ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that as international regimes become increasingly significant, democratic governments and publics will need to pay close attention to institutional changes that could threaten, or promote, democratic accountability. The growth of constraints on operational sovereignty has of course been essential to the expansion of institutionalized international cooperation; but its implications for democratic accountability may be less benign. Sovereignty remains a meaningful concept for the analysis of world politics, since most governments remain not only formally sovereign entities but are effective decision-making units, with substantial legal freedom of action. As the Kuwaiti example indicates, sovereignty is closely related to legitimacy, in the sense that extreme illegitimacy as a form of rule can be a justification for denial of sovereignty. In exceptional situations, where de facto rule seems illegitimate to the vast majority of their members, international organizations do sometimes challenge claims of formal sovereignty.
