Sovereignty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeSovereigntyFirst published Sat May 31, 2003; substantive revision Wed Jun 18, 2003Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, alsohas a core meaning, supreme authority within a territory. Itis a modern notion of political authority. Historical variants can beunderstood along three dimensions -- the holder of sovereignty, theabsoluteness of sovereignty, and the internal and external dimensionsof sovereignty. The state is the political institution in whichsovereignty is embodied. An assemblage of states forms a sovereignstates system.The history of sovereignty can be understood through two broadmovements, manifested in both practical institutions and politicalthought. The first is the development of a system of sovereign states,culminating at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Contemporaneously,sovereignty became prominent in political thought through the writingsof Machiavelli, Luther, Bodin, and Hobbes. The second movement is thecircumscription of the sovereign state, which began in practice afterWorld War II and has since continued through European integration andthe growth and strengthening of laws and practices to protect humanrights. The most prominent corresponding political thought occurs inthe writings of critics of sovereignty like Bertrand de Jouvenel andJacques Maritain.1. A Definition of Sovereignty2. The Rise of the Sovereign State: Theory and Practice3. The Circumscription of the Sovereign State: Theory and PracticeBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. A Definition of SovereigntyIn his classic, The King’s Two Bodies (1957),medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz describes a profound transformation inthe concept of political authority over the course of the Middle Ages.The change began when the concept of the body of Christ evolved into anotion of two bodies -- one, the corpus naturale, theconsecrated host on the altar, the other, the corpus mysticum,the social body of the church with its attendant administrativestructure. This latter notion -- of a collective social organizationhaving an enduring, mystical essence -- would come to be transferred topolitical entities, the body politic. Kantorowicz then describes theemergence, in the late Middle Ages, of the concept of the king’stwo bodies, vivified in Shakespeare’s Richard II and applicableto the early modern body politic. Whereas the king’s natural,mortal body would pass away with his death, he was also thought to havean enduring, supernatural one that could not be destroyed, even byassassination, for it represented the mystical dignity and justice ofthe body politic. The modern polity that emerged dominant in earlymodern Europe manifested the qualities of the collectivity thatKantorowicz described -- a single, unified one, confined withinterritorial borders, possessing a single set of interests, ruled by anauthority that was bundled into a single entity and held supremacy inadvancing the interests of the polity. Though in early modern times,kings would hold this authority, later practitioners of it wouldinclude the people ruling through a constitution, nations, theCommunist Party, dictators, juntas, and theocracies. The modern polityis known as the state, and the fundamental characteristic of authoritywithin it, sovereignty.The evolution that Kantorowicz described is formative, forsovereignty is a signature feature of modern politics. Some scholarshave doubted whether a stable, essential notion of sovereignty exists.But there is in fact a definition that captures what sovereignty cameto mean in early modern Europe and of which most subsequent definitionsare a variant: supreme authority within a territory. This isthe quality that early modern states possessed, but which popes,emperors, kings, bishops, and most nobles and vassals during the MiddleAges lacked.Each component of this definition highlights an important aspect ofthe concept. First, a holder of sovereignty possesses authority. Thatis to say, the person or entity does not merely wield coercive power,defined as A’s ability to cause B to do what he would otherwisenot do. Authority is rather what philosopher R.P. Wolff proposed:“the right to command and correlatively the right to beobeyed.”[1] What is most important here is the term“right,” connoting legitimacy. A holder of sovereigntyderives authority from some mutually acknowledged source of legitimacy-- natural law, a divine mandate, hereditary law, a constitution, eveninternational law. In the contemporary era, some body of law isubiquitously the source of sovereignty.But if sovereignty is a matter of authority, it is not a matter ofmere authority, but of supreme authority. Supremacy is what makes theconstitution of the United States superior to the government ofPennsylvania, or any holder of sovereignty different from a policechief or corporate executive. The holder of sovereignty is superior toall authorities under its purview. Supremacy, too, is endemic tomodernity. During the Middle Ages, manifold authorities held some sortof legal warrant for their authority, whether feudal, canonical, orotherwise, but very rarely did such warrant confer supremacy.A final ingredient of sovereignty is territoriality, also a featureof political authority in modernity. Territoriality is a principle bywhich members of a community are to be defined. It specifies that theirmembership derives from their residence within borders. It is apowerful principle, for it