State sovereignty is an inherently social construct. The modern state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the production of a normative conception which links authority, territory, population (society, nation), and recognition in a unique way, and in a particular place (the state). Attempting to realize this ideal entails a great deal of hard work on the part of statespersons, diplomats and intellectuals.

The ideal of state sovereignty is a product of the actions of powerful agents and the resistances to those actions by those located at the margins of power. The unique contribution of this book is to describe, theorize and illustrate the practices that have socially constructed, reproduced, reconstructed, and deconstructed various sovereign ideals and resistances to them.

The contributors analyze how all the components of state sovereignty - not only recognition, but also territory, population, and authority - are socially constructed and combined in specific historical contexts.