The challenges Taiwan faces in having its sovereignty recognized supports the theory of a French political professor who believes sovereignty is both ambiguous and fictitious.
"It's a very difficult and complex problem of sovereignty you have here in Taiwan. It's rather good evidence of what I contend, however -- that is, you can be achieving, you can be powerful and you can be influential in the international world, but you don't necessarily need to be sovereign," said Bertrand Badie, a professor at the Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris.
Badie, who is on a three-day visit to Taiwan, made the remark during his speech entitled "A World Without Sovereignty: the End of the Nation-State?" held at Academia Sinica yesterday afternoon.
The event was co-organized by the Taipei Office of the French Center for Research on Contemporary China, the French Institute of Taipei and the Sun Yat-sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy of Academia Sinica.
According to Badie, the notion of sovereignty is characterized by ambiguity and fiction.
"It's ambiguous because it's supposed to reject all kinds of dependence, while it in fact depends on the recognition of others," he said.
Taking Taiwan, for example, the sovereignty issue here is clearly a claim, Badie said.
"The claim will never be abolished until the people of Taiwan want to put an end to it," he said.
Sovereignty is ambiguous because it is impossible to conceive of a power which is neither preceded nor challenged by any other kind of power, he said.
"Sovereignty is postulated as an ultimate power, but in fact there's no such power existing in this world. Even the world's superpower can be challenged," Badie said, citing the recent example of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the US.
Sovereignty is ambiguous because it is limited in practice by many factors, although it is claimed as absolute, Badie said. These factors include other sovereignties, international agreements and common resources.
According to Badie, over 40,000 treaties have been signed in the world since 1945. With the signing of treaties and conventions, countries exchange technology, commodities and natural resources, making the world smaller and sovereignty less significant, he said.
Sovereignty is fictitious as it becomes less significant and outdated.
"The fiction is fading because of the proliferation of states, the new style of international communication, the increasing privatization of power, the emergence of new international actors and globalization," Badie said.
The new international actors, according to Badie, are the states themselves, the transnational network and "identity entrepreneurs."
"While the states' principles are sovereignty and citizenship, that of the transnational network are pragmatic associations, such as NGOs and the media, and that of identity entrepreneurs are primordialist such as ethnic, religious or tribal groups," he said.
The interaction among the three international players, Badie said, creates a strange world in which sovereignty is not a cornerstone of the international order.
Globalization, which makes the new international actors more dependent on each other, obviously weakens sovereignty.
"New styles of communication such as the Internet and satellites definitely break down the wall of the territorial concept," Badie said.
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