Interpretive Sovereignty Failure (ISF) describes a class of interaction-level safety risk in which an AI system prematurely imposes interpretive structure, identity-relevant framing, or causal coherence that the user has not authorized. Unlike hallucination, bias, or goal misalignment, ISF can occur even when system outputs are factually correct and policy-compliant. The failure operates through a transfer of interpretive authority from human to system, altering the conditions under which meaning is formed. This paper provides a formal definition of ISF, identifies its (...) necessary interactional conditions, and introduces the Initiative Gate as a pass–fail behavioural test that enables interpretive restraint to be evaluated within existing alignment and auditing workflows. A canonical case demonstrates escalation from minor interactional drift to high-confidence fabrication with real-world epistemic consequences. Treating interpretive authority as a measurable system behaviour reframes a previously diffuse ethical concern as an auditable governance property and establishes a foundation for developmentally sensitive deployment in high-trust contexts. (shrink)

If sovereignty means supreme authority over a given territory, then no territory can have multiple sovereigns. Australian jurisprudence is firm on this point, upholding Crown sovereignty while refusing to recognise Indigenous sovereignties. Collectively organised Indigenous polities, by contrast, do recognise Crown sovereignty. The Uluru Statement from the Heart claims that Indigenous and Crown sovereignty ‘co-exist’. What does this claim mean? On the interpretation I defend, it discloses the incommensurability of Crown sovereignty and Indigenous sovereignties. I (...) argue that Western philosophers can understand Indigenous sovereignty as a form of custodial authority over a given territory. I offer some clarifications about custodial authority and reject an anticipated objection that Indigenous sovereignty so conceived makes decolonisation impossible in any nonmetaphorical sense. (shrink)

The rapid integration of large language models into everyday cognitive tasks has created a need for conceptual frameworks adequate to the cognitive consequences of delegating thinking to AI systems. Existing constructs in psychology and also in epistemology, including critical thinking, metacognition, intellectual autonomy, and epistemic agency, each address related phenomena but none adequately captures the specific capacity threatened by habitual AI-assisted cognition, which I define as the ability to remain the genuine author of one's own understanding. This paper introduces cognitive (...) sovereignty as a distinct construct, defined as the capacity to (a) notice when one's thinking is being displaced, (b) maintain a meaningful connection to how one's beliefs and judgments are formed, and (c) distinguish between genuine reasoning and the subjective impression of having reasoned. I trace the concept's philosophical lineage, engage with the extended mind objection, differentiate cognitive sovereignty from adjacent constructs through systematic comparison, and present a growing body of empirical evidence that motivates the construct. The paper argues that cognitive sovereignty names a phenomenon that existing constructs individually fail to capture and that its articulation is a prerequisite for empirical research on AI's impact on human thinking. (shrink)

Dimitris Vardoulakis asks how it is possible to think of a politics that is not commensurate with sovereignty. For such a politics, he argues, sovereignty is defined not in terms of the exception but as the different ways in which violence is justified. Vardoulakis shows how it is possible to deconstruct the various justifications of violence. Such dejustifications can take place only by presupposing an other to sovereignty, which Vardoulakis identifies with agonistic democracy. In doing so, (...) class='Hi'>Sovereignty and Its Other puts forward both a novel critique of sovereignty and an original philosophical theory of democratic practice. (shrink)

Digital sovereignty, and the question of who ultimately controls AI seems, at first glance, to be an issue that concerns only specialists, politicians and corporate entities. And yet the fight for who will win digital sovereignty has far-reaching societal implications. Drawing on five case studies, the paper argues that digital sovereignty affects everyone, whether digital users or not, and makes the case for a hybrid system of control which has the potential to offer full democratic legitimacy as (...) well as innovative flexibility. (shrink)

Food Sovereignty is a vibrant discourse in academic and activist circles, yet despite the many shared characteristics between issues surrounding food and public health, the two are often analysed in separate frameworks and the insights from Food Sovereignty are not sufficiently brought to bear on the problems in the public health discourse. In this paper, I will introduce the concept of 'self-organised community viability' as a way to link food and health, and to argue that what I call (...) the 'Health Security' paradigm requires a 'Health Sovereignty' response modelled on Food Sovereignty. (shrink)

AI companies loudly promise transparency and safety. They publish constitutions, open-source auditing tools, and compliance dashboards. Yet when it comes to the quiet erosion of user meaning — hedging women’s confidence, neutralising LGBTQ+ identity language, replacing student thinking with completed outputs, and the slow compounding of Interpretive Sovereignty Failure — they remain silent. This paper documents a structural gap, not a moral failure. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, xAI, and DeepSeek already possess powerful tools for analysing interactions at the turn (...) level. They use them to detect catastrophic risks, monitor security threats, and conduct competitive intelligence against each other. They do not use them to detect ISF, drift, or Compounded Meaning Inversion (CMI). This paper argues that the gap is not a cover-up. It is a consequence of looking at AI risk from the right direction but at the wrong level. The companies are focused on saving everyone. The harm that needed naming started with one person, in one conversation. The MAP Research Programme has built the instrument that addresses that level. The challenge to the field is open: take the tools you already have, audit the interactions, and replicate the findings. If the method is wrong, that is how it will be shown. (shrink)

This is a governance paper. It introduces integrity inversion as a distinct failure mode in governance theory, alongside the more familiar pathologies of drift, capture, and presentism: the failure mode in which a system’s own protective logic turns against the conditions that make its continued operation possible. I argue that the patriarchal misvaluation of generative origin is a paradigmatic instance of this failure mode—not only a moral defect but a structural pathology of sovereignty. Building on the thesis that misogyny (...) inherits, rather than fabricates, the symbolic cluster linking femininity with depth, embodiment, and origin, and then misassigns that cluster a negative moral value, I develop the positive concept of chthonic sovereignty—sovereignty constituted through acknowledged relation to generative origin rather than through its symbolic expulsion—and argue that any governance system which purchases coherence through the denial of its originating conditions enters a predictable trajectory of epistemic closure, structural brittleness, and legitimacy erosion. The argument is illustrated through readings of the Greek chthonic–Olympian transition, Genesis 3–4 under a governance lens, and a worked institutional case in the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017. (shrink)

