Divided Sovereignty explores new institutional solutions to the old
question of how to constrain states when they commit severe abuses
against their own citizens. The book argues that coercive
international institutions can stop these abuses and act as an
insurance scheme against the possibility of states failing to
fulfill their most basic sovereign responsibilities. It thus
challenges the long standing assumption that collective grants of
authority from the citizens of a state should be made exclusively
for institutions within the borders of that state. Despite worries
that international institutions such as the International Criminal
Court could undermine domestic democratic control, citizens can
divide sovereign authority between state and international
institutions consistent with their right of democratic
self-governance.
States are imperfect, incomplete political forms. They presuppose a
monopoly of coercive power and final jurisdictional authority over
their territory. These twin elements of sovereignty and authority
can be used by state leaders and political representatives in ways
that stray significantly from the interests of citizens. In the
most extreme cases, when citizens become inconvenient obstacles in
the pursuit of the self-serving ambitions of their leaders, state
power turns against them. Genocide, torture, displacement, and rape
are often the means of choice by which the inconvenient are made to
suffer or vanish.
The book defends universal, principled limits on state authority
based on jus cogens norms, a special category of norms in
international law that prohibit violations of basic human rights.
Against skeptics, it argues that many of the challenges of building
an additional layer of institutions can be met if we pay attention
to the conditions of institutional success, which require (1)
experimentation with different institutional forms, (2) limitations
on the scope of authority for coercive international institutions
through clear, narrow, well defined mandates, and (3) understanding
the limits of existing knowledge on institutional design, which
should make us suspicious of proposals for grand institutional
schemes, such as global democracy.
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