SAMUEL WEBERCarl Schmitt, constitute the very essence of sovereignty. The sovereign would be ‘‘he who
is able to decide on the state of exception’’—or, translated into the situation of the United
Nations, sovereign would be the nation-state able to decide what constitutes a threat to
its survival, and thus a situation of self-defense. For Schmitt, however, the ‘‘state’’ is
already present in that which exceeds it as an exception, for the exception is merely the
state in its negative form: it is above all a ‘‘stateof exception [Ausnahmezustand],’’ or more
precisely, as the German word translated by ‘‘state’’ literally says, it involves a bringing ‘‘to
stand’’—aZu-stand.^8 The force of the decision that constitutes sovereignty is to bring the
exception as a temporal movement of alterity and difference to a standstill, thus making
it the negative mirror image of the state, which constitutes itself as negation of the nega-
tion. Thus, writing about the League of Nations in 1925 (inRoman Catholicism and Politi-
cal Form), Schmitt argues that, although the League might seem to constitute a ‘‘super-
state’’ or ‘‘super-sovereign’’ capable of adjudicating disputes between nations, it would
inevitably betray ‘‘the idea of an impersonal justice’’ by developing ‘‘its own powerful
personality.’’^9
The argument that Derrida develops inRogues, however, although indebted to
Schmitt, diverges from his notion on decisive points. For Derrida, the enabling ‘‘other’’
of sovereignty is not the ‘‘stateof exception,’’ which later, in Schmitt’sConcept of the
Political,will be identified with, or ratherasthe ‘‘enemy,’’ generally understood either as
another state or as a group seeking to take over the state. By thus determining the ‘‘other’’
of sovereignty as a ‘‘state of exception,’’ Schmitt defines the exception as essentially a
negative mode of the state or, which amounts to the same, as a state of negation. It is this
determination of alterity as state of exception that Derrida problematizes in his reconsid-
eration of certain discourses on and practices of democracy.^10
Before we turn to this argument itself, it is worth noting that what Schmitt, writing
in 1925, refers to as a ‘‘super-state’’ or ‘‘super-sovereign’’ has since undergone a significant
terminological shift: today it is called a ‘‘superpower.’’ This shift seems to acknowledge
that the claims of states or sovereigns to transcend their particularity and relativity can
only be based on sheer power—military in the first instance, economic in the second,
cultural in the third—rather than on any sort of political legitimacy. But if it is power
rather than legitimacy that determines sovereignty today—and perhaps always has, al-
though not as obviously—then where does this leave the distinction between legitimate
and ‘‘rogue’’ states?
The title that Derrida gives to his study of ‘‘democracy to come’’ already entails a
partial response to this question. It designates ‘‘rogue states’’ in the plural, a plurality that
will ultimately call into question the survival of the concept itself. If there aremanyrogue
states, including those that most loudly pronounce and denounce other states as being
‘‘rogue,’’ and if this plurality depends not simply on the perfidiousness or self-
interestedness of any one state—on its ‘‘personality,’’ as Schmitt might have said—but on
the traditional understanding—and practice—of sovereignty as essentially indivisible, one
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