This book is not intended as a history of sovereignty or the concept of sovereignty. For that, it would have had to be far more extensive. However, frequent encounters with ahistorical treatments of the concept of sovereignty strengthened my decision to write it. It should instead serve as a reminder of the contextual nature and the adaptability of the concept of sovereignty. To accomplish this, it is sufficient to consider some significant stages in its development. I see the book as helping to clarify the question whether, in the early twenty-first century, the concept of sovereignty still has an object in the real world and fulfills a function that justifies its continued use, or if the changes in recent decades have cut the ground out from under it. The basis of this text was a far shorter piece for
Traité international de droit constitutionnel, published in Paris.
Professor Dick Howard accepted the book for publication in the Columbia Studies in Political Thought/Political History. The translation was made possible by a grant from the Börsenverein des deutschen Buchhandels. Belinda Cooper translated the text with remarkable sensitivity. Andrea Katz prepared French sources and quotations for the English-speaking reader where possible. Of particular help was the Library Service of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study). To all I am greatly indebted.