This chapter introduces the main claims of Democracy and Empire, which reconceptualizes imperial popular sovereignty and self-determination as imperial concepts and constructs. This requires tracing the racial capitalist logics that marked the historical emergence of claims of popular sovereignty in western polities and their reliance on imperial forms of capitalist accumulation and explicating the political ramifications of these material underpinnings. The introduction explains how the book goes beyond existing accounts of white democracy by theorizing the material and ecological components of this form of rule and conceptualizing it as a properly transnational imperial form. Vis-à-vis the literature on popular sovereignty, the book makes the case that popular sovereignty and self-determination depended on popular claims that demanded collective access to wealth obtained by imperial means and required the exploitation of nonwhite subjects. Finally, the Introduction explains how the framework of racial capitalism informs Democracy and Empire’s project and presents its contribution within this approach, to assess the interconnections between different forms of racial subjection, and to theorize migration and nature within racial capitalism. In closing, this section provides a summary of the substantive chapters of the book.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Indigenous Chamorro political leaders and activists challenged United States imperialism on Guam, particularly the issues of heavy militarization and increased immigrant and settler presence. Influenced by Indigenous decolonization movements throughout the Pacific, Chamorros engaged in the political process of self-determination as stipulated by Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter. Through the Guam Commonwealth Movement, they chose to articulate their right to self-determination as an Indigenous people, emphasizing Indigenous political rights and culture within an island whose population was increasingly multicultural. Although the movement was ultimately stalled by the US Congress due to its perceived unconstitutionality, the quest for Chamorro self-determination reveals the limitations of the UN saltwater thesis for colonized Indigenous peoples living within settler colonial islands, demonstrates how articulations of self-determination become inextricable from Indigenous rights, and illustrates how US imperialism in the Pacific persists well into the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1 surveys the current historiography of anti-colonial self-determination in the twentieth century. It highlights how historians have continued to view anti-colonial self-determination in terms of state-based political representation.

Using a classical perspective tending to interpret existing positive international law, this chapter pursues a double objective. First, it fits in with the doctrinal trend embodied by the Institut de droit international (IDI) in emphasising that intervention by invitation is unlawful if it implies interference in an internal situation, contrary to the right of peoples to self-determination. Second, this research highlights the growing role of the UN Security Council in appraising and characterising the conditions surrounding the legal validity of intervention by invitation. The chapter focuses on military operations in Mali (2013), Iraq (2014), Syria (2015), Yemen (2015), and The Gambia (2017). It observes how, by adopting resolutions, the UN Security Council made pronouncements on which authority was entitled to give its consent, and on the legitimacy of the object and effects of the intervention. The chapter concludes that the Council no longer necessarily authorises any military intervention, but centralises and multilateralises the appraisal of the circumstances surrounding the formulation of the invitation.

In this chapter, we argue that autonomy-related developmental processes are key for a more complete and deep-level understanding of the development of coping. We first discuss the critical role of autonomy in psychosocial growth, not only during adolescence but also throughout the lifespan. Then, we consider how autonomy-relevant experiences, and autonomy frustration in particular, trigger specific coping responses, and we discuss the developmental patterns of these coping responses and their implications for individuals’ psychosocial development. We then review how situation-specific characteristics of individuals’ context (e.g., the social domain and the degree of autonomy support in the situation) have implications for the unfolding of a coping episode. The chapters ends by discussing how proximal figures in one’s social context (with a particular focus on parents) can foster more adaptive and flexible coping, and how self-determination and mindfulness also serve as critical coping resources.

Chapter three measures the political influences of ‘new’ and ‘old’ Irish nationalisms in Britain from the aftermath of the 1916 Rising to the aftermath of the 1918 general election. It profiles the political languages and cultures of ‘Irish-Ireland’ nationalism in British centres: Gaelic League-Sinn Féin-I.S.D.L.; charts the decline of the Irish Parliamentary Party’s British political influence; and evaluates the impact of the 1918 Representation of the People Act on Irish political representation in Britain. While advanced Irish nationalist associations were central to the organisation of relief campaigns for interned rebels in British centres, the 1916 Rising, this chapter submits, did not fundamentally change Irish nationalist politics in Britain. Conflicted over Redmond’s earlier refusal to join the British Cabinet, the Irish Party was instead debilitated by the absence of political leadership, and a post-war political manifesto, in Britain. While the Irish Party in Ireland was decisively defeated by Sinn Féin at the 1918 general election, the Irish Party in Britain was effectively displaced by the Labour Party. The ‘victory’ of Sinn Féin in Britain was predicated less on the democratic legitimacy of Dáil Éireann and more on its recognisable post-war mandate: an Irish Self-Determination League.

