State sovereignty : the concept, the referent and the ramifications

Sammanfattning: State Sovereignty - the Concept, the Phenomenon and the Ramifications is an attempt to clarify the explanatory value and the paradoxes of the concept of state sovereignty on the basis of empirical questions related to the sovereignty of various types of political entities. The book is an endeavour to bridge the gap in the international relations literature between the traditional, unproblematic usage of the concept in empirical statements and the contemporary overly problematic view of this concept, which reduces its utility to disciplinary premises and discursive practices. Adopting a cross-disciplinary perspective, the book argues that state sovereignty is a qualitative and binary - both factually and judicially - phenomenon and that problematic cases and "loss" of sovereignty exist only at the margins of international society.