Sovereignty

Sovereignty, a second and more established global norm, is also highly relevant to our story. Sovereignty divides territory into exclusive chunks of property, affecting styles of state violence in contradictory ways.^[43] In our two cases, sovereignty helped trigger violence by providing Serbian and Jewish nationalists with powerful grievances. Since both countries' internationally recognized borders excluded coveted lands, nationalists in each felt duty bound to change their country's boundaries. In both cases, moreover, frustrated sovereignty claims provided incentives for ethnic cleansing. Some Serbian nationalists believed their claim over Bosnia would be bolstered by removal of the non-Serb population, while some Jewish Zionists held similar views regarding Palestine. Thus in one important sense, sovereignty served as a catalyst for Serbian and Israeli violence.

At the same time, sovereignty constrained repression by enhancing each state's infrastructural power in contested areas, creating the pre-conditions

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for policing, rather than cleansing. Broadly speaking, infrastructural power is strengthened by international recognition of a state's right to be sovereign ruler over a given piece of territory. Without such recognition, states are constantly anxious that their claim to rule will be undermined.^[44] To clarify, it is helpful to distinguish between sovereignty's empirical and juridical aspects.^[45] Empirical sovereignty is the state's actual physical ability to control territory, expropriate the means of violence, administer the population, and shape social and political life. Juridical sovereignty, by contrast, is the theoretical right states have to do such things, and this is achieved through diplomatic practices, treaties, and international norms. States earn empirical sovereignty, conversely, through physical violence, control, and administration.^[46] Infrastructural control is based chiefly on mechanisms of empirical sovereignty, but cannot endure without juridical recognition.^[47]

A second way in which sovereignty promotes policing over cleansing is through its link to the global human rights norm. The two norms have become increasingly intertwined, creating a "package deal" in which governments gain juridical rights to territory in return for a commitment to treat the population appropriately.^[48] Although actual policies obviously diverge substantially from international standards, no state can remain entirely indifferent.

Finally, sovereignty promotes policing by making it difficult for governments to disclaim responsibility for rogue internal violence. Given human rights pressures, governments are often tempted to argue that private actors are responsible for illegal violence, but the spirit of juridical sovereignty complicates this effort.^[49] Sovereigns are expected to have expropriated the means of violence from the citizenry in their own territory, and actions by lawless private forces undermine the state's legitimacy, a fate most rulers seek to avoid.