ABSTRACT
Of all the possible ways of beginning a discussion of contemporary political possibilities and necessities, I have so far shaped my framing of the problem I want to address so as to insist that modern political life is formally organized in relation to the claims and capacities of the sovereign state and the system of sovereign states: to both, though ambivalently, in ways that produce both fundamental conflicts, in principle and in practice, and multiple negotiations, reconciliations and accommodations of conflicting principles and practices. It is not organized in relation to either the sovereign state or the system of sovereign states. Or perhaps it is better to say that it is not organized in relation to either one or the other, except when modern political life is in some kind of crisis, when it is subject to exceptional conditions. Or perhaps it is even better to say that it is not organized in relation to either one or the other, even when exceptional conditions prevail, given that exceptional conditions in this case only affirm the rule that modern political life is formally organized in relation to the claims of both the sovereign state and the system of sovereign states. Slight variations in formulation open up immense conceptual arenas in this respect: arenas that are usually understood in relation to the most extreme conditions of war and the most abstract questions about when and where modern political life begins and ends, and thus to the way the boundaries, borders and limits of political life are supposed to work. There are doubtless many rhetorical advantages to be gained from posing simple existential choices between the sovereign state and the system of states, as there are in posing similar choices between individual and society, liberty and equality, liberty and security, knowledge and power, democracy and authoritarianism, or friend and enemy. Nevertheless, rhetorical advantage is an uneasy criterion of analytical coherence. There is also some degree of empirical plausibility in the familiar claim that
the modern system of states has only a weak and largely prescriptive expression in international law and enforcement capacity, and may thus be treated
as a minor factor in situations shaped by state power, especially when the most powerful states really start throwing their weight around. Even so, modern political life cannot be understood through the discursive isolation of the state from the system of states, no matter how important or powerful any particular state might be, how weak the claims of international law may be, or how useful it might be to examine the modern system of states as an analytically discrete structural formation. Any attempt to do so wilfully effaces the contradictory character of modern politics and encourages silence about the most difficult sites, moments and practices of antagonism that must be negotiated, through resort to violence if necessary, and which must be engaged in any attempt to understand conflicts of principle and claims to sovereign authority. Weakness does not automatically translate into irrelevance. Greater power does not always imply greater authority. Self-assertion is no guarantee of political autonomy. Boundaries, borders and limits do not necessarily have only marginal significance. It may well be the case that statist parochialism remains a powerful political commitment, but it can never be an excusable scholarly strategy.1
