The Right to Dominate: How Old Ideas AboutSovereignty Pose New Challenges for WorldOrderRoland Paris

Abstract A principal theme of international relations scholarship following theCold War was the apparent erosion of state sovereignty caused by globalization’s inte-grative effects and the proliferation of international institutions and networks. In recentyears, however, scholars have noted a reverse trend: the reassertion of traditional, orWestphalian, state sovereignty. By contrast, I highlight another recent trend that hasgone largely overlooked: the reaffirmation of older “extralegal” and “organic” versionsof sovereignty by three of the world’s most powerful states—Russia, China, and theUnited States. After tracing the genealogy of these older concepts, I consider howand why they have gained prominence in the official discourse of all three countries.I also explore the implications of this shift, which not only illustrates the importanceof “norm retrieval” in international affairs, but also raises questions about the founda-tions of international order. Contrary to Westphalian sovereignty, which emphasizesthe legal equality of states and the principle of noninterference in domestic affairs,the extralegal and organic versions offer few constraints on state action. If anything,they appear to license powerful states to dominate others.

A central theme in international relations scholarship following the Cold War was theapparent erosion of state sovereignty arising from globalization’s integrative effectsand the proliferation of international institutions, norms, and networks.1 Morerecently, however, sovereignty seems to have staged a comeback. It was a corner-stone of Donald Trump’s bid for the US presidency and a rallying cry of the “takeback control” campaign for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU).China, Russia, and other countries have restricted foreign nongovernmental organiza-tions (NGOs) and limited access to the Internet, also to “protect” sovereignty.2 Polandand Hungary’s leaders invoked the principle against EU policies on migrants.3

Governments around the world are building border barriers at an accelerating rate.4

1. For example, Chayes and Chayes 1995; Held 2002; Sassen 1996; Van Creveld 1999.2. Carothers 2016; Evgeny Morozov, “Reasserting Cyber Sovereignty: How States Are Taking Back

Control,” The Guardian, 7 October 2018, <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/07/states-take-back-cyber-control-technological-sovereignty>; Rutzen 2015.3. Marcin Goclowski and Krisztina Than, “Hungary, Poland Demand Bigger Say in EU, Reject Its

Migration Policy: Reuters, 3 January 2018, <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-poland/hungary-poland-demand-bigger-say-in-eu-reject-its-migration-policy-idUSKBN1ES0ZW>.4. Hassner and Wittenberg 2015.

International Organization, 2020, page 1 of 37© The IO Foundation, 2020 doi:10.1017/S0020818320000077

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Many observers interpret these trends as a resurgence of Westphalian sovereignty,typically defined as the exclusive entitlement of state authorities to govern a boundedterritory and the recognition of this right by other actors.5 As Eric Posnerproclaims, “Westphalia has returned.”6 This interpretation is partly correct, but it isincomplete—misleadingly so. Non-Westphalian understandings of sovereigntyhave also experienced a resurgence in recent years. Some portray sovereignty asthe power of leaders to act outside the constraints of formal rules in both domesticand international politics, or extralegal sovereignty. Others characterize sovereignpower as the quasi-mystical connection between a people and their leader, ororganic sovereignty. Both of these meanings predate the Peace of Westphalia of1648—the putative genesis of modern sovereignty—and have been sustained andreshaped by generations of political thinkers.Strikingly, these concepts have recently gained prominence in the foreign-policy

discourses of Russia, China, and the United States, a development with importantimplications for both scholars and practitioners of international affairs. Sovereigntyencapsulates the “constitutional” norms of international politics, including sharedunderstandings about the attributes of legitimate statehood and the boundaries oftheir rightful behavior.7 Changes in these understandings consequently enable andconstrain different types of state conduct.8 However, contrary to the Westphalianmodel, which emphasizes states’ legal equality and the principle of noninterferencein their domestic affairs, the extralegal and organic versions of sovereignty offerfew constraints on state action. If anything, they appear to license powerful statesto dominate others.This article has four main parts, each of which contributes to international relations

scholarship. First, I elucidate the extralegal and organic models, which scholars havetended to overlook or dismiss as archaic precursors or as failed competitors of modernsovereignty. I trace these models’ main features and intellectual evolution from longbefore 1648 to the present, showing how they persisted and evolved in the shadow ofWestphalianism.Second, much of the scholarship on the development of international norms has

focused on the role of nonstate actors and small- and medium-sized states as norm“entrepreneurs,” or promoters of new norms. However, there are good reasons toexpect major powers to behave as norm entrepreneurs, and specifically to promotesovereignty norms that align with—and thus help to legitimize—their own policiesand behavior. I also explain why major powers might opt to revive older sovereigntynorms rather than concoct new ones. Established conceptions of sovereignty, even

5. This definition echoes Hinsley’s classic description of Westphalian sovereignty as “the idea that thereis a final and absolute political authority” within a state and that “no final or absolute authority exists else-where.” Hinsley 1986, 1.6. Posner 2017, 809.7. Reus-Smit 1999, 30.8. Barkin and Cronin 1994.

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those in partial abeyance, are more likely to resonate with other states and domesticpopulations than novel, unfamiliar formulations.Next I analyze leadership discourses in Russia, China, and the US—three of

the world’s most powerful countries—between 2000 and 2019. AlthoughWestphalianism remains the dominant depiction of sovereignty, organic and extralegalversions have gained prominence in all three countries over this period. The “return” ofsovereignty, in other words, has included the revival of older understandings of theconcept.Finally, I consider the implications of these findings. International relations schol-

ars have tended to assume that sovereignty moderates power politics—by establish-ing rights that both strong and weak states can assert, including the right ofnoninterference in their domestic affairs—but this is true only of the Westphalianversion. Extralegal and organic sovereignty effectively turn Westphalianism on itshead: the power of an extralegal “sovereign” leader is primordial, supreme, andfree of legal and conventional restraints; and an organically “sovereign” statederives its power from the whole force of the society, united by belief in its own cul-tural and civilizational superiority. The revival of extralegal and organic sovereigntyin the official discourse of three major powers should therefore be a matter ofconcern.

New and Old Sovereignties

Academic interest in sovereignty spiked after the Cold War, when globalization pro-cesses—including the growth of transnational markets and flows of goods, capital,technology, people, and ideas across borders—seemed to be eroding states’ abilitiesboth to govern internally and to respond to transnational problems.9 As one observerput it, “frameworks of political regulatory relations and activities, shaped and formedby an overarching cosmopolitan legal framework,” appeared to have “stripped awayfrom the idea of fixed borders and territories governed by states alone.”10 The EU, inparticular, had grown into a “highly developed system for mutual interference” in thedomestic affairs of each member state, “right down to beer and sausages.”11 Globalnorms also seemed to be gaining “precedence in certain domains over norms of sover-eignty.”12 United Nations (UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan, for example, wrote in1999 about a “developing international norm in favor of intervention to protectcivilians from wholesale slaughter,” necessitating changes to “traditional notions ofsovereignty.”13 To many, the world seemed to be entering a post-Westphalian era.14

9. See note 1.10. Held 2002, 33.11. Cooper 1996, 23.12. Jackson 1999, 426.13. Kofi Annan, “Two Concepts of Sovereignty,” The Economist, 16 September 1999.14. Hurrell 2013, 22.

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Yet in some quarters resistance was mounting to the globalization of liberal normsand the perceived erosion of national control. Russian authorities, in particular, cameto view transnational human-rights and democracy NGOs as fifth columnists, bent oninstigating democratic “color revolutions” in nearby Georgia and Ukraine and under-mining the sovereignty of Russia itself.15 Both Russia and China also bridled at whatthey saw as liberal interventionism, particularly following the 2011 military operationin Libya. The UN Security Council, invoking Annan’s “responsibility to protect,” hadauthorized the use of force to safeguard “civilians and civilian-populated areas” threat-ened by the forces of Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi.16 Although Russia and Chinaabstained in this Security Council vote, they later complained bitterly that interveningforces led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had overstepped theirmandate by effectively overthrowing Qadaffi. Thereafter they, along with severaldeveloping countries, reverted to a stricter interpretation of the Westphalian non-intervention principle in international forums, blocking Security Council action inSyria, for example.17

More surprising was the growing popular backlash against globalization in liberaldemocracies that had long championed international integration, most notably theUnited States and some European countries.18 Populists there sought, among otherthings, to reassert state control over transnational flows and external forces througha variety of means, including “economic nationalism and an embrace of protection-ism, political chauvinism, isolationism, reassertion of strict border controls, reversalof previous international commitments, and an expansive range of discriminatorymeasures” against outsiders.19 Calls to strengthen sovereignty sometimes made forstrange bedfellows: left-wing critics of globalized capitalism and right-wing oppo-nents of immigration and global governance.20 The rise of Western populism thusseemed to give the Westphalian state “an unlikely new lease on life.”21

The combination of these two, seemingly contradictory developments—illiberalstates resisting perceived encroachments by globalized liberalism, and Western popu-list movements and leaders wishing to “take back control” of national policy—created a diffuse yet influential Westphalian constituency. It also lent support tothose scholars and commentators who argued that Westphalian sovereignty was“back” and liberal globalism was in retreat.22 Their assessment was not wrong.

15. Finkel and Brudny 2012.16. UN Security Council resolution 1973 (17 March 2011), para. 4.17. Putin explained Russia’s opposition to humanitarian intervention in Syria, even to prevent chemical-

weapons attacks on civilians, by invokingWestphalian sovereignty: “Under current international law, forceis permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable… and would constitute an act of aggression.” “A Plea for Caution from Russia,” New York Times, 11September 2013.18. Cox 2017.19. Kallis 2018, 287.20. De Spiegeleire, Skinner, and Sweijs 2017.21. Kallis 2018, 287.22. Michael Ignatieff, “The Return of Sovereignty,” New Republic, 16 February 2012, 25–28.

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Border controls were increasing, restrictions on the free flow of information acrossborders were growing, and protectionist trade policies were mounting.23 But thisinterpretation oversimplified Westphalianism and ignored the possible resurgenceof other understandings of sovereignty, as we shall see.

