Ontological Foundations of State Sovereignty
It addresses foundational issues in political ontology for researchers in international relations, but is incremental as it focuses on setting the stage rather than presenting new results.
This paper examines the nature of state sovereignty and proposes a strategy for handling vague or contradictory data on which states are sovereign, aiming to lay groundwork for applied ontology in international affairs.
This short paper is a primer on the nature of state sovereignty and the importance of claims about it. It also aims to reveal (merely reveal) a strategy for working with vague or contradictory data about which states, in fact, are sovereign. These goals together are intended to set the stage for applied work in ontology about international affairs.