Conceptualizing Sovereignty in Comparative Political Thought

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel discusses the concept of “sovereignty” from an eclectic range of comparative perspectives in premodern and modern contexts beyond an exclusively Western European focus. Through substantive historical and textual analyses of the modern political thought of the Chilean legal theorist Andrés Bello, modern Islamic thought, Classical Confucian and Daoist thought in Early China, and the less discussed texts of the late Plato in the Ancient Mediterranean context, this panel traces the intellectual origins of sovereignty to sources beside Bodin and Hobbes. In doing so, this panel, composed largely of leaders in the field, re-engages with the question of “how to compare” in the emerging field of comparative political thought.

Sub Unit

• Division 1: Political Thought and Philosophy

Individual Presentations

• Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought: The Question of Constituent Power - Andrew F. March, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• The Sovereignty of Tradition in Classical Confucian Thought - Loubna El Amine, King's College London

• The American Origins of Positivist International Law - Joshua Simon, Johns Hopkins University

• Talentless Sovereigns: On Meritocracy and Its Limits in Early China - Trenton Wilson

• Sovereignty and Constitutional Power in late Plato and Guo Xiang - Aemann McCornack, Princeton University

Chair

• Peter J. Steinberger Reed College

Discussant

• Peter J. Steinberger Reed College