Introduction: the concept of emergent sovereignty

Sovereignty is traditionally defined as the ability of a State to independently control its own territory, resources, and political process. However, the cases of Guinea-Bissau and Trinidad and Tobago demonstrate a different type of statehood — sovereignty, which is not designed or maintained from within, but develops as a byproduct of the interaction of many external forces: international organizations, transnational corporations, criminal networks and global markets. This type of sovereignty can be called emergent: a country recognizes and obtains its sovereignty as a result of factors that it does not control itself, from the mediation of ECOWAS and the EU to fluctuations in LNG prices at Asian hubs.

Emergence is understood here in a systemic sense: as a property arising from the interaction of various independent agents on the outer contour, and not as a result of purposeful state-building. Both states formally possess all the attributes of independence — constitutions, governments, armies — but the actual stability of their sovereignty is determined by external actors, often acting without regard to the interests of the state itself.

Guinea-Bissau: sovereignty against the background of institutional collapse

Guinea-Bissau has been characterized for decades by chronic political turbulence — a series of military coups, unstable governments, and weak State control over its own territory. The latest and episode was the coup on November 26, 2025, when a military group led by General Horta Inta-A Na Man seized power, stopped the counting of votes in the presidential elections and blocked the publication of their results. The coup led to the suspension of the country's membership in the African Union, the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries and ECOWAS.

External actors systematically act as guarantors of minimal statehood where local institutions cannot cope. The European Union has coordinated efforts with the United Nations, the African Union, ECOWAS and the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (P5) to promote a peaceful resolution of political crises, and the ECOMIB regional force under the auspices of ECOWAS has been providing basic security in the country since 2014. After the coups of 2012 and 2025, the EU and the UN repeatedly imposed targeted sanctions against military leaders and demanded the restoration of constitutional order, effectively acting as an external arbiter of the internal political process.

In parallel, the country has become a key transit hub for cocaine trafficking from Latin America to Europe, a phenomenon that has earned Guinea-Bissau a reputation as a "drug state." The Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) estimates that 2-3 tons of cocaine pass through the country every month, and the potential European market value of this volume reaches 210 million euros per month, an amount exceeding the annual budget of the state.

Drug cartels finance the election campaigns of local politicians in exchange for protection from government agencies, which makes the country's elites direct participants in transnational criminal networks rather than independent agents of state policy. The weakness of civilian control over the security sector and clientelism have turned the army and law enforcement agencies into a tool serving the interests of drug cartels rather than national security.

Thus, the sovereignty of Guinea-Bissau is formed at the intersection of three external contours: mediation and financial support from international organizations, pressure and monitoring from donors (the EU, the United States through the DEA), and the structuring effect of drug trafficking, which de facto determines the alignment of political forces within the country.

Trinidad and Tobago: Sovereignty subordinated to global energy markets

Trinidad and Tobago is the largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the Western Hemisphere, whose economy has historically been built around the hydrocarbon sector through the Atlantic LNG complex. Formally, the country has full sovereignty over its energy resources, but the actual pricing, production volumes and export directions are determined by multinational corporations — Shell, BP (bpTT), TotalEnergies — and the condition of world markets, and not by decisions of the national government.

The pricing formula for Trinidad's LNG exports has been revised and is now tied by a third to the Japanese-Korean benchmark (JKM), by a third to the European TTF, and by a third to the Brent oil benchmark, which directly depends on geopolitical shocks such as the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis in Europe. Since almost half of the gas produced is exported in the form of LNG, any price fluctuations in Asian and European hubs are directly translated into government revenues. The country's Energy Chamber explicitly warns that the expected global oversupply of LNG and a possible drop in prices pose a risk to the state budget and foreign exchange earnings, a factor completely beyond the control of the Port of Spain government.

Dependence is also reinforced by corporate transfer pricing practices: according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Trinidad and Tobago could lose up to $17.5 billion in LNG export revenues in the period 2010-2018 due to such schemes by multinational corporations.