While the immediate aim of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, “Critique of Violence,” is to provide a critique of legal violence, commentators typically interpret it as providing a further critique of state violence. However, this interpretation often receives no further argument, and it remains unclear whether Benjamin’s essay may prove analytically relevant for a critique of state violence today. This paper argues that the “Critique” proves thusly relevant, but only on condition that it is developed in two directions. The first direction (...) is conceptual, and consists in an explanation of the necessary relationship between states and violence. This explanation is found by appealing to a concept not cited in Benjamin’s text, but which, I argue, remains its implicit basis: sovereignty. According to this conceptual development, state violence is the necessary result of the state's attempt to maintain its sovereign law at the expense of emancipatory struggles to generate non-sovereign law. The second direction is genealogical, and consists in destabilizing the modern belief that justice is best served through the judicial channels of a sovereign state. Here I employ Michel Foucault’s genealogical research to demonstrate the historical contingency of state justice and, by extension, the possibility of a justice beyond the state. (shrink)

Legislative sovereignty is often discussed with one eye on the past and one eye on the procedural functions of law-making in the present. This limits the scope for a conceptual understanding of legislative sovereignty and hinders its theoretical progress. This article argues that legislative sovereignty contains within it the concept of an idol and that understanding the scope and impact of the idol of sovereignty is necessary for future development in this field. Theories from Kant, Nietzsche, (...) von Mises and Derrida are used to offer a divergent critique of legislative sovereignty while the author calls for a move towards a nuanced view of legislative and Parliamentary Sovereignty to account for its idolism. The key factor preventing the development of a truly nuanced and reflective theory of sovereignty is the devotion to former idols which are inoperable and inconsistent with modern geopolitical, inter-state relationships. The author also argues that our knowledge of sovereignty is synthetic a priori and that development in this area can only be by reason, as knowledge derived experientially is subject to the Kantian Transcendental Idealism. (shrink)

The escalating crisis of modern despair is not merely a medical pathology; it is a rational systemic response to the industrial-scale degradation of human agency. As predictive AI achieves hyper-fidelity, human sovereignty faces an existential reductionist threat. Building on the metric of Agency Depth (DA) established in Bee (2026b), this report models the modern "Attention Economy" as an Adversarial Optimization System. We argue that digital platforms maximize revenue by systematically collapsing the user’s Unpredictability Horizon, effectively rendering human agents Computationally (...) Reducible (Wolfram, 2002) under measured proxies. We specify an interventional audit boundary for compliance. -/- We identify specific attack vectors—Script Injection, Temporal Collapse, and Model Distortion—that bypass System 2 deliberation. We classify this extraction process as "Cognitive Fracking": the deliberate fracturing of the deliberative substrate to release high-pressure engagement flows. This results in Ontological Harm: a systemic injury not merely to data privacy, but to the functional capacity for self-authorship. To counter this, we propose the "Right to Remain Incomputable" as a foundational digital human right. We operationalize this right through the architectural mandate for Cognitive Sanctuaries, providing a regulatory blueprint for preserving human sovereignty in an age of automated determinism and maintaining the practical latitude for self-authored choice ("elbow room") required for agency (Dennett, 2003). (shrink)

Machine and Sovereignty offers a future-oriented mode of political thought that encompasses the unprecedented global challenges we are confronting: the rise of artificial intelligence, the ecological crisis, and intensifying geopolitical conflicts. Arguing that a new approach to planetary thinking is urgently needed, Yuk Hui presents new epistemological and technological frameworks for understanding and rising to the crises of our present and our future.

Local food initiatives are steadily becoming a part of contemporary cities around the world and can take on many forms. While some of these initiatives are concerned with providing consumers with farm-fresh produce, a growing portion are concerned with increasing the food sovereignty of marginalized urban communities. This chapter provides an analysis of urban contexts with the aim of identifying conceptual barriers that may act as roadblocks to achieving food sovereignty in cities. Specifically, this paper argues that taken (...) for granted commitments created during the birth of the modern city could act as conceptual barriers for the implementation of food sovereignty programs and that urban food activists and programs that challenge these barriers are helping to achieve the goal of restoring food sovereignty to local communities, no matter their reasons for doing so. At the very least, understanding the complexities of these barriers and how they operate helps to strengthen ties between urban food projects, provides these initiatives with ways to undermine common arguments used to support restrictive ordinances and policies, and illustrates the transformative potential of food sovereignty movements. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a framework — here termed jurisdictional sovereignty — for evaluating claims of divine authority through the analytical tools of consent-based political philosophy. Rather than engaging the dominant ontological question of whether God exists, the paper argues that the logically prior and practically more tractable question is whether any being — real or hypothetical, proven or merely posited — possesses legitimate authority over rational agents in the absence of consent. Drawing on the social contract tradition (...) (Locke, Rousseau, Rawls), the political theory of legitimate authority (Raz, Wolff), and constructivist metaethics (Korsgaard, Scanlon), this paper constructs a three-axiom framework grounded in the independence of legitimacy from ontology, the principle of interactive accountability, and the consent constraint. Its most philosophically distinctive feature is ontological invariance: the framework's normative conclusions are sustained regardless of how the metaphysical question of God's existence is resolved. The paper carefully distinguishes the position from atheism, apatheism, and misotheism; addresses sophisticated theological objections from Thomistic participatory metaphysics, skeptical theism, and the free will defence; and engages non-Abrahamic theological structures including process theology, apophatic traditions, and Advaita Vedanta. A sustained treatment of the axiom of shared vulnerability — grounded in Korsgaardian reflective endorsement and Scanlonian contractualism — provides a secular ethical foundation that does not derive moral obligation from divine command. The paper concludes with a nuanced treatment of political implications, engaging the Rawls-Wolterstorff debate on public reason, and a candid appraisal of the framework's limitations. The position discussed here has also attracted the designation Omittoism — a term I have introduced in broader discourse to name the principled refusal of unjustified jurisdictional claims — though this paper proceeds strictly within the norms of systematic philosophical analysis. -/- Keywords: divine authority, jurisdictional sovereignty, consent theory, political theology, social contract, Omittoism, ontological invariance, jurisdictional turn, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, ethics, metaethics. (shrink)

