Date of Award

Spring 5-28-2025

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Global Governance and Human Security

First Advisor

Dr. J. Samuel Barkin

Second Advisor

Dr. Margaret P. Karns

Third Advisor

Dr. Shuai Jin

Abstract

This study examines alternative ways of conceptualizing sovereignty through European Union involvement in the issue areas of conflict management, capacity-building, and human rights promotion in four independence-seeking regions: Western Sahara, Somaliland, Abkhazia, and Transdniestria. Document analysis and in-depth key informant interviews were used to develop a theory of European Union involvement in independence-seeking regions.

The theory of European Union involvement proposed in this study rejects state-centric notions of sovereignty as the only mode of understanding sovereignty and holds that independence-seeking regions (ISRs) enact various sovereignties through their existence. Further, the theory formed in this research suggests that state-centric notions of sovereignty are unhelpful in understanding ISRs as a varied phenomenon; and that ultimately, state-centric notions of sovereignty perpetuate instability in the international system due to the isolation of ISRs by nation-states and international organizations, including the European Union. This theory proposes that many exclusive sovereignties coexist, have done in the past, and will do in the future, along a spectrum of sovereign iterations. Such a theory allows us to conceive of a political world(s) that will not always be constructed and ordered as we know it today.

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