Beyond Rugby and Cricket: which Sovereignty to Small Nations?

Notes internacionals CIDOB, núm. 50

- In an economy where markets and corporations are multinational or supranational, the sovereignty of a small nation-state has become a very weak defence; the only protection available to individual nation-states might be a supranational organisation.

- Small nations used to be subject to economic control by large nations that can themselves no longer resist international market forces: what should be the nature of a small nation-state now?

- Nationalist policies are rooted in a process that has been superseded by regionalization processes that tend toward the (re-)creation of supranational entities.

- Today national political power and supranational economic power have become separated and the existing political structures can no longer control the economic forces, resulting in a tendency toward supranational technocracy.

- Although sovereign debt and global financial problems have hemmed in the freedom and independence of Ireland, the people still cherish their national sovereignty but have lost any illusion about what the independence of a small nation-state might mean