In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, it is timely to ask what continuing role, if any, the concept of sovereignty can and should play in the emerging &"new world order.&" The aim of Law, Power, and the Sovereign State is both to counter the argument that the end of the sovereign state is close at hand and to bring scholarship on sovereignty into the post-Cold War era. The study assesses sovereignty as status and as power and examines the issue of what precisely constitutes a sovereign state. In determining how a political entity gains sovereignty, the authors introduce the requirements of de facto independence and de jure independence and explore the ambiguities inherent in each. They also examine the political process by which the international community formally confers sovereign status. Fowler and Bunck trace the continuing tension of the &"chunk and basket&" theories of sovereignty through the history of international sovereignty disputes and conclude by considering the usefulness of sovereignty as a concept in the future study and conduct of international affairs. They find that, despite frequent predictions of its imminent demise, the concept of sovereignty is alive and well as the twentieth century draws to a close.

Rated 24th Best Black Book of 2009 Inside Black Hollywood Magazine From emancipation to segregation to integration, African Americans exist today by virtue of a continuum of political evolutions, each of which is built upon prior legacies and achievements. In advancing our political progression, Sovereign Evolution re-declares freedom and equality in 21st-century terms, using sovereign principles and standards. Whether the issue concerns Katrina and Jena, or being underrepresented in Congress and overrepresented in penitentiaries, the common thread as Ezrah Aharone demonstrates, is that African Americans are an Un-Sovereign People, who pay varying degrees of Un-Sovereign Consequences. Thus, in a very methodical manner, he circumscribes sovereignty in a universal and historical context that confers African Americans with just as much integrity and authority as any other people to espouse and employ sovereign aspirations. The ideological framework herein self-applies and legitimizes the concept of sovereignty in ways that no other work has succinctly captured in politically-relatable terms, specific for African Americans. Realizing that not all African Americans will embrace sovereign values, Aharone uniquely specifies how a Sovereign Evolution can mutually advance the best interests of us all, without conflict or compromise to core beliefs of anyone. Accordingly, the book sets a platform to infuse sovereign discourse into mainstream domains that reach from street corners of the hoods, to Black universities, to church congregations, to the halls of Congress. The advent of President Barack Obama indicates a necessary and long-awaited political shift in time and history, which also conveys veiled implications of our sovereign potentials as a people. What once seemed politically improbable has proven to be politically achievable. Our only political limitations exist within the limits of our vision and courage. To this end, Ezrah Aharone factually sculpts the sociopolitical substance of our historical experience into a sovereign consciousness and political language to initiate a Manifest Destiny from Civil Rights to Sovereign Rights.

The present international system, composed for the most part of sovereign, territorial states, is often viewed as the inevitable outcome of historical development. Hendrik Spruyt argues that there was nothing inevitable about the rise of the state system, however. Examining the competing institutions that arose during the decline of feudalism--among them urban leagues, independent communes, city states, and sovereign monarchies--Spruyt disposes of the familiar claim that the superior size and war-making ability of the sovereign nation-state made it the natural successor to the feudal system. The author argues that feudalism did not give way to any single successor institution in simple linear fashion. Instead, individuals created a variety of institutional forms, such as the sovereign, territorial state in France, the Hanseatic League, and the Italian city-states, in reaction to a dramatic change in the medieval economic environment. Only in a subsequent selective phase of institutional evolution did sovereign, territorial authority prove to have significant institutional advantages over its rivals. Sovereign authority proved to be more successful in organizing domestic society and structuring external affairs. Spruyt's interdisciplinary approach not only has important implications for change in the state system in our time, but also presents a novel analysis of the general dynamics of institutional change.

Publisher Description

Now featuring a new preface by Peter Thiel Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the bestseller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century. The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization. Few observers of the late twentieth century have their fingers so presciently on the pulse of the global political and economic realignment ushering in the new millennium as do James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Their bold prediction of disaster on Wall Street in Blood in the Streets was borne out by Black Tuesday. In their ensuing bestseller, The Great Reckoning, published just weeks before the coup attempt against Gorbachev, they analyzed the pending collapse of the Soviet Union and foretold the civil war in Yugoslavia and other events that have proved to be among the most searing developments of the past few years. In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries—the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed "the fourth stage of human society," will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government. This outstanding book will replace false hopes and fictions with new understanding and clarified values.

The first collaborative volume to explore popular sovereignty, a pivotal concept in the history of political thought.

This volume gathers together some of the most significant debates surrounding the development, use and potential of the Internet. Twenty scholars from four continents address some of the more pertinent questions surrounding the presence and future of the Internet. These are organized into questions regarding the role of the Internet as a mediator of communicative space and process; an object of current and future policy; and a tool for development. The debates are proceeded by a discussion on the contextual positioning of the medium in terms of arts, the market, gender, and education.