Historicizing Sovereignty

Like many foundation myths, the story of Westphalian sovereignty has been distortedand idealized.24 It tends to portray the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which ended theThirty Years War in Europe, as the watershed between the political arrangements ofthe medieval era (crisscrossing feudal relationships in an overarching “Christian com-monwealth”) and the emergence of the modern states system (with centralized, terri-torially bounded structures of political organization with exclusive authority insidetheir own borders).25 However, the Westphalian model crystallized gradually overhundreds of years. The principle of nonintervention, for example, found clear expres-sion only late in the eighteenth century.26

Other understandings of sovereignty also emerged in the centuries after 1648.Ideas of popular and national sovereignty flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies and have co-existed and interacted with Westphalianism since then. Theleaders of the American Revolution were among those who believed that popularsovereignty—governing authority deriving from the consent of the people—justifiedtheir quest for independence, or Westphalian statehood. Notions of national sover-eignty—the right of national groups to govern themselves—also prompted coloniesto claim their own states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which incidentallyhelped spread the Westphalian model to most of the world.These versions of sovereignty are widely recognized, but scholars of international

relations have largely overlooked models pre-dating 1648, the “usual marker of theinception of modern international relations.”27 Even those studying earlier under-standings of sovereignty have tended to depict them either as archaic precursors oras failed competitors of the Westphalian version. Robert Jackson, for example,describes the demise of dynastic and imperial conceptions of sovereignty.28

Hedrick Spruyt recounts how the sovereign territorial state outcompeted feudalforms of political organization as well as city-leagues and city-states.29 F.H.Hinsley asserts that “the rise of state forms is a necessary condition of the notionof sovereignty,” effectively defining away pre-Westphalian uses of the term.30

23. “Trade-Restrictive Measures Continue at Historically High Level,” World Trade Organization, 22July 2019, <https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news19_e/trdev_22jul19_e.htm>.24. Hudson 2008; Osiander 2001.25. For example, Ramos 2013, 6–7.26. Krasner 1999, 20.27. Ruggie 1993, 167. For example, Philpott 2001a; Sørensen 1999.28. Jackson 2007, 49–77.29. Spruyt 1994.30. Hinsley 1986, 17.

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Portraying sovereignty as an inherently modern idea has created a blind spot in thestudy of international relations. Some pre-modern versions did not disappear, even asWestphalianism seemed to triumph. I describe two such versions: extralegal andorganic. Recognizing their existence—and persistence—allows us to ask an import-ant question about sovereignty’s recent “return”: Are extralegal and organic under-standings also experiencing a resurgence alongside Westphalianism—and if so, why?

Extralegal Sovereignty

Extralegal sovereignty refers to a leader’s right to act outside the constraints of formalrules. This was the earliest usage, coined in the Roman Empire during the firstcentury CE. Emperors from Augustus onward were considered divine personifica-tions of Rome’s power, and therefore above the law.31 As the noted third-centuryjurist Ulpian wrote, “what pleases the Prince has the force of law” and “the Princeis not bound by law.”32 This interpretation long survived the Romans. MedievalEuropeans, for example, recognized multiple sovereigns: a Christian God whoruled the world; the pope, sovereign over the (Latin) church; the Holy RomanEmperor, supreme monarch of the “republic of Christendom”; and kings in chargeof their various realms. In practice, the multiplicity of temporal authorities and theoverlapping structures of feudal politics limited these leaders’ individual authority,33

but medieval jurists, inspired in part by Ulpian, continued to define sovereignty as theuntrammeled power to rule.34

As political authority began to recentralize in early-modern European states, JeanBodin and other sixteenth-century thinkers envisioned sovereignty as centralizedauthority within a bounded territory—the seeds of Westphalianism. However, scho-lars today sometimes forget that Bodin retained extralegalism. Drawing on ancientand medieval theorists, he wrote in 1576 that the sovereign possessed “supremepower over citizens and subjects, unrestrained by law.”35 Indeed, his conceptualiza-tion of centralized, territorially bounded, and essentially unlimited sovereignty laidthe theoretical foundations not only for the modern state but also for seventeenth-and eighteenth-century absolutism.36

The Enlightenment belief that individuals possessed natural rights eventually chal-lenged this absolutist notion. John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and other eighteenth-century social-contract theorists argued that individual rights were ontologicallyprior to states: that is, individuals possessing sovereignty collectively delegated itto a governing authority but could revoke this contract if the state violated theirnatural rights. New doctrines of popular sovereignty and limited government

31. Hudson 2008.32. Quoted in Pennington 2007, 168.33. Spruyt 1994.34. Pennington 1988, 433.35. Cited in Merriam 2001, 7.36. Merriam 2001, 8.

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emerged from this thinking, ultimately to dramatic effect, including the American andFrench revolutions. Still, extralegal theories did not go away, nor did everyEnlightenment philosopher emphasize constraints on sovereign power. Like Lockeand Kant, Thomas Hobbes imagined autonomous individuals in a state of nature,but his reasoning (and the English Civil War) led him to theorize a Leviathan,37 anabsolute sovereign “unchecked by rival powers and unlimited by legal or otherconstraints.”38

Hobbes’s theory grounded a long line of political writers conceiving of sovereigntyas the capacity for decisive and unrestricted executive action. German jurist and polit-ical theorist Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) typified its essence as a supreme ruler’s discre-tionary power to act outside the law whenever they deemed it necessary: “Sovereign ishe who decides the exception.”39 For Schmitt, such “unbridled primordial power” didnot transgress sovereignty—it was sovereignty.40 It also differed from notions ofnational “exceptionalism,” or the belief that a nation’s uniqueness and moral superiorityentitled it to violate international rules.41 Schmitt’s concept of unlimited discretionarypower, by contrast, was intrinsically and exclusively that of the individual sovereign,who sat “above and outside the restraints of the existing legal order.”42

Organic Sovereignty

Sovereignty has also referred to the state’s “fundamental organic unity.”43 Althoughmany cultures have invoked bodily metaphors for polities, European ideas of organicsovereignty grew out of ancient Greek “political naturalism,”44 including Plato’sdepiction of a state as a living being in which different social classes perform distinctyet interdependent functions akin to parts of the human “soul.”45 Greek organicisminfluenced Roman political theorizing and ultimately Christian theology, includingSt Paul’s conception of the church as a mystical organic body (Ecclesia), whosehead was Christ.46 These ideas informed temporal political thought as well. In thetwelfth century, for example, John of Salisbury described a well-organized politicalcommunity as a “body which is animated,”with the king as head, soldiers and admin-istrative officials as the hands, and peasants as the feet;47 in effect, all inhabitants—rulers and ruled—were “essentially one person.”48

37. Hobbes 2004.38. Pettit 2005, 143.39. Schmitt 1985, 48, 5.40. Kalyvas 2000, 345.41. Nymalm and Plagemann 2019.42. Kalyvas 2000, 345.43. Merriam 2001, 63.44. Miller 2011.45. Neu 1971.46. Hicks 1963.47. John of Salisbury 1990, 66.48. Wilks 1963, 39.

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Enlightenment-era political theory mechanized this metaphysical body politic,reflecting discoveries in physiology and fascination with the human body as a typeof machine.49 Political society seemed similar to a body, with independent yet inter-acting parts (in this case, individuals), that was governed by these individuals’rational decisions rather than by divine fiat.50 Hobbes contributed to this intellectualtradition, too, portraying the commonwealth as an “Artificiall Man” created by rea-soning individuals, and sovereignty as the “Artificiall Soul, … giving life andmotion to the whole body.”51

Organic and mechanistic conceptions of the body politic ultimately came togethera century later in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Like other Enlightenmentrationalists, he saw society as a collection of autonomous individuals who set up asocial contract to create a government, which in turn allowed them to express theirwishes by voting in an assembly and legislating together. This process yielded thesociety’s “general will,” another precursor of the modern concept of popular sover-eignty. Yet Rousseau also characterized the general will in a second way: as citizens’metaphysical common interest, which was distinct from their expressed wishes. Indoing so, he reprised the pre-rationalist, organic conception of the body politic.52

Organic visions of the state also featured in the late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings of Johann Gottfried Herder and other German Romantics, whoargued that culture, language, ethnicity, race, and religion, rather than civic or polit-ical criteria, defined membership in the German nation. All authentic nations, theycontended, were the product of natural forces and attachments, later termed “bloodand soil.” Herder maintained that awareness of a glorified organic past, along witha society’s collective will, provided “a definite direction to all the endeavors of itsmembers.”53 He contrasted this directedness to the wayward weakness of societiesthat had “not found themselves” and had to “seek their salvation in foreignnations, serving them, thinking their thoughts; they forget even the times of theirglory, of their own proven feats, always desiring, never succeeding, always lingeringon the threshold.”54 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, drawing from Herder’s writings,also conceived of the state and sovereignty in organic terms: “The idealism whichconstitutes sovereignty is the same characteristic as that in accordance with whichthe so-called ‘parts’ of an animal organism are not parts, but members, moments inan organic whole, whose isolation and independence spell disease.”55

Colored by such notions of organic statehood, this version of sovereignty referredneither to Westphalian rights nor to extralegal leadership, but rather to “the wholepower of the state, the whole force belonging to the political association as such,

49. Ihalainen 2009.50. Cohen 1997.51. Hobbes 2004, xxxvii.52. Bertram 2012.53. Quoted in Wilson 1973, 823.54. Quoted in ibid.55. Hegel 1942, 180.

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[and] the might and power of the political community.”56 In this sense, a fully sover-eign state resembled a physically and mentally strong being whose people wereunited and mindful of their cultural uniqueness and superiority and committed toworking together to fulfill their collective destiny.

The Return of Sovereignty—But Which Kind?

