The changing boundaries of the EU Member State polity : the what, who and how of late sovereign argument

Abstract

Sovereignty endures as a language tenaciously entrenched in the legal and political self-understanding of the Member State. So it is that the boundaries demarcating the Member State polity retain importance as signifiers of sovereignty in terms of both constituted and constituting power. This thesis critically re-evaluates disagreement about these boundaries of territory and citizenship through the exploration of four cases: overseas territories, the withdrawal of nationality, the loss of effective control and state succession. The analysis begins by acknowledging a fundamental split in how sovereignty is understood: it is comprehended both as claims made within the given institutional grid of a state, and as deeper framing ideas about how the legal world is explained and justified. These two meanings of sovereignty have become separated in a time of endemic overlap between legal orders, such as is particularly apparent in the European Union. As a consequence, it is argued that an account of the boundaries of the Member State polity needs to go beyond simply aggregating the four cases in terms of how they are conceived and resolved as practical problems. It also needs to engage with that deeper sense of sovereignty as discourses about how to define and justify the overlap of authority between the Union and the Member States. That deeper sense of sovereignty is given expression in sets of questions the thesis identifies as the “foundational”, “jurisdictional” and “structural” frames corresponding with the “what”, “who” and “how” of late sovereignty. Through a reading of the chief debates in the four cases selected in the thesis, it is argued that disagreement about Member State boundaries concerns not only the stark question of who or where is “in” or “out” of the polity but also involves a clash of ideas about the scope and purposes of the European project.