defines membership in a way that may notcorrespond with identity. The borders of a sovereign state may not atall circumscribe a “people” or a “nation,” andmay in fact encompass several of these identities, as nationalself-determination and irredentist movements make evident. It is ratherby simple virtue of their location within geographic borders thatpeople belong to a state and fall under the authority of its ruler. Itis within a geographic territory that modern sovereigns are supremelyauthoritative.Territoriality is now deeply taken for granted. It is a feature ofauthority all across the globe. Even supranational and internationalinstitutions like the European Union and the United Nations arecomposed of states whose membership is in turn defined territorially.This universality of form is distinctive of modernity and underlinessovereignty’s connection with modernity. Though territorialityhas existed in different eras and locales, other principles ofmembership like family kinship, religion, tribe, and feudal ties havealso held great prestige. Most vividly contrasting with territorialityis a wandering tribe, whose authority structure is completelydisassociated with a particular piece of land. Territoriality specifiesby what quality citizens are subject to authority -- their geographiclocation within a set of boundaries. International relations theoristshave indeed pointed out the similarity between sovereignty and anotherinstitution in which lines demarcate land -- private property. Indeed,the two prominently rose together in the thought of Thomas Hobbes.Supreme authority within a territory -- this is the generaldefinition of sovereignty. Historical manifestations of sovereignty arealmost always specific instances of this general definition. It is infact the instances of which philosophers and the politically motivatedhave spoken most often, making their claim for the sovereignty of thisperson or that body of law. Understanding sovereignty, then, involvesunderstanding claims to it, or at least some of the most important ofthese claims.Over the past half millennium, these claims have takenextraordinarily diverse forms -- nations asserting independence frommother states, communists seeking freedom from colonialists, thevox populi contending with ancien regimes,theocracies who reject the authority of secular states, and sundryothers. It is indeed a mark of the resilience and flexibility of thesovereign state that it has accommodated such diverse sorts ofauthority. Though a catalog of these authorities is not possible here,three dimensions along which they may be understood will help tocategorize them: the holders of sovereignty, the absolute ornon-absolute nature of sovereignty, and the relationship between theinternal and external dimensions of sovereignty.As suggested, diverse authorities have held sovereignty -- kings,dictators, peoples ruling through constitutions, and the like. Thecharacter of the holder of supreme authority within a territory isprobably the most important dimension of sovereignty. In early moderntimes, French theorist Jean Bodin thought that sovereignty must residein a single individual. Both he and English philosopher Thomas Hobbesconceived the sovereign as being above the law. Later thinkersdiffered, coming to envision new loci for sovereignty, but remainingcommitted to the principle.Sovereignty can also be absolute or non-absolute. How is it possiblethat sovereignty might be non-absolute if it is also supreme? Afterall, scholars like Alan James argue that sovereignty can only be eitherpresent or absent, and cannot exist partially.[2] But here, absolutenessrefers not to the extent or character of sovereignty, which must alwaysbe supreme, but rather to the scope of matters over which a holder ofauthority is sovereign. Bodin and Hobbes envisioned sovereignty asabsolute, extending to all matters within the territory,unconditionally. It is possible for an authority to be sovereign oversome matters within a territory, but not all. Today, many EuropeanUnion (EU) member states exhibit non-absoluteness. They are sovereignin governing defense, but not in governing their currencies, tradepolicies, and many social welfare policies, which they administer incooperation with EU authorities as set forth in EU law. Absolutesovereignty is quintessential modern sovereignty. But in recentdecades, it has begun to be circumscribed by institutions like the EU,the UN’s practices of sanctioning intervention, and theinternational criminal court.A final pair of adjectives that define sovereignty is“internal” and “external.” In this case, thewords do not describe exclusive sorts of sovereignty, but differentaspects of sovereignty that are coexistent and omnipresent. Sovereignauthority is exercised within borders, but also, by definition, withrespect to outsiders, who may not interfere with the sovereign’sgovernance. The state has been the chief holder of external sovereigntysince the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, after which interference inother states’ governing prerogatives became illegitimate. Theconcept of sovereignty in international law most often connotesexternal sovereignty. Alan James similarly conceives of externalsovereignty as constitutional independence -- a state’s freedomfrom outside influence upon its basic prerogatives.