Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the exclusive right to exercise supreme
political (e.g. legislative, judicial, and/or executive)
authority over a geographic region, group of people, or oneself.
The word has been documented in
English since circa 1340, meaning
preeminence, and as rule (since 1378). It derives from Anglo-French
sovereynetee, from Old French souveraineté, from
souverain (
Sovereign, itself from medieval
latin superanus which derives from classical Latin
superus "superior" or "overness").
The source or origins of sovereignty (God or the people) must be distinguished from its exercise by branches of government. In
democracies,
sovereignty is held by the people. This is known as
popular sovereignty; it may be exercised directly, as in a
popular assembly, or, more commonly, indirectly through the election of representatives to government. This is known as a
representative democracy, a system of government currently used in most western nations and former colonies. Popular sovereignty also exists in other forms, such as in
constitutional monarchies, usually identical in political reality as in the
United Kingdom and Commonwealth realms. Systems of representative democracy can also be mixed with other methods of government, for instance the use of
referendums in many countries.
In another model, sovereignty is of an eternal origin, such as nature, or God, legitimating the
divine right of kings in
absolute monarchies or a
theocracy.
A more formal distinction is whether the law is held to be sovereign, which constitutes a true state of law: the letter of the law (if constitutionally correct) is applicable and enforceable, even when against the political will of the nation, as long as not formally changed following the constitutional procedure. Strictly speaking, any deviation from this principle constitutes a revolution or a coup d'état, regardless of the intentions.
In constitutional and international law, the concept of sovereignty also pertains to a government possessing full control over its own affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit, and in certain context to various organs (such as courts of law) possessing legal jurisdiction in their own chief, rather than by mandate or under supervision. Determining whether a specific entity is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute.
Basileus is the Greek
concept for "Sovereign", which designs who has the
auctoritas, which is to be distinguished from simple
imperium, retained by
archons (or "
magistrates").
Jean Bodin (1530-1596) is considered to be the modern initiator of the concept of sovereignty, with his 1576 treatise
Six Books on the Republic which described the sovereign as a ruler beyond human
law and subject only to the divine or
natural law. He thus predefined the scope of the
divine right of kings, stating
"Sovereignty is a Republic's absolute and perpetual power". Sovereignty is
absolute, thus indivisible, but not without any limits: it exercises itself only in the
public sphere, not in the
private sphere. It is perpetual, because it does not expire with its holder (as
auctoritas does). In other words, sovereignty is no one's property: by essence, it is inalienable.
These characteristics would decisively shape the concept of sovereignty, which we can find again in the
social contract theories, for example, in
Rousseau's (1712-1778) definition of
popular sovereignty, which only differs in that he consider the people to be the legitimate sovereign. Likewise, it is inalienable - Rousseau condemned the distinction between the origin and the exercise of sovereignty, a distinction upon which
constitutional monarchy or
representative democracy are founded.
Machiavelli,
Hobbes,
Locke and
Montesquieu are also key figures in the unfolding of the concept of sovereignty.
Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) defined sovereignty as "the power to decide the
state of exception", in an attempt, argues
Giorgio Agamben, to counter
Walter Benjamin's theory of
violence as radically disjoint from law.
Georges Bataille's heterodox conception of sovereignty, which may be said an "anti-sovereignty", also inspired many thinkers, such as
Jacques Derrida, Agamben or
Jean-Luc Nancy.
There exist vastly differing views on the moral bases of sovereignty. These views translate into various bases for legal systems:
* Partisans of the
divine right of kings argue that the
monarch is sovereign by divine right, and not by the agreement of the people. Taken to its conclusion, this may translate into a system of
absolute monarchy.
* The second book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
Du Contrat Social, ou Principes du droit politique (1762) deals with sovereignty and its rights. Sovereignty, or the general will, is inalienable, for the will cannot be transmitted; it is indivisible, since it is essentially general; it is infallible and always right, determined and limited in its power by the common interest; it acts through laws. Law is the decision of the general will in regard to some object of common interest, but though the general will is always right and desires only good, its judgment is not always enlightened, and consequently does not always see wherein the common good lies; hence the necessity of the legislator. But the legislator has, of himself, no authority; he is only a guide who drafts and proposes laws, but the people alone (that is, the sovereign or general will) has authority to make and impose them.
* Democracy is based on the concept of
popular sovereignty.
Representative democracies permit (against Rousseau's thought) a transfer of the exercise of sovereignty from the people to the parliament or the government.
Parliamentary sovereignty refers to a representative democracy where the Parliament is, ultimately, the source of sovereignty, and not the executive power.
*
Anarchists and some
libertarians deny the sovereignty of states and governments. Anarchists often argue for a specific individual kind of sovereignty, such as the
Anarch as a sovereign individual.