Extralegal and organic sovereignty are logically distinct: the extralegal locates polit-ical power and legitimacy in the leader’s inherent qualities, whereas organic locatesit in the nature of the society. However, the leader—as part of the organic bodypolitic—may claim to channel the quasi-mystical spirit of the people, while simultan-eously asserting extralegal powers in virtue of his or her supremacy as leader.Blending these two understandings of sovereignty creates logical tensions—is theleader bound to society or not? Both conceptions also have commonalities that differ-entiate them from Westphalianism, which establishes both entitlements and limits onstate behavior, such as the principle of nonintervention in domestic affairs, that restupon shared understandings among states—a social contract of sorts.57 By contrast,the “sovereignty” rights of extralegal leaders and organic societies are neither inter-national nor contractual. They are autochthonous and primordial.Scholars analyzing the recent “return” of sovereignty have tended to take the

Westphalian meaning for granted, but what if the older versions have also experi-enced a resurgence? The question has important implications. Some commentatorsbelieve that reaffirming sovereignty will reinforce restraints on state behavior, thusproviding a sounder basis for international order. “The world needs a new ordergrounded not in twentieth-century ideological fault lines and the idea that historywould soon reach its end, but in respect for … state sovereignty,” writes Eric Li,because “strong sovereign states are paramount to a functioning internationalsystem.”58 According to Stephen Walt, embracing sovereignty as the central tenetof US foreign policy could go “a long way toward resolving some of our current ten-sions with Russia.”59 Under this mantle, he writes, “the United States would get outof the business of trying to spread democracy (whether by force or through less coer-cive means) and would instead adopt a ‘live and let live’ approach toward govern-ments that are different from its own.”60 Others disagree, worrying about humanrights in such a “neo-Westphalian” world because states might find it easier to mis-treat their own people, or because a stronger defense of state autonomy might hinder

56. Merriam 2001, 6357. Watson 1987, 147.58. Eric X. Li, “The End of Globalism:Where China and theUnited States Go FromHere,” Foreign Affairs,

9 December 2016, <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-12-09/end-globalism>.59. Stephen M. Walt, 2016. “Could There Be a Peace of Trumphalia?” Foreign Policy, 14 November

2016, <https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/14/could-there-be-a-peace-of-trumphalia>.60. Ibid.

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international cooperation.61 Both sides in this debate share a common assumption:Westphalian sovereignty is back.Importantly, the extralegal and organic versions do not rest on the Westphalian

principles of political independence, territorial integrity, and nonintervention. If any-thing, they offer a license for strong states to dominate others. The power of an extra-legal “sovereign” leader is intrinsic, supreme, and free of legal and conventionalconstraints; and an organically “sovereign” state derives its power from the wholeforce of a society united by beliefs about its own cultural or civilizational superiority.If these models were to revive, it is far from clear that they would foster restraint.

Norm Retrieval in Theory and Practice

How would we know if extralegal and organic understandings of sovereignty weregaining prominence in international affairs—and why might this be happening?There is an extensive literature on the emergence and development of internationalnorms. According to Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, new norms emergeat the start of their “life cycle” (emergence, development, diffusion, and institution-alization) when norm entrepreneurs seek to “convince a critical mass of states … toembrace [them].”62 Success may lead to a “tipping point” and the norm’s widespreadacceptance as a “prevailing standard of appropriateness” for state behavior.63

Scholars in this school, however, rarely explain how to recognize emergent normsbefore they reach the tipping point, although they imply that such investigationsshould focus on NGOs and small and medium-sized states—the usual norm entrepre-neurs in this literature.64

This approach has two limitations. First, it downplays the role of materially power-ful states, typically depicting them as objects of campaigns to shift norms, rather thanas norm entrepreneurs themselves. As Seva Gunitsky notes, “despite general agree-ment that great powers ‘matter’ in shaping global norms,” theories of norm evolution“rarely focus on the mechanics of hegemonic power and instead emphasize tacticssuch as shaming and persuasion by non-state actors.”65 However, there are goodreasons to expect major powers to perform the role of norm entrepreneur, particularlyvis-à-vis sovereignty. Different sovereignty concepts legitimize different types ofactors and actions. All other things being equal, the closer a state’s policies andbehavior align with dominant sovereignty concepts, the easier it is for that state topursue its objectives with at least the tacit consent of other actors. Conversely, viola-tors are more likely to incur “legitimacy costs” in the form of domestic or

61. John Bew, “Revenge of the Nation State,” New Statesman, 7 November 2018, <https://www.news-tatesman.com/2018/11/revenge-nation-state>; Hopgood 2013.62. Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 895.63. Ibid.64. For example, Ingerbritsen 2002; Kaufmann and Pape 1999; Klotz 1995.65. Gunitsky 2016.

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international resistance.66 Powerful states should therefore have an interest in promot-ing sovereignty norms that match their legitimacy requirements.Major powers also possess greater capacities than nongovernmental actors and

smaller states to shape international norms, which likely explains why the “constellationof constitutional norms and fundamental institutions” in international politics, includingsovereignty, has historically tended to reflect “the perspectives of the dominantactors.”67Westphalianism itself emerged in response to (and as a means of legitimizing)the rising power of territorial states in early-modern Europe. Ever since, criteria for rec-ognizing other polities as sovereign states have reflected major powers’ beliefs aboutthe attributes of legitimate statehood and rightful state action, informed by their owninterests and ideological commitments.68 In short, to detect leading indicators of anemergent shift in sovereignty norms, we should start with major powers.Second, the norm evolution literature has tended to focus on the development and

diffusion of new norms, without considering how and why major powers mightinstead seek to revive older ones. What, then, is the logic of norm retrieval, specif-ically in relation to sovereignty? It may be this: older norms are more likely to reson-ate with key audiences than novel, less-recognizable formulations. Becausesovereignty consists of shared understandings, no state can single-handedly changeits content simply by affirming different versions of sovereignty; other states mustalso embrace them. The same applies to domestic politics: national governmentsseeking legitimacy in the eyes of their own population must invoke norms thattheir people recognize and accept. In the language of social-movement theory, repre-sentations must “resonate” with “extant interpretive frames.”69 Representations withlow chances of resonating are therefore of little practical use, which in turn impliesthat there are limits to the sovereignty claims that states can realistically advance.Sociologist Anne Swidler makes a similar argument in her analysis of culture as a“tool kit” of symbols and shared understandings.70 Individuals and groups, sheargues, legitimize their behavior by constructing “strategies of action” out of theseshared ideas, but the tool kit provides a “limited set of resources out of which indi-viduals and groups construct strategies of action.”71 In other words, the repertoireof shared understandings is both enabling and constraining.States seeking to change the prevailing standards of state behavior by advancing

new sovereignty norms face a similar paradox: how to do so in a way that resonateswith other states and domestic audiences. One solution is to retrieve older understand-ings from “deeper” in the tool kit—that is, versions of sovereignty that have estab-lished meanings, even if they have been in partial abeyance. Extralegal andorganic sovereignty are good examples, long overshadowed by the Westphalian

66. Finnemore 2009, 6567. Phillips 2011, 5.68. Gong 1984.69. Snow et al. 1986, 473.70. Swidler 1986.71. Ibid., 273, 281.

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model, but still extant, as we have seen. Retrieving these understandings offers stra-tegic advantages compared to concocting new formulations of sovereignty that keyaudiences might not even recognize, much less embrace.How would we recognize norm retrieval happening? Once norms are widely

accepted, they tend to be visible in what actors say and do. International legal schol-ars, for example, scrutinize patterns of state discourse and behavior to distill elementsof customary international law. Scholars of international relations similarly judgenorms’ “robustness” by examining the extent to which states talk and behave asthough they are real.72 However, the act of norm retrieval does not presuppose a suc-cessful, or robust, outcome; it merely describes an attempt to promote older norms. Inthe case of extralegal and organic sovereignty, in particular, it involves efforts topresent these concepts as legitimate understandings. Frank Schimmelfennig callsthis “rhetorical action,” or “the strategic use of norm-based arguments.”73 Othersnote that political actors often use “strategic narratives” in attempts “to construct ashared meaning of the past, present, and future of international politics to shapethe behavior of domestic and international actors.”74 If norm retrieval is fundament-ally a rhetorical act, it should therefore be evident in the discourse of states.Three questions should guide this investigation. First, when major powers have

mentioned sovereignty, what meanings have they attached to the term? Are theyWestphalian (sovereignty as territorial integrity, political independence, noninterven-tion), extra-legal (sovereignty as the primordial power of the leader), or organic (sov-ereignty as a strong, united society or civilization)—or some combination of allthree? Second, do these countries also invoke the extralegal and organic models todescribe the “constitutional structures” of international politics, even when they donot explicitly mention sovereignty? Christian Reus-Smit defines constitutional struc-tures as “coherent ensembles of intersubjective beliefs, principles, and norms thatperform two functions in ordering international societies: they define what constitutesa legitimate actor, entitled to all the rights and privileges of statehood; and they definethe basic parameters of rightful state action.”75 The parameters of rightful state actionare of particular concern here. When major powers talk about how states can orshould behave, do they invoke the principles of Westphalian, extralegal, or organicsovereignty in all but name? Third, based on these assessments, have patternschanged over time? Specifically, have certain meanings become more prominent—that is, invoked more often—relative to the other meanings?Although norm retrieval is fundamentally discursive, examining major powers’

behavior can help clarify the meaning of their discourses, and perhaps the motivationsbehind their use. Indeed, analyzing discourses “is not merely the linguistic analysis oftexts”;76 it also requires considering the “context or environment that produced”

72. Deitelhoff and Zimmermann 2019.73. Schimmelfennig 2001, 48.74. Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle 2017, 6.75. Reus-Smit 1999, 30.76. Fairclough 2003, 3.

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them.77 Part of this context is what states are doing when they talk about sovereignty.If, as I have posited, major powers have an interest in shaping sovereignty norms tolegitimize their actions in the eyes of other states and their own people, we shouldlook for evidence of specific behaviors that they seek to legitimize. A detailed inves-tigation of their motives would require analysis of internal governmental delibera-tions that is beyond the scope of this study, but shifts in sovereignty discoursescoinciding with behavioral changes would offer prima facie evidence of a connec-tion. More generally, considering major powers’ behavior situates their speechwithin a specific temporal and policy context, which may not be explicit within thediscourses themselves.78

Are Extralegal and Organic Sovereignty “Back”?