[3]> Significantly,external sovereignty depends on recognition by outsiders. To states,this recognition is what a no-trespassing law is to private property --a set of mutual understandings that give property, or the state,immunity from outside interference. It is also external sovereigntythat establishes the basic condition of international relations --anarchy, meaning the lack of a higher authority that makes claims onlower authorities. An assemblage of states, both internally andexternally sovereign, makes up an international system, where sovereignentities ally, trade, make war, and make peace.2. The Rise of the Sovereign State: Theory and PracticeSupreme authority with a territory -- within this definition,sovereignty can then be understood more precisely only through itshistory. This history can be told as one of two broad movements -- thefirst, a centuries long evolution towards a European continent, then aglobe, of sovereign states, the second, a circumscription of absolutesovereign prerogatives in the second half of the twentieth century.It was at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that Europe consolidatedits long transition from the Middle Ages to a world of sovereignstates. According to historian J.R. Strayer, Britain and France lookeda lot like sovereign states by around 1300, their kings possessingsupremacy within bounded territories. But as late as the beginning ofthe Reformation in 1517, Europe remained distant from Westphalia. Itwas just around then that a great reversal in historical momentumoccurred when Charles V of Spain ascended to the throne, unitingCastile, Aragon and the Netherlands, at the same time becoming HolyRoman Emperor, gaining prerogatives over lands in Central Europe, whiletaking on the role of enforcer of the Catholic Church’s stillsignificant temporal prerogatives inside the Empire, especially itsenforcement of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. But within the Empire, CharlesV was not sovereign, either, for princes and nobles there retainedprerogatives over which he exercised no control. In 1555, a system ofsovereign states gained important ground in the Peace of Augsburg,whose formula cuius regio, eius religio, allowed Germanprinces to enforce their own faith within their territory. But Augsburgwas unstable. Manifold contests over the settlement’s provisionsresulted in constant wars, culminating finally in the Thirty Years War,which did not end until 1648, at the Peace of Westphalia.What features of Westphalia make it the origin of the sovereignstates system? In fact, not all scholars agree that it deserves thisstatus.[4] Nowhere in the settlement’s treatiesis a sovereign states system or even the state as the reigninglegitimate unit, prescribed. Certainly, Westphalia did not create asovereign states system ex nihilo, for components of thesystem had been accumulating for centuries up to the settlement;afterwards, some medieval anomalies persisted. In two broad respects,though, in both legal prerogatives and practical powers, the system ofsovereign states triumphed. First, states emerged as virtually the soleform of substantive constitutional authority in Europe, their authorityno longer seriously challenged by the Holy Roman Empire. TheNetherlands and Switzerland gained uncontested sovereignty, the Germanstates of the Holy Roman Empire accrued the right to ally outside theempire, while both the diplomatic communications and foreign policydesigns of contemporary great powers revealed a common understanding ofa system of sovereign states. The temporal powers of the Church werealso curtailed to the point that they no longer challenged anystate’s sovereignty. In reaction, Pope Innocent X condemned thetreaties of the peace as “null, void, invalid, iniquitous,unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for alltime.”[5]Second, Westphalia brought an end to intervention in matters ofreligion, up to then the most commonly practiced abridgement ofsovereign prerogatives. After decades of armed contestation, the designof the Peace of Augsburg was finally consolidated, not in the exactform of 1555, but effectively establishing the authority of princes andkings over religion. In ensuing decades, no European state would fightto affect the religious governance of another state, this in starkcontrast to the previous 130 years, when wars of religion sunderedEurope. As the sovereign states system became more generalized inensuing decades, this proscription of intervention would become moregeneralized, too, evolving into a foundational norm of theinternational system.The sovereign states system that came to dominate Europe atWestphalia spread worldwide over the next three centuries, culminatingin the decline of the European colonial empires in themid-20th century, when the state became the only form ofpolity ever to cover the entire land surface of the globe. Today, normsof sovereignty are enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations,whose article 2(4) prohibits attacks on “political independenceand territorial integrity,” and whose Article 2(7) sharplyrestricts intervention.As the sovereign state was occupying the European continent, pieceby piece, in early modern times, eventually forming the system thatcame to occupy the globe, contemporary political philosophers embracedthis form of polity and described what made it legitimate. They werenot originators of the concept, for even during medieval times,philosophers like Dante and Marsilius of Padua advocated a separationof temporal and religious powers that would be achieved through atransfer of prerogatives into temporal ruler’s hands. Then, inearly modern times, there were two roughly contemporary