Sovereignty, in political theory, the ultimate
overseer, or authority, in the decision-making process of
the state and in the maintenance of order. The concept of sovereignty—one of the most controversial
ideas in political science and international law—is closely
related to the difficult concepts of state and government and of independence
and democracy. Derived from the Latin superanus through
the French souveraineté, the term was originally
understood to mean the equivalent of supreme power. However, its application in
practice often has departed from this traditional meaning. History
In 16th-century France Jean Bodin (1530–96)
used the new concept of sovereignty to bolster the power of
the French king over the rebellious feudal lords, facilitating the
transition from feudalism to nationalism. The thinker who did
the most to provide the term with its modern meaning was the English
philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), who argued that in every true
state some person or body of persons must have the ultimate and absolute
authority to declare the law; to divide this authority, he held, was
essentially to destroy the unity of the state. The theories of the English
philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712–78)—that the state is based upon a formal or informal
compact of its citizens, a social contract through which they entrust
such powers to a government as may be necessary for common protection—led to
the development of the doctrine of popular sovereignty that found
expression in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Another twist was given to this concept by the statement in the French
constitution of 1791 that “Sovereignty is one, indivisible, unalienable and
imprescriptible; it belongs to the Nation; no group can attribute sovereignty
to itself nor can an individual arrogate it to himself.” Thus, the idea of
popular sovereignty exercised primarily by the people became combined with the
idea of national sovereignty exercised not by an unorganized people in
the state of nature, but by a nation embodied in an organized state. In
the 19th century the English jurist John Austin (1790–1859) developed
the concept further by investigating who exercises sovereignty in the name of
the people or of the state; he concluded that sovereignty is vested in a
nation’s parliament. A parliament, he argued, is a supreme organ that
enacts laws binding upon everybody else but that is not itself bound by the
laws and could change these laws at will. This description, however, fitted
only a particular system of government, such as the one that prevailed in
Great Britain during the 19th century.
·
·
Jean Bodin, 16th-century engraving.
Courtesy
of the Bibliothèque Nationale,
Paris
Thomas
Hobbes
Thomas
Hobbes, detail of an oil painting by John Michael Wright; in the National
Portrait Gallery, London.
Austin’s notion of
legislative sovereignty did not entirely fit the American situation.
The Constitution of the United States, the fundamental law of the federal union,
did not endow the national legislature with supreme power but imposed
important restrictions upon it. A further complication was added when the Supreme
Court of the United States asserted successfully in Marbury v. Madison (1803) its
right to declare laws unconstitutional through a procedure called judicial
review. Although this development did not lead to judicial sovereignty, it
seemed to vest the sovereign power in the fundamental document
itself, the Constitution. This system of constitutional sovereignty
was made more complex by the fact that the authority to propose changes in the
Constitution and to approve them was vested not only in Congress but also in
states and in special conventions called for that purpose. Thus, it could be
argued that sovereignty continued to reside in the states or in the people, who
retained all powers not delegated by the Constitution to the United States or
expressly prohibited by the Constitution to the states or the people (Tenth
Amendment). Consequently, the claims by advocates of states’ rights that
states continued to be sovereign were bolstered by the difficulty of
finding a sole repository of sovereignty in a complex federal structure; and
the concept of dual sovereignty of both the union and the component units found
a theoretical basis. Even if the competing theory of popular sovereignty—the
theory that vested sovereignty in the people of the United States—was accepted,
it still might be argued that this sovereignty need not be exercised on behalf
of the people solely by the national government but could be divided on a
functional basis between the federal and state authorities.
Another assault from within on the
doctrine of state sovereignty was made in the 20th century by those political
scientists (e.g., Léon Duguit, Hugo Krabbe, and Harold J. Laski) who developed the theory
of pluralistic sovereignty (pluralism) exercised by various political,
economic, social, and religious groups that dominate the government of each
state. According to this doctrine, sovereignty in each society does not reside
in any particular place but shifts constantly from one group (or alliance of
groups) to another. The pluralistic theory further contended that the state is
but one of many examples of social solidarity and possesses no special
authority in comparison to other components of society.
Harold
Joseph Laski, 1946.
The Press Association Ltd.
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Although the doctrine of sovereignty has had
an important impact on developments within states, its greatest influence has
been in the relations between states. The difficulties here can be traced to Bodin’s statement that sovereigns who make the
laws cannot be bound by the laws they make (majestas est
summa in cives ac subditos legibusque soluta potestas). This statement has often been
interpreted as meaning that a sovereign is not responsible to anybody
and is not bound by any laws. However, a closer reading of Bodin’s
writings does not support this interpretation. He emphasized that even with
respect to their own citizens, sovereigns are bound to observe certain basic
rules derived from the divine law, the law of nature or reason,
and the law that is common to all nations (jus gentium),
as well as the fundamental laws of the state that determine who is the
sovereign, who succeeds to sovereignty, and what limits the sovereign power.
Thus, Bodin’s sovereign was restricted by
the constitutional law of the state and by the higher law that was
considered as binding upon every human being. In fact, Bodin
discussed as binding upon states many of those rules that were later woven into
the fabric of international law. Nevertheless, his theories have been used
to justify absolutism in the internal political order
and anarchy in the international sphere.
This
interpretation was developed to its logical conclusion by Hobbes in Leviathan (1651),
in which the sovereign was identified with might rather than law. Law is what
sovereigns command, and it cannot limit their power: sovereign power is absolute.
In the international sphere this condition led to a perpetual state of war,
as sovereigns tried to impose their will by force on all other sovereigns. This
situation has changed little over time, with sovereign states continuing to
claim the right to be judges in their own controversies, to enforce by war
their own conception of their rights, to treat their own citizens in
any way that suits them, and to regulate their economic life with complete
disregard for possible repercussions in other states.
During the 20th century important
restrictions on the freedom of action of states began to appear. The Hague
conventions of 1899 and 1907 established detailed rules governing the
conduct of wars on land and at sea. The Covenant of the League
of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations (UN), restricted the
right to wage war, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 condemned
recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and its use as
an instrument of national policy. They were followed by the UN Charter,
which imposed the duty on member states to “settle their international disputes
by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security,
and justice, are not endangered” and supplemented it with the injunction
that all members “shall refrain in their international relations from
the threat or use of force” (Article 2). However, the Charter also stated that
the UN is “based on the principle of sovereign equality of all its Members.”