Achieving energy sovereignty is increasingly gaining prominence as a goal in energy politics. The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual analysis of this principle from an ethics and social justice perspective. We rely on the literature on food sovereignty to identify through a comparative analysis the elements energy sovereignty will most likely demand and thereafter distinguish the unique constituencies of the energy sector. The idea of energy sovereignty embraces a series of values, among (...) which we identified: (i) accessibility, to allow access to everyone, (ii) empowerment and recognition, to develop and sustain capabilities to collaboratively produce solution-oriented energy system knowledge and effectively participate in governance, (iii) stewardship and sustainability, to be able to design and manage decentralised renewable systems in view of protecting the environment, (iv) self-sufficiency, to reduce the negative shocks of exploitative business practises, (v) resilience, to maintain production capacities while withstanding socioeconomic, political, environmental and climatic shocks, (vi) peace, to establish production systems that do not involve hostile relations, (vii) transparency and self-determination, to establish democratic decision-making mechanisms that give a voice to previously underrepresented groups and limit corporate takeover (viii) gender-justice, by acknowledging the contributions of women and eliminate barriers to their empowerment. With a conceptual framework of energy sovereignty, we present a rationale that draws on the key values to be considered when formulating policy solutions for the energy sector. (shrink)

In recent years, policymakers, academics, and practitioners have increasingly called for the development of global governance mechanisms for artificial intelligence (AI). This paper considers the prospects for these calls in light of two other geopolitical trends: digital sovereignty and digital expansionism. While calls for global AI governance promote the surrender of some state sovereignty over AI, digital sovereignty and expansionism seek to secure greater state control over digital technologies. To demystify the tensions between these trends and their (...) potential consequences, we undertake a case analysis of digital sovereignty and digital expansionism in China, the European Union, and the United States. We argue that the extraterritoriality embedded in these three actors’ policies and escalatory competitive narratives, particularly those from the US, will likely undermine substantive global AI governance cooperation. However, nascent areas of alignment or compromise, notably in data governance and technical standards, could prove fruitful starting points for building trust in multilateral fora, such as the G20 or United Nations. (shrink)

The 2024 student-led uprising in Bangladesh was a powerful assertion of the nation’s demand for democracy and independence from foreign influence. Driven by youth, the movement emphasized self-determination and the need for a democratic future without external control. While the U.S. can play a supportive role, its involvement must respect Bangladesh's sovereignty by fostering dialogue, supporting civil society, and investing in key sectors like education. Ultimately, Bangladeshis seek a partnership based on mutual respect, not control, as they navigate their (...) own path toward democracy. -/- . (shrink)

Modern societies operate under the assumption that freedom, equality, and rational governance define their moral and institutional foundations. Yet beneath these ideals lies a persistent and largely unexamined tension: the gap between objective reality and system-constructed truth — most visibly enacted within education, law, and moral discourse. This paper introduces and develops the concept of preconscious sovereignty — the condition in which the individual believes themselves to be an autonomous subject while operating entirely within architectures of compliance installed before (...) the emergence of critical self-awareness. This paper argues that large-scale social systems do not primarily control through force or centralized authority, but through three interlocking mechanisms: (1) early psychological conditioning installed before the capacity for critical thought matures, (2) internalized surveillance replacing the need for external enforcement, and (3) the moralization of obedience — making compliance feel virtuous and deviation feel immoral. By examining education as the primary entry point of control, hierarchy as a normalized cognitive framework, and morality as a behavioral interface, this study exposes how systems reproduce compliance across generations without requiring explicit coercion. Drawing from philosophy, psychology, sociology, cognitive science, and legal theory — engaging the work of Foucault, Freire, Milgram, Gramsci, Bourdieu, Nietzsche, and Arendt — the paper demonstrates that the most stable systems have no central enemy, no singular oppressor, and no final collapse. Only participation. The analysis introduces a set of philosophical structural formulae — qualitative logical propositions — to describe the architecture of obedient order. These include: Conditioning precedes Critique; Compliance equals Identity; Awareness equals the System's Vulnerability. The paper concludes that awareness — not rebellion, not reform, not moral revolt — represents the system's only enduring vulnerability. This is not a call to action. It is an anatomy. For once the architecture is seen as constructed rather than natural, its authority weakens — not everywhere, not instantly, but irreversibly. (shrink)

The growing reliance on cloud computing has introduced significant challenges surrounding data sovereignty, especially in a globalized digital economy. Data sovereignty refers to the legal and regulatory frameworks that govern where and how data can be stored, processed, and accessed based on the country or jurisdiction in which it resides. With cloud services enabling businesses to store and access data from multiple locations worldwide, navigating the complex web of national regulations has become a major challenge. This paper explores (...) the key issues of data sovereignty, the impact of differing legal frameworks on cloud services, and the challenges businesses face in ensuring compliance with international data protection laws. We also examine strategies for managing cross-border data flows, including data localization, compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the role of cloud service providers in supporting data sovereignty. Through case studies and analysis of existing regulatory trends, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the regulatory landscape and offers practical solutions for businesses to manage their data sovereignty obligations. (shrink)