philosopherswho did not write explicitly or consciously of sovereignty, yet whoseideas amounted in substance to important developments of the concept.Machiavelli observed the politics of city states in his RenaissanceItaly and described what a prince had to do to promote a flourishingrepublic in terms that conferred on him supreme authority within histerritory. Manifestly, he was not to be bound by natural law, canonlaw, Gospel precepts, or any of the norms or authorities that obligatedmembers of Christendom. Rather, he would have to be prepared “notto be good,” and to be ready to perform evil, not because evilwas no longer evil, but because it was sometimes necessary to furtheran end that was central for Machiavelli, an end that amounts to theunifying idea of his thought: the strength and well-ordering of thestate. The obligation of the prince was raisond’état. He was supreme within the state’sterritory and responsible for the well being of this singular, unitarybody.Purveying sovereignty from quite a different perspective was MartinLuther. His theology of the Reformation advocated stripping theCatholic Church of its many powers, not only its ecclesiastical powers,but powers that are, by any modern definition, temporal. Luther heldthat the Church should no longer be thought of as a visible,hierarchical institution, but was rather the invisibly united aggregateof local churches that adhered to right doctrine. Thus, the CatholicChurch no longer legitimately held vast tracts of land that it taxedand defended, and whose justice it administered; it was no longerlegitimate for its bishops to hold temporal offices under princes andkings; nor would the Pope be able to depose secular rulers through hispower of excommunication; most importantly, the Holy Roman Emperorwould no longer legitimately enforce Catholic uniformity. No longerwould the Church and those who acted in its name exercise political oreconomic authority. Who, then, would take up such relinquished powers?Territorial princes. “By the destruction of the independence ofthe Church and its hold on an extra-territorial public opinion, thelast obstacle to unity within the State was removed,” writespolitical philosopher J.N. Figgis (72). It was thisvision that triumphed at Westphalia.Luther’s political theology explained all of this. He taughtthat under God’s authority, two orders with two forms ofgovernment existed. “The realm of the spirit” was the orderin which Christ was related to the soul of the believer. The realm ofthe world was the order of secular society, where civil authorities rangovernmental institutions through law and coercion. Both realmsfurthered the good of believers, but in different senses; they were tobe separately organized. Leaders of the church would perform spiritualduties; princes, kings and magistrates would perform temporal ones.Freed from the power of the pope and the Catholic Church, havingappropriated temporal powers within their realm, princes were noweffectively sovereign. In that era, princes even exercised considerablecontrol over Protestant churches, often appointing their regionalleaders, as described by the doctrine of “Erastianism.”Though neither Luther nor other Protestant reformers discussed thedoctrine of sovereignty in any detail, they prescribed for princes allof its substance. Again, Figgis:The unity and universality and essential rightness of thesovereign territorial State, and the denial of every extra-territorialor independent communal form of life, are Luther’s lastingcontribution to politics” (91).Other early modern philosophers, of course, espoused the doctrine ofsovereignty explicitly, and are thus more familiarly associated withit. French philosopher Jean Bodin was the first European philosopher totreat the concept extensively. His concept ofsouveraineté featured as a central concept in his work,De la république, which he wrote in 1576, during a timewhen France was sundered by civil war between Calvinist Huguenots andthe Catholic monarchy. He viewed the problem of order as central anddid not think that it could be solved through outdated medieval notionsof a segmented society, but only through a concept in which rulers andruled were integrated into a single, unitary body politic that wasabove any other human law, and was in fact the source of human law.This concept was sovereignty. Only a supreme authority within aterritory could strengthen a fractured community.To be sure, Bodin thought that the body that exercised sovereigntywas bound by natural and divine law, though no human law could judge orappeal to it. More curiously, he also thought that sovereignty rightlyexercised would respect customary and property rights. It is not clearhow such a restraint was to be reconciled with the supreme status ofsovereign authority. Possibly, Bodin thought that such rights were tobe features of a legal regime which was itself sovereign with respectto other authorities. Indeed, he also thought the form of governmentthat exercised sovereign powers could legitimately vary among monarchy,aristocracy and democracy, though he preferred monarchy. Whatever thesovereign body looked like, though, it was not subject to any externalhuman law or authority within its territory. F.H. Hinsley writes:At a time when it had become imperative that the conflict betweenrulers and ruled should be terminated, [Bodin] realized -- and it wasan impressive intellectual feat -- that the conflict would be solvedonly if it was possible both to establish the existence of anecessarily unrestricted