Greetings, David.
I think you have to be a person who accepts that the concept of shared
sovereignty exists. I would venture to say that when states make
agreements with each other to share occupancy, administration and
governance over the same piece of property, that they always break
down the attributes of sovereignty and delineate which power shall
have what functions with respect to any one particular attribute. And
when the treaty is finished and "working", one party of the two is
always the underlying sovereign.
Examples:
Bhutan. The Duar of Bijnee, in around 1865, was under Bhutanese
sovereignty for six months of each year, and under British sovereignty
for the other six months.
US Bases in Germany. Under the NATO status of forces treaty, the US,
as "sending state", occupies base areas, and administers many
functions of sovereignty on behalf of the German governent (i.e.,
issues German license plates to base inhabitants, which the German
government permits to be inscribed with "USA"). The US postal service
operates on the bases, through an agency called the US Military Postal
Services Agency, to the exclusion of Germans as users, but not to the
exclusion of the German government's provision of mail services on the
bases by its own postal service. US criminal law applies alongside
German law. The bases are inside German customs territory, but the
treaty says the US may operate without their ooperations being
controlled by German customs. Thus, while the Germans can inspect
incoming goods destined for US Forces, they agreed that the US can
import whatever it needs duty free.
Customs Posts (many). The US government operates immigration posts in
other countries, the Swiss government allows German officials on
official duty to exercize sovereign rights on the Swiss sides of
border areas (at Bargen, near Schaffhausen, for example). In
Basel, there is the "Badische Bahnhof", which is operated by the
German Federal Railway. The territory is Swiss, but the Swiss allow
the Germans to operate postal, customs and railway activities there as
though German laws and as though German sovereignty applied there.
UN HQ New York. The building in New York boasts a sign that says
"welcome to International territory"... but it is not. The HQ
agreement clearly states that the grounds on which the UN operates
remains under US sovereignty, it's just that the US has relinquished
its prerogatives to exercize its sovereign rights in certain ways in
favor of the UN police and other organizational organs.
International Zone of Tangier. This takes a book, but underlying the
situation that existed there until the mid 1950s is the fact that
ultimate sovereignty was Moroccan - even though at times there was
really no Moroccan administration independent of the French.
Panama Canal Zone. Here, I believe, you come as close to shared
sovereignty as you can get, and as such, as close to "graduated" or
"gradual" sovereignty as ever existed. The Hay-Bunau-Villa treaty
(spelling??) provided at the key, pertinent part, that the United
States could act in the Canal Zone "as though it were sovereign".
In other words, Panama was sovereign but on top of it's continuing to
act as sovereign, it let the US also act like the sovereign. What
happended was that the US sovereign actions totally overpowered the
Panamanian's ability to compete in the exercize of sovereign
activities in the Zone, which ----ed the Panamanians off. Throughout
all of it, they had the ultimate titular rights of sovereignty - if
the US stopped acting like the sovereign, who would be left? The real
sovereign. Looking at the Zone in these terms, sovereignty was
ursurped in an operational context - not shared nor "graduatable".
Regards
Len Nadybal
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., David Mark <dmark@g...> wrote:
>
> Does anyone know of any current or past cases of "graded"
sovereignty,
> that is, of one country grading or blending gradually into another?
>
> That is, at this point it is 100% "country A", and over there 90%
"country
> A", 10% "country B". And then 70% "A", 30% "B", then 50-50, then 20%
"A",
> 80% "B", and finally 100% "B"? Sort of a condominium zone in which
one
> country gradually gives way to the other?
>
> If not at the national level, any examples at the subnational level?
>
> David