ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores the concept of sovereignty inherited from Westphalia has therefore flourished. So, however, has the importance of ideology in non-Western theories of governance, and therefore in non-Western approaches to sovereignty. Anthropologists for decades have been aware that institutions and concepts are extremely likely to differ between cultures. There is a tendency in Western political philosophy, for example, to assume that any status or prestige that does not involve the display of military strength or economic control is unimportant, whereas in reality, ideology is at least as important, if not more so, than these categories. It is not impossible, therefore, to continue in the twenty-first century to conceive of sovereignty as over peoples rather than territories, nor could that religion form the basis for a sense of identity or supreme authority that transcends national boundaries and citizenship.