ruling power and to distinguish this powerfrom an absolutism that was free to disregard all laws and regulations.He did this by founding both the legality of this power and the wisdomof observing the limitations which hedged its proper use upon thenature of the body politic as a political society comprising both rulerand ruled -- and his statement of sovereignty was the necessary, onlypossible, result (124-125).Bodin’s “statement of sovereignty” is the firstsystematic one in modern European philosophy, and thus deserves alandmark status.The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes also wrote during a time ofcivil war and also arrived at the notion of sovereignty as a solution.For Hobbes, the people established sovereign authority through acontract in which they transferred all of their rights to theLeviathan, which represented the abstract notion of the state. The willof the Leviathan reigned supreme and represented the will of all thosewho had alienated their rights to it. Like Bodin’s sovereign,Hobbes’ Leviathan was above the law, a mortal god unbound by anycontractual obligations with any external party. But contrary to Bodin,Hobbes’ sovereign was unlimited by natural, divine, or customarylaw. Law, rather, was the command of the sovereign ruler, emanatingfrom his will, and the obligation to obey it absolute.Both Bodin and Hobbes argued for sovereignty as supreme authority.The concept continues to prevail as the presumption of political rulein states throughout the globe today, including ones where thesovereign body of law institutes limited government and civil rightsfor individuals. Over the centuries, new notions of the holders ofsovereignty have evolved. Rousseau, far different from Bodin or Hobbes,saw the collective people within a state as the sovereign, rulingthrough their general will. In constitutional government, it is thepeople ruling through a body of law that is sovereign. That is theversion that commands legitimacy most commonly in the world today.3. The Circumscription of the Sovereign State: Theory and PracticeThe rise and global expansion of sovereignty, described and evenlauded by political philosophers, amounts to one of the most formidableand successful political trends in modern times. But from its earliestdays, sovereignty has also met with both doubters and qualifiedsupporters, many of whom have regarded any body of law’s claim tosovereign status as a form of idolatry, sometimes as a carapace behindwhich rulers carry out cruelties and injustices free from legitimateoutside scrutiny. It was indeed after the Holocaust that meaningfullegal and institutional circumscriptions of sovereignty in fact arose,many of which have come to abridge the rights of sovereign states quitesignificantly. The two most prominent curtailments are conventions onhuman rights and European integration.It was in 1948 that the vast majority of states signed the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, committing themselves to respect over 30separate rights for individuals. As it was not a legally bindingdeclaration and contained no enforcement provisions, the declarationleft states’ sovereignty intact, but it was a first step towardstethering them to international, universal obligations regarding theirinternal affairs. Over decades, these human rights would come to enjoyever stronger legal status. One of the most robust human rightsconventions, one that indeed curtails sovereignty, even if mildly,through its arbitration mechanisms, is the European Convention for theProtection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, formed in 1950.Roughly contemporaneous, signed on December 9, 1948, was the GenocideConvention, committing signing states to refrain from and punishgenocide. Then, in the mid-1960’s, two covenants -- the Covenanton Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social andCultural Rights -- legally bound most of the world’s states torespecting the human rights of their people. Again, thesignatories’ constitutional authority remained largely intact,since they would not allow any of these commitments to infringe upontheir sovereignty. Subsequent human rights covenants, also signed bythe vast majority of the world’s states, contained similarreservations.Only a practice of human rights backed up by military enforcement orrobust judicial procedures would circumscribe sovereignty in a seriousway. Progress in this direction began to occur after the Cold Warthrough a historic revision of the Peace of Westphalia, one thatcurtails a norm strongly advanced by its treaties -- non-intervention.In a series of several episodes beginning in 1990, the United Nationsor another international organization has endorsed a political action,usually involving military force, that the broad consensus of stateswould have previously regarded as illegitimate interference in internalaffairs. The episodes have involved the approval of military operationsto remedy an injustice within the boundaries of a state or the outsideadministration of domestic matters like police operations. Unlikepeacekeeping operations during the Cold War, the operations haveusually lacked the consent of the government of the target state. Theyhave occurred in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia,Rwanda, Haiti, Cambodia, Liberia, and elsewhere. Although thelegitimacy and wisdom of individual interventions is often contestedamong states -- the U.S. bombing of Iraq in December 1999 andNATO’s intervention in Kosovo, for instance, failed