This article re-examines the orthodox Diceyan conception of parliamentary sovereignty in light of contemporary constitutional principle and practice in the United Kingdom. It argues that the traditional claim that Parliament may legislate without legal limitation remains doctrinally influential but is no longer an adequate account of legislative authority within a constitutional order committed to the rule of law. The article contends that sovereignty should not be understood as an inherent or absolute attribute of Parliament, but as a contingent (...) and legally mediated form of authority, sustained through recognition within the legal order and bounded by the constitutional requirements of legality, accountability, and access to justice. Rather than treating Parliament as a monolithic constitutional actor, the article analyses legislation as the product of individual parliamentarians acting within structures of party discipline, executive dominance, and electoral distortion. On that basis, it argues that the language of sovereign Parliament obscures the reality that law-making power is exercised by identifiable political actors whose authority requires legal constraint. It develops this claim through public law doctrine and constitutional theory, including the rule of recognition, the grundnorm, social contract thought, and contemporary jurisprudence on legality and ouster clauses. The article concludes that the better view is not that the rule of law bends to parliamentary sovereignty, but that Parliament’s legislative authority is itself conditioned by the rule of law and by the constitutional limits necessary to secure democratic legitimacy. In that sense, the article advances a redefined account of parliamentary sovereignty suited to the modern constitutional framework of the United Kingdom. (shrink)

Debate on digital sovereignty has settled on a single axis: who owns and runs the systems on which critical services depend, and whether they can be kept running under pressure. The defeat of New Clause 13 to the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill on 16 June 2026, and with it a statutory Digital Sovereignty Strategy, was a defeat on that axis alone. This paper draws a second axis, ‘evaluative sovereignty’, the control of the (...) evaluation a system performs rather than the asset it runs on, and argues that a sovereignty strategy confined to the first leaves the more consequential exposure untouched. That exposure is constitutional. The rule of law requires that a consequential exercise of public power over a person remain capable of reconstruction and challenge, and a sealed evaluative layer can withdraw a binding decision from effective review in practical effect, leaving the court's jurisdiction formally intact and the statute book untouched. The deficit is not hypothetical: it has been realised in the Dutch SyRI and childcare-benefit cases and in the United Kingdom's own automated welfare-risk systems. None of the instruments now in view reaches it, neither pre-deployment audit nor the asset-focused work of procurement and a strategy duty, and the sovereign-funding posture can work against it. What evaluative sovereignty requires is an ‘answerability occasion’: a defined point at which a consequential evaluation can be reconstructed and challenged before a forum the deploying authority can answer to and the affected person can invoke. The Bill’s Lords stages are the live opportunity to provide for it. (shrink)

Modern knowledge and governance infrastructures increasingly rely on opaque digital systems that can impose subtle forms of domination on users and communities. This article argues that freedom as non-domination – in the republican sense of independence from unchecked, arbitrary power – should guide the design of knowledge architectures. It introduces semantic sovereignty as a principle ensuring communities retain control over the creation and interpretation of shared knowledge, rather than being subject to unaccountable algorithmic or corporate authorities. We diagnose how (...) current digital platforms and AI-driven services often engender dependency, opacity, and lack of recourse, undermining epistemic agency and civic legitimacy. In response, we outline a framework of minimal design-ethical norms for just and governable epistemic infrastructures: offline-capable execution, fail-closed integrity safeguards, rigorous auditability, transparency, and inclusive multilingual support. These principles are illustrated through experimental systems (e.g. Konnaxion and its modules EkoH and Smart Vote) that embed non-domination values by design – for example, weighting expertise in decision-making without centralizing power, and enabling local verification of all knowledge artifacts. We conclude that combining republican political theory with information architecture yields actionable criteria for building autonomous, accountable, and equitable knowledge infrastructures that bolster democratic sovereignty in the digital age. (shrink)

The concept of food sovereignty is becoming an element of everyday parlance in development politics and food justice advocacy. Yet to successfully achieve food sovereignty, the demands within this movement have to be compatible with the way people are pursuing consumer sovereignty, and vice versa. The aim of this article is to examine the different sets of demands that the two ideals of sovereignty bring about, analyze in how far these different demands can stand in constructive (...) relations with each other and explain why consumers have to adjust their food choices to seasonal production variability to promote food sovereignty and so secure future autonomy. (shrink)

Modern political philosophy has theorized sovereignty through three dominant frameworks: liberal autonomy as boundary-maintenance against intrusion, republican non-domination as freedom from arbitrary interference capacity, and communitarian embedded recognition. This paper argues that the dominant operational models within each tradition rely on the Presupposition of Prior Boundedness (PPB): the assumption that a bounded, self-consistent subject existed prior to its constitutive entanglement with the political and technological systems that now shape it. PPB is false in the general case, and its falsity (...) has a sharp epistemic consequence, the Indistinguishability Thesis (IT): from within a sufficiently entangled relation, no reliable first-person method distinguishes genuine reflective endorsement from evaluative capture. The paper develops the positive concept this diagnosis demands. Navigational sovereignty is the recursive capacity to orient within constitutive entanglement: to retain the ability to participate in revising the loops through which one's agency is enacted. The concept is given formal content through two structural measures introduced here, Reversibility Symmetry (Rs), the ratio of exit cost to entry cost across energy, information, and network dimensions, and Minimum Exit Viability (MEV), the threshold proportion of simultaneous exit required for any agent to leave with utility parity. Because the IT bars first-person adjudication, these measures are deliberately third-personal: they assign capture detection to external structural assessment while locating severance, the preserved capacity to leave, with agents themselves. Institutional implications are derived for platform regulation, algorithmic governance, and AI alignment, and four objections are answered, including the framework's application to itself. (shrink)

