The concept of sovereignty has comprised the conditions of legal rule, public authority and, due to this, has been a political and legal key-concept for centuries. The promise of sovereignty has been to guarantee political order. What has come to the forefront of academic discussion today, however, is the question whether or not the concept of sovereignty should still has its place within our analytical vocabulary and whether or not there is a way of making sense of it in times of globalization. This volume addresses these questions and seeks to study the challenges to the concept of sovereignty arising from the different processes of debordering, of integration, and of (social) differentiation today. The formation of new political and societal order(s) beyond the state on the one hand and the growing influence of transnational corporations, of transnational cooperation of governmental agencies as well as of transnational activism make such an investigation more topical than ever. With contributions by: Friederike Kuntz, Christian Volk, Markus Patberg, Daniel Jacobi, Thorsten Thiel, Theresa Reinold, Sassan Gholiagha, Petra Gumplova