Salvador Dalí, for instance, talked of "anarcho-monarchist" (as usual, tongue in cheek);
Antonin Artaud of
Heliogabalus : Or, The Crowned Anarchist;
Max Stirner of
The Ego and Its Own;
Georges Bataille and
Jacques Derrida of a kind of "antisovereignty". Therefore, anarchists join a classical conception of the individual as sovereign of himself, which forms the basis of
consciousness. The unified consciousness is sovereignty over one's own body, as
Nietzsche demonstrated (see also
Pierre Klossowski's book on
Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle).
See also self-ownership and Sovereignty of the individual.
* Some supporters of
democratic globalization consider that
nation-states should yield some of their power to a
world government controlled by world citizens instead of being organized as now in an
intergovernmental basis.
The key element of sovereignty in the legalistic sense is that of
exclusivity of
jurisdiction.
Specifically, when a decision is made by a sovereign entity, it cannot generally be overruled by a higher authority. Further, it is generally held that another legal element of sovereignty requires not only the legal right to exercise power, but the actual exercise of such power. ("No
de jure sovereignty without
de facto sovereignty.") In other words, neither claiming/being proclaimed Sovereign,
nor merely exercising the power of a Sovereign is sufficient; sovereignty requires
both elements.
Following the
Thirty Years' War, a European religious conflict that embroiled much of the continent, the
Peace of Westphalia in
1648 established the notion of territorial sovereignty as a doctrine of noninterference in the affairs of other nations. The 1789
French Revolution shifted the possession of sovereignty from the sovereign ruler to the nation and its people.
In
international law,
sovereignty is the legitimate exercise of power by a
state.
De jure sovereignty is the legal right to do so;
de facto sovereignty is the ability in fact to do so (which becomes of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that
de jure and
de facto sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and rest in the same organization). Foreign governments
recognize the sovereignty of a state over a territory, or refuse to do so.
For instance, in theory, both the
People's Republic of China and the
Republic of China considered themselves sovereign governments over the whole territory of
mainland China and
Taiwan. Though some foreign governments recognize the Republic of China as the valid state, most now recognize the People's Republic of China. However,
de facto, the People's Republic of China exercises sovereign power over mainland China but not Taiwan, while the Republic of China exercises its effective administration only over Taiwan and some outlying islands but not mainland China. Since
ambassadors are only exchanged between sovereign high parties, the countries recognizing the People's Republic often entertain
de facto but not
de jure diplomatic relationships with Taiwan by maintaining 'offices of representation', such as the
American Institute in Taiwan, rather than embassies there.
The autonomous province of
Kosovo in
Serbia provides a somewhat similar example, where the government of Serbia remains the
de jure sovereign power but the
United Nations has exercised
de facto control since
1999. The province is still recognized as part of Serbia, though the Serbian government has no practical authority on the ground.
The same principle applies to internationally unrecognized separatist states such as
Abkhazia in
Georgia,
Transnistria in
Moldova and
Tamil Eelam in
Sri Lanka. All are treated in international law as territory subject to the authority of the internationally recognized national government, even where that government has no
de facto control of the territory.
Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign body possesses no territory or its territory is under partial or total occupation by another power. The
Holy See was in this position between the annexation in
1870 of the
Papal States by Italy and the signing of the
Lateran Treaties in
1929, when it was recognised as sovereign by many (mostly
Catholic) states despite possessing no territory – a situation resolved when the Lateran Treaties granted the Holy See sovereignty over the
Vatican City. The
Sovereign Military Order of Malta is likewise a non-territorial body that claims to be a sovereign entity, though it is not universally recognized as such.
Similarly, the governments-in-exile of many European states (for instance,
Norway and the
Netherlands) during the
Second World War were regarded as sovereign despite their territories being under foreign occupation; their governance resumed as soon as the occupation had ended. The government of
Kuwait was in a similar situation
vis-á-vis the
Iraqi occupation of its country during
1990-
1991.
In
federal systems of government, such as that of the
United States,
sovereignty also refers to powers which a state government possesses independently of the federal government.
The question whether the individual states, particularly the so-called 'Confederate States' of the American Union remained sovereign became a matter of debate in the USA, especially in its first century of existence:
*According to the theory of
John C. Calhoun, the states had entered into an agreement from which they might withdraw if other parties broke the terms of agreement, and they remained sovereign. Calhoun contributed to the theoretical basis for acts of
secession, as occurred just before the
American Civil War. However, Calhoun propounded this as part of a general theory of "
nullification," in which a state had the right to refuse to accept any Federal law that it found to be unconstitutional. These self-same southern states refused to accept that non-slave states had any such nullificatory right and insisted that the Federal government enforce the
Fugitive Slave Act over any state's attempt to nullify it. However the premises of the Act was explicit in the Constitution, which required that all prisoners or slaves who escaped into other states, must be returned to their state of origin.
