WebOpen Document. State Sovereignty has always been a relatively big issue in regards to the power of the country. Since the beginning of this great country, in , state sovereignty WebDefinitions of Sovereignty: (1) “That characteristic of the state by virtue of which it cannot be legally bound except by its own or limited by any power other than itself. -Jellineck (2) WebSovereignty is considered as an important political aspect due to several factors. An important factor of sovereignty is the degree of absoluteness. Any sovereign power
Sovereignty: Meaning and Characteristics of Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the supreme political authority. The concept forms the basis for the modern international system, and it provides legitimacy to contemporary nation-states and national governments. At sovereignty essay most basic level, sovereignty is control over people and geographic space. Such control is typically invested in the structures of government, and history was marked by the steady growth in sovereignty by national governments and a concurrent accumulation of centralized power. However, many modern democratic systems are based on the principle of individual sovereignty that in turn entrusts authority to representative governments. Consequently, a distinction has developed between the exercise of sovereignty within either domestic affairs or international relations, and the theoretical or philosophical source of sovereignty, sovereignty essay.
Meanwhile, the growth of nonstate, sovereignty essay, international actors has eroded the traditional power of the nation-state and redefined some aspects of sovereignty. Sovereignty has been manifested in one form or another for most of human history, sovereignty essay. Rulers and governments have gained both legal and practical control over territory and populations by various means. Within political philosophy, the modern concept of sovereignty was initially developed in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Aquinas argued that sovereignty sovereignty essay with Sovereignty essay. The sovereignty exercised by human rulers came from the divine, and it was incumbent upon these leaders to exercise their power in accordance with Christianity.
Otherwise, citizens sovereignty essay other states were justified in removing the ruler, sovereignty essay. This notion of sovereignty formed the basis for the concept of the concept of absolutism, sovereignty essay. The French philosopher Jean Bodin argued that sovereignty was absolute, sovereignty essay it conferred upon a government unconditional power. His most influential work was Six Books on the Republic He also differentiated between domestic sovereignty and that expressed in the international system. Other prominent supporters of monarchial sovereignty included Joseph de Maistre. Englishman Thomas Hobbes agreed that sovereignty was absolute.
However, Hobbes contended in his famous work Leviathan that power came not from the divine but from a social contract between the people and the rulers, in which people surrender some portion of their natural rights sovereignty essay exchange for the government maintaining sovereignty essay order and providing for the common defense of its citizenry. Later philosophers such as John Locke expanded on both the importance of natural rights and the role of the social contract in legitimizing domestic sovereignty.
Locke contended that governments were granted only enough sovereignty by their people to protect the natural rights of the citizenry. The notion that sovereignty came from the people popular sovereignty became one of the main foundations of modern democracy and formed the core of the governmental system of countries such as the United States. Rousseau asserted that sovereignty was based in the general will of a population or the common good and that there was no sovereignty essay between the source of sovereignty and its exercise. The general will was consequently the basis for national sovereignty and the means through which state authority was manifested.
It was expressed through the structure of government which Rousseau argued should be a form of direct democracy but was implemented as a representative system. The general will could and would supersede the individual rights of citizens. Under popular sovereignty, power rests with the people, while under the concept of the general will, power rests with the government, sovereignty essay. An extreme version of sovereignty essay concept of the supremacy of the sovereignty essay over the individual would later form the core of totalitarian systems, sovereignty essay, including fascism and communism. Under such systems, the state has total sovereignty over individuals, although the regime bases its authority on the need to promote the public good. For instance, Carl Schmitt advocated that all sovereign governments had the authority to decide when to abrogate the social contract and undertake dictatorial means in order to protect the public interest.
Schmitt later defended the sovereignty of totalitarian regimes. In reaction to the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, an ant sovereignty movement emerged that rejected the domestic authority sovereignty essay states and argued instead for an internationalization of rights. In his book, Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good, Bertrand de Jouvenel acknowledged the importance of state sovereignty but criticized the growing power of the nation-state over individual citizens, a theme echoed by Jacques Maritain who argued that sovereignty was an antiquated concept used to oppress citizens.
While many philosophers and scholars concentrated on the internal dimensions of sovereignty, sovereignty essay, others concentrated on the study of international sovereignty essay and international relations theory as they applied to state sovereignty in the global system. Hugo Grotius is often considered the father of international law. He asserted that natural law, conventions, treaties, and traditions formed constraints on state sovereignty in external matters. His work formed the core of the rationalist or Grotian division of international relations that contrasted with the realist or Hobbesian emphasis that stressed power and control of resources rather than cooperation in global interactions.
Meanwhile, Immanuel Kant developed a political philosophy that emphasized the importance of constitutional republics as a means to constrain expansionist state sovereignty essay and prevent war. The English school of international relations of the twentieth century was based on these three trains of scholarship but emphasized the Grotian model. Hedley Bull, sovereignty essay, one of the leaders of the English school, emphasized the importance of a community of states within the otherwise anarchical system of international affairs. Within the international society of states, norms and values develop that both guide and constrain state action and provide the boundaries of sovereignty.
The English school, as well as the realist and neorealist schools that emerged from the Hobbesian tradition, sovereignty essay, emphasizes the centrality of the nation-state as the principle unit in international relations and therefore the main sovereign entity. However, a number of challenges have emerged to the concept of state-centric sovereignty. Neoliberal institutionalism modified structural realism emphasized the growing importance of economics and the interplay between trade and traditional notions of military power to assert that nonstate actors increasingly play a role in global affairs and have led to a diffusion of sovereignty, sovereignty essay. Neoliberal institutionalism is identified with the work of contemporary scholars such as Robert Keohane, sovereignty essay, including After HegemonySovereignty essay D.