The chapter chronicles the emergence of religious minorities in late colonial constitutional politics. Efforts to actualize the missionary dream of winning souls took the form of self-determination advocacy in the late colonial years with Protestant advocates constructing the religious minorities as the group seeking self-determination. Although the religious minorities emerged to resist colonial rule, paradoxically, making that identity affirmed the Muslim-non-Muslim classification central to colonial governance. By telling a story of the oppression of Christians and diverse indigenous faiths based on their status as non-Muslims, Protestant advocates constructed an identity centered on its antithesis to Islam. That binary failed to capture the complex forms of exclusion that colonial governance of religion entailed. Although it purported to be inclusive of all non-Muslim concerns, self-determination advocacy overwhelmingly privileged the Protestant experience. Moreover, the religious minorities' identity excluded Muslim populations marginalized in the colonial state. The ultimate consequence was that the religious minorities project opened new doors to inequality.

The year 1919 saw an unprecedented wave of female activism unleashed by women who collectively decried the exclusion of ’half of humanity’ from the peace negotiations. Promises of a new international order rooted in self-determination, popular sovereignty and social justice served as the catalyst for these women: suffragists, pacifists, labour activists, pan-Africanists and anti-colonialists from Europe, North America, India, Korea, Egypt, China and beyond. Throughout 1919, they congregated in meeting halls and marched in the streets, demanding a voice in the peace negotiations and insisting on representation in democratic states and the new institutions of global governance. In their vision, a just and secure international order depended as much on safeguarding the rights of individuals as it did on facilitating the peaceful coexistence of nations. The result of their activism was an ever-expanding and intersecting network of women’s organisations dedicated to securing gender equality around the world

Without falling into the Keynesian trap of implying the entire settlement was created in President Wilson’s ‘hot, dry room’, this chapter acknowledges the central role of the Big Four at the Paris Peace Conference in providing a decision-making forum to which many of the most contentious issues were referred. Their ideas, conflicting ambitions and interactions helped to shape the peace. Wilson and Lloyd George, who largely shared a Gladstonian liberal philosophy, advocated self-determination, disarmament, trade and a new international order based on a League of Nations, though this did not prevent significant clashes between them over reparations and naval construction. Clemenceau pursued a more traditional, though potentially incompatible, policy of alliances and territorial adjustments to counter what he perceived to be a continuing threat from a neighbour with larger resources and a more dynamic demographic. Orlando’s vision was focused more closely on Italy and its European context, though not without imperial aspirations. Keynes dismissed him in a sentence and footnote but Italy had an important part in the negotiations and compromises, which moulded the settlement drafted by the Four and their colleagues. The extent, however, to which a ‘New Diplomacy’ had overtaken the old remained moot.

Throughout the twentieth century, the principle of ’self-determination’ had many lives – as political catch-phrase, legal possibility and a justifying logic of world order. In the aftermath of the First World War, it was a principle that suffused the treaty discussions of the Paris peace conference, and loomed large in the framing of the plebiscites, as well as the League of Nations mandate system. This was not least because it animated the claims of numerous nationalist and anti-imperialist activists agitating for increased rights and freedoms in this moment. This chapter explores how the notion of self-determination, and related ideas around national belonging, race and gender, manifested in this 1919 moment in the promises of the Allied leaders, in the claims-making of non-state actors and in the discussions of legal professionals. In so doing it shows how we can understand particular visions of international law in this period as part of a much larger political and cultural conversation about the relationship between the state and national, racial and gendered belonging.

The year 1919 is now remembered primarily as the year in which peace was restored to Europe following the cataclysm of the Great War. But it was also, no less importantly, a time of upheaval across much of the colonial world. In North Africa, Egyptians rose in revolt against British control and Tunisian protesters demanded the restoration of the constitution from their French overlords. Indians, too, rose against British rule, launching a concerted campaign that year for Indian self-determination. And across East and Southeast Asia – in China, Korea, Indochina, the Dutch East Indies – uprisings against imperialism transformed polities and societies. In short, the wake of the Great War saw the rise of a transnational revolt against the imperial world order, a revolt that would profoundly shape the transformation of international order in the ensuing decades.