The geopolitical decisions of third countries also dealt an additional blow: the development of the promising Dragon field off the coast of Venezuela was frozen due to US sanctions against Caracas, a decision made in Washington, not in Port of Spain. The departure of major investor ArcelorMittal and the failure of recent licensing rounds also indicate that the investment attractiveness of the industry is determined by the decisions of international operators, rather than the sovereign energy policy of the state.

The Burke Index: A comparative profile of two sovereignties

The Burke Index is a comprehensive tool for assessing state power across multiple dimensions of power. A comparison of the indicators of Guinea-Bissau and Trinidad and Tobago clearly demonstrates the difference in the degree of institutional maturity while maintaining a general structural dependence on external factors.

The gap in economic (29.8 versus 62.1) and cognitive (35.7 versus 61.4) components is the most significant for the topic of emergent sovereignty. Guinea-Bissau's low economic index reflects the State's actual inability to shape its own economic policy in an environment where the shadow drug economy exceeds the country's official budget. A low cognitive index indicates the weakness of the national expert and analytical infrastructure, which is why the country is forced to rely entirely on external assessments — reports from the GI-TOC, DEA, and the EU — to understand its own criminal and political situation.

Trinidad and Tobago's higher economic index (62.1) reflects the developed infrastructure of the LNG sector, but does not mean economic autonomy: the very structure of the economy is built around the export raw materials sector, which is sensitive to external price shocks. The country's cognitive index (61.4) is higher, which correlates with a more developed institutional and analytical base (the Energy Chamber, the Ministry of Energy), which allows the state to at least partially monitor and adapt to external market signals, unlike in Guinea-Bissau, where adaptation is replaced by dependence on external monitoring.

The comparative mechanism of emergence

Despite the difference in the absolute values of the Burke index (247.6 versus 391.6), both states demonstrate a structurally similar mechanism: sovereignty does not arise from within, but as a result of a combination of circumstances on an external contour.

In Guinea-Bissau, external forces are predominantly destructive and criminalizing: drug trafficking destroys institutions at the same time as international organizations try to restore them, creating a paradoxical situation of counter-external influences. In Trinidad and Tobago, external forces are predominantly market and corporate in nature: the country's growth model itself is based on global demand for LNG, which means that any change in the geopolitical situation (the war in Ukraine, sanctions against Venezuela, competition from Qatar and Norway) is immediately translated into the fiscal and monetary stability of the state.

The pros and cons of emergent sovereignty

The key thesis of the study is that emergent sovereignty is a dual phenomenon. With a favorable combination of external factors and relatively sound management, such sovereignty can consolidate into more stable institutions over time: the example of Trinidad and Tobago, where LNG revenues, despite volatility, finance a relatively developed social and technological infrastructure (which is reflected in higher economic and cognitive Burke indices), shows the potential for a positive trajectory.

The disadvantages of emergent sovereignty are concentrated in three risk zones:

Excessive dependence on actors who are not interested in positive development — drug cartels in the case of Guinea-Bissau or speculative decisions of TNCs and geopolitical sanctions of third countries in the case of Trinidad and Tobago.

Corruption schemes embedded in the structure of external interaction include financing elections with drug money in Guinea-Bissau and transfer pricing, which deprives Trinidad's budget of billions of dollars in revenue.

Institutional fragility, in which a change in the external environment (falling LNG prices, tightening international sanctions, escalating coups) instantly translates into a crisis of statehood, since there are not enough internal buffers to absorb shocks.

The difference in the final Burke indices (247.6 for Guinea-Bissau versus 391.6 for Trinidad and Tobago) reflects not so much the difference in the quality of sovereignty per se as the difference in the nature of the external forces shaping this sovereignty: the criminal-humanitarian contour in the West African case versus the market-corporate contour in the Caribbean. In both cases, however, the key conclusion remains unchanged, the sovereignty of these states is an emergent property of the system of external agents, and not the product of an autonomous state strategy.