According to Lord Acton,
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
This week's essay stems from a growing concern I've harbored about the fragmentation of political discourse along increasingly narrow identity lines. The catalyst for this piece was a recent community meeting where I observed activists from various groups staking competing claims to "sovereign authority" over local issues, each based on their particular identity.
By exploring this phenomenon, I hope to initiate a necessary dialogue about how we can honor these opportunities without compromising our collective ability to govern. This piece invites readers to consider the broader implications of identity-based authority claims on our democratic processes and institutions.
How Competing Claims to Authority Are Fracturing Democratic Governance
Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood, Khayyam 🌶️
In a small conference room in San Francisco last month, I watched a dozen activists spend four hours debating whether their neighborhood had the right to declare itself a "sovereign food zone" free from corporate agriculture. None of them could define sovereignty. None had ever governed anything larger than a book club. Yet they spoke with the moral certainty of the founding fathers, convinced that their shared commitment to local produce granted them legitimate political authority.
Sitting there, watching passionate people tie themselves in rhetorical knots, I felt a familiar frustration. These were well-intentioned people who genuinely cared about their community. But they were lost in a way of thinking that's become pervasive across modern democratic societies. This scene captures the central delusion destroying democracy: we have convinced ourselves that feeling strongly about something grants us sovereign rights over it.
Sovereignty—real sovereignty—meant something specific when the concept emerged from the blood-soaked fields of Westphalia in 1648. It was the exclusive right to make binding decisions within defined borders, backed by force and recognized by other powers. Nothing more, nothing less. It was brutally practical: whoever could enforce their will throughout a territory without external interference was sovereign. Everyone else was subject.
Today, we've turned sovereignty into a participation trophy. Every identity group, every cultural movement, every political faction claims sovereign rights. Indigenous sovereignty. Data sovereignty. Food sovereignty. Bodily sovereignty. The list grows daily, and with each new claim, the concept becomes more meaningless.
This isn't semantic pedantry. This confusion is tearing apart the foundational assumption of democratic governance: that territorial citizenship creates shared political authority regardless of who you are.
The Great Conflation
I've spent the last five years watching communities I care about tear themselves apart over this confusion. In city after city, school board after school board, I've seen the same pattern: two fundamentally different human needs getting tangled up in destructive ways. We're conflating identity recognition with political authority, and it's destroying our capacity to govern together.
Identity recognition is the deeply human desire to have your group's experiences, culture, and dignity acknowledged. This is legitimate. Historical injustices demand acknowledgment. Cultural distinctiveness deserves respect. Group experiences shape individual identity in profound ways.
Political authority is the practical power to make binding decisions for people who live in the same place, regardless of their background. This requires territory, institutions, and the capacity to enforce decisions. It has nothing to do with identity and everything to do with function.
We've fused these concepts because sovereignty sounds more powerful than "please recognize us." This rhetorical upgrade has created an impossible situation: multiple groups now claim exclusive authority over the same resources, territory, and people—all justified by incompatible identity claims that cannot be reconciled.
The result is political paralysis disguised as moral complexity. I've watched a city council spend eighteen months debating a bike lane because three different groups claimed sovereign authority over the same street. I've seen school districts unable to update math curricula because competing communities claimed sovereign rights over education. In my own neighborhood, we can't even fix the broken streetlights because every demographic wants veto power over decisions that affect "their people."
The Democracy Killer
This matters because identity-based sovereignty claims are fundamentally anti-democratic.
Democracy requires accepting that sometimes you lose. Sometimes the majority disagrees with you. Sometimes policies you hate get implemented because you live in a shared political community with people who see things differently.
But if your political legitimacy flows from your identity rather than your citizenship, why should you accept decisions made by people who don't share that identity? If sovereignty derives from being Black, or Indigenous, or working-class, or Christian, then political authority becomes impossible across difference.
I've seen this logic play out with disturbing clarity. Last year, I watched a school board meeting in suburban Denver devolve into something resembling a racial tribunal. Parents literally sorted themselves by ethnicity, sitting in separate sections of the auditorium to debate curriculum changes. When political legitimacy becomes tied to identity, territorial sharing becomes impossible. Every group demands exclusive control over "their" space. Diverse communities don't become more integrated—they become battlegrounds.
We're watching the same logic unfold globally. In Brussels, EU parliamentary sessions devolve into national identity standoffs rather than policy discussions. Municipal councils in multicultural cities like Toronto and Melbourne fragment along ethnic lines when debating housing development. In post-colonial contexts like South Africa and Kenya, local resource allocation becomes a battle of competing historical grievances rather than discussions about effective governance.
The Performance of Power
The cruelest irony is that identity-based sovereignty claims actually prevent real empowerment.
Real sovereignty requires governing everyone in your territory, regardless of their background. It means taking responsibility for infrastructure, education, healthcare, public safety—the grinding daily work of collective life. It means making hard choices about resource allocation and accepting responsibility when things go wrong.
