In the contemporary era, the exercise of sovereignty presents a paradox. In effect, many national states have used their exclusive right to act as legal entities in international fora to undermine the scope of their internal sovereignty and policy autonomy. Through membership in the World Trade Organization or as signatories of regional agreements such as the NAFTA, national governments agree to narrow the terrain of state competency by complying with externally derived and binding rules that almost exclusively relate to the deregulation of capital within their jurisdictions. Compliance in many of the countries of the global South has been achieved under the wright of international debt repayment schemes, Structural Adjustment Programs and, most recently, poverty reduction strategy papers. The new constitutionalism turns binding control over designated national policy fields to external constitution-like agreements that facilitate the mobility of global capitalism. Such agreements often trump the decisions of national democratic bodies, are binding for an indefinite future, and define a new set of negative freedoms from democratic interventions for global capital operating in national spaces.