The Sovereign Nation-State: A Reconsideration in light of European Integration

European democracy is undergoing unprecedented transformation and upheaval. The relationship between an increasingly complicated European Union (EU) and its member-states has altered their decision-making procedures to such an extent that the member-states of the EU are no longer sovereign in the traditional sense of the word. The main theories of international relations, realism and liberalism, fall short in explaining this change because they assume that a state is not properly a state unless it has unconditional and unlimited sovereignty. Taking a cue from two major figures in the history of political thought, Hobbes and Kant, this dissertation argues that the traditionalist view of state sovereignty is misleading. It claims that the purpose of sovereign power is to strengthen peace, security and individual autonomy. Inspired by Philpott's approach to sovereignty, it argues that the best definition of sovereignty is supreme authority over certain defined issues within a territory . This allows for a description of political associations such as the EU where member-states have begun to pool their sovereignty, a process that in turn distributes sovereign powers in a novel manner. Massive immigration to Europe, and more open European borders, have blurred the identity between the state and the nation, a process that puts in question the plausibility of the term 'nation-state.' This dissertation accordingly presents reasons why states are different from nations. Nations are primarily cultural communities and therefore are not necessarily dependent on a pairing with a single state for their flourishing. Thus, national self-determination is concerned with the thriving of national culture. In this way, a vocabulary is developed that is applicable to the actual circumstances of our political reality where a plurality of nations lives under the same political and judicial rule. Finally, the arguments of the dissertation are problematized by discussing critical examples from EU case law and European politics. It is argued that a right to cultural self-determination depends on the particular circumstances of the state in which one lives. The conclusion holds that the EU, being a regional state, must learn accordingly to find practical solutions to the challenge of accommodating national differences.