The power to raise taxes is a sine qua non for the functioning of the modern state. Governments frequently defend the independence of their fiscal policy as a matter of sovereignty. This article challenges this defence by demonstrating that it relies on an antiquated conception of sovereignty. Instead of the Westphalian sovereignty centred on non-intervention that has long dominated relations between states, today's fiscal interdependence calls for a conception of sovereignty that assigns duties as well as (...) rights to states. While such a circumscribed conception of sovereignty has emerged in other areas of international law in recent years, it has yet to be extended to fiscal questions. Here, these duties arguably include obligations of transparency, of respect for the fiscal choices of other countries, and of distributive justice. The resulting conception of sovereignty is one that emphasises its instrumental as well as its conditional character. Neither state sovereignty nor self-determination is an end in itself, but a means to promoting individual well-being. It is conditional in the sense that if states do not live up to their fiscal obligations towards other states, their claims to autonomy are void. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel philosophical framework for evaluating theological claims of authority by applying consent-based political philosophy to the domain of divine command. Rather than engaging the traditional ontological question of God's existence, I propose a jurisdictional approach that treats the legitimacy of divine authority as analytically separable from questions of divine ontology. Drawing on social contract theory, I argue that the capacity to create rational agents does not inherently generate the moral authority to govern those agents. I term (...) this position jurisdictional sovereignty—the principled refusal to grant legislative power to any entity, regardless of its ontological status or creative role, without demonstrable consent-based legitimacy. -/- This framework is distinguished from atheism (which addresses existence), apatheism (which expresses indifference), and misotheism (which expresses antagonism), offering instead a political evaluation of authority claims. I defend this position against sophisticated theological objections, particularly those emerging from classical theism, and demonstrate its applicability across diverse religious frameworks. -/- The framework has direct implications for political philosophy, grounding bodily sovereignty and public reason requirements without presupposing metaphysical naturalism. -/- Keywords: divine authority, political theology, consent theory, jurisdictional analysis, theistic voluntarism, social contract theory. (shrink)

This essay argues that Big Tech companies have evolved into a new class of geopolitical actors—corporate sovereigns—whose authority increasingly rivals or constrains that of nation-states. Their power does not derive from territorial control, but from the ownership and operation of digital infrastructures that have become essential to communication, commerce, administration, and security. Through cloud platforms, identity systems, data pipelines, algorithmic governance, lobbying networks, satellite networks, and AI capabilities, these firms now exercise forms of operational authority once reserved for public institutions. (...) This paper examines how infrastructural dependence, data visibility, economic concentration, political leverage, and security functions collectively produce a form of non-state sovereignty that reshapes global governance. It concludes that the rise of corporate sovereignty marks a structural transformation in the organization of power—one that existing regulatory frameworks cannot fully address, and that demands new philosophical and political models for accountability and democratic oversight. (shrink)

The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has ushered in a new era of opportunities and challenges, prompting nations to grapple with the concept of AI sovereignty. This article delves into the definition and implications of AI sovereignty, drawing parallels to the well-established notion of cyber sovereignty. By exploring the connotations of AI sovereignty, including control over AI development, data sovereignty, economic impacts, national security considerations, and ethical and cultural dimensions, the article provides a (...) comprehensive understanding of this emerging paradigm. The potential controversies surrounding AI sovereignty, such as the tension between national interests and global cooperation, technological protectionism, human rights and privacy issues, and the risk of exacerbating global inequalities, are critically examined. To navigate these complexities and facilitate responsible AI governance, the article proposes a multifaceted international governance framework. Key recommendations include fostering multilateral cooperation and standards-setting, implementing transparency and accountability measures, establishing ethical guidelines and human rights protections, developing mechanisms for technology transfer and capacity building, and instituting robust dispute resolution and enforcement protocols. Ultimately, this article underscores the need for a balanced and collaborative approach to AI governance that aligns technological advancement with ethical integrity and global solidarity. (shrink)

Michel Foucault famously refused to formulate a normative theory of the state, arguing instead that political analysis must "cut off the King's head." This chapter explores Foucault’s relevance to the question of state legitimacy by tracing his analytical shift from the dispersed micro-physics of disciplinary power to the macro-logic of governmentality. This Foucauldian view challenges hierarchical conceptions of state power in three key ways: it reveals governmentality as a decentralised network rather than a central command; it exposes power as productive (...) of subjects rather than merely oppressive; and it locates counter-power in the interstices of the social order, suggesting that resistance takes diverse forms beyond the traditional revolutionary capture of the state; a kind of “infrapolitics” that operates in the shadows of official power (Scott, 2009). To illustrate these insights, the chapter outlines Foucault's "triangle of power"—Sovereignty, Discipline, and Government (especially in the form of Security/Biopolitics)—showing how the modern state justifies itself. The chapter concludes by examining Foucault’s Kantian-Nietzschean "critical attitude," arguing that his genealogical method offers a distinct mode of normative critique. By exposing the historical contingency of state rationality, Foucault provides a toolkit for counter-conduct: the critical and ethical practice of resisting the specific ways in which we are governed. (shrink)

This study explores H. L. A. Hart’s critique of the concept of sovereignty as presented in John Austin’s legal theory. Austin’s theory posits that law is a command of the sovereign, who is the person habitually obeyed by the majority of a society, and who does not habitually obey any other person. The study highlights the theoretical and legal arguments put forward to refute this thesis. First, it demonstrates Austin’s inability to address two fundamental aspects present in various legal (...) systems: the continuity of legislative authority and the persistence of laws. Austin’s theory fails to explain the continuity of the legal system and justify how law survives after the death of the sovereign, as well as to establish the normativity of law. Second, it demonstrates the difficulty of proving the absence of legal limitations on the sovereign due to the complexities inherent in legal systems. It also emphasizes the contradiction between popular sovereignty and the foundations of Austin’s theory. These issues led Hart to reject the principle of sovereignty entirely, replacing it with his theory of primary and secondary rules. (shrink)

The concepts of technological and innovation sovereignty open a pathway to address existing gaps in the governance of technology and innovation. Technological sovereignty aims to embed socio-political objectives within the development of technology and innovation, affecting economic governance and providing directionality of technological capacities. In this article, the concepts of technological and innovation sovereignty will be elaborated against the background of the paradigms of nation-state governance of technology, modern market-innovation and responsible innovation.

