This article theorizes the ways in which the new sovereignty discourse relates to modifications in the nature of statehood and the emergence of new forms of international conduct. States no longer assert their authority on the grounds of jurisdictional exclusivity, but rather decide to share it within collective systems to deal with the realities of a late-modern world. Thus ‘sovereignty no longer equates with statehood’, but a complex network of multi-actor governance domains prompts us to reassess how states have come to perform their functions within a wider context of ‘multiple modernities’, relocating ‘the major arenas of contestation … to new areas in which different movements and societies continually interact’.