to elicitU.N. Security Council endorsement -- the broad practice of interventionis likely to continue to enjoy broad endorsement within the U.N.Security Council and other international organizations.The other way in which sovereignty is being circumscribed is throughEuropean integration. This idea also arose in reaction to theHolocaust, a calamity that many European leaders attributed at least inpart to the sovereign state’s lack of accountability.Historically, the most enthusiastic supporters of European integrationhave indeed come from Catholic Christian Democratic parties, whoseideals are rooted in medieval Christendom, where at least in theory, noleader was sovereign and all leaders were accountable to a universalset of values. In the modern language of human rights and democracy,they echo Pope Innocent X’s excoriation of the Peace ofWestphalia.European integration began in 1950, when six states formed theEuropean Coal and Steel Community in the Treaty of Paris. The communityestablished joint international authority over the coal and steelindustries of these six countries, entailing executive control througha permanent bureaucracy and a decision-making Council of Ministerscomposed of foreign ministers of each state. This same model wasexpanded to a general economic zone in the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Itwas enhanced by a judicial body, the European Court of Justice, and alegislature, the European Parliament, a directly elected Europe-widebody. Over time, European integration has widened, as the institutionnow consists of fifteen members, and deepened, most recently in the1991 Maastricht Treaty, which expanded the institution’s powersand reconfigured it as the European Union. Far from a replacement forstates, the European Union rather “pools” important aspectsof their sovereignty into a “supranational” institution inwhich their freedom of action is constrained.[6] They are no longerabsolutely sovereign. Today, European integration proceeds apace. Corestates in the European Union are now considering integrating theirdefense forces, at least for certain purposes.This circumscription of the sovereign state, through internationalnorms and supranational institutions, finds a parallel in contemporaryphilosophers who attack the notion of absolute sovereignty. Theirthought is not entirely new, for even in early modern times,philosophers like Hugo Grotius, Alberico Gentili, and Francisco Suarez,though they accepted the state as a legitimate institution, thoughtthat its authority ought to be limited, not absolute. The cruel prince,for instance, could be subject to a disciplining action fromneighboring princes that is much like contemporary notions ofhumanitarian intervention.Perhaps the two most prominent attacks on sovereignty from politicalphilosophers since World War II come from Bertrand de Jouvenel andJacques Maritain. In his prominent work of 1957, Sovereignty: AnInquiry Into the Political Good, Jouvenel acknowledges thatsovereignty is an important attribute of modern political authority,needed to quell disputes within the state and to muster cooperation indefense against outsiders. But he roundly decries the modern concept ofsovereignty, which creates a power who is above the rules, a powerwhose decrees are to be considered legitimate simply because theyemanate from his will. To Jouvenel, sovereignty reached its peak inHobbes, in whose “horrific conception everything comes back tomeans of constraint, which enable the sovereign to issue rights anddictate laws in any way he pleases. But these means of constraint arethemselves but a fraction of the social forces concentrated in the handof the sovereign” (197). Despite their differences over the locusand form of sovereignty, subsequent thinkers like Locke, Pufendorf, andRousseau “were to feel the lure of this mechanically perfectconstruction” (198). This was “the hour of sovereigntyin itself,” writes Jouvenel, the existence of which“hardly anyone would thenceforward have the hardihood todeny” (198).As his description of Hobbes intimates, Jouvenel views early modernabsolute sovereignty with great alarm. “[I]t is the idea itselfwhich is dangerous,” he writes (198). But rather than calling forthe concept to be abrogated, he holds that sovereignty must bechanneled so that sovereign authority wills nothing but what islegitimate. Far from being defined by the sovereign, morality has anindependent validity. Appealing to the perspective of “Christianthinkers,” he argues that “there are . . . wills which arejust and wills which are unjust” (201). “Authority,”then, “carries with it the obligation to command the thing thatshould be commanded” (201). This was the understanding ofauthority held by the ancien regime, where effective advisers to themonarch could channel his efforts towards the common good. What canchannel the sovereign will today? Jouvenel seems to doubt that judicialor constitutional design is alone enough. Rather, he places his hope inthe shared moral concepts of the citizenry, which act as a constraintupon the choices of the sovereign.In Chapter Two of his enduring work of 1951, Man and theState, Jacques Maritain shows little sympathy for sovereignty atall, not even the qualified sympathy of Jouvenel:It is my contention that political philosophy must get rid of theword, as well as the concept, of Sovereignty:-not because it is anantiquated concept, or by virtue of a sociological-juridical theory of“objective law”; and not only because the concept ofSovereignty