Simulating Sovereignty
Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange

Cynthia Weber offers an original and important contribution to the understanding of sovereignty, the state and intervention in international relations theory.

Cynthia Weber (Author)

9780521455237, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 September 1994

164 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.367 kg

'This is an important and brilliant book. Weber travels through extremely difficult theoretical terrain with enviable ease and disarming simplicity. It needs to be read to be believed. What is more, this is done without once resorting to simplistic philosophical accounts … [those] interested in joining the debate, should definitely give this book a serious read.' International Affairs

In Simulating Sovereignty Cynthia Weber presents a critical analysis of the concept of sovereignty. Examining the justifications for intervention offered by the Concert of Europe, President Wilson's Administration, and the Reagan-Bush administrations, she combines critical international relations theory and foreign policy discourses about intervention to accomplish two important goals. First, rather than redefining state sovereignty, she radically deconstructs it by questioning the historical foundations of sovereign authority. Secondly, the book provides a critique of representation generally, and of the representation of the sovereign state in particular. This book is thus an original and important contribution to the understanding of sovereignty, the state and intervention in international relations theory.

1. Writing the state
2. Examining the sovereignty/intervention boundary
3. Interpretive approaches
4. Concert of Europe interventions in Spain and Naples
5. Wilson administration actions in the Mexican and Bolshevik revolutions
6. United States invasions of Grenada and Panama
7. Symbolic exchange and the state.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]