“Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in Contemporary World Politics" by John Agnew

This article critically examines the historical interpretations of state power and sovereignty. Agnew points out that there is a discrepancy between many traditional accounts of state sovereignty and observed reality. The concept of the modern state, commonly considered to be a consequence of the Peace of Westphalia, casts the state as the “absolute territorial organization of political authority”. However, a number of current and past examples undermine such grand assumptions: shared sovereignty in late 20th Century Hong Kong, landless movements such as the Palestinian National Authority, and the extreme sums of power accumulated by international corporations.

Today, Agnew argues, governments require communication and infrastructure resources combined with a public cooperation, to successfully exert sovereignty. Globalization, continually erodes national sovereignty because the related policy and infrastructure necessitates shared and decentralized rule. Given the failure of classical sovereignty to explain many events in history, Agnew proposes a more nuanced classification of sovereignty: Classic (strong central authority with consolidated territory), globalist (strong central authority with open territory), integrative (weak central authority with consolidated territory), and imperialist (weak central authority and territorially open). However, Agnew cautions that spaces will rarely fall into these categories neatly. Instead, it is more important to recognize that political authority often supersedes the boundaries of the state.