Value Chain Sovereignty

Abstract

We have a “Leviathan” problem. Great powers are rewriting the current rules-based global order. Their core argument draws on “sovereignty.” They do not mean “sovereignty” as codified in the U.N. Charter. Instead, their version of sovereignty is “imperial”: it is absolute and legally unreviewable. In this article, I provide a theoretical assessment of imperial sovereignty and identify its unique rapaciousness, extending beyond even its colonial precursors. I argue that there is a structural reason for its emergence: imperial sovereignty reacts to, and grows out of, the post-Cold-War Washington consensus and its complex integration of global value chains away from traditional sovereignty control. I provide an alternative to imperial sovereignty that can make sense of current reality and constructively reharness the idea of sovereignty. The key move I make is to reinvigorate the old legal principle of neighborliness and its cognate idea of correlative rights. I argue that integrated global value chains constitute a global resource community. This frame can address the core globalization concerns fueling imperial sovereignty: globalization erodes traditional sovereignty and thus deprives states of critical regulatory power over shared resources. Correlative rights re-empower States to exercise value-chain-wide jurisdiction to capture their share of benefits from the value chain. Yet, this right is limited by the correlative rights of their peers to safeguard the value chain community as such and compete back within it. These correlative rights are legally ascertainable and have been ascertained in the common law of property. They therefore can reinvigorate neighborliness as a crucial safety valve to manage increasingly fierce inter-State competition. This safety valve is critical for any realist to deescalate worsening geopolitical tensions between nuclear powers.