Concept
Sovereignty
Overview
Sovereignty is generally defined as supreme, independent control and lawmaking authority over a territory. It is expressed through the power to rule and make law. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy, which refers to the ability of a state to act independently in international affairs. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over its citizens and the power to modify existing laws. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity.
According to international law, sovereign states are all considered equal, and no state has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another sovereign state. While Article 2(7) of the UN Charter explicitly recognizes the sovereignty of states, and in general there is a principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states, the UN Security Council’s Chapter VII powers clearly contemplate the use of force against a state when necessary to restore peace. Moreover, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), endorsed by UN member states at the 2005 World Summit, authorizes the United Nations to take action to “avert a humanitarian catastrophe” within a state when that state's government cannot or will not act.
A state is generally considered to have sovereignty over a territory when it has consistently exercised state authority there without objection from other states. De jure sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; de facto sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue 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 reside within the same organization.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Sovereignty is discussed.
Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, is indivisible; for will either is, or is not, general;[1] it is the will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy--at the most a decree.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
a chapter is titled for it; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Nevertheless, if in making an elective king, with intention to reserve the sovereignty, they reserve not a power at certain known and determined times and places to assemble themselves, the reservation of their sovereignty is of no effect, inasmuch as no man is bound to stand to the decrees and determinations of those that assemble themselves without the sovereign authority. [Sidenote: A conditional king, &c.]
Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph
There is no more justification for the claim to absolute sovereignty on the part of a state than there would be for a similar claim on the part of an individual. The claim to absolute sovereignty is, in effect, a claim that all external affairs are to be regulated purely by force, and that when two nations or groups of nations are interested in a question, the decision shall depend solely upon which of them is, or…
Bertrand Russell, Political Ideals
names the idea; states what it is
Each minor institution is a member of some more comprehensive whole, to which it bears the same relation that the individual bears to it. That is to say, _its_ sovereignty gives way to the authority of the more comprehensive organization; its laws must be in harmony with the laws which flow from the larger activity; its rights must become aspects of a fuller satisfaction. Only humanity or the organized activity of…
John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
names the idea; opens on it
The essence of sovereignty consisting in the general will, it is equally hard to see how we can be certain that an individual will shall always be in agreement with the general will. We should rather assume that it will often be opposed to it; for individual interest always tends to privileges, while the common interest always tends to equality, and if such an agreement were possible, no sovereign right could exist…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
author linked in the graph; opens on it; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Sovereignty
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Judith Butler
- John Stuart Mill
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Jean Bodin
- Giorgio Agamben
- Carl Schmitt
- Jeremy Bentham
- Bruno Bauer
- Johannes Althusius
Related ideas
- The Holocaust
- Francisco Suárez
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Max Stirner
- Feudalism
- Germany
- Stanford University Press
- Holy See
- Hierarchy
- The Ego and Its Own
- John Stuart Mill
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- John Locke
- Positive law
- Authority
- Internet Archive
- Middle Ages
- Leviathan (Hobbes book)
- Moon
- Max Weber
- Georges Bataille
- Mandate of Heaven
- Nation state
- Unitary state
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of British philosophy.