I examine the sovereignty discourses of three of the world’s most powerful countries—Russia, China, and the United States—through their leaders’ public statementsbetween 2000 and 2019.79 Although their statements represent only a fraction ofeach state’s foreign-policy pronouncements, the three presidents are their countries’chief diplomats, and their official communications are the most authoritative expres-sions of government policy. This is particularly true in autocratic Russia and China,whose leaders exercise enormous personal discretion. The American president, bycontrast, operates in a system of constitutionally divided powers, where Congressplays a major role on international matters. Nevertheless, the US president retainsconsiderable executive powers over foreign policy and officially speaks for thenation on the world stage.80

To analyze the discourse of these leaders, I first searched the record for statementsthat explicitly referred to sovereignty and considered, in each case, whether theyattached Westphalian, extra-legal, or organic meanings.81 Second, I examined aselection of their major foreign-policy speeches to capture instances in which theymay have invoked the extralegal or organic concepts to describe the parameters ofrightful state action, even if they did not explicitly mention the term sovereignty.

77. Downe-Wamboldt 1992, 314. See also Dunn 2008.78. Bos and Tarnai 1999.79. These three states are widely recognized as among the most materially powerful. See, for example,

Posen 2017.80. Prakash and Ramsey 2001.81. Russia’s government archives its presidents’ speeches and statements on the Kremlin website at

<http://en.kremlin.ru>. Speeches by US presidents are stored in an online database at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara (American Presidency Project <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu>). BecauseChina has no comprehensive database of presidential speeches and statements, I rely primarily on thewebsite of its foreign ministry at <https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng> and two government-connectednews organizations, Xinhua and China Daily, which reproduce many speeches in full-text Englishtranslation.

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Russia

Vladimir Putin has served twice as Russia’s president: from late 1999 until 2008 andagain from 2012 to the present.82 When he first assumed the office, he was still callingfor Russia’s “integration into the world community” and even promoting cosmopolitanliberalism.83 In December 1999, for example, he said his compatriots had accepted“supra-national universal values which are above social, group or ethnic interests,”including “such values as freedom of expression … and other fundamental politicalrights and human liberties.” He also pointedly rejected “state ideology” because itleft “practically no room for intellectual and spiritual freedom, ideological pluralismand freedom of the press, that is, for political freedom.”84 At the same time, he stresseda “strong state” as a “source and guarantor of order,” echoing but not yet linking theseideas to sovereignty, which he still depicted in Westphalian terms.This changed after his 2004 re-election: “It is our values that determine our desire

to see Russia’s state independence grow and its sovereignty strengthened …

[because] our place in the modern world… will only depend on how strong and suc-cessful we are,” he told the federal assembly in 2005.85 This is an early instance of hisdescribing sovereignty not just as a shield from outside interference, but also as ametaphor for a strong state rooted in shared values—a hint of the organic imagerythat would gain prominence in his later sovereignty discourse. Putin’s rhetoricalshift may have been partly a reaction to Baltic neighbors Estonia, Latvia, andLithuania joining NATO in 2004. In a 2007 speech in Munich, he condemnedNATO’s expansion and accused the US of being the world’s “one master, onesovereign,” again in a non-Westphalian sense.86 After returning home, he furtherlinked traditional values, national will, state strength, and organic sovereignty:“The spiritual unity of the people and the moral values that unite us”—including“native language” and “unique cultural values”—are “the foundation for strengthen-ing our country’s unity and sovereignty.”87 He later told the Valdai InternationalDiscussion Club that Russia “will either be independent and sovereign or willmost likely not exist at all.”88

Putin also increasingly spoke of his country as a special civilization with distinctivevalues and a unique spirituality.89 He retrieved the medieval concept of a “Russian

82. He was prime minister in the interim.83. Vladimir Putin, “Remarks at a Meeting of Top Members of the Russian Diplomatic Service,” 26

January 2001, <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21169>.84. Putin 1999.85. Vladimir Putin, “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation,” 25 April 2005,

<http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22931>.86. Vladimir Putin, “Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security

Policy,” 10 February 2007, <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034>.87. Vladimir Putin, “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly,” 26 April 2007, <http://en.kremlin.ru/

events/president/transcripts/24203>.88. Vladimir Putin, “Meeting with Members of the Valdai International Discussion Club,” 14 September

2007, <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24537>.89. Tsygankov 2016.

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World,” which referred both to a transnational ethnic community and to other nation-alities living in a Eurasian space extending “far from Russia’s geographicalborders.”90 Although Putin described Russian civilization as multiethnic, itsorganic character was clear: “Russian people are without a doubt the backbone, thefundament, the cement of the multinational Russian people … a poly-ethnic civiliza-tion held together by a Russian cultural core … The[ir] great mission … is to uniteand cement this civilization.”91 As one observer has noted, the concept of aRussian World “hierarchically elevates ethnic Russians over other (ambiguously con-ceived) inhabitants of the post-Soviet space, as well as assuming Russian leadershipover Eurasian integration.”92 Indeed, Putin has sought to establish Eurasian supra-national bodies dominated by Russia, but with limited success to date.93

Ensuring his nation’s sovereignty, Putin has further argued, requires tapping into“Christian values.”94 Once again describing sovereignty in organic terms, he hascharacterized Russia as the last true redoubt of Christendom and explicitly wovenreligion into his project: “The desire for independence and sovereignty in spiritual,ideological and foreign policy spheres is an integral part of our national character.”95

The Russian Orthodox Church, notes one observer, has been a “central pillar andmain source of cohesion” in Putin’s organic and civilizational vision.96 The churchhas reciprocated, supporting (and thus sanctifying for believers) his foreign militaryinterventions, and championing the link between organic sovereignty, religion, andthe civilizational “Russian World.” As its patriarch proclaimed in 2013, “spiritualsovereignty is perhaps the highest degree of asserting the sovereignty of Russia asa unique country-civilization.”97

To Putin, achieving full sovereignty also presupposes a powerful presidency,which in practice has meant increasingly extralegal rule. Russia, in his words,“cannot be strong if the President’s power is weak.”98 He has centralized politicalpower in the Kremlin “to an extent not seen since Stalin,” acquiring “somethingclose to control of most levers of power in Russia, including the national legislature,provincial governments, the media, and even industry.”99 Several scholars have notedthe affinities with Carl Schmitt’s political philosophy, particularly as political powerand authority in Moscow have become more personalized, centralized, and

90. Quoted in Laruelle 2015, 6.91. Quoted in Mark Galeotti and Andrew S. Bowen, “Putin’s Empire of the Mind,” Foreign Policy, 21

April 2014, <http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/21/putins-empire-of-the-mind>.92. Wilson 2017, 19.93. Dragneva and Wolczuk 2017.94. Putin, “Meeting with Members.”95. Vladimir Putin, “Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club,” 19 September 2013, <http://

en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/19243>.96. Dmitri Trenin, “Looking out Five Years: Ideological, Geopolitical, and Economic Drivers of Russian

Foreign Policy,” Carnegie Moscow Center, 22 August 2017, <https://carnegie.ru/commentary/72812>.97. Quoted in Sharafutdinova 2017, 135.98. Putin “Meeting with Members.”99. Owen and Inboden 2015, 95.

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extralegal.100 Putin, one of them writes, “makes the rules and he alone has the right toignore them and to dispense the authority to ignore them to others.”101 Two otherscholars make a similar point: “it is not that Putinism is anti-constitutional, butthat it is supra-constitutional, building constant loopholes and states of exceptionsin which Putin can find justifications for both expanding his power across Russia’sborders and cracking down on supposed security threats within its borders.”102 Hesees “himself, and only himself, as the guarantor of the system.”103

These elements of organic and extralegal sovereignty came together in the writingsof the Kremlin’s “loyal ideologue,” Vladislav Surkov, who first asserted that Russiahas its own unique understanding of “sovereign democracy.”104 Its foundation, heargued, is the “centralization [and] concentration of the nation’s material, intellectual,and power resources for the purposes of self-preservation and successful develop-ment of each citizen in Russia and of Russia in the world.”105 At home, a strong,if not authoritarian, leader protects and develops the society—linking extralegalismand organicism. The system projects outward through “the ideology of derzhavni-chestvo, of great power status, missionary impulses, imperial designs and Russia’sdestiny as a unique geopolitical pole.”106 Sovereign democracy thus seems to legit-imize Putin’s increasingly autocratic rule and Russia’s organic strength, as well as itsclaim to global greatness.107

Although Putin has not formally endorsed Surkov’s doctrine, he has characterizedsovereignty in similar terms: “Who will take the lead and who will remain an outsiderand inevitably lose his independence will depend not only on the economic potential,but primarily on the will of each nation, on its inner energy … [Ours] must be a sov-ereign and influential country.”108 Other states may have forgotten their nationalpride and consider sovereignty a “luxury,” said Putin, but for Russia, it is “absolutelynecessary for survival… Either we remain a sovereign nation, or we dissolve withouta trace and lose our identity.”109 Here, he again presents sovereignty as a link betweenRussia’s organic strength—its societal identity and willpower—and its globalinfluence.Still, he has simultaneously insisted that other states respect his country’s

Westphalian sovereignty rights. He has strengthened state control over the Russianpublic’s access to outside information and over foreign NGOs’ activities, which he

100. For example, Auer 2015; Lewis 2017.101. Fish 2018, 335.102. Langdon and Tismaneanu 2019, 208, emphasis in original.103. Hill and Gaddy 2013, 215.104. Headley 2015, 214; Surkov 2014.105. Surkov 2014, 21.106. Ziegler 2012, 407.107. Morris 2018, 100–29.108. Vladimir Putin, “Address to the Federal Assembly,” 12 December 2012, <http://en.kremlin.ru/

events/president/transcripts/messages/17118>.109. Vladimir Putin, “Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly,” 4 December 2014, <http://en.

kremlin.ru/events/president/news/47173>.

