The final two weeks of ‘Alamgir’s life is the focus of this chapter. It highlights various themes and characters (some important, others minor) to illustrate daily life at court at the end of his long reign while reflecting back on ‘Alamgir, his reign, and the Mughal Empire. There are sections devoted to the relationship between ‘Alamgir and his three surviving sons, the tensions between his sons and grandsons, the impoverishment of the Mughal nobility, biographies of some of his favorite nobles and last surviving wife (Udaipuri Mahal), conversion to Islam, and the ill-fated Mughal struggle against the Marathas. Other sections highlight ‘Alamgir’s physical and mental frailties, his extraordinary work ethic, his attentiveness to intelligence gathering, and the deep sense of personal failure and self-recrimination at the end of his life. Together these stories offer insights on ‘Alamgir, the court, and the empire on the cusp of a new era that everyone feared might be even less settled than the one drawing to a close.

This chapter uses the twin rubrics of “state” and “sovereignty” to understand many of the most important or controversial aspects of ‘Alamgir’s forty-nine-year reign. What emerges is a portrait of a ruler who was, by turns, determined to restore law and order, protect social hierarchies, coopt or crush anyone who opposed his efforts, replenish the imperial treasury, and strengthen Mughal rule. Although ‘Alamgir mostly positioned himself as a typical Mughal emperor in terms of his sovereign self-expression, his style of renunciate sovereignty (at once Timurid and Islamic) radiated into the court and empire in distinctive ways. Ultimately, his decision to invade the Deccan in the early 1680s proved to be his and the Mughal Empire’s undoing. Against a backdrop of political and military failure, ‘Alamgir nonetheless held on to his throne. This chapter ends by arguing that his emergence as a living saint–emperor (Zinda Pir ‘Alamgir) was a key factor in his political survival.

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.

This final and concluding chapter highlights the main points discussed in the book and explains the importance that Early German Romanticism can have in the ecological and environmental-philosophical debate today.

Economic globalization has produced uneven outcomes that challenge conventional development strategies. This chapter examines how global rules in trade, finance, and taxation reflect and reproduce asymmetries of power. It analyses the tensions between national sovereignty and global fairness, particularly in multilateral institutions. The chapter proposes reforms to create more balanced international regimes, enabling developing countries to pursue inclusive growth while participating meaningfully in global governance. Justice requires institutional redesign beyond national borders.

The chapter focuses on the Romantic philosophy of nature. This will permit us to point out how the relational idea of the Romantic Self is consistent with the image of the human being as located within nature. The human is not opposed to nature and is neither her master, but she is immersed in (and even constituted by) the entanglement of natural forces. Following a line of reflections that unites Spinoza, Leibniz, Herder, and Goethe to the Romantics, I will show the centrality of ‘life’. This is the inexhaustible source of forms created through repetitions and metamorphoses. As we will see at the end of the chapter, the Romantic interpretation of life is at the basis not only of their anthropology but also of their idea of normativity. Norms are, for the Romantics, instructions provided with a compelling force and are not only the formulation of interdictions. The dynamic conception of nature allowed the Romantics to reintegrate human beings into it and overcome the opposition between nature and freedom, nature and politics; however, a distinction between human and animal, or human and plants, is maintained. It is, though, not maintained in the sense of domination.

In these pages, the problematic at the centre of the book is introduced. It explores how the concepts of sovereignty and freedom and the human/nature relationship are linked and how they influence the idea of self. This Introduction also displays past and current interpretations of the Romantic conception of subjectivity and of Romantic political philosophy, highlighting the shortcomings of these readings. Indeed, they neglect the political essence of the Romantic Self. This chapter closes with an overview of the structure of the book and a list of the Romantic authors considered.

This chapter focuses on the relationality that constitutes the Romantic Self, highlighting the ethical and political consequences that derive from it. The Romantics refuse the lexicon proper to modern political thought, centred on the concept of sovereignty and autonomy: they highlight the illusory essence of these concepts and the dangers they imply. Consistently, they also dismantle the possibility to write a political theory that pretends to offer universal principles. Relations are not extrinsic elements added to a fully formed subject and to be considered only after the identity of the subject has been defined. Relations are what we are. That is why in its political reflections, Romanticism’s primary polemical target is modern contractualism, founded on the tacit assumption that it is possible to study human beings in their individuality, skating over the interplay among them. This chapter shows how the idea of forces and the priority given to relationships influence the Romantic political concepts. These concepts in particular will be scrutinised: representative, constituent and constituted powers, democracy, individuality, equality, and justice.

The final chapter of this book considers external challenges – namely, discourses and regulatory moves driven by concerns about state sovereignty and, relatedly, security and development – to the dual-sided framework in the current digital era. It starts by discussing to what extent China provides a counter-model to the liberal conception of information freedom and the dual-sided framework and argues that there is not really a Chinese (counter-)model. It moves to consider other Global South countries, looking at firstly Brazil and India and then the peripheries of the periphery. It argues that placed in a chain of dependence, practices of Global South countries generally do not present fundamental challenges to the dual-sided framework despite their genuine normative contestations. The chapter finally moves to recent sovereignist policies and discourses from the Western liberal world and observes that the main challenge to the dual-sided framework comes from an increasingly fascist United States.

