The paper examines two divergent paths of sovereignty – the trajectory of the concept of sovereignty in political theory and the trajectory of the development of the sovereign statehood as the firm principle of post-war international law.
The conceptual development of sovereignty in political theory is reconstructed from the point of view of continuous discontents and repeated attempts to get rid of the concept. These attempts are derived from the essentialist interpretation of sovereignty in terms of the absolute, unitary, and lawless exercise of power. Contemporary debates on human rights, legal pluralism, and transnational governance seem to complete the task of rendering sovereignty obsolete for the explanation of legal and political authority in modern politics. I argue contrary to these attempts that de-absolutization of sovereignty is possible and that liberal democracies are in fact dangerous enterprises without sovereignty because sovereignty secures the link between democratic politics and the rule of law – a much needed connection especially in the context of transnational regimes of soft law with democratic deficit or of transnational emergency regimes of economic steering and military interventions.
Contrary to political theory, international politics and international law in the second half of the 20th century has relied on a rather traditional notion of sovereignty. Diverse episodes and contexts document this development towards a firm institutionalization of absolutist sovereignty doctrine in an allegedly post-sovereign world – cultural relativization of human rights, permanent sovereignty over natural resources, war against terrorism, financial governance by IMF and the World Bank etc. The principle "sovereignty over natural resources" is discussed in detail as a paradigmatic example of a praxis relying on absolutist notion of sovereignty and a pre-modern idea of territoriality principle that not only contradicts a plausible notion of democratic sovereignty, but also conflicts with demands of global justice.
