Review of International Studies (2001), 27, 519–538 Copyright © British International Studies Association
Human rights and the social construction of sovereignty CHRISTIAN REUS-SMIT*
Abstract. Sovereignty and human rights are generally considered separate, mutually contradictory regimes in international society. This article takes issue with this conventional assumption, and argues that only by treating sovereignty and human rights as two normative elements of a single, inherently contradictory modern discourse about legitimate statehood and rightful state action can we explain key moments in the expansion of the international system during the twentieth century. After developing a constructivist argument about communicative action, norm formation and sovereignty, the article focuses on post-1945 decolonization, showing how ‘first wave’ post-colonial states played a crucial role in constructing the ‘international bill of rights’, how they invoked those rights to justify the norm of self-determination, and how this norm in turn licensed the proliferation of new sovereign states in Asia and elsewhere.
The principle of sovereignty is widely considered the grundnorm of international society, and evolving human rights norms are seen as a compensatory international regime, the purpose of which is limit the inhumane consequences of the sovereign order. The principle of sovereignty grants states supreme authority within their territorial borders and denies the existence of any higher authority beyond those borders. Human rights norms, in contrast, place limits on how states can treat their peoples, compromising sovereignty in the name of universal standards of legitimate state conduct. Sovereignty and human rights are thus considered two separate regimes, that stand in a zero-sum relationship—the stronger the principle of sovereignty, the weaker norms of human rights, and vice versa. There is a fundamental tension, Hedley Bull argues, between the principles that sustain international order—foremost among which is the mutual recognition of sovereignty—and the demands of human justice articulated in human rights norms. ‘The basic compact of coexistence between states, expressed in the exchange of recognition of sovereign jurisdictions, implies a conspiracy of silence entered into by governments about the rights and duties of their respective citizens.’ 1 It is this silence, and the atrocities it masks and permits, that have fuelled calls for the qualifying of sovereignty, for the
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This article is part of a larger work of historical sociology that examines the role that rights politics has played in the constitution of the modern international system since the sixteenth century. I would like to thank seminar participants at the Australian National University and La Trobe University for their thoughtful comments on early expressions of the article’s central argument, and I am immensely grateful for comments on previous drafts provided by Robyn Eckersley, Amy Gurowitz, Richard Price, Heather Rae, Henry Shue, Peter Katzenstein, Nicholas Wheeler, the anonymous referees for this journal, and the anonymous readers for the Australian Research Council. 1 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, 2nd edn. (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 80.
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