ABSTRACT
The world’s dominant political form is the nation-state. A glance at a map shows how the world is divided up into territorial units called ‘France’, ‘Nigeria’, ‘Brazil’, and so on. The division of territory in this way is, of course, self-evidently political. The role of the state in domestic politics, indeed in the everyday lives of citizens, has increased enormously. But many of the state’s functions and its behaviour in the international arena are in no way novel. The absence of binding and legitimate authority in world politics means that the ‘rules of the game’ are—on the face of it and out of necessity—rather different from those that determine the conduct of domestic politics. The established rules of international politics are most obviously governed by the doctrine of sovereignty. Certainly, sovereignty is one of the most written-about political concepts, both in international law and international politics.