This chapter discusses the first wave of systemic contestation of the liberal imagery of ‘free flow of information’ and the early dual-sided framework. One major front of contestation was Third World countries, which put forward a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) to de-monopolize, democratize, and decolonize the existing structure of international communication and develop their national information capacities as part of postcolonial nation-building. Another major front of contestation was within Western liberal countries struggling with domestic socio-economic crisis and resisting the US economic and technological supremacy. This chapter first revisits the NWICO movement and then discusses contestation of the liberal idea of ‘free flow of information’ from both the Global South and the Global North regarding regulation of the new information technologies of direct satellite broadcasting, satellite remote sensing, and informatics. It shows the complicated political, economic, cultural, ideological, and security dimensions of information, which fundamentally concern the organization of capitalist social relations.

The Doctrine of Discovery, rooted in 15th-century papal bulls, entitled the European nations of Spain, Portugal and England and the Catholic Church to claim Indigenous lands globally, justifying settler-colonial expansion based on their presumed superiority. The British Crown used this doctrine to assert sovereignty over newly discovered territories and and engaged with Māori by signing the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Colonisation has had – and continues to have – severe and detrimental impacts on Indigenous peoples worldwide. This brief overview of the Doctrine of Discovery provides a starting point for an exploration of the events leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi, its impacts on Māori, its relevance today, and what it means for health practitioners.

This chapter examines synergies between colonization and racism in the United States, including how colonization provides a foundation for various forms of bigotry and dehumanization. In the United States, colonial structures shape and racialize beliefs about Native Americans, leading to their mis-categorization as one of many ethnic minority groups. This creates misunderstandings about sovereignty and the foundation for many social policies and programs. This chapter describes what it means to be Indigenous and how colonial structures and social constructions of race in the US affect Native Americans. Social workers have played core roles in supporting colonial structures, but social workers can also challenge harmful structures. Legal threats to the Indian Child Welfare Act are examined, accompanied by a call to action for social workers.

This chapter sets the scene for later analyses, providing a historical overview of African RIOs. I trace the evolution of African RIOs, and discuss how leaders developed RIO policies in response to domestic and transnational threats against their political stability, as well as changing international norms.

Native Americans working in alternative media to Hollywood are overthrowing Indian stereotypes. The 1990s rise of an independent film festival circuit, especially the Sundance Film Festival, and multiplying cable channels and streaming services, have supported Indigenous self-representation and anti-colonial discourse. Documentaries by Native American filmmakers Sandra Osawa, George Burdeau, and Victor Masayesva Jr. critique stereotypes and express tribal aesthetics. Fiction films, like Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals (1998), Naturally Native (1998), Doe Boy (2001), and Sterlin Harjo’s features, depict modern Native American life and characters while cable and streaming TV series are set in modern Indigenous communities. However, Martin Scorcese’s big-budget Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) garnered more attention and awards for portraying 1920s atrocities against the Osage Nation. Although sympathetic to Native Americans, the film is still a reiteration of history. Only with Native American artists are stories refocusing from fascination with the past to the present and future.

It has been said that Brexit was a solution in search of a problem. The campaign encouraged the idea that voting for Brexit could satisfactorily shift the practice and discourse of national political priorities; the downside proved to be the confusion over exactly what specific issues it was meant to address. An indeterminate number of loosely focused grievances could not easily be translated into a programme. The protracted parliamentary stand-off in the following years encouraged suspicion about any attempts to adjust or fine-tune precise legal provisions – suspicion of elite interests, of reversion to rule by anonymous experts and of legal process itself. A distinctly close vote in the actual referendum was rapidly mythologised as an overwhelming popular mandate, even though it was unclear what exactly it was a mandate for. The lasting legacy has been to reinforce a ‘theatrical’ approach to politics, in which actual problem-solving and long-term strategising yield to performative or gestural decisions. Both globally and nationally, this is an increasingly disturbing and destabilising trend; those on both sides of the Brexit debate need to acknowledge this as a real issue about the health of a critical and engaged democracy.

Connection to Country or traditional lands is critical to the life and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. In the Indigenous worldview, collective identity, stories, language, law/lore, ancestors, and all living things are intimately interconnected with Country, which provides the central pivot point around which all life revolves. Attempts by the ‘colonial project’ to disconnect Indigenous Peoples from their sovereign Country and distinct worldviews has undermined their source of wellbeing and generated traumatic social and health outcomes. Yet, Indigenous Peoples continue to resist. This chapter provides examples of how several Wiradjuri Elders and Wiradjuri Nation-rebuilders are resisting the colonial project through reclaiming the Wiradjuri language and building connection to Country to solidify their Wiradjuri worldview. We discuss the importance of an Indigenous sense of place for collective healing and wellbeing and how interconnection with Country informs a world where we face the potential for environmental crisis and collapse.

This chapter introduces the paradox in a constitutional order in which there is parliamentary supremacy: the Parliament may make any law it pleases, including a law that undermines the rule of law in such a way as to undermine parliamentary supremacy. It then sketches the tension in A. V. Dicey’s classic treatment of the two ‘constitutional fundamentals’ of parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. It shows how deeply that tension is embedded in the common law and how post-war developments in the European Convention of Human Rights, the Human Rights Act 1998, and the institutional machinery of the constitutional order deepen the tension by expressing an ever-firmer commitment to human rights while preserving parliamentary supremacy. The chapter sets up the argument of the next chapter: that the Rwanda Act could both be perfectly valid and unconstitutional in that it introduced a dangerous incoherence into the UK constitutional order.