Sovereignty Challenged The Changing Status and Moral Significance of Territorial Boundaries Anne Julie Semb Department of Political Science, University of Oslo Doctoral thesis University of Oslo Department of Political Science Acknowledgements The work with this thesis started in May 1993, when I was granted a scholarship from the Ethics Programme of the Norwegian Research Council. My workplace in the period May 1993 to October 1993 was, however, the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO). I wish to thank both the Ethics Programme and PRIO. From May 1993 to November 1999 I held a position as research fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. I am grateful to the Department for providing me with a scholarship, as well as offering working conditions that proved conducive to completing the thesis. Many friends and colleagues have read and commented upon the entire thesis, or parts of it. My supervisors, Knut Midgaard and Stein Tønnesson, have encouraged me and provided thorough comments on draft versions of all the articles. They have both made numerous valuable suggestions on how to improve the structure of the articles as well as the quality of the arguments. In addition to these two, I especially wish like to thank four persons: Raino Malnes, Thomas Pogge, Lars Fjell Hansson and Andreas Føllesdal. Raino Malnes deserves my special gratitude for supporting my work when it was needed most, as well as commenting upon draft versions of all but one of the articles, and numerous earlier versions of the introduction. My affiliation with the Ethics Programme made it possible to have Thomas Pogge read draft versions of all parts of the thesis. I doubt that I have managed to respond to all your suggestions, Thomas, but I have learned a great deal from our discussions. Lars Fjell Hansson has been pointed out some of the problems with earlier versions of all the articles and been an important source of benevolent criticism as well as support for many years. The same goes for Andreas Føllesdal, who has also organised many informal settings where thoughts can be discussed in a friendly atmosphere before they are put on the paper. Draft versions of all parts of the thesis have been presented to members of the ARENA seminar group in normative political theory. Draft versions of three of the articles, as well as the introduction, have been presented to participants at the Colloquium of the Ethics Programme. I thank you all for stimulating discussions and helpful suggestions. Other friends and colleagues have also taken the time to read and comment on parts of the thesis. Among those who deserve a “ thank you” for help and advice are Elisabeth Bakke, Lothar Brock, Else Grete Broderstad, Nils Butenschøn, Alexander Cappelen, Tom Eide, Erik Oddvar Eriksen, Eli Feiring, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Bernt Hagtvet, Helge Høibraaten, Tore Lindholm, Audun Lona, Hilde Nagell, Nils Oskal, Eli Skogerbø, Henrik Syse, and Øyvind Østerud. Thanks also to Susan Høivik, who edited the language in the four articles, and to Chris Ennals, who edited the language in the introduction. Øyvind Sørby has kindly provided technical assistance with the PC on more than one occasion. Needless to say, the responsibility for remaining errors and shortcomings rests with the author alone. Last, but not least, I want to thank my husband, Lars Normann Mikkelsen, and our two children, Ingrid and Sigurd, for their love, invaluable support and patience. Oslo, January 2000 Anne Julie Semb Contents ,QWURGXFWLRQ Article 1: “ The New Practice of UN-authorised Interventions – A Slippery Slope of Forcible Interference?” Article 2: “ The Morality of Secession” Article 3: “ How to Reconcile the Political One with the Cultural Many” Article 4: “ How Norms Affect Policy: The Case of Sami Policy in Norway” Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 1. State sovereignty .................................................................................................. 2 2. The articles and the relationship between them ................................................... 4 3. Method for normative analysis........................................................................... 11 a. Normative versus positive analysis........................................................ 11 b. Method for normative analysis .............................................................. 12 References .............................................................................................................. 23 Introduction1 The purpose of this introduction is to give a brief presentation of the main topics of the thesis and their interrelations. The thesis consists of four articles. The first article deals with UN authorised interventions, the second with secession, the third with strategies for reconciling the political one with the cultural many, and the fourth and final with Norwegian policy vis-à-vis the Sami minority. Each of the articles focuses on a separate issue, and each of them contains several separate arguments. Thus, each article can be read separately. But even if all the articles can be read without reference to the others, they are nonetheless linked to each other. Hence the main purpose of this introduction is to clarify the relationship between the four articles, as well as explaining how each of them relates to the overall purpose of the thesis. All of the articles in the thesis relate to the issue of sovereignty and the question of the foundation and significance of boundaries. It is the aim of this thesis to identify and discuss some of the important conflicts that may arise between a state’s claim to sovereignty on the one hand and competing normative concerns on the other. There may be many such competing concerns. One such concern is the idea of universal human rights, i.e., that all individuals, regardless of place of residence or citizenship status, possess inviolable rights. Another concern that may conflict with a state’s claim to sovereignty is the idea that the territorial boundaries of sovereign states should, as far as possible, encompass individuals who want to live under the same government. In order to identify these conflicts, I have chosen to focus on specific issues, such as interventions, secessions and the question of how the public authorities of a sovereign state ought to respond to ethno-cultural pluralism. In addition to identifying conflicts, I will suggest how they ought to be resolved. I shall now present some basic aspects of the issue of state sovereignty and the corresponding issue of the foundation and significance of territorial boundaries between sovereign states. Then I shall briefly present each of the articles and relate them to each other. The last part of this introduction will be devoted to the question of 1 The author wishes to thank participants at the Colloqium of the Ethics Programme under the Norwegian Research Council, Andreas Føllesdal, Lars Fjell Hansson, Raino Malnes, Knut Midgaard, Hilde Nagell, Tore Nyhamar, Thomas Pogge, Henrik Syse, Marianne Takle and Stein Tønnesson for numerous valuable comments to earlier drafts. The responsibility for remaining errors or short-comings rests with the author alone. 1 how to proceed when undertaking normative analysis. There is no agreement on the question of method for normative analysis. I shall approach this question by presenting and critically discussing Michael Walzer’s proposition that what we should do when undertaking a normative analysis is to interpret the moral world. Having pointed at some apparent problems with this proposition, I shall present what I consider to be the most important elements of a method for normative analysis, that is, a method for arriving at convincing arguments for why, e.g., a particular institutional arrangement is more acceptable than another institutional arrangement. 1. State sovereignty A sovereign state may be understood as a state that is eligible to participate in inter- state affairs on a regular basis. Following Alan James’ definition, I shall take the defining feature of a sovereign state to be constitutional independence (James 1986). This is to say that what sets sovereign states apart from other political units is that the constitution of a sovereign state is not part of a wider constitutional scheme. The formal condition of sovereignty is thus of a legal kind and signifies that formal decision-making competence resides within the state. Sovereignty in the sense of constitutional independence is not to be viewed on a par with functional or actual autonomy: The fact that a state is sovereign, in the sense that its constitution is not a part of a wider constitutional scheme, does not mean that it has control over all those factors that in a significant way affect its domestic life. One should, however, be careful to distinguish between the question of what is the defining feature of sovereign states on the one hand and the question of what is implied by the fact that some states have acquired constitutional independence on the other. Having proposed an answer to the first of these questions, I now turn to the question of the significance of state sovereignty. What is implied by the status as sovereign? Sovereignty is often held to have a dual reference, and a distinction may consequently be made between what may be termed internal sovereignty and external sovereignty. Internal sovereignty may be defined as “ supremacy over all other authorities