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has depicted as Western subversion aimed at infringing on Russia’s sovereignty. Hehas spoken many times about the principle of nonintervention in domestic affairs as abasis for international order, and defended Russia’s use of military force in Syria onthe Westphalian grounds that the Bashar al-Assad government requested it, whichappears to be true.110 In short, he has been a vocal defender of the conventionalversion of sovereignty.Nevertheless, older versions have become fixtures of Putin’s discourse during his

tenure in office, and now appear alongside Westphalian references. Perhaps moststrikingly, they have been visible in his justifications of Russia’s military incursionsin nearby countries, including Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.111 Some obser-vers regarded Putin’s annexation of Crimea, in particular, as clear evidence of hishypocrisy. How, they asked, could he champion sovereignty while so brazenly vio-lating it?112 In the midst of the crisis, for instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkelspoke to Putin and later reported to US President Barack Obama that the Russian leaderwas “in another world.”113 However, while the invasion clearly violated Westphaliansovereignty and international law,114 Putin was living his own reality—one that fusedorganic, civilizational, and extralegal notions with Westphalianism. Crimea and itsmain city, Sevastopol, he said, “have invaluable civilizational and even sacral import-ance for Russia,” because it was there that “Grand Prince Vladimir was baptized beforebringing Christianity” to the homeland.115 This narrative contributed to “an emotion-ally charged state of exception which transformed the supposed violation of therights of a vague set of Russian-identified people living in Ukraine into a national catas-trophe that blurred the foreign and the domestic.”116 Putin’s actions, in other words, didnot infringe extralegal and organic sovereignty, but expressed it.

China

Like his predecessors, President Xi Jinping of China, who took office in 2012, has con-sistently talked about sovereignty inWestphalian terms, often in relation to his nation’sindependence and territorial integrity. But he has also revived venerable ideas of pol-itical order—extralegal, hierarchical, organic, and civilizational—that increasinglyappear to conflict with the Westphalian elements of his sovereignty discourse.

110. “Russia Begins Airstrikes In Syria After Assad’s Request,” National Public Radio, 30 September2015, <https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/09/30/444679327/russia-begins-conducting-air-strikes-in-syria-at-assads-request>.111. Deyermond 2016.112. For example, Samuel Charap, “The Purpose of Putin’s Diplomatic Acrobatics,” Financial Times, 25

March 2015.113. Quoted in Ian Traynor and Patrick Wintour, “Ukraine Crisis: Vladimir Putin Has Lost the Plot, Says

German Chancellor,” The Guardian, 3 March 2014, <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/03/ukraine-vladimir-putin-angela-merkel-russian>.114. Grant 2015.115. Putin, “Presidential Address.”116. Langdon and Tismaneanu 2019, 196.

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Westphalianism is relatively new in Chinese political thought, a direct result of theMiddle Kingdom’s disastrous nineteenth-century encounter with the West. TheTreaty of Nanjing of 1842 with Britain—the first of China’s “unequal treaties”with European powers—compelled its imperial dynasty to open its ports to foreignopium traders, pay Britain an indemnity, and cede the territory of Hong Kong. AsJeremy Paltiel writes, “The Chinese ‘discovered’ sovereignty just as they effectively‘lost’ it.”117 The dynasty’s subsequent collapse in 1911, the nation’s descent into civilwar, and a brutal invasion by Japan in the 1930s all caused hardships that ordinary citi-zens have not forgotten. When this “century of humiliation” ended in 1949, the newPeople’s Republic of China was determined to protect its independence and unity.Its “five principles of peaceful coexistence” in international relations—respect for ter-ritorial integrity and sovereignty, nonaggression, noninterference in internal affairs,equality and cooperation for mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence—were quintes-sentially Westphalian and remain a cornerstone of its foreign policy.Until Xi, modern Chinese leaders had adopted a largely postcolonial approach to

international affairs; the country had overcome decades of colonialism and imperial-ism to emerge as a united, self-governing state “with the need to protect its independ-ence, sovereignty, and self-determination as a main priority.”118 This attitudepersisted even as China’s economic power burgeoned. The architect of the 1980s’economic liberalization, President Deng Xiaoping, famously warned his compatriotsto “hide our capabilities and bid our time” in international affairs.119 Xi’s immediatepredecessor, Hu Jintao, was also “extremely risk-averse” and focused on sustainingdomestic economic growth.120 By 2012, however, the country’s growing power andself-assurance had prompted many Chinese scholars to call for a new foreign policybetter suited to a major power.Some turned to the Confucian concept of “great harmony,” which they contrasted

to the Westphalian-Western states system and its “ruinous capitalist competition,rivalries between and among states, and constant confrontation.”121 Others invokedthe old imperial idea of tianxia, a “system of hierarchical harmony enforced by thepreponderance of power and virtue anchored in China.”122 In the historical tianxia,the emperor—the divine ruler of “everything under the heavens”—was the focalpoint in a hub-and-spokes arrangement of neighboring states and vassals that mir-rored the hierarchical social structure at home. The “organizing principle of sover-eignty” in the Chinese-dominated imperial system was both hierarchical andindivisible: “if one had an equal, it was not sovereign.”123 So long as lesser states

117. Paltiel 2007, 61.118. Dian and Menegazzi 2018, 29.119. Quoted in Fravel 2009, 134.120. Ferdinand 2016, 941.121. Dreyer 2015, 1016.122. Kim 1979, 23. Tingyang Zhao 2006 was one of the first scholars to draw mainstream scholarly

attention in China to the notion that tianxia offered a framework for modern international affairs.123. Zhang and Busan 2012, 16; Ford 2010, 52.

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accepted the imperial center’s dominance and offered obeisance and tribute, it wouldrespect their de facto autonomy. None of the scholars who have retrieved tianxia inrecent years have called for an imperial system or the rejection of Westphalianism,but some have proposed that tianxia’s “transcendent universalism” could provide“a new normative reference point for the international system.”124

Xi has not explicitly endorsed neo-tianxia for the international order, but he too hasadvanced Confucian concepts of governance as “intellectual resources providingsolutions to the dilemma of how to think and legitimize a new role for China inthe twenty-first century.”125 The leitmotif of his presidency has been the “great reju-venation of the Chinese nation,” a subject he first raised two weeks after becomingpresident. Standing at the National Museum of China before images of people suffer-ing through the “century of humiliation,” he announced his “China Dream,” an ini-tiative to restore the country’s greatness.126 This has involved, among other things,cultivating a national identity rooted in “memories of past golden eras characterizedby Confucian values and a Sino-centric world order.”127 By characterizing neighborsas “peripheral countries,” for example, Xi has invoked historical, Confucian concep-tions of a China-centered order based on virtuous hierarchy.128 When the CentralCommittee of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) convened a meeting in 2014 todiscuss peripheral diplomacy, it stated that realizing “the complete rise of China”included establishing itself as the “defender of a Harmonious Asia-Pacific.”129

Xi’s China Dream aims to socialize the region’s states into a “community ofshared destiny”—vital, he insists, to protect “national sovereignty, security anddevelopment interests” and to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinesenation.”130 Others, however, view it as a normative overlay for a Sino-centricregional order.131 Elizabeth Economy goes further, arguing that Xi’s narrative ofnational rejuvenation “places the country not only at the centre of the internationalsystem but also above it.”132

The rise of Xi’s peripheral-diplomacy discourse has coincided with more coercivebehavior toward China’s neighbors and the construction of military installations in

124. Xu 2015. See also Zhao 2019. For a survey of this literature, see Puranen 2020.125. Dian and Menegazzi 2018, 31. Although previous leaders, including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao,

also invoked Confucian concepts, Xi has done so to an “unprecedented” degree. Ibid.126. Xi 2012.127. Arase 2016, 14.128. “Important Speech of Xi Jinping at Peripheral Diplomacy Work Conference,” China Council for

International Cooperation on Environment and Development, 30 October 2013, <http://www.cciced.net/cciceden/NEWSCENTER/LatestEnvironmentalandDevelopmentNews/201310/t20131030_82626.html>.See also Smith 2019.129. Quoted in French 2017, 260.130. Xi Jinping, “Let the Sense of Community of Common Destiny Take Deep Root in Neighbouring

Countries,” 25 October 2013, <https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjb_663304/wjbz_663308/activ-ities_663312/t1093870.shtml>.131. Reeves 2018.132. Economy 2017, 141.

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areas of contested sovereignty. The CPC has advanced a historical argument—firmlyrejected by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016, a judgment that Beijing hasdisregarded—that “successive Chinese governments have exercised jurisdiction”over most of the South China Sea and that “the Chinese people have long been”its “master.”133 This is an ostensibly Westphalian claim, but it also expresses trad-itional hierarchical conceptions of political order. These “two irreconcilable perspec-tives”—Westphalian and neo-tianxia—“live today in China’s self-conception, in theway it engages with the world, and specifically in its territorial disputes with thePhilippines and with other littoral states over ownership of the South China Sea,”writes Howard French.134

Others also see elements of neo-tianxia in Xi’s massive Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), a string of land- and sea-based infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa,and Europe. The BRI, writes William Callahan, expresses a “new grand strategy,where Beijing aims to use connectivity projects to socialize Asia and Europe intoits own preferred [hub-and-spokes] view of global order,” with itself—the “topnormative power”—at the core.135 Some scholars even depict the BRI as amodern-day adaptation of the nation’s “classical ‘tribute system’ … of concentriccircles in which the civilized imperial capital at the centre flows out to embracethe periphery, forming a pattern of interdependence, coexistence, and co-prosperity.”136

In his speeches, Xi has regularly linked sovereignty to the China Dream and hiscountry’s “security and development interests,” describing China as a strong, confi-dent, sovereign state that will achieve its rightful position as a global power—guidedby an empowered party and its paramount leader.137 This has in turn promptedintense scholarly debates in China. On one hand, “constitutionalist” scholars havecalled for “enforcing the rights enshrined in the current constitution, guaranteeingjudicial independence, and checking the power of the Party.”138 On the other hand,“sovereigntists,” including some who explicitly cite Carl Schmitt, “view thepowers of the state (guarding against external and internal threats) as the highest pol-itical principle, overriding if necessary the powers of the constitution.”139 The latterview has been visible in Xi’s legal and governing philosophy. He has said many timesthat the great rejuvenation, including defense of sovereignty, requires even stronger

133. “China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs ofChina, 13 July 2016, <https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/nanhai/eng/snhwtlcwj_1/t1380615.htm>.134. French 2017, 72.135. Callahan 2016, 2.136. Lin, Sidaway, and Woon 2019, 513–14.137. Xi, “Let the Sense of Community;” Xi, “Full Text of Xi Jinping’s Report at 19th CPC National

Congress,” 18 October 2017, <http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2017-11/04/content_34115212.htm>; “Full Text of Xi’s Speech on China’s 70th Founding Anniversary,” BBCMonitoring Asia Pacific, 2 October 2019; “Xi Focus: Xi Sends Message of Peace at ‘Olympics forMilitary,’” Xinhua, 20 October 2019, <http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-10/20/c_138487748.htm>.138. Veg 2019, 25.139. Ibid.

