This new volume shows how state sovereignty is more fluid and contested than is usually appreciated within both conventional and constructivist literature.

Whereas previous constructivist works have investigated the temporal contingency of state sovereignty, the spatial contingency of this concept has been neglected. This book tackles this situation, showing the reader how the meaning of state sovereignty was constituted differently in the case of the intervention in Kosovo and the case of non-intervention in Algeria in the late 1990s.

This essential study clearly and concisely:

• takes existing constructivist and poststructuralist work on state sovereignty one step further, arguing that state sovereignty not only is open to different constructions over time, but also across space
• probes further into the conceptual relationships between sovereignty/ intervention, arguing that legitimations of non-intervention also can be analyzed as a practice, which gives meaning and content to the concept of state sovereignty
• contributes to the emerging debate on the importance of 'methodology' in constructivist studies, turning the philosophical and meta-theoretical assumptions of constructivism and poststructuralism into an informed 'analytical strategy' guiding the book’s empirical discourse analysis.