Besides the reactions to avoid the politiks of defining what is or not a country, I don't remember any original discussions about sovereignty ...
Early on there was an issue about running the .HT domain, between an incumbent operator, and one endorsed by the government who appeared less competent. Jon decided in favor of the government candidate, and that's set the precedent ever since. Based on discussion here a few months ago and reading between the lines, IANA would never directly refuse a ccTLD change from a government, but if they ask for something foolish IANA will try to persuade them not to. At this point, there are only four undelegated ccTLDs: .UM is deliberately undelegated because nobody lives there .BL and .MF are deliberately undelegated because they're administratively part of .GP .EH has two competing governments and probably no networks IANA has accepted even very poor requests from governments like the one from .SO last year. Really, it's 15 years too late to change the rules on ccTLDs. R's, John