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CPC leadership.140 He has also centralized power in his own hands. Among othersteps, he has appointed himself chair of the CPC’s major policy committees—effect-ively making himself “chairman of everything”141—and eliminated presidential termlimits so he may perhaps serve for life. While the CPC has long exercised extralegalsupremacy over the country’s laws and institutions, Xi has increasingly become theparty.142 For him, realizing China’s rejuvenation and full sovereignty seems torequire not just a strong state and party, but a supreme leader with de facto extralegalauthority.He has also turned to organic nationalism to rally public support for the China

Dream, invoking the country’s cultural uniqueness and superiority, its glorious andvirtuous imperial past, and a narrative of national strength and historic destiny,together with hints of racial essentialism. In Xi’s words: “As long as more than1.3 billion Chinese people uphold the great spirit of unity, we will definitely forgean unstoppable and invincible force.”143 All Chinese—including diaspora communi-ties abroad—are to participate, he has argued, because they have “the blood of theChinese nation flowing in their veins” and bear “the distinctive brand of theChinese culture” and “civilization.”144 The CPC’s United Front Work Departmenthas been tasked with “mobiliz[ing] all the sons and daughters of [ethnic Chinese]to work together for the greater national interests and the realization of the ChineseDream.”145 This discourse represents more than national exceptionalism; it positsan organic, civilizational, transnational “nation.” To one scholar, this represents aform of “racial sovereignty” extending beyond China’s borders and even legitimizingBeijing’s apparent kidnapping of Chinese nationals (including dual citizens) abroad,“not only as a matter of territorial security but also as a civilizational imperative.”146

The United Front’s use of diaspora Chinese as “public diplomats” to advocateBeijing’s interests in foreign countries has also raised concerns about interferencein those countries’ domestic politics.147 These activities—and the Chinese govern-ment’s attempt to mobilize overseas Chinese—strike some observers as a new

140. “Xi Jinping’s Speech on 40th Anniversary of China’s Reforms, Opening Up. Full Text. Xinhua,” 24December 2018, reproduced by Transcend Media Service, <https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/12/xi-jinpings-speech-on-40th-anniversary-of-chinas-reforms-opening-up-full-text>; Shannon Tiezzi, “XiJinping Continues His Quest for Absolute Party Control,” The Diplomat, 10 July 2019, <https://thediplo-mat.com/2019/07/xi-jinping-continues-his-quest-for-absolute-party-control>.141. “China’s ‘Chairman of Everything’: Behind Xi Jinping’s Many Titles,” New York Times, 25

October 2017.142. Shirk 2018.143. Xi Jinping, “Speech Delivered by President Xi at the NPC Closing Meeting,” China Daily, 22

March 2018, <http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkedition/2018-03/22/content_35894512.htm>.144. Xi 2014, 69.145. “Beijing Official Urges Efforts for Xi’s ‘Chinese Dream,’” Associated Press, 3 March 2018.146. Gonzalez-Vincente 2017, 140. On the apparent kidnappings, see Zach Dorfman, “The Disappeared,”

Foreign Policy, 29 March 2018, <https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-renditions-kidnapping>; Barbara Demic, “Why Did China Kidnap Its Provocateurs?” New Yorker, 16 February 2016,<https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-did-china-kidnap-its-provocateurs>.147. Fitzgerald 2018.

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form of “transnational governance”148 that “reconfigur[es] the spatiality of the state”by breaking with “the Westphalian principle of congruence between territory, sover-eignty, population and political authority, while introducing new ways of conceptu-alizing citizenship and national belonging.”149

Countries tend to become more assertive as their capabilities grow, but what typeof international order and principles of rightful state action does Beijing wish topromote? “In the late nineteenth century,” writes Yongjin Zhang, “imperial Chinahad no option but to accept and accommodate the rules, norms and institutionsdefined by the invading and alien international society based on the Westphalianmodel.”150 Chinese leaders have long embraced sovereignty as a shield againstoutside interference and pressures for domestic change, and Xi’s explicit referencesto sovereignty have been more consistently Westphalian than those of Putin, forexample. Yet, concluding that Xi’s sovereignty discourse remains staunchlyWestphalianism would ignore his revival of non-Westphalian conceptions of politicalorder that draw on venerable conceptions of imperial sovereignty from China’s past.An Asia defined by relations between “peripheral states” and a Chinese core, a trans-national organic civilization that seemingly entitles Beijing to flout Westphalian con-straints, and an imperial president who stands above the law and effectively is thelaw—these are all elements that have merged into the vision of a strong, sovereignChina pursuing “national rejuvenation.” Although there has long been a “troubledrelationship” between traditional Chinese thinking about international order andthe Westphalian principle of sovereign coequality,151 these tensions remainedlargely concealed while China pursued a largely defensive, postcolonial approachto international affairs. Now that the country is grappling to define its role as amajor power, they are no longer hidden.

The United States

When US President Donald Trump delivered his first speech to the UN GeneralAssembly in September 2017, he mentioned “sovereignty” no fewer than twenty-one times, leaving many observers puzzled.152 “I have no fully graspable ideawhat he is talking about,” wrote columnist Daniel Henniger in the Wall StreetJournal. “The idea of protecting a country’s national security and economic interestsis easy enough to understand,” but the president “seems to be talking about somethingmore transcendent … a mystical force.”153

148. Liu and van Dongen 2016.149. Thunø 2017, 201.150. Zhang 2008, 115.151. Ford 2010, 5.152. “Remarks by President Trump to the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly,”

19 September 2017, <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-72nd-session-united-nations-general-assembly/>.153. Daniel Henniger, “Trump Goes Nuclear,” Wall Street Journal, 20 September 2017.

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Henniger’s confusion was understandable. Trump was mixing Westphalian witholder ideas of sovereignty. On one hand he said the US would “not seek to imposeour way of life on anyone” (a nod to political independence and noninterference),and railed against “unaccountable international tribunals and powerful global bureau-cracies” (voicing a long-standing American suspicion of external bodies’ impingingon US autonomy).154 But he also appeared to use sovereignty as a metaphor forAmerican vitality and power. “Strong, sovereign nations”—a phrase he repeatedseveral times—nurture “strong families and strong values” and “patriots” willingto “sacrifice” and “fight” for the “nations they loved,” thus warding off “decay, dom-ination, and defeat.” Reaffirmed sovereignty would involve “a great awakening ofnations” and “the revival of their spirits, their pride, their people, their patriotism.”These were expressions of organic sovereignty.Additional clues appeared in a July 2017 speech in Warsaw in which Trump simi-

larly portrayed “sovereign” societies as those united by strong internal bonds of“culture, faith and tradition” and the spirit of “noble sacrifice.”155 Later in theyear, he urged fellow leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit touphold their own countries’ sovereignty, adding this curious coda: “For family, forcountry, for freedom, for history, and for the glory of God, protect your home,defend your home, and love your home today and for all time.”156 In subsequentmonths, he criticized “cynics and critics that try to tear down America” or “denigrateAmerica’s incredible heritage, challenge America’s sovereignty, and weakenAmerica’s pride.”157 Here again, sovereignty seemed a synonym for organic strengthand—shades of Xi’s China Dream—“the great reawakening of the American spiritand of American might.”158 He lectured the UN General Assembly again inSeptember 2018: “Let us stand for our people and their nations, forever strong,forever sovereign” and “a culture built on strong families, deep faith and strongindependence.”159

In addition to invoking organic notions of sovereignty—culture, history, family,and religion—Trump has also equated the concept with “strong borders.” At firstglance, this seems quintessentially Westphalian, but his justifications have beenlargely organic: to keep out Muslims, Mexicans, and immigrants from “shithole”countries.160 “We only want to admit those people into our country who share our

154. “Remarks by President Trump to the 72nd Session.”155. “Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland,” 6 July 2017, <https://www.whitehouse.

gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-people-poland/>.156. “Remarks by President Trump at APEC CEO Summit,” 10 November 2017, <https://www.white-

house.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-apec-ceo-summit-da-nang-vietnam/>.157. “Donald Trump Delivers Speech at US Naval Academy Graduation,” 25 May 2018, <https://factba.

se/transcript/donald-trump-speech-naval-academy-graduation-may-25-2018>.158. Ibid.159. “Remarks by President Trump to the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” 25

September 2018, <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-73rd-session-united-nations-general-assembly-new-york-ny>.160. Quoted in “Trump Alarms Lawmakers with Disparaging Words for Haiti and Africa,” New York

Times, 11 January 2018.

