Sovereignty and the State

For Ibn Khaldun (1967), politics is fundamentally concerned with the “administration of home or city in accordance with ethical and philosophical requirements, for the purpose of directing the mass toward a behaviour that will result in the preservation and permanence of the (human) species”. Across global politics, the vehicle through which preservation and permanence is sought is typically the ‘sovereign state’, an entity that acts as the institutional mechanism for the regulation of life. While the central position of states within the post-WWII international order reflects the dominance and normalization of a particular historically specific mode of sovereignty – with entities deemed sovereign by virtue of territorial claims and external recognition – this mode fails to capture the essence of sovereignty in the global south.