HIDEAKI SHINODA is a research fellow at the Institute for Peace Studies at Hiroshima University, Japan.

'Sovereignty has been the subject of an uncommon amount of recent discussion...One might think that there is nothing more worth saying. Shinoda shows otherwise. He makes a convincing case that sovereignty is conceptually intelligible only by situating it in the context of society. He surveys a wealth of materials, largely unexplored by other scholars, to make his case. He also shows that various conceptions of sovereignty entail conceptions of international society that are largely left implicit. While Shinoda himself refrains from speculating about sovereignty's future, his work makes it plain enough why recent speculation points in so many directions.' - Nicholas Onuf

• Acknowledgements Introduction Classical Constitutional Notions of Sovereignty Modern National Notions of Sovereignty The Rise of International Constitutionalism The Collapse of International Constitutionalism The Formalisation of Sovereignty Sovereign Equality and National Sovereignty in Communist and Third World Countries Towards New Constitutional Sovereignty Conclusions Index