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values, who love our people, and who always will love our people,” he told suppor-ters in 2017.161 He has also accused opponents of “encouraging millions of illegalaliens to break our laws, violate our sovereignty, overrun our borders and destroyour nation in so many ways.”162 Here again, he equated weakening sovereigntywith social and moral erosion. He also pledged to stop “this lawless assault on ourdignity, our sovereignty,” and to restore the strength of “one people, one family,and one glorious nation under God.”163

This discourse departed starkly from that of Trump’s immediate predecessors.During Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama’s collective twenty-fouryears in the White House, they mentioned sovereignty in a total of 278 publicspeeches and statements, but never as a metaphor for an organic community or astrong state.164 Rather, they consistently connected it to the principles of territorialintegrity, political independence, or nonintervention—and sometimes explicitlyrejected notions of blood-and-soil-type rootedness and a strong organic state.When Bush, for example, insisted on securing US borders as “a basic responsibilityof a sovereign nation,” he added, “We are also a nation of immigrants, and we mustuphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways.”165

Some scholars compare Trump’s approach to governing with that of AndrewJackson, the populist president (1829–37) who also propounded nativist, blood-and-soil nationalism and viewed foreign policy principally as a means to promote the“well-being—political, moral, economic—of the folk community.”166 However, theanalogy is imperfect. Jackson never articulated an anti-Westphalian version of sover-eignty, nor recommended it to other states. Nonetheless, the “land-folk nexus” has along history in US politics.167 In the 1880s, for instance, Americans debatedWashington’s powers to restrict Chinese immigration. The US Supreme Court ruledthat the federal government had an “exclusive and absolute” right to exclude aliens todefend the country’s sovereign independence from all manner of “foreign aggressionand encroachment,” including “vast hordes of … people crowding in upon us,” whopossibly threaten “our civilization.”168 These ideas have remained hallmarks of

161. “Donald Trump Holds a Political Rally in Youngstown, Ohio,” 25 July 2017, <https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-speech-rally-youngstown-ohio-july-25-2017>.162. “Donald Trump Holds a Political Rally in Pensacola, Florida,” 3 November 2018, <https://factba.se/

transcript/donald-trump-speech-maga-rally-pensacola-fl-november-3-2018>.163. “Donald Trump Holds a Political Rally in Cleveland, Ohio,” 5 November 2018, <https://factba.se/

transcript/donald-trump-speech-maga-rally-cleveland-oh-november-5-2018>.164. Online database of US presidential speeches, American Presidency Project, University of

California, Santa Barbara, <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu>. I searched the database for all mentionsof “sovereignty” by the three presidents in the following categories: oral addresses, spoken addressesand remarks, interviews, miscellaneous remarks, State of the Union addresses, debates, farewell addresses,and inaugural addresses. (References to tribal sovereignty were excluded from the results.)165. George W. Bush, “Address to the Nation on Immigration Reform,” 15 May 2006, <https://www.

presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-nation-immigration-reform>.166. Mead 1999, 15. See also Mead 2017.167. Mohamed 2018, 295.168. Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581, US Supreme Court, 13 May 1889.

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far-right US movements, including radical “sovereigntists” and white nationalists whoview the border as a “bulwark of a nativist, homogeneous community against incursionsfrom people, ideas, commodities and any other flow from the perceived ‘outside’ thatcould threaten the identify and welfare of the bounded community.”169 Intentionallyor not, Trump’s ethno-nationalist renderings of sovereignty have resonated stronglywith these groups.170

In addition to his organicist tendencies, Trump has hinted at extralegalism in bothdomestic and international politics. As a presidential candidate, he called the JusticeDepartment a “political arm of the White House.”171 In office, he denounced and laterfired his first attorney-general, apparently for failing to block an investigation of hiselectoral campaign;172 asked the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation toend an investigation into a former associate;173 encouraged Justice Department offi-cials and at least two foreign governments—Ukraine and China—to investigate orprosecute his political rivals;174 and declared a “national emergency” whenCongress refused to fund the US-Mexican border wall.175 In international affairs,too, Trump has scorned existing agreements and rules. He withdrew the UnitedStates from the Paris Agreement on climate, the never-ratified Trans-PacificPartnership on trade, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia,the Iran nuclear deal framework, and some UN bodies. He also threatened to pullout of the World Trade Organization and reportedly told his advisers “severaltimes” that he wanted to leave NATO.176 Together, these actions suggested “a con-certed effort to undermine the rule-of-law institutions of the post-war legal order—whether the United Nations and its human rights mechanisms, the EuropeanUnion, or global institutions of trade and security.”177

Perhaps this is merely an expression of American exceptionalism, but with onenotable difference: Trump has personalized this supposed entitlement.178 Hisapproach to politics and diplomacy has reflected his 2016 proclamation: “I alone

169. Kallis 2018, 295.170. “Far-Right Internet Groups Listen for Trump’s Approval, and Often Hear It,” New York Times, 4

November 2018.171. Quoted in Matt Ford, “Trump Warned America about His Abuse of Power,” New Republic, 30

January 2018, <https://newrepublic.com/article/146843/trump-warned-america-abuse-power>.172. “Why Is Trump Mad at Sessions? A Tweet Provides the Answer,” New York Times, 5 June 2018.173. “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation,” New York Times, 16 May

2017.174. “Mueller Report Reveals Trump’s Fixation on Targeting Hillary Clinton,” New York Times, 24

April 2019; “Trump Administration Used Potential Meeting to Pressure Ukraine on Biden, TextsIndicate,” Wall Street Journal, 4 October 2019.175. “Trump Declares National Emergency on Southern Border in Bid to Build Wall,”Washington Post,

15 February 2019.176. “Trump Threatens to Pull US Out of WTO If It Doesn’t ‘Shape Up,’” Bloomberg, 30 August 2018;

“Trump Discussed Pulling US from NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia,” New YorkTimes, 14 January 2019.177. Koh 2019.178. Richard Fontaine, “A Troubling Pattern of Personal Diplomacy,” The Atlantic, 29 December 2018.

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can fix it.”179 His officials have sometimes gone to extraordinary lengths to restrainhim from issuing “impulsive and dangerous orders” in domestic and foreignpolicy.180 In the words of Gary Cohn, who served as his chief economic advisor in2016 and 2017: “It’s not what we did for the country. It’s what we saved himfrom doing.”181 Trump’s version of US exceptionalism has not sprung from theuniqueness of America’s values, constitution, or special role in the world—as theconcept is typically understood.182 Rather, he appears to understand it as an expres-sion of his personal will. “I am the chosen one,” he remarked in 2019, invoking mes-sianic imagery to explain his willingness to challenge China’s economic policies.183

He has also put forward a novel interpretation of the US Constitution—one with nomeaningful limits on presidential authority. “I have the right to do whatever I want aspresident,” he has asserted.184 “Like Schmitt,” writes Andrew Kolin, “Trump placesthe ruler above the law; he rejects the concept of universal law, replacing it with situ-ational law, in which he believes he has the authority to decide in which situationsexceptions can be made.”185

In other respects, Trump’s foreign policy has been less radical than his discourse.Under his leadership, the US renegotiated the North American free trade agreementrather than carrying out his vow to tear it up. He has not abandoned treaty allies inAsia, nor unleashed the “fire and fury” that he had threatened against North Korea.In the Middle East and Afghanistan, his administration has more or less continuedthe Obama-era policies of limited engagement. To date, he has launched no newwars. By comparison, although George W. Bush consistently spoke in Westphalianterms, he ordered the fateful 2003 invasion of Iraq—an “evident breach” of inter-national law.186

Two factors may account for the disparity between Trump’s discourse and hisactions. First, unlike Presidents Putin and Xi, he operates within a system of consti-tutionally divided powers. US courts have delayed or blocked some of his actions,including initial versions of an executive order excluding citizens of seven major-ity-Muslim countries.187 Congress has also pressed the White House into takingaction in some areas, such as sanctioning Russia for its apparent interference in the2016 presidential election.188 His officials have also reportedly prevented seeminglyreckless decisions. Second, Trump may be personally risk averse, particularly vis-à-

179. Quoted in “Trump to America: ‘I Alone Can Fix It,’” Christian Science Monitor, 22 July 2016.180. Woodward 2018, xix.181. Quoted in ibid.182. Nymalm and Plagemann 2019, 20–22.183. Quoted in “‘I Am the Chosen One’: Trump Again Plays on Messianic Claims as He Embraces

‘King of Israel’ Title,” Washington Post, 21 August 2019.184. Quoted in “While Bemoaning Mueller Probe, Trump Falsely Says the Constitution Gives Him ‘The

Right To Do Whatever I Want,’” Washington Post, 23 July 2019.185. Kolin 2017.186. Weller 2010, 275.187. Spiro 2019.188. “White House Penalizes Russians Over Election Meddling and Cyberattacks,” New York Times, 15

March 2018.

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vis the use of military force. Before becoming president, he repeated criticized theBush and Obama administrations for “wasting lives and money in Iraq andAfghanistan.”189 As president, he declared, “We are not nation building again.”190

Indeed, it was his abrupt decision in 2018 to withdraw troops from Syria, ratherthan escalating involvement, that prompted his first secretary of defense, JamesMattis, to resign.191

Whatever the explanation, it would be a mistake to dismiss Trump’s distinctivesovereignty discourse as “just talk.” His extralegal and organic depictions of sover-eignty appear to reflect the popular sentiments that took him to power, includingnativist nationalism, antiglobalism, resentment at other countries’ perceived mistreat-ment of the US, a desire to restore preponderant American global power, and theappeal of a “Schmittian” leader unimpeded by established institutions and rules.192

These sentiments may endure beyond his presidency, just as Jacksonian populismoutlasted its champion. While some combination of institutional checks andTrump’s own fear of foreign quagmires may have restrained him, such constraintsmight not curb a future president. A conception of sovereignty that normalizes theidea of “a muscular America bending opponents to its will around the world” ultim-ately invites such behavior.193

Trump’s discourse also invites such behavior from other “sovereign” states,including many that lack American-style separation of powers and rule of law.Indeed, he has recommended his own version of sovereignty as the basis for arenewed international order. When he addressed the General Assembly in 2017,for example, he called for a world of “strong and independent nations that embracetheir sovereignty.”194 He also urged the assembled countries to confront Iran,North Korea, and Islamic terrorism, and to put pressure on Cuba and Venezuela.On what basis should they do so? He could have cited any number of reasons, butinstead offered, gnomically: “Our respect for sovereignty is also a call toaction.”195 He seemed to be suggesting that sovereignty itself legitimized the useof coercive force against other states—in violation of their sovereignty.196 It wasclearly not a Westphalian appeal.

