Similarly to the experience in Kosovo, the United Nations presence in Timor-Leste also took the form of an international administration. This chapter reviews the three years of governance displayed by the UN over the territory, and notably the growing resistance by the Timorese elite to the governance arrangement. One specific set of practices will be carefully analysed: the international negotiations carried by the UN on behalf of Timor-Leste with Australia over the Timor Gap.

Calls for international administrations are still present in contemporary international relations, from the war in the Middle East to the Ukraine. This chapter summarises the main argument developed in the book, notably the necessity to apprehend international administrations through the reality on the ground. This means to pay special attention to the confluence of claims of political authority deployed by international officials and concomitant claims of accountability such practices of authority elicit. Finally, I discuss the various possibilities to strengthen accountability mechanisms for the UN (and for other international organisation).

In the case of Kosovo, the United Nations not only had a mandate to act like an international administration, but its officials also displayed political authority over the territory. As such, the UN displayed authority over legislative, executive and judicial branches of the government. The accountability mechanisms put in place by the UN also pointed the finger at this unorthodox governance arrangement, leading the UN to strip the Ombudsperson institution from its mandate to report on international actors in the territory. After initial years of being under international governance, the Kosovars started rejecting international rule and expressed their willingness to take over the sovereignty of the young country.

This chapter argue that the political authority deployed through the early experiments of governance by the League of Nations was actually more limited than generally accounted for. If some of these missions, such as in Danzig and the Saar Basin, were given manyof the ‘trappings of sovereignty’, the actual practices of sovereignty were more limited than generally accounted for. Basing my analysis on archival research done at the Archives of the League of Nations in Geneva – analysing the “hidden transcripts” of League officials – I argue that League of Nations officials were far from being international governors, and authority in most cases resided firmly in specific European capitals.

Some argue that international administrations are contemporary manifestations of a project which began with the League of Nations Mandate System and the United Nations Trusteeship System. This chapter makes the case that these experiments of colonial administration systems are hardly international administrations, with sovereignty practices resting firmly within the European capitals at the time. If some projects envisionned a bigger role for the international organisations at the time, they were in fine defeated by officials brushing aside the idea of having these organisations play a crucial role in colonial governance. This discussion nevertheless sheds a new light on the specificities of contemporary international administration as a project of global governance.

This chapter introduces the main approach developed in International Leviathans through (1) a sociological understanding of sovereignty and (2) the concept of international administration. First, the chapter presents a new take of the debate between Kelsen and Schmitt around sovereignty and presents the sociological understanding of sovereignty by unpacking sovereignty practices. It makes the case for analysing the socio-political or socio-legal struggles happening between competing claims of political authority and accountability. It then discusses and theorises the concept of ‘international administration’, pointing out the limitations of two strands of the literature: the functionalist approach, defining international administrations through the functions they ought to perform as underlined in their mandate, and the normative approach, focusing on self-proclaimed goals and objectives. I posit that sovereignty practices deployed by international officials are social practices which cannot be understood solely through mandates or stated goals – they need to be understood through the reality on the ground, created by claims of political authority deployed by actors and the concomitant claims of accountability these practices elicit.

This chapter presents the central claim of the book, arguing that sovereignty practices emerge at the confluence of struggles – on the one hand, by actors asserting the political authority over a specific territory and, on the other hand, through resistance to this move by actors pursuing accountability and the responsibilisation of sovereign actors. I claim that practices of political authority – expressed through effective rule over territory – are central, constitutive acts of world politics, entailing specific obligations. Broadening the study of sovereignty practices beyond state relations, I argue that understanding how specific actors such as international organisations act as sovereign actors opens up new perspectives on international accountability and obligations in world politics.

Contrary to many libertarian arguments, the Declaration does not manifest hostility to government. Many of its complaints are that the British had provided too little government, not too much. It also makes repeated arguments about how the king and parliament had violated the British constitution. The Declaration’s deepest commitment is to constitutional government and the rule of law. “Under Law” is a better description of the nation’s founding than the “Under God” that was later added to the Pledge of Allegiance.