UN Security Council Resolution 1706 and later facilitating the deployment of the UN–African Union Mission in Darfur under Resolution 1769, China demonstrated a recalibrated understanding of sovereignty that accommodated humanitarian norms while preserving multilateral legitimacy (Contessi, 2010; Ahmed, 2010). From a constructivist perspective, this shift reflects processes of norm socialisation rather than coercive imposition.
Despite their explanatory power, institutionalist and constructivist approaches remain incomplete. While institutionalism highlights how sovereignty is constrained through rules and governance mechanisms, it often underestimates how these constraints reproduce hierarchical authority under the guise of neutrality. Similarly, constructivism explains how norms enable intervention but offers limited insight into why certain norms are invoked selectively and applied unevenly across cases. As a result, both approaches risk obscuring how the redefinition of sovereignty may serve not only moral progress, but also the consolidation of power within an unequal international order.
Who defines Sovereignty? Critical and Postcolonial Prespectives
Critical and postcolonial approaches depart sharply from mainstream international relations theories by rejecting the assumption that sovereignty functions as a neutral or universally accessible norm. Instead, they conceptualise sovereignty as a stratified institution, whose meaning and application are historically produced through colonial encounters, racial hierarchies, and global political economy (Seth, 2011). From this perspective, what are often described as violations of sovereignty appear less as deviations from an otherwise equal order and more as the routine operation of an international system structured by inequality.
Barkawi and Laffey (2006) argue that sovereignty, as theorised in conventional IR, remains deeply Eurocentric, having been historically denied to non-Western societies through imperial governance and unequal incorporation into international society. Similarly, Anievas, Manchanda, and Shilliam (2014) demonstrate how colonial and racial hierarchies continue to shape contemporary understandings of political authority, rendering many states in the Global South as “less fully sovereign” and therefore more vulnerable to external intervention. In this reading, sovereignty does not operate as a uniform legal status, but as a differentiated condition shaped by historical position and geopolitical location.
International law plays a central role in sustaining these hierarchies. Modern international legal doctrines universalised a European conception of sovereignty while simultaneously excluding non-European polities from full recognition (Anghie, 2005). Through civilisational distinctions between the “modern” and the “backward,” sovereignty became conditional upon conformity with Western norms of governance. Although formal decolonisation extended juridical sovereignty to formerly colonised states, underlying hierarchies of recognition persisted, enabling continued intervention through legal and moral justifications.
The post-9/11 “war on terror” illustrates how these dynamics continue to operate in contemporary global politics. The United States’ global counterterrorism campaign relied on practices such as drone strikes, extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and targeted killing, all of which reconfigured sovereignty through a logic of security exceptionalism. As Anievas et al. (2014) argue, these practices reproduced racialised hierarchies in which Arab and Muslim populations were governed primarily as security threats rather than as rights-bearing political subjects. In these contexts, sovereignty became contingent upon perceived compliance with security norms defined by dominant powers.
From a critical legal perspective, these practices represent not a rupture but a continuation of international law’s historical role. Anghie (2005) characterises such practices as contemporary manifestations of a civilisational logic that has long structured global order, in which the non-Western world remains only conditionally sovereign. Sovereignty is thus not merely violated; it is selectively suspended through discourses that normalise intervention as necessary, moral, or inevitable.
Rather than asking why sovereignty is violated, critical and postcolonial scholars therefore redirect attention to a more foundational question: who possesses the authority to define sovereignty, and whose sovereignty is recognised as legitimate. At the same time, these approaches risk collapsing diverse forms of international interaction into a singular narrative of domination, leaving limited analytical space for agency, contestation, and normative change. Nevertheless, their central contribution lies in revealing how sovereignty operates as a technology of power that both reflects and reproduces global hierarchies. In doing so, they underscore that the selective application of sovereignty is not an anomaly within the international system, but a constitutive feature of its historical and structural foundations.
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The preceding analysis demonstrates that sovereignty in contemporary international politics is neither obsolete nor uniformly respected. Instead, it operates as a selectively applied principle, shaped by power asymmetries, institutional authority, and historically embedded hierarchies. Across realist, institutionalist, and critical perspectives, a consistent pattern emerges: sovereignty continues to structure international discourse, yet its protection and suspension vary systematically according to context, capability, and legitimacy.
Realist and neoclassical realist approaches reveal how sovereignty is conditioned by material power and strategic calculation, rendering violations of non-intervention predictable within a hierarchical system. Institutionalist and constructivist accounts show how sovereignty is redefined rather than discarded, increasingly framed as a responsibility contingent on compliance with evolving norms and governance regimes. Critical and postcolonial perspectives deepen this analysis by exposing how these transformations are embedded within longer histories of colonialism and racialised exclusion, in which authority to define and suspend sovereignty has never been evenly distributed.
Taken together, these approaches suggest that selective sovereignty is not an anomaly or temporary deviation from international order, but a structural feature of how that order functions. Sovereignty persists as a foundational norm precisely because it is flexible enough to accommodate unequal application, enabling intervention, constraint, or recognition to be justified through legal, moral, or security discourses. The challenge this poses is not merely analytical, but normative: selective sovereignty risks legitimising hierarchy while preserving the appearance of juridical equality.
Recognising this tension does not require abandoning sovereignty as a principle of international order. Rather, it calls for a more critical engagement with how sovereignty is mobilised in practice, by whom, and with what consequences. By foregrounding the conditions under which sovereignty is selectively upheld or suspended, this analysis invites a more honest debate about the relationship between power, norms, and authority in global politics, and about whether sovereign equality can meaningfully coexist with the persistent hierarchies that shape the international system.
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