The Supervised State

This article addresses an arresting conjuncture: the fact that the international community's involvement in states' affairs frequently coalesces around a state's management of internal difference. I outline striking parallels in the ways relations between supranational bodies, some European states, and their minorities were reconfigured in two post-imperial moments: the decade following the Great War and the present period of post-socialist transformation. In both periods supranational bodies developed regimes of supervision whose rationale and focus were minority rights and the state's governance of difference. Examining a figure I call “the supervised state,” I reflect on its implications for theorisations of state and sovereignty. I place these moments of intensified supervision of selected states within a larger history of supranational scrutiny and a political landscape that entailed a spectrum of sovereignties.