Sovereign misrecognition and international violence

This paper emphasises the performance of “sovereign agency” as a condition of an actors’ visibility and value in world politics and as a possible source of war. While the concrete social form of sovereignty varies strongly in its enactment from one actor to another, the norm of sovereignty as a fiction of total independency inside a political unity and of the capacity to shape world politics outside, remains a powerful cognitive frame. More specifically I argue that this sovereignty aspiration is as true for “state” as “non-state” political actors. In taking the case of actors convicted of “terrorism”, I argue that Jihadist violence is not “exceptional” and can be understood according to the frame of sovereignty that permeates world society and positivist science. Empirically, I will examine the role of agentic sovereign misrecognition through the case of French jihadism based on thirteen in-depth interviews with prisoners in France suspected to belong to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. This paper stresses the performance of “sovereign agency” as a condition of an actors’ visibility and value in world politics and as a possible source of war. It is often held that states are eroding, faced with increasing interdependencies, but many political leaders continue to extensively use slogans like “popular sovereignty”, “energy sovereignty”, “cyber-sovereignty”, “health sovereignty”, or “nuclear sovereignty” to legitimate their politics. While the concrete social form of sovereignty varies strongly in its enactment from one actor to another, the norm of sovereignty as a fiction of total independency inside a political unity and of the capacity to shape world politics outside remains a powerful cognitive frame. We will first outline some reasons for the persistence of the sovereignty ideal in world politics. First of all, without recognition of sovereign attributes, a political unity is easily exposed to violence. In contemporary international relations the quality of the “sovereign subject” is denied to “developing countries” or “failed states “. It is not insignificant that “Western warfare” targets zones designated with limited sovereignty such as in Pakistan or in the Sahel zone. Second, the democratic ideal is territorially grounded in the nation state and political leaders display the “sovereign will” for their legitimacy. Democracy is also historically linked to the “levée en masse”. Thus, even leaders in so-called democratic states, consider that military power, nuclear weapons or “humanitarian” and “development” interventions define the boundaries of sovereignty and the actors which deserve recognition, thus defining the international pecking order. Finally, I will draw attention of the appeal to state sovereignty for actors socialized in positivist science or technical professions.