ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an identity-based approach to sovereignty, which accounts for the relationship between moral obligation and sovereignty, as well as how moral obligations are historically constructed and contingent. The identity-based theory of sovereignty and moral obligation suggests that a state understands itself in relation to other communities as a function of its sovereign identity, and this identity both shapes and is shaped by its moral obligations across political borders. A genealogical approach to moral obligation provides an opportunity to understand how shifting practices of sovereignty contribute to new constructions of moral obligations, at the same time at setting certain limits on those obligations. In the latter half of the twentieth century, a number of social theorists considered the role of difference in processes of identity formation. A problem that pre-dates the existence of the modern state system, and which characterizes international relations, is the question of how to form political relationships between different communities.
