Political Agency Beyond Sovereignty: How Non-State Political Communities Sustain Political Agency

Existing scholarship on nations without states, regional autonomy, federalism, nationalism and paradiplomacy has generated substantial knowledge about how non-state communities mobilize, acquire autonomy and contest state authority. It provides fewer comparative explanations, however, of how such communities sustain political agency over time despite limited sovereignty, changing institutional constraints and unequal access to formal power. Consequently, we know considerably more about the emergence of non-state political actors than about the mechanisms through which they preserve political agency across different political and constitutional contexts.
This panel examines how non-state political communities reproduce, transform or lose their capacity to act as distinct political subjects. Political agency is understood as the capacity to define collective interests, formulate political objectives, maintain institutional and symbolic continuity, mobilize support and seek influence across multiple levels of governance. Rather than focusing primarily on the origins of autonomy movements or secessionist demands, the panel shifts attention to the longer-term reproduction of political agency under conditions of incomplete sovereignty.
We welcome theoretical, conceptual, comparative and empirically grounded contributions addressing questions such as: Which institutional, political and ideational mechanisms sustain political agency without state sovereignty? How do political institutions, language, education, memory and external action contribute to the reproduction of collective political subjectivity? Under what conditions does autonomy strengthen political agency, and when does it instead generate dependence, fragmentation or decline? How do constitutional conflicts, political crises and changes in territorial governance reshape the capacity of non-state communities to act?
Contributions may examine autonomous regions, stateless nations, Indigenous polities, sub-state governments and other territorially or politically organized communities across different world regions. Comparative studies, single-case analyses and methodological contributions from different theoretical traditions are encouraged.
By bringing together research from comparative politics, federalism, political sociology, nationalism studies and international relations, the panel seeks to advance comparative understanding of the conditions and mechanisms through which political agency is sustained, transformed or weakened beyond sovereignty.