| Summary: | In the recent theoretical scholarship on sovereignty, it has become commonplace to encounter the numerous ways in which state sovereignty has been quietly “outsourced” and “pooled” with other agents and institutions, especially international institutions aimed at promoting global governance and commerce. Frédéric Mégret's fascinating article, which contributes to this growing body of scholarship, adds an important twist to this literature, by focusing specifically on the privatization of state sovereignty—that is, how various sovereign functions, once thought to be essential or “inherent” to statehood, have now been outsourced and handed over to private actors. While Mégret's analysis concerns the consequences of privatized sovereignty on modern public international law, there is a rich pre-modern legal history anticipating the conceptual and normative problems explored in this piece. This essay focuses on some of those early modern sources, especially the theory of Jean Bodin (c.1530–1596), which bear a striking resemblance to Mégret's analysis. Like Mégret, Bodin, the preeminent theorist of state sovereignty, approached the concept of sovereignty by focusing on those qualities that were regarded to be exclusive.
|
|---|