What Is Wrong With Sovereignty? A Critical Approach Through the Limitations of Legal Violence

Yıl 2025, Sayı: 76 , 263 - 290 , 24.07.2025

Doğukan Bingöl

https://doi.org/10.26650/annales.2025.76.0009

https://izlik.org/JA43AB27EY

Öz

This article provides a critical perspective on current debates about sovereignty through the structural limitations of legal violence. A central discussion revolves around the question of whether the disaggregation of sovereignty as a result of international and global developments should be welcomed or resisted. While some argue that this provides better protection for human rights and international cooperation, others defend sovereignty as it ultimately means self-determination and democratic rule. However, being able to evaluate these arguments and developments requires an understanding of how sovereignty functions and what is problematic with it. To achieve this, the article grasps sovereignty from its two interrelated facets: Sovereignty signifies, on the one hand, that the legitimacy of law and political power comes from a popular source. On the other hand, it points to the supremacy of the authority that creates and enforces law through violence if necessary. Hence, the instrumentalization of violence is integral to its functioning. However, this method has structural drawbacks as the legal order built by violence requires its further instrumentalization, compelling the sovereign to compete with the people as the constituent source rather than just representing it. This endangers the promises of sovereignty, such as self-determination and democracy, and the article maps out these drawbacks by following Walter Benjamin’s analysis of legal violence. Hence, the real problem of sovereignty lies in its functioning rather than its territorial configurations. This awareness of the problem inherent in sovereignty provides critical guidance in evaluating the arguments and developments about the concept’s future.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Sovereignty , Legal violence , Self-determination , Walter Benjamin , International law , Critical perspectives

