Cosmopolitanism, State Sovereignty and International Law and Politics:
A Theory
By
Jorge E. Núñez
Chapter 5
Contexts, realms and modes of existence
Chapter Five distinguishes the contexts[1] in which sovereignty and cosmopolitanism may take place and adds the realms through where these contexts and, consequently, agents and players and their interrelations, may be explored while introducing the different modes of existence any subject or object of study may have.
While sovereignty seems to give preeminence to the local context because there must be a single sovereign power over the same population and territory in order to have a sovereign state, cosmopolitanism appears to bring a polar opposite view with its claims to universality and generality. These assumptions are as simplistic as erroneous.
[…]
Regardless of the relevance in the local, regional or international contexts, sovereignty and cosmopolitanism are always present to a different degree. Whether they are more concentrated or dispersed, centralized or des-centralized, it is a matter of degree, but not of lacking.
There is a further angle to the pluralism of pluralisms present that deserves more detailed exploration when referring to sovereignty and cosmopolitanism: the realms from which they are evaluated and, consequently, the intentionally and non-intentionally concealed assumptions and beliefs behind them. A subject or an object of study may be assessed with reference to how it ought to be, how it is and how it should/could be. Realms refer to the way in which a subject or an object of study may be perceived either normatively, factually or axiologically. Different disciplines, academics, policy makers and people at large may apply the same concepts but because they do so in a different way controversy appears. This kind of controversy is not based on the case itself but on the way in which the speakers apply their pre-conceptions, assumptions and beliefs. To that extent, it is of utmost importance to recognize the kind of arguments used and differentiate those that are determined by normative authorities, those that are dependent on nature and those that imply an assessment based on a value judgement.
[…]
Finally, a subject or an object of study may have different modes of existence and, therefore, be ideal, natural, cultural or metaphysical. Ideal subjects or objects are unreal. That is, they simply “are” but do not properly exist.
[…]
For instance, any definition of sovereignty includes the concept of the highest, supreme, absolute authority in a territory and over a population. Within a territory, it means that lawmakers—i.e. the government—have the exclusive prerogative to create laws for these people. Externally, any other agent has the obligation not to interfere. From this very brief characterization, it is self-evident that sovereignty refers to ideal and cultural elements such as national legal order and international legal agreements as well as natural ones such as territory and population. To a similar extent cosmopolitanism, for example, may refer to a moral or a legal set of rules as well as a sociological characteristic present in a domestic, regional or international context.
Consequently, if scholars in legal science aimed to evaluate a territorial dispute from, for example, the public international law perspective (normative realm, ideal or cultural objects) they might find it hard to come to an agreement with scholars in political science or sociology who could assess the same territorial dispute based on historical, ethnic or even linguistic elements (factual realm, natural or cultural objects). Indeed, all these scholars would be exploring the same territorial dispute but from different realms of reference or assessing the issue according to different modes of existence and their results would be determined (or, at least influenced and, arguably, biased) by a priori concepts, assumptions and beliefs.
[1] Context may refer to several notions such as geographical placement, historical background, sociological and financial influences. This monograph applies the term “context” with reference to geographical placement only. All other notions are dealt with in other chapters; e.g. chapter 4 refers to agents and players and, therefore, covers the sociological aspect.
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Friday 16th June 2023
Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez
Twitter: @DrJorge_World
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