Governments Without States

by bam

Course 7 of the path whose method course, Who Has the Power to Do This?, taught the four questions (who acted, under what authority, where the power comes from, who can overturn it) and the vertical stack of national and subnational government. This course is about the authority that stack leaves out: governance that happens in bodies that are NOT sovereign states. It opens with the question underneath the whole subject, what even makes a state a state, teaching the Montevideo Convention's four criteria (1933) and the long argument between the declarative and constitutive theories of recognition. Then it climbs above the state to the supranational bodies: the European Union, which is neither a country nor an ordinary treaty organization but its own autonomous legal order (Van Gend en Loos, 1963; Costa v ENEL, 1964); the United Nations, an organization of sovereign equals rather than a world government (UN Charter, 1945); and the African Union (2002), successor to the OAU. Then it turns to the hardest case, unrecognised and contested states, taught neutrally: the course describes the recognition disagreement, attributes each claim, reports the documented facts, and does not adjudicate anyone's status. Finally it comes down BELOW the state to self-governing communities, the homeowners association that governs by covenant, the housing co-op that governs by membership, the union that governs by collective bargaining, and the mutual-aid network that governs by voluntary agreement, which is the hand-off to the business path, because each holds its power through an entity and an instrument rather than through sovereignty. It closes with a capstone: find a body with real authority over someone that is not a sovereign state, and map where its power comes from. This course teaches how to read authority. It is not legal advice, and it does not take sides in any sovereignty dispute.