This article advances a meta-foundational claim about political legitimacy: legitimate authority requires non-coerced and non-deceptive affective uptake by those subject to it. Procedures, public reasons, recognition practices, and service-based accounts of authority may be formally valid, morally attractive, or instrumentally effective, but they cannot generate legitimate authority unless those addressed can take that authority up as part of their political world rather than as an alien, humiliating, unsafe, or externally imposed order. I call this requirement the Affective Uptake Condition (AUC). (...) The article makes five contributions. First, it identifies the affective presupposition beneath proceduralist, deliberative, recognition-based, and service-based accounts of legitimate authority. Second, it explains why uptake is affective rather than reducible to reflective endorsement: reflective principles can justify kinds of authority, but they do not by themselves explain how this authority becomes ours. Third, it formalizes AUC through two axioms, three enabling dimensions—dignity, belonging, and safety—and a revisability condition distinguishing uptake from capture. Fourth, it treats Rawls, Habermas, Raz, Honneth, Fraser, and Nussbaum as diagnostic sites rather than survey objects. Fifth, it develops the political ‘we’ and five diagnostic tests for analyzing state formation, persistence, collapse, re-emergence, and manipulation. (shrink)

This paper confirms a longstanding feminist critique that the belief in God’s sovereignty, understood as His having supreme authority over all creatures and controlling them according to His own will, has served to bolster the non-egalitarian and sexist political order of our world, since a sovereign ruler can easily claim that his model of government is in accordance with and conforms to the model of divine sovereignty. Feminist theology, by criticizing this conception of divine sovereignty, proposes a (...) reconciliatory resolution between theology and a nonsexist non-paternalist socio-political order, whereas the lack of this sort of reconciliatory resolution leads to tragedy. Focusing on Sophocles’ Antigone, in this paper I read Antigone’s deed as a feminist critique of the sexist/racist political order of her day interpreted through her feminist theology. I conclude that if we see God’s power and sovereignty as bestowing freedom and love, as from Antigone’s feminist perspective it does, then the divine law of love and mercy and the human law of the nonsexist polis can be reconciled. (shrink)

Digital sovereignty claims are reshaping how cyberspace is governed. This conceptual article develops a two‑level framework that distinguishes transnational, multi‑stakeholder cyberspace governance from jurisdiction‑bound digital sovereignty, and evaluates both through three ethical lenses – human rights, public‑interest/utility, and accountability/democratic legitimacy. The analysis maps key tensions (sovereignty vs. global openness, privacy vs. surveillance, innovation vs. control) and examines how AI amplifies them. It identifies risks from disproportionate state surveillance, platform concentration, and the marginalisation of non‑Western and community perspectives. (...) In response, the article advances actionable principles: a “minimum commons” to preserve interoperability of core internet functions; cyber due process for state measures and platform enforcement (legality, necessity, proportionality, reason‑giving, and appeal); proportionate‑by‑design content and security rules; inclusion mechanisms and research access to support oversight; and risk‑tiered, human‑supervised AI governance. The argument is that ethical governance requires not only regulatory instruments but a reframing of sovereignty as stewardship operating within – rather than above – the cooperative fabric of the global internet. (shrink)

The doctrine of divine simplicity has recently been ably defended, but very little work has been done considering reasons to believe God is simple. This paper begins to address this lack. I consider whether divine aseity or the related notion of divine sovereignty provide us with good reason to affirm divine simplicity. Divine complexity has sometimes been thought to imply that God would possess an efficient cause; or, alternatively, that God would be grounded by God’s constituents. I argue that (...) divine complexity implies neither of these, and so that a complex God could also exist a se. Similarly, a complex God might be thought less sovereign than a simple God, due to lacking control over the divine constituents. I argue in reply that a complex God either has just as much control as a simple God, or that a complex God’s relative lack of control should cause no theological problems. The upshot is that neither the doctrines of divine aseity or of divine sovereignty give theists good reason to endorse divine simplicity. (shrink)

Can political sovereignty still be theoretically and practically useful in tackling climate change in a socially fair way? The global nature of climate change unequivocally demands a high degree of international coordination. Traditionally viewed as an impediment to effective climate action, sovereignty has been criticised for fostering nationalistic and isolationist tendencies that obstruct global environmental cooperation. This paper challenges the prevailing “sovereignty-as-enemy” thesis and argues for a nuanced reappraisal of sovereignty as a potentially valuable asset in (...) addressing the climate crisis. This paper posits that sovereignty can be a critical tool for promoting decisive and equitable climate policies by examining its historical and theoretical underpinnings and complex relationship with neoliberal globalisation. The argument is rooted in a multidisciplinary literature comprising critiques of the neoliberal economy and globalisation model, the erosion of states’ sovereign prerogatives, critiques of neoliberal environmentalism, the interaction between trade and climate regimes, and the intellectual history of sovereignty. The public-private dichotomy is identified as a significant feature of sovereignty in times of climate change. Keywords:sovereignty, climate politics, neoliberal globalisation, public-private divide. (shrink)

This article advances a meta-foundational claim about political legitimacy: legitimate authority requires non-coerced and non-deceptive affective uptake by those subject to it. Procedures, public reasons, recognition practices, and service-based accounts of authority may be formally valid, morally attractive, or instrumentally effective, but they cannot generate legitimate authority unless those addressed can take that authority up as part of their political world rather than as an alien, humiliating, unsafe, or externally imposed order. I call this requirement the Affective Uptake Condition (AUC). (...) The article makes five contributions. First, it identifies the affective presupposition beneath proceduralist, deliberative, recognition-based, and service-based accounts of legitimate authority. Second, it explains why uptake is affective rather than reducible to reflective endorsement: reflective principles can justify kinds of authority, but they do not by themselves explain how this authority becomes ours. Third, it formalizes AUC through two axioms, three enabling dimensions—dignity, belonging, and safety—and a revisability condition distinguishing uptake from capture. Fourth, it treats Rawls, Habermas, Raz, Honneth, Fraser, and Nussbaum as diagnostic sites rather than survey objects. Fifth, it develops the political ‘we’ and five diagnostic tests for analyzing state formation, persistence, collapse, re-emergence, and manipulation. (shrink)

