1 SOVEREIGN VENTURES? Transborder Corporations and the Politics of Offshore

This paper seeks to analyse the challenges that the offshore finance/economy causes to the modern state sovereignty. The offshore finance consists of tax havens, flags of convenience registers, export processing zones, offshore financial centres and international banking facilities, and has grown to such an extent that if we want to understand the international political economy the offshore simply cannot be left unnoticed. I approach the concept of sovereignty by adopting Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the close link between sovereignty and the ability to issue a state of exception. Agamben argues that sovereignty is defined by the ability to issue a state of exception and that in contemporary world the exception takes increasingly often the form of a camp. Albeit Agamben’s theory focuses mostly on his idea of biopolitics, I find it imperative to extend its reach. Ronen Palan has shown how offshor