7 - The Interstices of Sovereignty

Summary

Chapter 7 looks into the interstices of the contemporary sovereign states system. One of the key practical effects of the normative tensions between the different understandings of property informing the practice of the sovereignty cartel is a governance gap between autonomy and multilateralism into which a variety of illicit activities falls. The chapter argues that the tensions not only create spaces in the system in which illicit activity can find a home but actually force some activity there by definition. This often involves non-sovereign actors engaged in economic pursuits, either finding the interstices of sovereignty to arbitrage regulatory gaps or forced into the interstices by those gaps. It also often involves sovereign actors taking advantage of the market value of their sovereign property rights to enrich either their states or themselves. These gaps in governance in the sovereign states system introduce places where sovereign right can be challenged. This is why a sovereignty cartel is necessary to maintain these rights. The cartel is the mechanism by which the sovereign states system polices its interstices and keeps them from undermining the prerogatives of its members.