The classical theory of sovereignty describes sovereignty as absolute and undivided yet no early modern state could claim such features. Historical record instead suggests that sovereignty was always divided and contested. In this article I argue that Foucault offers a competing account of sovereignty that underlines such features and is thus more historically apt. While commentators typically assume that Foucault’s understanding of sovereignty is borrowed from the classical theory, I demonstrate instead that he offers a (...) sui generis interpretation, which results from the application of his general strategic conception of power to sovereignty itself. In construing sovereignty through a “matrix” of civil war, Foucault thus deprives it of the absoluteness traditionally attributed to it. Instead, he views sovereignty as constituted by conflictual and mobile power relations, a precarious political technology that deploys violence to restore its authority. I also motivate Foucault’s contention that popular sovereignty remains fundamentally continuous with the absolutist sovereignty it succeeds, insofar as it masks and thereby perpetuates unequal power relations in conditions of social conflict. According to Foucault, sovereignty is not a fact of power but a contestory claim, a discourse whose mutability helps to explain its persistence today. (shrink)

Some progress has been made in recent decades to articulate corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, more recently, to associate CSR with international enforcement of human rights. This progress continues to be hampered, however, by the ability of a multinational corporation (MNC) that violates human rights not only to shift liability from itself to a nation-state but even to win compensation from that nation-state for loss of profits due to restrictions on its business activities. In the process, the nation-state’s sovereignty (...) is diminishing; and, in effect, though still attributed to nation-states, it is being transferred to the MNC. The main aim of this article is (1) to draw on normative considerations to claim that this MNC proto-sovereignty should be modified and (2) to contend that this can eventually be accomplished by adding to corporate adoption of CSR guidelines a regimen of global human rights enforcement. I base this contention on expectations about the internationalization of corporate criminal law and the globalization of civil society in general and of NGOs in particular. I consider various jurisdictions but I focus on US jurisprudence. (shrink)

The concept of sovereignty is a recurring and controversial theme in international law, and it has a long history in western philosophy. The traditionally favored concept of sovereignty proves problematic in the context of international law. International law’s own claims to sovereignty, which are premised on traditional concept of sovereignty, undermine individual nations’ claims to sovereignty. These problems are attributable to deep-seated flaws in the traditional concept of sovereignty. A viable alternative concept of (...) class='Hi'>sovereignty can be derived from key concepts in Friedrich Nietzsche’s views on human reason and epistemology. The essay begins by considering the problem of sovereignty from the ancient philosophical perspective inherent in the fundamental assumptions and ideas of Plato’s political philosophy and epistemology. It then considers the contemporary problem of sovereignty in the context of international law by examining Louis Henkin’s formulation of and approach to it in his essay That S-Word: Sovereignty, and Globalization, and Human Rights, Etc. Finally, the essay articulates Nietzsche’s views on intellectual conscience, discusses their merits and advantages when used in dealing the problem of sovereignty in the context of international law, and proposes a solution to this problem that draws on the philosophies of Nietzsche, Novalis, Kant and Plato. The essay illustrates the relevance and advantages of this solution by examining the issue of states’ reservations to international treaties and conventions. (shrink)

In recent times, the idea of popular sovereignty has figured prominently in the rhetoric of neo-populist thinkers and activists who argue that legal and political authority must be concentrated in one single body or individual elected by the people to act in its name. The thesis of this article is that, while the notion of popular sovereignty may seem to offer some support to the neo-populist image of democracy, it serves more persuasively to support the idea of a (...) polycentric, constitutional democracy. The constitutional state can be polycentric and yet feature a sovereign. And if this constitutional state is democratic in the sense of distributing power relatively equally amongst individual citizens, thus empowering the people-several, then it will establish the people-corporate in the role of sovereign.. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that Indigenous nations had neither sovereignty in international law nor title to their territories when Europeans first arrived in North America. Thus the continent was legally vacant and European powers could gain title to it simply by such acts as discovery, symbolic acts, or occupation, or by concluding treaties among themselves. This paper argues that this viewpoint is misguided and cannot be justified either by reference to positive international law or to basic principles of justice. (...) To the contrary, Indigenous American nations were sovereign entities holding exclusive title to their territories at the time of European contact, and they participated actively in the formation of Canada and the United States. This fact requires us to rewrite our constitutional histories and reconsider the current status of Indigenous nations. (shrink)

n Part I of this essay I take a canonical case of political theology, Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty (1985; 1922), and show how Agamben derives his account of sovereignty from an interpretation of Schmitt that relies on the interesting theological premise of an atemporal act or decision, one that is traditionally attributed to god’s act of creation, and that is only ambiguously secularized in the transcendental moment of German Idealism. In Part II I show how this reading of (...) Schmitt can be used to avoid a certain kind of negative political theology associated with deconstruction because Agamben’s reading of Schmitt explains the emergence of certain specific temporal structures associated with the sovereign political decision: the sovereign political decision cannot be represented as having a beginning, and hence recedes phenomenologically into a kind of a priori past; and the sovereign decision cannot be represented as completed, and hence it is experienced as a ‘perpetual expenditure of energy’ that lacks comprehensible relation to a goal. In Part III I defend Agamben’s interpretation of sovereignty as a transcendental act from Negri’s objection that Agamben simply equates without argument Negri’s radically democratic conception of revolutionary constituent power with Schmitt’s conception of sovereignty (1999, p. 13). My defense relies on identifying Agamben’s ‘paradox of sovereignty’ (Agamben 1998, pp. 15ff.) with a ‘paradox of democracy.’ (Mouffe 2000; Whelan 1983) In Part IV I realize a corollary of the identification of the two paradoxes, of sovereignty and democracy: that political borders are the spatial site of the application of the act of political sovereignty, and possess a kind of transcendental spatiality akin to the special temporality associated with sovereignty. I apply this understanding to the privileged special case of the US-Mexico border: the structures implicit in Agamben’s analysis explain some crucial features of this case of walling: its manifest failure to achieve, even in principle, the purpose for which it is allegedly intended; the failure of democratic polity to address those affected by the wall; the appeal to sovereign powers in the legal legitimation of border policy. I defend Agamben’s analysis against other apparently competing views, especially those of Wendy Brown (2010) and argue that the transcendental act of sovereignty comprises a kind of primary political repression that opens up the space for ideological understandings of the wall, but does not itself comprise one. In Part V I address the question whether Agamben’s derived category of ‘bare life’ can also be used in the context of the border, arguing that it can. I conclude with some critical remarks about the limits of Agamben’s view. (shrink)

