The “egalitarian shared sovereignty”
The question at
issue now is to decide, by respecting these two pre-requisites, how to share
sovereignty. So, the issue is what would constitute a reasonable allocation of
sovereignty over the third territory amongst sovereign States A and B and the
third territory C as equal claimants—i.e. Russia, Ukraine, and Crimea, whose
equality of claim is in no way affected by whatever other situation they
already have; and that allocation has a target: the third territory (Crimea)
and all that it implies in terms of rights and obligations. By acknowledging
the circumstances in sovereignty conflicts, that is, different agents and an ample
concept such as sovereignty, and the way in which the original position has
been set up, a revised principle may offer comparable advantages that may make
it a reasonable option.
Firstly, we must
remind us of the fact that the representatives of the three parties are behind
the veil of ignorance as characterised before in this paper. Hence, they are
deprived of knowledge in regard to which party they represent. So, it is
reasonable for them and likely to agree that each party has a right to participate
in each aspect of sovereignty, regardless of their particular circumstances,
i.e. their development or ability, because no one would want to be left out. In
other words, they would agree that ideally they would have ‘equal’ shares of
sovereignty over the third territory, which means that the three claimants
would have equal standing or status. Therein, all three parties would have a
right to participate and the decision making process in each case would be
subject to egalitarian consensus: all the three parties should be granted an
equal input into the decision making process. They all have the opportunity to
present, and amend proposals in relation to every aspect of the sovereignty of
the third territory.
A second point
has to do with factual circumstances. The representatives would acknowledge
that it would be hard to see how after lifting the veil of ignorance all the
three parties had the same relative situations such as economic development,
defence system, means for exploitation of natural resources, law, and so on. So
it is reasonable to think that the representatives would agree that the degree
of each party’s participation would vary according to each party’s ability to
contribute. We also said in the previous paragraph that it is also reasonable to
suppose that each party would as well have an interest in each aspect of
sovereignty. Therefore, and bearing in mind these two circumstances—equal right
to participate and different ability to contribute—it is reasonable to maintain
that each party would have an interest in each aspect of sovereignty being
handled in the most efficient manner.
A third point
would be to determine the level of input and output of each party with regard
to each objective/area/activity related to the sovereignty over the third
territory. In principle, the representatives may think of distributing what
benefits or rights each party would enjoy depending on the level of
contribution that the party makes. Indeed, they acknowledge that some parties
will be able to make a bigger or larger input than others. However, an
immediate problem arises.
The
representatives would realise that by making the output dependant on the level
of each party’s input this could result in a subterfuge for domination. That is
to say, the better off party contributing more towards one or more areas and
therefore securing a larger stake while the other two parties were unable to
make the same level of contribution that would be translated in an ad
eternum share of benefits.
Tomorrow the
post will refer to a proviso to avoid this kind of potential form of domination
or imposition.
Jorge
Emilio Núñez
18th
June 2018
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