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- Title
The sovereignty deficit: Afterword to the Foreword by Neil Walker.
- Authors
Johns, Fleur
- Abstract
The frenzy of sovereign claiming that Neil Walker describes in his enthralling Foreword reveals more about sovereignty's deficits, and prevailing anxieties about these deficits, than it evinces the expanding range of sovereignty. Sovereignty is clearly not eroding across the board, but it is far more fissured than Walker's Foreword article suggests, as more and more modes of governmental power perforate, parse and parry it. Sovereignty captures how some things work, some of the time, and a good measure of political rhetoric and aspiration. As a comprehensive or incisive analytic for contemporary power, however, it is inadequate. This Afterword fleshes out this claim by presenting counter-narratives to each of the five dimensions of Walker's analysis of contemporary mobilizations of sovereignty: decomposition as a counterpoint to Walker's story of recomposition; routing around in contrast to his account of raising; ransoming rather than rationing; monomania in lieu of reinforcement; and fetishization instead of reduction. Insofar as people are everywhere today grasping for sovereign determinacy, this may reveal more about the exhaustion of sovereignty's explanatory power than its continuing salience.
- Subjects
SOVEREIGNTY; CONSTITUTIONAL law; WALKER, Neil; JURISDICTION; CONSTITUTIONALISM
- Publication
International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2021, Vol 19, Issue 1, p6
- ISSN
1474-2640
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/icon/moab004