Identity-based sovereignty offers something much easier: cultural recognition without political responsibility. You get to feel sovereign while someone else handles the sewage treatment.
I've watched this dynamic play out repeatedly in community after community—activists celebrating symbolic victories with passionate speeches and ceremonial declarations, while the actual work of governance—fixing roads, managing budgets, maintaining public services—grows harder and more dysfunctional by the day.
This suits existing power structures perfectly. States love granting symbolic sovereignty to restive groups. Create "autonomous cultural zones" with special recognition but no budget authority. Establish "indigenous sovereignty" that depends entirely on federal funding and federal courts. Give every identity group just enough symbolic power to feel heard while maintaining actual control over resources and decisions.
Everyone wins except democracy itself, which slowly hollows out as shared political authority becomes impossible.
The Fragmentation Accelerates
The identity-sovereignty fusion has no logical stopping point because identities are infinite and overlapping.
I've watched this cascade happen in real time. Start with reasonable claims—Black communities deserve recognition, Indigenous peoples have historical sovereignty rights. But logic doesn't stop there. If race justifies sovereignty, why not subculture? If historical oppression grants authority, what about contemporary marginalization? Last month, I encountered activists claiming "neurodivergent sovereignty" over workplace policies. Where does it end?
More importantly, which identity trumps others when they conflict? Are you sovereign as a woman, as a Catholic, as a union member, as a Californian? Who decides authentic group membership? The questions multiply infinitely, ensuring permanent conflict.
We're already seeing this logic play out. Progressive activists demand racial sovereignty while conservative activists claim religious sovereignty. Rural communities declare themselves "Second Amendment sanctuaries" while urban neighborhoods establish "immigrant sanctuary zones." Each group insists their identity grants them veto power over policies they dislike.
The end result isn't justice or recognition—it's the complete breakdown of shared governance.
The Path Forward
Fixing this requires intellectual honesty about what we actually want.
If the goal is identity recognition—acknowledging historical injustices, protecting cultural practices, ensuring equal dignity—then let's pursue that directly. Create truth and reconciliation processes. Fund cultural preservation. Enforce anti-discrimination laws. Build institutions that respect difference without fragmenting authority.
If the goal is political power—controlling resources, making binding decisions, governing territory—then organize territorially, build coalitions across difference, and compete for actual authority through democratic processes.
But we cannot continue pretending that feeling strongly about your group identity grants you sovereign rights over other people who happen to live in the same place.
The Uncomfortable Truth
After five years studying this dynamic across dozens of communities—from rural townships to major metropolitan areas—I've reached an uncomfortable conclusion: we're not going to fix this easily, if at all.
The identity-sovereignty fusion serves too many interests too well. Politicians get to grant symbolic recognition without transferring real power. Activists get to feel empowered without taking responsibility for governing. Academics get endless complexity to analyze. Media gets perpetual conflict to cover.
Meanwhile, the actual work of collective governance—maintaining infrastructure, educating children, managing resources—gets harder every year as each decision requires navigating an increasingly complex web of competing sovereignty claims.
We'll keep holding conferences on "reimagining sovereignty" and "decolonizing governance" while potholes multiply, schools crumble, and basic services deteriorate. I've attended dozens of these conferences, watching brilliant scholars and passionate advocates spend days debating the theoretical implications of sovereignty while outside the conference hall, their own cities visibly crumble from neglect. We'll celebrate every new form of identity-based authority while wondering why nothing actually gets done.
The really perverse part? This dysfunction will create genuine crises that make people desperate for any authority that can actually solve problems. When the bridges start collapsing and the lights stop working, voters won't care about cultural recognition—they'll support whoever promises to make things function again.
That's when real sovereignty returns. Not the feel-good version we've been playing with, but the original: whoever can impose order when everything else has failed.
The irony is exquisite, and it keeps me up at night. Our attempt to democratize sovereignty by tying it to identity will end up destroying democracy entirely, replaced by whatever authority emerges from the chaos of governmental collapse.
Having studied failing states and collapsing communities across three continents, I recognize the pattern: this ends with someone promising to make the trains run on time, regardless of who gets hurt in the process. The historical pattern is as consistent as it is disturbing.
But hey, at least everyone will have felt heard.
References
- Besley, T., & Persson, T. (2019). "The Rise of Identity Politics." London School of Economics Working Paper.
- Kuah, A. (2003). "Sovereignty and the Politics of Identity." RSIS Working Paper.
- Astrada, S.B. (2020). "Reevaluating Politicized Identity & Notions of an American Democracy." Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality.
- Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
- Fanon, F. (1952). Black Skin, White Masks. Éditions du Seuil.
- Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford University Press.
- Young, I.M. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press.
- Benhabib, S. (2002). The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton University Press.
- Taylor, C. (1994). "The Politics of Recognition." In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton University Press.
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🌶️ iamkhayyam
Khayyam Wakil is a systems theorist whose research on technological transformation led him to examine how political communities organize and fragment. His work on computational systems developing contextual awareness informs his analysis of how human communities navigate competing claims to authority.
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