Teşekkür

Reyda Ergün, Orkun Güner, Seyla Benhabib

Kaynakça

• Agamben G, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Daniel Heller-Roazen tr, Stanford University Press 1998). google scholar
• Arendt H, ‘On Violence’, Crises of the Republic (Harcourt Brace 1972). google scholar
• ——, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, Inc 1985). google scholar
• ——, On Revolution (Penguin Books 1990). google scholar
• Austin J, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (Wilfrid E Rumble ed, Cambridge University Press 1995). google scholar
• Balibar E, ‘Prolegomena to Sovereignty’ in James Swenson (tr), We, the people of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton University Press 2004). google scholar
• ——, Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy (GM Goshgarian tr, Columbia University Press 2015). google scholar
• Bartelson J, ‘Double Binds: Sovereignty and the Just War Tradition’ in Hent Kalmo and Quentin Skinner (eds), Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept (Cambridge University Press 2010). google scholar
• Bashkina O, ‘Nation against People: Whose Sovereign Power?’ in Bas Leijssenaar and Neil Walker (eds), Sovereignty in Action (Cambridge University Press 2019). google scholar
• Benhabib S, ‘Twilight of Sovereignty or the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Norms? Rethinking Citizenship in Volatile Times’, Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times (Polity 2011). google scholar
• ——, Another Cosmopolitanism (Robert Post ed, Oxford University Press 2006). google scholar
• Benjamin W, ‘Toward the Critique of Violence’ in Peter Fenves and Julia Ng (eds), Julia Ng (tr), Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition (Stanford University Press 2021). google scholar
• Berry CJ, ‘From Hume to Hegel: The Case of Social Contract’ (1977) 38 Journal of the History of Ideas 691. google scholar
• Bickerton C and others, ‘Conflicts of Sovereignty in Contemporary Europe: A Framework of Analysis’ (2022) 20 Comparative European Politics 257. google scholar
• Birnbaum A, ‘Variations of Fate’ in Carlo Salzani and Brendan Moran (eds), Carlo Salzani and Brendan Moran (trs), Towards the Critique of Violence: Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben (Bloomsbury 2015). google scholar
• Black A, ‘The Juristic Origins of Social Contract Theory’ (1993) 14 History of Political Thought 57. google scholar
• Bobbio N, ‘Law and Force’ (1965) 49 The Monist 321. google scholar
• Butler J, ‘Critique, Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”’ in Hent de Vries and Lawrence E Sullivan (eds), Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (Fordham University Press 2006). google scholar
• Canovan M, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought (Cambridge University Press 1992). google scholar
• Cover R, ‘Nomos and the Narrative’ in Martha Minow, Michael Ryan and Austin Sarat (eds), Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover (The University of Michigan Press 2004). google scholar
• ——, ‘Violence and the Word’ in Martha Minow, Michael Ryan and Austin Sarat (eds), Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover (The University of Michigan Press 2004). google scholar
• D’Entreves AP, The Notion of the State (Oxford University Press 1967). google scholar
• De Wilde M, ‘Violence in the State of Exception: Reflections on Theologico-Political Motifs in Benjamin and Schmitt’ in Hent de Vries and Lawrence E Sullivan (eds), Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (Fordham University Press 2006). google scholar
• Donnelly J, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (3rd ed, Cornell University Press 2013). google scholar
• Dyzenhaus D, ‘Kelsen, Heller and Schmitt: Paradigms of Sovereignty Thought’ (2015) 16 Theoretical Inquiries in Law accessed 11 October 2021. google scholar
• Fenves P, ‘“Out of the Order of Number”: Benjamin and Irigaray toward a Politics of Pure Means’ (1998) 28 Diacritics 43. google scholar
• Finer SE, ‘State- and Nation-Building in Europe: The Role of the Military’ in Charles Tilly (ed), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton University Press 1975). google scholar
• Gauchet M, ‘Les Tâches de La Philosophie Politique’ [2002] Revue du Mauss 275. google scholar
• Geneens R, ‘Sovereignty, Action, Autonomy’ in Bas Leijssenaar and Neil Walker (eds), Sovereignty in Action (Cambridge University Press 2019). google scholar
• Giddens A, The Nation-State and Violence (Polity Press 1985). google scholar
• Greenberg U, ‘Orthodox Violence: “Critique of Violence” and Walter Benjamin’s Jewish Political Theology’ (2008) 34 History of European Ideas 324. google scholar
• Grewal DS and Purdy J, ‘The Original Theory of Constitutionalism’ (2018) 127 Yale Law Journal 490. google scholar
• Grimm D, Sovereignty. The Origin and Future of a Political and Legal Concept (Belinda Cooper tr, Columbia University Press 2015). google scholar
• Hamacher W, ‘Afformative, Strike’ (1991) 13 Cardozo Law Review 1133. google scholar
• Hart HLA, The Concept of Law (Oxford University Press 2012). google scholar
• Henkin L, ‘That “S” Word: Sovereignty, and Globalization, and Human Rights, Et Cetera’ (1999) 68 Fordham Law Review 1. google scholar
• Hobbes T, Leviathan (Crawford B Macpherson ed, Penguin Books 1985). google scholar
• Höpfl H and Thompson MP, ‘The History of Contract as a Motif in Political Thought’ (1979) 84 The American Historical View 919. google scholar