This chapter covers three areas of international law that, though distinct, are interconnected. The law of statehood defines which entities qualify as states, the most important actors on the world stage and the international legal persons with the most rights, duties and functions. The law of self-determination accords rights to ‘peoples’ rather than to states, but in limited circumstances it enables peoples to create new states for themselves. That can be a way for a people to seize control of its own destiny, especially if it has been subject to colonialism or oppression. Finally, the law of territory determines the geographical borders within which many of the rights, duties and functions of states are applicable, including how those borders can change.

Public international law is a worldwide legal system which regulates the conduct of states (countries) and other actors, both in their international relations and within states’ territories. It governs many areas, such as sovereignty over territory; rights and responsibilities at sea; environmental protection; human rights and the suppression of international crimes; trade and investment; the use of military force; responsibility for breaches of the law; and the settlement of disputes. This chapter introduces the main features of public international law, including its history, sources and purposes. It outlines what the law regulates, who has rights and bears obligations under it, and how it is implemented and enforced. The chapter then considers jurisprudential debates about the nature of public international law as ‘law’ and the reasons for compliance with it, and concludes with discussion of some key critical theories.

This chapter provides a snapshot of the recent history of Indigenous political movements in the circumpolar north. Over the past six decades or so, Indigenous peoples across the Arctic have pushed forward with political action and initiatives that have aimed to secure national and international recognition of their rights, land claims, the granting of autonomy, and participation in many of the decision-making processes and institutions of governance that affect their lives and homelands.1 Indigenous peoples’ organizations have also become major actors in Arctic environmentalism and international circumpolar affairs.

The advantages of power-sharing arrangements as a tool of peacemaking are gradually being substantiated in practice and research, but have not yet gained normative legitimacy, nor have they been properly incorporated into either the human rights framework or international and regional law. When power-sharing arrangements utilize predefined ethno-national groups as a central feature of the constitutional structure, they are widely seen as illiberal (and unjust) and as violating individual rights to equality and nondiscrimination. This conflict between power-sharing and human rights is generally viewed as a dilemma between peace and justice, and the main justification given to support the maintenance of the arrangements is that they are an indispensable political compromise to overcome violent conflict and are preferable to the continuation of bloodshed. However, this justification is not always enough, as the European Court of Human Rights ruling in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitution illustrates. But is this “peace versus justice” framing of the tensions between power-sharing and human rights accurate? Does it properly account for the meaning and requirements of justice in loci of deeply divided places?

The theoretical framework of collective equality changes how tensions between power-sharing arrangements and human rights are viewed: Instead of a dilemma of peace versus justice, it is framed as between two conceptions of justice as we evaluate power-sharing and other collective measures as a way for promoting justice (in addition to peace). This chapter brings the collective equality framework into the legal debate and explores its key implications for human rights law. It also offers an alternative way to mitigate the tensions between existing international law (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 1) and contemporary peacemaking practice, which is more apt to the contemporary task of international law: regulating disputes and conflicting demands made by ethno-national groups. This proposed framework aims to contribute to an already happening shift, from a state-centered interpretation of the right to self-determination to a more nuanced and substantive understanding of that right as an international legal right of peoples to secure their freedom and equality.

This chapter substantiates the argument that promoting collective equality as a core rationale of peacemaking is not only utopian, but a realistic goal that corresponds with reducing the likelihood of violent conflict and increasing the potential for durable peace. In the first part of the chapter, the argument that collective equality posits a realistic goal for peacemaking is presented. In the second part, the claim that promoting collective equality should be regarded as an effective peacebuilding strategy is promoted. I base this claim on empirical findings found in the literature, mainly writings on ethnic conflicts, nation-building, and peace. Lastly, the chapter engages with three possible objections related to the relationship between collective equality and power politics.

In recent decades international and regional human rights norms have been increasingly applied to constitutional provisions, revealing significant tensions between primary political arrangements, such as power-sharing institutions, and human rights norms. This book argues that these tensions, generally framed as a peace versus justice dilemma, are built on an individualistic conception of justice that fails to account for the meaning and requirements of justice in deeply divided places, which are characterized by ethnically based political exclusion and inequalities.

By introducing the concept of collective equality as a new theoretical basis for the law of peace, this book proposes a new approach for dealing with the tensions between peace-related arrangements and human rights. Through principled, pragmatic, and legal reasoning, the book develops a new paradigm that captures more accurately what democracy and human rights mean and require in the context of ethno-national conflicts, and provides potent guidance for advancing justice and peace in such places.