Krasner, and John G. In addition, cosmopolitanism argues for the development of a form of world citizenship in which national sovereignty exists only within the sovereignty essay of a broad series of sovereignty essay individual rights. For most of human history, sovereignty was vested in a single individual or in small groups within political units. Sovereignty was usually sovereignty essay on power and rested on the martial capabilities of the ruler and ruling class. A wide variety of political organizations consequently emerged, ranging from multiethnic empires to kingdoms to city-states to assorted religious states. Authority was not the domain of the state, but rather the individual.
Rulers and dynasties gained varying degrees of authority over disparate lands as a result of wars, treaties, and marriage. As a result, a series sovereignty essay overlapping and complicated political relationships emerged in which rulers often had multiple loyalties, sovereignty essay. The feudal system of Europe exemplified this pattern. Rulers who exercised absolute power in one land often found themselves the vassal of another leader because of extended holdings. In addition, vassals could be more authoritative and influential than their liege lords. The Sovereignty essay of Burgundy was considerably more powerful then the kingdom of France during the late Middle Ages, and the dukes used their resources to emerge as rivals to sovereignty essay French kings.
This occurred despite the fact that the dukes of Burgundy were vassals of the French king, sovereignty essay. Consequently, national borders had little significant meaning and political authority was uneven and divided. The broken geography of Europe, with its series of mountain ranges and rivers, sovereignty essay, not to mention the water barriers around the British Isles, divided the continent and precluded the rise of a single empire as was the case in China or India. Instead, geography fostered smaller political units that often competed fiercely with one another for primacy. Sovereignty was even more diffused because sovereignty essay the role and influence of the Catholic Church, which acted as a supranational body with political manifestations in the form of autonomous bishoprics or other church-states, sovereignty essay.
Nonetheless, the church performed an important role in legitimizing the sovereignty of rulers through participation in coronations and other forms of formal recognition of feudal rulers. In return, secular leaders were expected to support the church financially, politically, sovereignty essay, and militarily. Of the political organizations of the period, empires sovereignty essay harness significant military and economic resources. However, these entities often could not maintain the loyalty of their citizenry. The central government faced daunting challenges in attempting to maintain order in remote parts of the empire while the core population typically grew to resist the diversion of resources away from the capital region.
Empires also could fall into the sovereignty essay of imperial overstretch and devote too many resources to conquest and therefore erode their competitiveness against challengers. Thus, most multiethnic empires collapsed as a result of sovereignty essay threats or internal dissension. Alternatively, smaller political units such as city-states could command deep loyalty and sacrifice by their citizenry, but they lacked the resources to defend themselves from larger entities. If the city-states expanded, they risked weakening the bonds of loyalty, sovereignty essay. From the constant strife of the Middle Ages, a new political entity, the nation-state, emerged to redefine notions of sovereignty and the nature of the international political system. The modern nation-state combined the resources of the empire with the loyalty and self-identification of the city-state.
It had a population that was large enough to project significant military power, sovereignty essay, yet its people were typically relatively homogenous, sovereignty essay. Sovereignty essay also had the economic resources necessary to keep pace with the rapid advances that accompanied the series of revolutions in military affairs. The end of the Thirty Years War, sovereignty essay, through the Treaty of Westphaliamarked the rise of the modern nation-state and the decline of both the church and the feudal system. Post-Westphalian nation-states were different from their predecessors in four main areas. First, sovereignty essay, sovereignty was vested in a central government that was generally separate and distinct from other social institutions such as the church.
The central government developed a monopoly on the exercise of political authority the use of force, both internally and externally, sovereignty essay. Second, the new nation-states developed a degree of cohesion and unity of identification among the population that was the forerunner of nationalism. This marked an important distinction from the past sovereignty essay loyalty was generally personal and vested in the person of the king or prince. Instead, in nation-states, loyalty came to be directed to the state and its structures of government. Third, sovereignty essay, nation-states accelerated the rise of the multiclass system and the rise of the middle class.
The traditional lord sovereignty essay vassal arrangement was replaced by a complicated and multitiered system in which the growing middle or bourgeoisie sovereignty essay demanded increased political access and power. Fourth, and finally, the nation-state was a coherent geographic entity. Its borders were usually defined by natural boundaries and homogenous populations with shared cultural, linguistic, and religious values and norms. Sovereignty within the nation-state was exercised over a compact area and governments were sovereignty essay a degree of legitimacy and authority unmatched in sovereignty essay political systems since that authenticity came to be generally voluntary with notable exceptions, sovereignty essay.
This led to the relative stabilization of borders and populations as external sovereignty essay and governments conferred recognition of the sovereignty of individual governments over their territory and populations. The sovereignty accorded to the modern state makes it relatively unique in historical terms. Whereas the international system has been typically marked by inequality with hegemons and sovereignty essay states, in the post-Westphalian era, all states have equal sovereignty under international law in spite of differences in size, resources, and military capabilities.
This equality may not always exist in practical terms, but it does form the basis for the contemporary international system. Sovereignty is confirmed by the general acceptance that national governments have near exclusive power or jurisdiction over their territory and population. Sovereignty came sovereignty essay the international community, not from divine power or military might. Modern nation-states combined high degrees of internal and external sovereignty. Internal sovereignty is the relationship between the structures of government and civil society. Its basis is the recognition of the legitimacy and authority of the central government against any domestic rivals.
Internal sovereignty is marked by almost total monopoly on the use of force within a territory and population.
Sovereignty Explained - World101
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WebOpen Document. State Sovereignty has always been a relatively big issue in regards to the power of the country. Since the beginning of this great country, in , state sovereignty WebDefinitions of Sovereignty: (1) “That characteristic of the state by virtue of which it cannot be legally bound except by its own or limited by any power other than itself. -Jellineck (2) WebA.V Dicey gives an introduction to the doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty as, “the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely,
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