©Cheneval/University of Zurich/12.08.04
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with traditional international or statist structures, with feedback loops of sub-state or ethnic
fragmentation, with failed states or with the total absence of modern statehood. The global
application and the “finality” of MDI is uncertain. But as a process towards a more
comprehensive transnational guarantee of rule of law, individual autonomy and general welfare,
we can consider MDI a systemic and normative necessity of modern democracy and market
economy. The future of MDI depends on many factors, but where it does happen, it happens for
good reasons. Where it doesn’t happen, opportunities might be missed (Pastor 2001).
MDI guarantees the rule of law through shared responsibility between democratic
domestic, intergovernmental and supranational institutions. It is therefore not a process of
reproduction of the unitary state at a higher level. Neither is it a process of centralization and
monopolization of power, but of differentiated delegation of sovereignty to supranational agents
and of democratic intergovernmentalism in the areas where states cooperate but retain full or
shared decision-making power. States, especially the powerful ones, continue to be the single
most important political actors. However, many of them pursue some of their goals through
negative integration (differentiated abolition of borders), differentiated delegation of sovereignty
to supranational regulatory agents and to legislative bodies through constituent or contractual
treatises (Sarooschi 2003). On a lower level of intensity, the integration process might be limited
to regulatory arbitration of which the dispute settlement system of the WTO can serve as an
example. Overall, sovereignty remains important. The same holds true for the principle of uti
possidetis juris. But sovereignty and the traditionally unitary and holistic character of borders are
being unbundled (Ruggie 1993, p. 164). Borders and decision-making powers are increasingly
differentiated. It is important to see that the unbundling of territory is not just a cultural,
economic and social process (Jackson 2000, p. 36). Rather, it leads to legal and institutional
forms of unbundled, incongruent and non-unitary political and legal authority.
Convention