In order to determine how Britain’s governance and sovereignty have changed since 1950, I developed a historical case study tracing Britain’s political and economic integration into the E.U. starting from the early post-World War II governments through the end of the Thatcher administration. This study uses Historical Institutionalism, which seeks to explain how changes in governance and state sovereignty come about outside of state control, as a ‘testing’ theory to determine whether Britain’s governance and sovereignty have changed since 1950. The hypothesis of this case study is: Did the past decisions on E.C. integration, made by Britain’s government officials and policy-makers, have unintended consequences which caused Britain to become dependent on or locked into paths which led to losses in British state sovereignty? This study concluded that ‘unintended consequences’ and ‘path dependencies’ were important factors in Britain’s integration into the E.U. However, I found a number of antecedent conditions such as Britain’s status as a weakening nation-state, its insecurities in an economically interdependent world, deteriorating trade relations with iii the Commonwealth and the misperceived status as an equal partner with the U.S. that should also be taken into account in providing a comprehensive explanation. Finally, this study found that ‘unintended consequences’ and ‘path dependencies’ did not lead to a loss of sovereignty for Britain. This case study embraces a nontraditional concept of sovereignty which defines it as constantly changing and which does not have to be linked to its territory. This new definition allows for Britain to lose sovereignty in traditional ways (domestic) and gain it in unconventional areas (E.U.). Therefore, I have determined that Britain’s sovereignty and governance have changed rather than been mistakenly ‘given away’.

This thesis interrogates the continued statelessness of more than 12 million stateless people around the world, in the face of Article 15 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which provides that everyone has a right to a nationality. Its principal argument is that the continued unresolved presence of stateless groups around the world exposes international law’s inadequate protection of the ‘right to a nationality’. It advocates the adoption of a robust approach to protect and enforce this right to nationality of stateless people. Article 15 of the UDHR has been complemented by a host of international and regional instruments relating to the right to nationality. In developing its argument, the thesis reviews the relevant instruments, as well as local and international judicial decisions relating to the right. The review is juxtaposed with local legislation and state practices on the issue of citizenship, for the purpose of determining the status of the right, and whether the right forms part of customary international law. This thesis also examines the emergence of nationality as a human right under international law and the interplay between states sovereignty and the right to nationality, for the purpose of showing the lacuna in international law that allows continued statelessness. It examines the relationship between the possession of nationality and the enjoyment of other human rights vis-à-vis the sufferings that arise from statelessness, as well as the extent to which denationalization is a step toward genocide, for the purpose of showing that protection of the right qualifies as erga omnes obligation. It also argues that suffering of stateless people must be taken seriously, as a step toward taking the right to nationality of stateless people seriously. While the thesis does not necessarily provide the final solution to all the problems arising out of statelessness, it is anticipated that it will make a worthy contribution to addressing the legal questions on statelessness and, more importantly, provide a sound basis for further discussions on the status, importance and the need to protect and enforce the right to nationality of stateless people.

The growth and prevalence of the private military industry has led many to conclude that the state has outsourced one of its core functions: public security. As a global non-state actor, PMSCs pose a risk to state sovereignty by undermining the democratic legitimacy of armed forces and challenging the states international monopoly over force. This study, using the tripartite model in English school theory, refutes this commonly held belief by examining the regulatory methods that have brought PMSCs squarely under state control. This study organizes regulatory efforts in a three level concept of national, international and self-regulatory methods, and based on the increased national regulatory methods, mixed with international norms and weak self-regulation, concludes that states maintain their primacy over violence in world politics.