creates insuperable difficulties and theoreticalentanglements in the field of international law; but because,considered in its genuine meaning, and in the perspective of the properscientific realm to which it belongs - political philosophy - thisconcept is intrinsically wrong and bound to mislead us if we keep onusing it - assuming that it has been too long and too largely acceptedto be permissibly rejected, and unaware of the false connotations thatare inherent in it (29-30).Bodin’s and Hobbes’ mistake was in conceiving ofsovereignty as authority that the people permanently transferred andalienated to an external entity, here the monarch. Rather thanrepresenting the people and being accountable to it, the sovereignbecame a transcendent entity, holding the supreme and inalienable rightto rule over the people, independently of them, rather thanrepresenting the people, accountable to them. Like Jouvenel, Maritainrues the exaltation of the sovereign’s will such that what isjust is what serves his interest. This is idolatry. Any transfer of theauthority of the body politic either to some part of itself or to someoutside entity -- the apparatus of the state, a monarch, or even thepeople -- is illegitimate, for the validity of a government is rootedin its relationship to natural law. Sovereignty gives rise to threedysfunctionalities. First, its external dimension renders inconceivableinternational law and a world state, to both of which Maritain ishighly sympathetic. Second, the internal dimension of sovereignty, theabsolute power of the state over the body politic, results incentralism, not pluralism. Third, the supreme power of the sovereignstate is contrary to the democratic notion of accountability.As a Catholic philosopher, Maritain’s arguments run similar toChristian philosophers of early modern Europe who criticized absolutesovereignty. Witnessing the rise of the formidable entity of the state,they sought to place limits on its power and authority. They are theancestors of those who now demand limits on the state’s authorityin the name of human rights, of the right to quell genocide anddisaster and deliver relief from the outside, of an internationalcriminal court, and of a supranational entity that assumes power ofgovernance over economic, and now, maybe, military affairs.BibliographyBartelson, J. 1995. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press.Bodin, J. 1992. On Sovereignty: Four Chapters From Six Books ofthe Commonwealth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Figgis, J. N. 1916. From Gerson to Grotius 1414-1625. 2ed. 1907. Reprint. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Fowler, M. R., and J. M. Bunck. 1995. Law, Power, and theSovereign State. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.Grotius, H. 1901. The Rights of War and Peace. London: M.Walter Dunne.Hinsley, F. H. 1986. Sovereignty. Second ed. Cambridge,U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Hobbes, T. 1968. Leviathan. Harmondsworth, UK:Penguin.James, A. 1986. Sovereign Statehood. London: Allen &Unwin.James, A. 1999. The Practice of Sovereign Statehood in ContemporaryInternational Society. Political Studies 47(3): 460-2.de Jouvenel, B. 1957. Sovereignty: An Inquiry Into thePolitical Good. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Kantorowicz, E. 1957. The King's Two Bodies: A Study inMedieval Political Theology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress.Keohane, R. O., and S. Hoffmann. 1991. Institutional Change inEurope in the 1980's. In The New European Community. Decisionmakingand Institutional Change, eds. R. O. Keohane, and S. Hoffmann.Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Krasner, S. D. 1999. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Kratochwil, F. 1989. Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On theConditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relationsand Domestic Affairs. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress.Luther, M. 1967. Temporal Authority: To What Extent It ShouldBe Obeyed. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press.Machiavelli, N. 1950. The Prince and the Discourses. NewYork, NY: The Modern Library.Maritain, J. 1951. Man and the State. Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press.Philpott, D. 2001. Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas ShapedModern International Relations. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press.Pogge, T. 1992. Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty. Ethics103Spruyt, H. 1994. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Wolff, R. P. 1990. The Conflict Between Authority andAutonomy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Other Internet Resources"Something Happened. Sovereignty and European Integration", by Adrián Tokár, preprint of article inExtraordinary Times, Institut für die Wissenschaften vomMenschen, Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences, Vol. 11: Vienna2001"State sovereignty and the protection of fundamental human rights: an international law perspective", by Alain Pellet(University of Paris X-Nanterre, member and former Chairman of theInternational Law Commission of the United Nations)Popular Sovereignty, by John F. KnutsenRelated Entries authority | cosmopolitanism | Dante Alighieri | Hobbes, Thomas: moral and political philosophy | Maritain, Jacques | medieval philosophy | nationalism | rights: human | world government Copyright © 2003 byDan Philpott<Philpott.1@nd.edu> |
|
