Sovereignty and the division of powers in the Doctrine of Right - the apriori and the empirical.'

This paper is intended for the Kantian Political Theory section which my colleague Andrew Jones and I are proposing. The purpose of this paper is to explore closely Kant's use of the idea of sovereignty in the Doctrine of Right. There are profound methodological considerations which structure Kant's approach to sovereignty. On the one hand neither does he believe that we can derive an account of sovereignty solely by examining the nature of the societies and polities that lie before us, and on the other nor does he believe that we can merely rely on an ideal concept which we construct in advance. The empirical and the a priori have to be brought together in the conceptualizing of sovereignty. Normatively we have to set out what we intend to achieve through sovereignty and then we have to relate it sensitively to the social, local and historical context.