189. Quoted in Zack Beauchamp, “The Case Against Trump’s Decision to Keep Fighting inAfghanistan, Explained by Trump,” Vox, 21 August 2017, <https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/21/16178916/trump-afghanistan-withdraw-tweets>.190. “Donald Trump Delivers Primetime Speech on Afghanistan,” 21 August 2017, <https://factba.se/

transcript/donald-trump-speech-afghanistan-fort-myer-virginia-august-21-2017>.191. “Mattis Resigns after Clash with Trump over Troop Withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan,”

Washington Post, 20 December 2018.192. MacWilliams 2016; Mutz 2018.193. Ishaan Tharoor, “Trump and the Rest of the World Offer Little Hope for Syrian Refugees,”

Washington Post, 18 April 2018.194. “Remarks by President Trump at APEC CEO Summit.”195. Ibid.196. Posen 2018.

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Findings and Implications

The concepts of extralegal and organic sovereignty have become more prominent inthe leadership discourses of Russia, China, and the United States in recent years.Observers who maintain that Westphalian sovereignty is “back” are not wrong—all three countries have sought to strengthen national autonomy and control overtransnational flows—but they overlook the concurrent revival of non-Westphalianmodels. This oversight, I have argued, reflects a tendency in international relationsscholarship to portray sovereignty as a post-1648 idea and earlier understandingsas extinct ancestors or failed competitors. I have described the enduring relevanceof older sovereignty ideas, tracing the pre-Westphalian origins of two variants andshowing how they subsequently persisted and evolved. I have also highlighted thedifferences between these ideas and Westphalianism. Each version defines a differentbasis for rightful state action: the primordial powers of the sovereign leader, the strengthof the organic sovereign society, and the international legal rights of the sovereignWestphalian state, including the right to political independence and the concomitantprohibition on interfering in other states’ domestic affairs. By contrast, a leader withprimordial powers stands above legal bounds, and the transcendental will of anorganic society or civilization does not readily recognize equals. These retrievedconcepts offer few constraints on powerful states dominating weaker ones.There is nothing new about countries—especially economically and militarily

strong ones—claiming special privileges and powers for themselves. Hierarchy isan enduring feature of world politics.197 However, most scholarship has portrayedsovereignty as a counterpoint to hierarchy. According to Benedict Kingsbury, forexample, it “serves, if very unevenly, as a counter to the vast inequalities that[might] otherwise be expected to feature in the formal structure of the legalsystem.”198 Georg Sørensen formulates it this way: “Irrespective of the substantialdifferences between sovereign states in economic, political, social, and other respects,sovereignty entails equal membership of the international society of states, withsimilar rights and obligations.”199 David Lake similarly argues that “sovereignty asa norm prohibits relations of authority by one state over another,” which in principle“limits relations of hierarchy,” even though states regularly violate this norm in prac-tice.200 A similar assumption underpins the literature on the “special responsibilities”of major powers, or the idea they receive special status in exchange for providingpublic goods, such as maintaining order.201 This “institutionalized functionalbargain,” some scholars argue, provides a practical means of “managing collective

197. Lake 2017; Mattern and Zarakol 2016.198. Kingsbury 1998, 600.199. Sørensen 1999, 592–93.200. Lake 2017, 364.201. Bukovansky et al. 2012.

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problems in a world characterized by both formal equality and inequality of materialcapability.”202 Sovereignty, in this view, is the equalizing side of this bargain.However, extralegal and organic conceptions of sovereignty do not lend them-

selves to collective responsibilities, or even to self-restraint. They are openly, ifnot ostentatiously, chauvinist and solipsistic. Contemporary observers who arguethat the recent “return” of sovereignty will foster greater restraint in international rela-tions seem to miss this point. Conceiving of sovereignty as an expression of organicnationalism, societal strength, civilizational destiny, or extralegal leadership does notlimit hegemonic behavior. Rather, it appears to legitimize it.To some, this concern may seem exaggerated. Some realist scholars of inter-

national relations, for example, argue that norms and institutions have “no independ-ent effect on state behavior” because they are “basically a reflection of the distributionof power” and “self-interested calculations of the great powers.”203 Stephen Krasnerrelates this point to sovereignty: “Outcomes in the international system are deter-mined by rulers whose violation of, or adherence to, international principles orrules is based on calculations of material and ideational interests, not taken-for-granted practices derived from some overarching institutional structures or deeplyembedded grammars.”204 Krasner also cites numerous violations of Westphaliannorms, concluding that they impose few real constraints, even though they may beobserved “in talk.”205 If, as he suggests, Westphalian norms have little influenceon international politics, why worry about the retrieval of these older conceptions?First, even if we accept these realist propositions, examining how major powers

characterize sovereignty can still illuminate their foreign-policy intentions. Iexplained why states might seek to bring sovereignty norms into conformity withtheir approaches to domestic and international politics: to do so reduces legitimacycosts. This logic is largely consistent with realist assumptions: international rulesand institutions tend to mirror states’ interests and intentions, especially those ofthe most powerful ones. Although further research is needed to determine whyPutin, Xi, and Trump have articulated pre-Westphalian conceptions, my casestudies offer prima facie evidence that they all did so in conjunction with policychanges—and at a moment when all three countries, for different reasons, wereexpressing misgivings about their place in the existing world order.Second, international orders consist not only of material structures but also of “a

web of shared meanings that makes the exercise of authoritative power possiblebetween polities.”206 Although Krasner identifies numerous breaches ofWestphalian sovereignty norms, most states, including powerful ones, routinelyobserve them.207 Even when they use military force, they typically—and very

202. Ibid., 16; Mattern and Zarakol 2016, 653.203. Mearsheimer 1994, 7.204. Krasner 1999, 9.205. Ibid., 24, 66.206. Phillips 2011, 24.207. Ikenberry 2011, 52. See also Goldsmith 2000; Philpott 2001b.

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publicly—invoke international standards, drawing on and articulating “shared valuesand expectations that other decision makers and other publics in other states alsohold.”208 Leading realists appear to recognize norms’ constraining effects. JohnMearsheimer, for example, writes that “almost all leaders care about legitimacyand thus pay careful attention to well-established norms, as they do not want to beseen by other states as wantonly disregarding rules that enjoy widespread respectand support.”209 Henry Kissinger goes a step further: “Calculations of powerwithout a moral dimension will turn every disagreement into a test of strength; ambi-tion will know no resting place; countries will be propelled into unsustainable toursde force of elusive calculations regarding the shifting configuration of power.”210 Amoral dimension here refers to “a set of commonly accepted rules that define thelimits of permissible action.”211 If Stephen Walt, another realist, believed thatWestphalian sovereignty norms had little impact, why would he call for theirreaffirmation?212 These scholars appear to acknowledge that norms are both con-straining and enabling for states, even if they also contend that material power andinterests explain much of international politics.The retrieval of extralegal and organic sovereignty thus raises serious concerns.

Should this trend continue, it would point toward a future of intensifying competitionamong major powers and their more open domination of others. Already, states havebeen “weaponizing interdependence,” transforming cooperative arrangements intozero-sum contests for influence.213 Taken to its logical conclusion, the reaffirmationof these older sovereignty concepts might legitimize and enable the “unfettered self-assertion of autonomous, xenophobic nation-states.”214 Still, this outcome is far fromcertain. Russia, China, and the US have not abandoned Westphalianism; on the con-trary, they remain its vocal champions. Changing conditions—and leaders—mightreverse the recent rise of extralegal and organic sovereignty.A deeper understanding of this phenomenon is essential. Why exactly did the

leaders of Russia, China, and the US retrieve older sovereignty ideas—and why atthis moment? Have other foreign policy officials in these three countries alsoemployed these discourses? Are other states also articulating these concepts—andwhat might account for any variation between them? Are these countries “learning”from each other? What does the revival of extralegal and organic sovereignty ultim-ately mean for world politics, including relations among major powers and theirbehavior toward other states? If the prognosis is worrisome, as I have suggested,what would it take to reverse this trend? Finally, does the phenomenon of norm

208. Finnemore 2003, 15.209. Mearsheimer 2018, 159.210. Kissinger 2014, 367, emphasis added.211. Ibid., 9.212. See note 59.213. Farrell and Newman 2019.214. Christopher R. Browning, “The Suffocation of Democracy,” New York Review of Books, 25

October 2018, <https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/25/suffocation-of-democracy/>.

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retrieval occur in other domains of international affairs and in relation to other typesof norms, beyond those of sovereignty?

Conclusion

Much of the post-Cold War scholarship on sovereignty debated whether the worldwas entering a post-Westphalian era. More recently, observers have noted the appar-ent reaffirmation of Westphalianism and the efforts of many countries to “reclaim”

sovereignty. As we have seen, however, this is an incomplete and ultimately mislead-ing assessment. Other versions of sovereignty, with origins predating the Peace ofWestphalia, have also resurged. I have described these concepts’ content andtraced their development, addressing a blind spot in international relations scholar-ship, which has tended to dismiss these ideas as antiquated relics. I have also elabo-rated the logic of “norm retrieval,” filling a gap in an academic literature that hastended to focus on the development and diffusion of new norms, rather than therevival of older ones. Extralegal and organic concepts of political organizationhave become increasingly prominent in the foreign-policy discourses of three ofthe world’s most powerful countries and there are risks associated with this trend:it appears to license powerful states to dominate others—paradoxically, in thename of sovereignty.“We can read the essential character of any era of international relations through its

norms of sovereignty,” writes Daniel Philpott.215 If so, today’s sovereignty dis-courses may be an early-warning indicator of a more discordant and dangerousfuture. Worse, they might help to bring it about.

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Author

Roland Paris is Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University ofOttawa. He can be reached at rparis@uottawa.ca.

Acknowledgments

I presented drafts of this article at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association inSan Francisco, California, in April 2018 and at the Dickey Center International Relations of DartmouthCollege, New Hampshire, in May 2018. My thanks to International Organization’s editors and anonymousreviewers for their insightful comments, and to Stephen Brooks, Tim Dunne, Alexandra Gheciu, Kal Holsti,Andrew Hurrell, Igor Istomin, Robert Keohane, David Lake, Jeremy Paltiel, Alexander Wendt, William

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Wohlforth, Christoph Zuercher, and members of the international relations seminar at Dartmouth Collegefor feedback on earlier drafts. I also thank Jessica Becker for her research assistance.

Key Words

Sovereignty; Russia; China; United States; international order; international norms; norm retrieval; greatpowers

Date received: August 9, 2018; Date accepted: December 8, 2019

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