Nors 1990 m. atgavusi nepriklausomybę Lietuva pademonstravo ryžtą kuo greičiau šalyje įtvirtinti visuotinai pripažintus žmogaus teisių principus, visgi įvertinant vėlesniais nepriklausomybės metais valstybės formuojamą politiką, nėra visiškai aišku, kieno interesai – valstybės ar individo – yra aktualesni ir kaip (ar) jie tarpusavyje dera Lietuvos valstybės politikoje. Disertacijos tikslas – ištirti, ar valstybės suverenitetas ir žmogaus teisės yra (ne)suderinami vienas su kitu Lietuvos nacionalinės žmogaus teisių politikos formavimo kontekste. Siekiant užsibrėžto tikslo analizuojamas Lietuvos žmogaus teisių politikos formavimosi kontekstas, jį įtakojantys veiksniai, nacionalinė žmogaus teisių teisinė bazė, keturiolika Vyriausybės programų per žmogaus teisių prizmę. Atliekant tyrimą naudojama teisės aktų ir dokumentų analizė, pusiau struktūruotas kokybinis interviu, taip pat palyginamoji analizė. Empiriniai tyrimo duomenys rodo, kad Lietuvos politika žmogaus teisių atžvilgiu yra fragmentiška, stokojanti integralumo, tolygaus dėmesio visoms žmogaus teisėms ir joje stipriai išreikšta socialinė, ekonominė dimensija. Tokios politikos kontekste žmogaus teisių ir valstybės suvereniteto tarpusavio sąryšis vertintinas nevienareikšmiškai. Viena vertus, išorinis suverenitetas yra suderinamas su žmogaus teisėmis; jie papildo vienas kitą. Tuo tarpu vidaus politikoje valstybės interesų viršenybė individo atžvilgiu sudaro prielaidas teigti, kad žmogaus teisės nėra suderinamos su vidiniu... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / After regaining its independence in 1990, Lithuania has demonstrated the will to establish the universal human rights standards in the country as soon as possible. However, taking into account the country’s policy in the later years of independence, it’s not clear whose interests – state of individual – are more important and how these concepts coexist in the framework of Lithuanian human rights policy. The aim of the research is to examine wherever state sovereignty and human rights are (in)compatible with each other in the policy-making context of Lithuanian human rights policy. Aiming to achieve the above mentioned aim the Lithuanian human rights policy-making context, factors affecting this policy, national legal basis on human rights, fourteen programmes of the Government through the prism of human rights are analyzed. In conducting the research the following research methods were used: documents and legal acts analysis, semi-structured interview, as well as comparative analysis. Empirical research data indicates that Lithuanian human rights policy could be described as fragmented, lacking integrity and balanced attention to all human rights; strongly expressed social economical dimension the other key feature of this policy. In the context of such policy the relation between the human rights and state sovereignty is rather mixed. On the one hand, the external sovereignty is compatible with human rights and freedoms; they complement each other. Meanwhile the supremacy of... [to full text]

After regaining its independence in 1990, Lithuania has demonstrated the will to establish the universal human rights standards in the country as soon as possible. However, taking into account the country’s policy in the later years of independence, it’s not clear whose interests – state of individual – are more important and how these concepts coexist in the framework of Lithuanian human rights policy. The aim of the research is to examine wherever state sovereignty and human rights are (in)compatible with each other in the policy-making context of Lithuanian human rights policy. Aiming to achieve the above mentioned aim the Lithuanian human rights policy-making context, factors affecting this policy, national legal basis on human rights, fourteen programmes of the Government through the prism of human rights are analyzed. In conducting the research the following research methods were used: documents and legal acts analysis, semi-structured interview, as well as comparative analysis. Empirical research data indicates that Lithuanian human rights policy could be described as fragmented, lacking integrity and balanced attention to all human rights; strongly expressed social economical dimension the other key feature of this policy. In the context of such policy the relation between the human rights and state sovereignty is rather mixed. On the one hand, the external sovereignty is compatible with human rights and freedoms; they complement each other. Meanwhile the supremacy... [to full text] / Nors 1990 m. atgavusi nepriklausomybę Lietuva pademonstravo ryžtą kuo greičiau šalyje įtvirtinti visuotinai pripažintus žmogaus teisių principus, visgi įvertinant vėlesniais nepriklausomybės metais valstybės formuojamą politiką, nėra visiškai aišku, kieno interesai – valstybės ar individo – yra aktualesni ir kaip (ar) jie tarpusavyje dera Lietuvos valstybės politikoje. Disertacijos tikslas – ištirti, ar valstybės suverenitetas ir žmogaus teisės yra (ne)suderinami vienas su kitu Lietuvos nacionalinės žmogaus teisių politikos formavimo kontekste. Siekiant užsibrėžto tikslo analizuojamas Lietuvos žmogaus teisių politikos formavimosi kontekstas, jį įtakojantys veiksniai, nacionalinė žmogaus teisių teisinė bazė, keturiolika Vyriausybės programų per žmogaus teisių prizmę. Atliekant tyrimą naudojama teisės aktų ir dokumentų analizė, pusiau struktūruotas kokybinis interviu, taip pat palyginamoji analizė. Empiriniai tyrimo duomenys rodo, kad Lietuvos politika žmogaus teisių atžvilgiu yra fragmentiška, stokojanti integralumo, tolygaus dėmesio visoms žmogaus teisėms ir joje stipriai išreikšta socialinė, ekonominė dimensija. Tokios politikos kontekste žmogaus teisių ir valstybės suvereniteto tarpusavio sąryšis vertintinas nevienareikšmiškai. Viena vertus, išorinis suverenitetas yra suderinamas su žmogaus teisėmis; jie papildo vienas kitą. Tuo tarpu vidaus politikoje valstybės interesų viršenybė individo atžvilgiu sudaro prielaidas teigti, kad žmogaus teisės nėra suderinamos su vidiniu... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

