Where does sovereignty collide?

The supreme authority of a state over its territory and population, together with its independence from outside control. Krasner's 2001 Rethinking the sovereign state model distinguished four things the one word bundles: domestic sovereignty (the organisation of authority within a state), interdependence sovereignty (control over cross-border flows), international legal sovereignty (mutual recognition among states), and Westphalian sovereignty (the exclusion of external authority from a territory). The referent is a claim about who may rightfully command within a border and answer to no one outside it, not a shopper's power over production, a nation's jurisdiction over data, or a community's control of its food.[1]

Unit

A state's supreme internal authority and external independence

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed through recognition by other states, constitutional authority, and effective control over territory and borders

The principle that consumers, through the pattern of their spending, ultimately dictate what an economy produces, so that firms serve buyers' preferences rather than their own. Hutt's 1940 The Concept of Consumers' Sovereignty, which named the idea, cast the consumer as the one who directs the productive system by choosing among offerings, in contrast to producer sovereignty, where output is set by those who make it. The referent is a claim about who steers an economy through market demand, a matter of price and choice, not political authority over a territory, control of data, or self-determination over a food system.[2]

Unit

The direction of production by aggregate consumer demand

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Inferred from how production responds to shifts in demand, prices, and expressed consumer preference

The principle that data are subject to the authority and governance of a particular people or nation, classically the laws of the jurisdiction where they are collected or stored, and by extension the right of Indigenous peoples to govern data about their communities, lands, and knowledge. Carroll and colleagues' 2020 The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance set out collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, and ethics as principles that assert Indigenous data sovereignty alongside open-data norms. The referent is a claim about whose law and authority govern a body of data, not a state's territorial rule, a shopper's sway over production, or control of a food system.[3]

Unit

The governing authority a people or nation holds over data

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed through data governance rules, jurisdictional storage requirements, and Indigenous community control over collection and use

The claimed right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture systems, to control how food is produced, distributed, and consumed, rather than have those terms set by markets or distant institutions. Patel's 2009 Food sovereignty traced the term from the peasant movement La Via Campesina and examined its contested meanings around rights, agroecology, and democratic control of food systems. The referent is a demand for collective self-determination over food and land, a question of who governs a food system, not supreme authority over a state's territory, a consumer's pull on production, or jurisdiction over data.[4]

Unit

A people's self-determined control over its food system

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed through control of land and seed, local food policy, and the terms peasant and Indigenous movements set for production