• Hunter I, ‘Secularization: The Birth of a Modern Combat Concept’ (2015) 12 Modern Intellectual History 1. google scholar
• Kellogg C, ‘Walter Benjamin and the Ethics of Violence’ (2013) 9 Law, Culture and the Humanities 71. google scholar
• Kelsen H, General Theory of Law and State (Anders Wedberg tr, Harvard University Press 1949). google scholar
• Koskenniemi M, ‘What Use for Sovereignty Today?’ (2011) 1 Asian Journal of International Law 61. google scholar
• ——, ‘The Many Faces of Sovereignty. Introduction To Critical Legal Thinking’ (2017) 2 Kutafin University Law Review 282. google scholar
• Lindsay AD, ‘Sovereignty’ (1924) 24 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 235. google scholar Liska V, ‘The Legacy of Benjamin’s Messianism: Giorgio Agamben and Other Contenders’ in Rolf J Goebel (ed), A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin (Camden House 2009). google scholar
• Menke C, ‘Law and Violence’, Law and Violence: Christoph Menke in Dialogue (Manchester University Press 2018). google scholar
• Neumann F, The Rule of Law: Political Theory and the Legal System in Modern Society (Berg Publishers 1986). google scholar
• Pasquino P, ‘Popular Sovereignty: The People’s Two Bodies’ in Bas Leijssenaar and Neil Walker (eds), Sovereignty in Action (Cambridge University Press 2019). google scholar Poggi G, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Polity Press 2004). google scholar
• Ritchie DG, ‘Contributions to the History of the Social Contract Theory’ (1891) 6 Political Science Quarterly 656. google scholar
• Ross A, On Law and Justice (University of California Press 1959). google scholar
• Sarat A, ‘Situating Law Between the Realities of Violence and the Claims of Justice: An Introduction’ in Austin Sarat and Thomas R Kearns (eds), Law, Violence, and the Possibility of Justice (Princeton University Press 2001). google scholar
• Sarat A and Kearns TR, ‘Making Peace with Violence: Robert Cover on Law and Legal Theory’ in Austin Sarat (ed), Law, Violence, and the Possibility of Justice (Princeton University Press 2001). google scholar
• Schauer F, The Force of Law (Harvard University Press 2015). google scholar
• Schmitt C, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (University of Chicago Press ed, University of Chicago Press 2005). google scholar
• ——, ‘Statute and Judgment’ in Lars Vinx and Samuel Garret Zeitlin (eds), Lars Vinx and Samuel Garret Zeitlin (trs), Carl Schmitt’s Early Legal-Theoretical Writings (Cambridge University Press 2021). google scholar
• ——, ‘The Value of the State and the Significance of the Individual’ in Lars Vinx and Samuel Garret Zeitlin (eds), Lars Vinx and Samuel Garret Zeitlin (trs), Carl Schmitt’s Early Legal-Theoretical Writings (Cambridge University Press 2021). google scholar
• Skinner Q, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Volume One: The Renaissance (Cambridge University Press 2002). google scholar
• ——, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Volume Two: The Age of Reformation (Cambridge University Press 2004). google scholar
• ——, ‘The Sovereign State: A Genealogy’ in Hent Kalmo and Quentin Skinner (eds), Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept (Cambridge University Press 2010). google scholar
• Sommerville J, ‘The Social Contract (Contract of Government)’ in George Klosko (ed), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press 2011) . google scholar
• Sorel G, Reflexions Sur La Violence (Librairie Des Sciences Politiques et Sociales 1925). google scholar
• ——, Reflections on Violence (Jeremy Jennings ed, Thomas Ernest Hulme tr, Cambridge University Press 1999). google scholar
• Teubner G and Teubner G, ‘Global Bukowina: Legal Pluralism in the World Society’, Global Law Without a State (Dartsmouth 1997). google scholar
• Tuck R, The Sleeping Sovereign: The Invention of Modern Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2016). google scholar
• Vatter M, ‘Liberal Governmentality and the Political Theology of Constitutionalism’ in Bas Leijssenaar and Neil Walker (eds), Sovereignty in Action (Cambridge University Press 2019). google scholar
• Volk C, ‘The Problem of Sovereignty in Globalized Times’ (2019) 18 Law, Culture and the Humanities 716. google scholar
• Walker N, ‘When Sovereigns Stir’ in Bas Leijssenaar and Neil Walker (eds), Sovereignty in Action (1st edn, Cambridge University Press 2019). google scholar
• Weber M, ‘Politics as a Vocation’ in C Wright Mills and HH Gerth (eds), C Wright Mills and HH Gerth (trs), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Oxford University Press 1946). google scholar
• Witkowski M, ‘Political Violence and Instrumental Use of Religion in the Works of Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin’ (2022) 13 Religions 917.. google scholar
• Witte J, ‘Law and the Protestant Reformation’ in Heikki Pihlajamaki, Markus D Dubber and Mark Godfrey (eds), The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History (Oxford University Press 2018). google scholar
• Wolin S, ‘Violence and the Western Political Tradition’ (1963) 33 American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 15. google scholar
• ——, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton University Press 2004). google scholar
• Yaqoob W, ‘Reconciliation and Violence: Hannah Arendt on Historical Understanding’ (2014) 11 Modern Intellectual History 385. google scholar