This thesis provides a qualitative research of asylum seeking of unaccompanied children in Sweden. Children who find themselves traveling borders without company of a family member are in a very vulnerable position. In this thesis, the experience of unaccompanied children undergoing an asylum process in the Swedish jurisdiction is presented and the consequences of this process are also presented. With the creation of territorial boundaries embodied with an institution of state sovereignty, unaccompanied children finds themselves in a position of statelessness which produces a situation of rightlessness as they find themselves outside their own territories. This research suggests that, the territorial system provides great examples of unaccompanied children in a situation of statelessness even when they find themselves inside a new community. Even in this new state they do not automatically gain access to the community, instead through migration system, they must undergo investigations and procedures to prove that they have the rights to belong to that current community, a procedure that contributes to stress and other negative factors to the health of these children. From the findings of the interviews with unaccompanied children undergoing the process of seeking asylum and also unaccompanied children in hiding, it is seen that the asylum seeking process in the condition of unaccompanied children is characterized by the paradoxical system of national states, territorialism, totalitarianism, state sovereignty and an effort of maintaining human rights. The suggestion is that, the paradigm of territorialism and state sovereignty deprives unaccompanied children from what one in the Arendtian sense would call the right to have rights. As their journey to a new community starts off as a position of statelessness and with a 50% chance of returning back to that position. Their position slowly emerges from unaccompanied children, to a stateless adultescence and lastly to a forgotten undocumented adult.

This dissertation examines two different perspectives on refugee status and state sovereignty respectively, and their bearings on refugee protection regimes. It reveals how dominant views of refugee status and state sovereignty have contributed to establishing restrictive refugee law and policy associated with various forms of external migration controls in the 21st century, and provides alternative views that may contribute to creating more “just” refugee protection regimes.   When refugees came to be regarded as those who fled from various push factors, such as persecution, distress and wars etc. (the persecution perspective), refugee policies were developed to provide “push factors-free” environments. These have not necessarily included surrogate political membership in the country of asylum (particularly, in developed countries).  Instead, developed countries have endorsed humanitarian assistance schemes that aim to provide aid to refugees in regions of their origin rather than providing settlement in their own territories. Moreover, in refugee law, the fear of “persecution”, as a push factor, has become a critical factor in determining refugee status. As a parallel, governments have developed various forms of deterrence policies based on a traditional concept of state sovereignty that allows states to implement migration polices at their own discretion.  Under these circumstances, refugees find it difficult to reach developed countries, and many of them end up being “contained” in refugee camps or other facilities in regions of their origin for a long time.   This dissertation calls into question these views of refugee status and state sovereignty, by providing alternative views: the protection perspective and an account of sovereignty that requires “responsible” border control. The protection perspective regards the ruptured protection relationship between a state and a citizen (thus, the lack of state protection) as the core element of refugee status. According to this view, refugee status is inextricably associated with systemic failure of the nation-states system (not merely with push factors) that is designed to secure political membership for each individual in the international state system. Therefore, as a matter of justice, the ultimate remedy for refugeehood is to provide surrogate political membership in the country of asylum or to restore original political membership in the home country. This project also proposes a concept of “responsible” border control, according to which, a state should exercise state sovereignty in relation to border control within institutional frameworks in which multiple authorities, including human rights norms, have been institutionalized. In this way, the dissertation aims to provide a more “just” framework in which to propose, adopt and implement refugee law and policy. From this alternative perspective, refugees are perceived as those who have right to political membership in the country of asylum rather than mere humanitarian assistance in refugee camps or somewhere else. / Graduate