*According to the theory expounded in the
Federalist Papers, "each State, in ratifying the Constitution, was to be considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution [was to be] a federal, and not a national constitution." The author then goes on to examine other aspects of the Constitution, some of which elevate the national government above the constituent states, and concludes that, "The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both." (Federalist No. 39)During the first half-century after the Constitution was ratified, the right of secession was asserted on several occasions, and various states considered secession (including, for example, the
New England states during the
War of 1812. It was not until later, c. 1840, that
Joseph Story,
Daniel Webster and others began to publish the theory that secession was illegal, and that the United States was a supremely sovereign nation over the various member-states. These writers inspired
Lincoln's later declaration that "no state may lawfully get out of the Union by its own mere motion."
*
Tribal sovereignty refers to the right of
tribes or of federally recognized
Native American nations to exercise limited jurisdiction within and sometimes beyond
reservation boundaries.
*In some regions of the world, such as
Quebec and Indian
Kashmir, the word "sovereignty" has become the preferred synonym for national
independence (referring in this case to "national sovereignty" or the right of national
self-determination, as explicited by example in
US President Wilson's
Fourteen Points - 1918). Compare the
Māori term
rangatiratanga, and the concept of
self-determination.
*The
Holy See is recognized as sovereign subject under international law (separate entity in international law vis-à-vis
Vatican City, which has a very small amount of territory enclaved in the Italian capital Rome).
*A case
sui generis, though often contested, is the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the third sovereign mini-state based in an enclave in the Italian capital (since in 1869 the Palazzo di Malta and the Villa Malta receive
extraterritorial rights, in this way becoming the only "sovereign" territorial possessions of the modern Order), which is the last existing heir to one of several once militarily significant,
crusader states of sovereign
military orders; in 1607 its Grand masters were also made by the Holy Roman Emperor
Reichsfürst ('prince of the Holy Roman Empire', granting a seat in the
Reichstag or Imperial Diet, at the time the closest permanent equivalent to a UN-type general assembly; confirmed 1620), the sovereign rights never deposed, only the territories lost; several modern states still maintain full diplomatic relations (94) with the order (now de facto 'the most prestigious service club'), and the UN awarded it observer status.
*Just like the office of
Head of state (whether sovereignty is vested in it or not) can be vested jointly in several persons within a state, the sovereign jurisdiction over a single political territory can be shared jointly by two or more consenting powers, notably in the forms of a
condominium or of (as still in
Andorra) a
co-principalityIn rare cases, the title sovereign is not just a generic term, but an actual (part of the) formal style of a
Head of state.
Thus from 22 June 1934 to 29 May 1953 (the title "Emperor of India" was dropped as of 15 August 1947 by retroactive proclamation dated 22 June 1948), the British Monarch was styled in the
dominion of
South Africa: "By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India and
Sovereign in and over the Union of South Africa", only thereafter (to 31 May 1961) "Queen of South Africa and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth" parallel to the style in most
commonwealth realms.
The adjective form can also be used in a Monarch's full style, as in pre-imperial Russia, 16 January 1547 - 22 November 1721:
Bozhiyeyu Milostiyu Velikiy/Velikaya Gosudar'/Gosudarynya Tsar'/Tsaritsa i Velikiy/Velikaya Knyaz'/Knyaginya N.N. vseya Rossiy Samodyerzhets "By the Grace of God Great
Sovereign Tsar/Tsarina and Grand Prince/Princess, N.N., of All Russia, Autocrat"
Sovereignty is the only word in the English language with the letters
g,
n, and
t appearing consecutively in that order, if proper nouns such as
Paignton are disregarded.
*
Basileus, the Greek concept of sovereignty
*
Rousseau's classic theory of
popular sovereignty*
Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty as the power to
decide the instauration of the
state of exception (according to
Giorgio Agamben, a response to
Walter Benjamin's theorization of a "pure violence" unrelated with law)
*
Colonization*
Constitutive theory of statehood*
Declarative theory of statehood*
Dictatorship*
Divine right of kings (
Bodin,
Hobbes, etc.)
*
Leadership*
Montevideo Convention*
non-intervention*
Plenary authority*
Self-determination*
Self-ownership*
Social contract theories (Hobbes,
Locke,
Rousseau)
*
State*
Suzerainty*
Parliamentary sovereignty*
Sovereigntist*
The Changing Character of Sovereignty in International Law and International Relations by Winston P. Nagan and Craig Hammer of the Levine College of Law, University of Florida
*
Etymology OnLine*
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry*
Protection of national sovereign rights under international law - by Dr
Faisal Al-Rfouh, associate professor, political science,
University of Jordan, President of the
Gandhi Center for Strategic Studies (GCSS), NGO
*
WorldStatesmen
