Response to Joel Ng’s Review of Hybrid Sovereignty in World Politics

Abstract

practices—and how private entities engage in and even capture sovereign functions through this ambiguity— form the central contribution of this book. Its discussion between the conceptual issues of “ideal types” against the need for these to form markers along a spectrum for analytical purposes is excellent. A final thought that the book raises is one of how we go about analysing fundamental concepts in political science. Humankind as knowledge-maker is prone to categorization and ordering of types to make sense of our world. But reality, whether evolutionary or social, often operates along spectra without discrete markers between “types” except those we impose. As Srivastava reminds us, while we may use the concepts instrumentally, we should be mindful that it is a methodological step that risks obscuring nuance and variation that are the source of evolving conceptions. This prompts the final question that is only hinted at in the book: How might this book’s insights inform our understanding of the future evolution of sovereignty? This would entail asking about the conditions though which sovereign power moves between public and private: How large are these hybrid spaces where private entities may wield sovereign power? What causes retreat of the state or of the quasi-sovereign? This has largely been the domain of critical theorists following Carl Schmitt (see Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, 1985; Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, 2005), but the empirical study is sorely in need of updating for the twenty-first century.