This study is essentially a critique of how the three dominant paradigms of explanatory international relations theory - (neo-)realism, liberalism, and systemic constructivism - conceive of, analytically deal with, and explain ethnic conflict and sovereignty. By deconstructing their approaches to ethnic identity formation in general and ethnic conflict in particular it argues that all three paradigms, in their epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies through reification and by analytically equating ethnic groups with states, tend to essentialise and substantialise the ethnic lines of division and strategic essentialisms of ethnic and ethno-nationalist elites they set out to describe, and, all too often, even write them into existence. Particular attention, both at the theoretical and empirical level, will be given to the three explanatory frameworks explanatory IR has contributed to the study of ethnic conflict: the 'ethnic security dilemma', the 'ethnic alliance model', and, drawing on other disciplines, instrumentalist approaches. The deconstruction of these three frameworks will form the bulk of the theoretical section, and will subsequently be shown in the case study to be ontologically untenable or at least to fail to adequately explain the complex dynamics of ethnic identity formation in ethnic conflict. By making these essentialist presumptions, motives, and practices explicit this study makes a unique contribution not only to the immediate issues it addresses but also to the wider debate on the nature of IR as a discipline. As a final point, drawing on constitutive theory and by conceiving of the behaviour and motives of protagonists of ethnic conflict as expressions of a fluid, open-ended, and situational matrix of identities and interests without sequential hierarchies of dependent and independent variables, the study attempts to offer an alternative, constitutive reading of ethnic and nationalist identity to the discourses of explanatory IR. These themes that are further developed in the empirical section where, explanatory IRA's narratives of ethnic group solidarity, ethno-nationalism, and national self-determination are examined and deconstructed by way of the case study of the relations between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Iraqi Kurdish ethno-nationalist parties in the wider context of the political status of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq. With this ambition this study makes an original empirical contribution by scrutinising these relations in a depth unique to the literature.

This research examines and critically analyses to what extent the host states might use their sovereignty in a manner that may be counterproductive to the interests of foreign investors on their territory; and the role played by international investment law in its regulation. Further, it considers the extent to which investor-state arbitration, under both the inter-state bilateral investment treaty (BIT), and investment contract, can be used to rebalance the uneven investment relationship arising from the adverse effect of host state sovereignty. The importance of the investor-state arbitration is based on the fact that such a process will be of no value if its award is not enforceable against sovereigns. It is therefore argued that arbitration enforcement against states must be augmented by further safeguards mechanisms. Challenges are faced by international investment law to minimise the possible adverse effect of host state’s sovereignty, in order to require states to respect investment agreements. Responsibility will be asserted by a wronged foreign investor if the state breaches customary international law when it hosts the foreign investment and if there is a violation of the specific investment agreement. Such challenges expose the limitations on how states can use their sovereign powers (whether legal, economic or political), against foreign investors and question the clarity of such boundaries. An unsuccessful litigant state will often seek to resist award enforcement, claiming sovereign immunity against its execution. International investment law and applicable national and regional bodies must find a balance between the interests of the foreign investor and the host state. This research concludes that the adjudication system used in England provides a framework in which a foreign investor can seek recognition of its claim and thus enforce a foreign arbitral award against recalcitrant states, but improvements could still be made as explained in thesis.

Most - if not all - conflicts in international relations have - to an extent - something to do with sovereignty. On the theoretical side, we learn at University that either considered as a strong concept or one that has lost relevance, it is still discussed. On the practical side, the prerogatives a State has over its people and territory appear to be the highest. Within these ideal and real backgrounds, there are various sovereignty disputes around the world that struggle between legal and political limbo, status quo and continuous tension with various negative consequences for all the involved parties (e.g. violation of human rights, war, arms trafficking, only to name a few). It is increasingly clear that the available remedies have been less than successful, and a peaceful and definitive solution is needed. This thesis proposes a fair and just way of dealing with certain sovereignty conflicts. Part One presents the core argument to work out the structure upon which this thesis will be developed. There is a traditional idea that sovereignty must be unshared and unlimited. I argue that in actual fact both in theory and in practice sovereignty is always limited. Thereby, I consider how shared sovereignty is possible—how a State can limit itself and stay sovereign. Chapter One, the Introduction, presents the basic constitutive elements of this thesis. Chapter Two examines if sovereignty can be (in fact, may actually be) limited, and therefore can be shared. To show this I use both criticism of the best known theories of sovereignty and investigation of the historical facts. Part Two explores the minimum elements that must be acknowledged conceptually, legally and realistically in order to give flesh to shared sovereignty and the way it needs to work if we want a peaceful understanding amongst the parties concerned. Chapter Three appraises ‘shared sovereignty’ and similar expressions used in political and legal literature. In order to do that, I show which notions of shared sovereignty are not relevant. Chapter Four examines how a relevant notion can be developed, using the analogy of self-ownership. Chapter Five discusses the main remedies applied at international level in sovereignty issues and why proposed alternatives to shared sovereignty will not solve the problem. Part Three considers how distributive justice theories can be in tune with the concept of sovereignty and explores the possibility of a solution for sovereignty conflicts. I argue that shared sovereignty can be that solution based on Rawlsian principles. Chapter Six introduces and explores a new conception of shared sovereignty. Chapter Seven evaluates what sorts of institutions and arrangements could, and would best, realise shared sovereignty so defined by showing in outline how it might be applied to territory, population, government and law. Chapter Eight brings together the main points of this thesis, and shows possible further implications.