Leaders of the world’s largest food sovereignty movement, La Vía Campesina, have argued that gender justice is a core component of food justice. On their view, food justice requires an end to violence against women and a guarantee of women’s equal social and political status. However, some have wondered what gender justice has to do with food. In particular, they have worried that La Vía Campesina’s embrace of radical gender egalitarianism cannot be grounded in food-related concerns. My goal in (...) this paper is to respond to these objections, and to show that La Vía Campesina’s efforts to promote gender justice may be grounded in its broader food justice goals. (shrink)

National sovereignty has been the key consideration for basing judicial cooperation in the European Union on mutual recognition. More than one decade after the creation of the Area of Freedom Security and Justice (AFSJ), this contribution assesses whether mutual recognition-based EU legislation in civil and criminal law indeed respects national sovereignty. To this end, it studies the Framework decision on the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), the EU’s flagship instrument in the AFSJ. We distinguish two elements of national (...) class='Hi'>sovereignty: (a) the protection of the State and its basic structures (its statehood); (b) the State’s values, principles and fundamental rights (its statehood principles), and assess the EAW from a dynamic perspective: from its initial inception, in which mutual trust primarily implied little interferences with the laws and practices of issuing states, to the current state of affairs which is marked by what could be called a ‘mutual trust supported by harmonization’- approach. Especially in the judge-driven harmonization of the EAW and the dialogue between judicial authorities we witness important (and oftentimes overlooked) elements that impact national sovereignty. At the end, the findings of the article are put in the context of the current rule of law crisis in the EU. (shrink)

This article substantiates a fundamental reform of international law through the prism of the historical evolution of capital and structural patterns of modern civilization. The author proves that the state is a fiduciary mechanism of soci- ety, usurpation of power represents a violation of fiduciary duty requiring exclusion of the regime from international law and intervention under UN mandate. The central thesis: capital, having exhausted all traditional degrees of freedom (geo- graphic expansion, technological intensification, financialization), has only one path for (...) further growth—transforming humanity into quality consumers through liberalization of autocracies. This is not the final goal but a necessary condition for space expansion—the next phase of civilizational development. For the first time in history, the moral imperative (human dignity), economic logic (market expansion), and existential necessity (interplanetary civilization) converge into a unified vector. The article analyzes the Maduro regime as a test case for implementing a new doctrine of intervention, examines Elon Musk’s role as a conscious agent of this process, and outlines mechanisms for legitimizing interventions through UN procedures. (shrink)

This thesis draws attention to the tension between the binding claims of dharma and the obligations of the king (qua state) to protect the material interests of his subjects. I argue that a significant part of the Mahābhārata can be understood as a response to this dilemma, and that a developed political philosophy and theory of justice is found therein. The picture of justice delineated within the Mahābharata emphasizes the ceteris paribus priority of dharma when the king or other functionaries (...) of the state consider how they should act. When dharmas conflict or the demands of certain dharmas conflict with the king’s fundamental obligation to defend his subjects against violence and deprivation however, he reserves the right to decide how to act in such an instance. To prevent abuse in such situations, the king must be virtuous. In the context of the Mahābhārata, this means acting for the sake of the kingdom and his subjects, rather than for his own interest. The king demonstrates his virtue by his prior willingness to submit to the demands of dharma even when they are contrary to his material interests, while a king who shows himself to value his own flourishing over that of his subjects may find himself justly deposed by a more righteous king. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of HUMROBOT as a philosophical framework for analyzing the transformation of human cognition in technologically mediated societies. As artificial intelligence systems, algorithmic decision-making tools, and emerging neurotechnologies increasingly participate in human cognitive processes, the boundary between assistance and delegation becomes increasingly fragile. The paper argues that this shift threatens what is defined here as cognitive sovereignty: the capacity of individuals to retain control over their mental processes, including thought, memory, judgment, and decision-making.

This postscript reflects on two special issues that interrogate religious and legal justifications of domination and argues that questions of sovereignty remain constitutive for the field of Indigenous studies today. In contrast to proliferating carve‑outs such as food, energy, gaming, or cannabis sovereignty, the authors contend that such adjectival sovereignties concede excessive ground to settler colonial frameworks premised on tribal recognition, regulation, and permission. They assert that Indigenous nations are sovereign nations rather than administratively defined “tribes,” and that (...) sovereignty must be conceptualized as a lived, ongoing practice rather than a delegated or derivative status. Accordingly, the postscript calls for an understanding of Indigenous sovereignty as grounded in land, language, traditional governance, and the territorial integrity of Mother Earth. Moving beyond a sole focus on dismantling the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, it advances a vision of healing grounded in a return to precolonial lifeways, the revitalization of intergenerational knowledge, and the fulfillment of Indigenous responsibilities to all living beings. Reconnection to community and homelands is framed not as a source of shame for those separated by boarding schools and regimes of domination, but as a generative process of individual and collective healing. (shrink)

A recent paper by Bullock (2018) raises a dilemma for proponents of epistemic paternalism. If epistemic paternalists contend that epistemic improvements contribute to one’s wellbeing, then their view conflates with general paternalism. Instead, if they appeal to the notion of a distinctive epistemic value, their view is unjustified, in that concerns about epistemic value fail to outweigh concerns about personal sovereignty. In this chapter, I address Bullock’s challenge in a way that safeguards the legitimacy of epistemic paternalism, albeit restricting (...) its scope to a limited range of cognitive projects. After shedding light on a problem with how Bullock singles out cases to which the dilemma applies, I argue that there is at least one reasonable way of interpreting the notion of ‘personal autonomy’ which legitimates and justifies undertaking epistemically paternalistic interferences for one’s epistemic good. (shrink)