Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty is a non-fiction book written by the Australian lawyers and legal academics Harry Hobbs and George Williams about micronations and their legal status within international law. Written from an academic perspective, it is one of few works on micronational movements and the earliest-published book to focus largely on the legal aspect of micronations. The book concerns the definition of statehood, the place of micronations within international law, people's motivations for declaring them, the micronational community and the ways by which such entities mimic sovereign states.
Both Hobbs and Williams specialise in international law; Hobbs is a human rights lawyer and Williams is an Australian constitutional law professor. Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty was published by Cambridge University Press as an ebook on 23 December 2021, and in hardcover and paperback formats in January 2022. The work's legal and non-dismissive academic approach to micronations garnered positive reviews. Hobbs and Williams authored a subsequent publication for a broader audience, entitled How to Rule Your Own Country: The Weird and Wonderful World of Micronations, which was published by the University of New South Wales Press in November 2022.
Context and publication
Micronations are political entities that claim independence and mimic acts of sovereignty as if they were a sovereign state, but lack any legal recognition. According to Collins English Dictionary, many exist "only on the internet or within the private property of [their] members" and seek to simulate a state rather than to achieve international recognition; their activities are generally non-threatening, often leading sovereign states to not actively contest the territorial claims they put forth. Legally speaking, micronation as a word has no basis in international law.
Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty is authored by the Australian lawyers and legal academics Harry Hobbs, an associate professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Technology Sydney, and George Williams, a professor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Planning and Assurance at the University of New South Wales. Both Hobbs and Williams specialise in international law; Hobbs is a human rights lawyer and Williams is an Australian constitutional law professor. Hobbs and Williams have published several articles together in academic journals regarding micronations since 22 April 2021. Prior to the book's publication, Hobbs had written about Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous people's aspirations in Australia in 2020. Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty is written from an academic perspective, and is one of a few works on micronations and the earliest-published book to focus largely on their status in regards to the law.
The earliest-published book about micronationalism was How to Start Your Own Country (1979) by libertarian science-fiction author Erwin S. Strauss, in which Strauss documents various approaches to sovereignty and their chances of success. This was followed by two French-language publications—L'Etat c'est moi: histoire des monarchies privées, principautés de fantaisie et autres républiques pirates in 1997 by writer and historian Bruno Fuligni and Ils ne siègent pas à l'ONU in 2000 by founder and head of the French Institute of Micropatrology, Fabrice O'Driscoll, which details over 600 micronations. In 2006, travel guide book publisher Lonely Planet published Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations, a humorous gazetteer that profiles various micronations and information on their locations, flags, stamps and other facts.
Although academic interest in micronationalism is limited, the study of the phenomenon—known as micropatriology—has been gaining momentum since the 2010s, and two journals entitled Shima and Transformations have frequently published articles regarding micronationalism. Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty was published by Cambridge University Press as an ebook on 23 December 2021, and in hardcover and paperback formats in January 2022. Published as part of Cambridge University Press's Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law series edited by David Dyzenhaus and Thomas Poole, Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty is 256 pages long.