SOVEREIGNTY
Sovereignty, in its simplest sense, is the principle of absolute and unlimited power.
However, a distinction is commonly made between legal and political sovereignty.
Legal sovereignty refers to supreme legal authority; that is, an unchallengeable
right to demand compliance, as defined by law. Political sovereignty, in contrast,
refers to unlimited political power; that is, the ability to command obedience,
which is typically ensured by a monopoly of coercive force. The term sovereignty
is used in two distinct though related senses, usually understood as external and
internal sovereignty. External sovereignty relates to a state’s place in the
international order and its capacity to act as an independent and autonomous entity.
This is what is meant by terms such as ‘national sovereignty’ and ‘sovereign state’.
Internal sovereignty is the notion of a supreme power/authority within the state,
located in the body that makes decisions that are binding on all citizens, groups and
institutions within the state’s territorial boundaries. This is how the term is used in
cases such as ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ and ‘popular sovereignty’.
Significance
The concept of sovereignty emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as
a result of the development in Europe of the modern state. As the authority of
transnational institutions, such as the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire
faded, centralizing monarchs in England, France, Spain and elsewhere were able to
claim to exercise supreme power, and they did this in a new language of
sovereignty. In the writings of Jean Bodin (1530–96) and Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679), sovereignty was used as a justification for monarchical absolutism.
For Bodin, law amounted to little more than the command of the sovereign, and
subjects were required simply to obey. However, whereas Bodin accepted that the
sovereign monarch was constrained by the will of God or natural law, Hobbes
defined sovereignty as a monopoly of coercive power and advocated that it be
vested in the hands of a single, unchallengeable rule. The basic justification for
internal sovereignty as developed by Bodin and Hobbes is that the existence of a
single focus of allegiance and a supreme source of law within a state is the only
sure guarantee of order and stability. Hobbes, in particular, offered citizens a stark
choice between absolutism and anarchy.
Other versions of internal sovereignty, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712–78)
notion of popular sovereignty, expressed in the idea of the ‘general will’, and John
Austin’s (1790–1859) doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, viewed as the
‘monarch in Parliament’, linked sovereignty to democracy and constitutionalism,
respectively. What all such thinkers, however, had in common is that they believed
that sovereignty could be, and should be, located in a determinate body. In an age
of pluralistic and democratic government this ‘traditional’ doctrine of sovereignty
has attracted growing criticism. Its opponents argue either that it is intrinsically
linked to its absolutist past, and if so is frankly undesirable, or that it is no longer
applicable to modern systems of government, which operate according to networks
of checks and balances. It has been suggested, for example, that liberal democratic
principles are the very antithesis of sovereignty in that they argue for a distribution
of power among a number of institutions, none of which can meaningfully claim to
be sovereign. This is particularly evident in the case of federalism, which is based
on the paradoxical notion of shared sovereignty.
While questions about internal sovereignty have appeared increasingly outdated in
a democratic age, the issue of external sovereignty has become absolutely vital.
Indeed, some of the deepest divisions in modern politics, from the Arab–Israeli
conflict to tensions in former Yugoslavia, involve disputed claims to such
sovereignty. Historically, the notion of external sovereignty has been closely linked
to the struggle for popular government, the two ideas fusing to create the modern
notion of ‘national sovereignty’. External sovereignty has thus come to embody the
principles of national independence and self-government. Only if a nation is
sovereign are its people capable of fashioning their own destiny according to their
particular needs and interests. To ask a nation to surrender its sovereignty is
tantamount to asking its people to give up their freedom. This is why external or
national sovereignty is so keenly felt and, when it is threatened, so fiercely
defended. The potent appeal of political nationalism is the best evidence of this.
However, external sovereignty has been criticized on both moral and theoretical
grounds. Moral concerns about external sovereignty arise from its capacity to block
interference in the affairs of other states, even when they are violating the natural
rights of their citizens. Theoretical problems stem from the fact that the notion of
an independent or sovereign state may no longer be meaningful in an increasingly
interdependent world. Globalization, for example, may mean that political
sovereignty is impossible, while legal sovereignty has been reduced to merely a
diplomatic nicety.
Excerpt From: Andrew Heywood. “Key Concepts in Politics and International
Relations”. Apple Books.