Sovereignty

General Understanding and History

Challenged by global relations and transnational influences, the sovereignty of a single state is constantly questioned and continuously redefined. This affects the internal as well as the external sovereignty of a state, for example, when a reliable and accountable institutional setup is a prerequisite for development aid and demands a significant reform of the internal organization of a state. Furthermore, a state's sovereignty is infringed on sometimes by the interest of strong states that limits the scope of action of smaller states or even binds them to certain alliances, or when tendencies of disaggregation between the demos and the state can be observed to take shape in an increasingly decentralized organization of civil society that circumvents national centers and addresses a global audience and institutional setup. The latter can be exemplified with the world social forum and the opposition against global institutions at G-8 and G-20 meetings.

Sovereignty still constitutes a core concept of political authority. It has been of central importance since the early modern period when it began to be applied to describe a mode of rule within a certain territory that rested in the hands of the state. In general, sovereignty describes the possession of legitimate authority over a polity. This means that sovereignty provides the ability of self-determination and autonomy. Who is sovereign has the capacity of self-determination as well as the ability to enjoy autonomy. This question of self-determination and autonomy remains relevant today.

The meaning of sovereignty is contested and has changed over time. For example, in the case of the European Union, much legal power is not in the hands of the member-states anymore, which has a bearing on the concept of sovereignty as such when it is de facto split between two legal entities. Furthermore, the legal (de jure) sovereignty is not always congruent with the actual (de facto) sovereignty, for example, when legal claims over the rule of a territory are not matched with the execution of this legal sovereignty, or when a de facto rule over a territory is not internationally recognized through diplomatic relations on legally binding levels, as was the case with East Germany for many decades after World War II. Sovereignty can thus be described as verbally continuous yet semantically discontinuous and contested. The concept itself is not isolated; rather, it shares a rich semantic field and is connected to other concepts such as civil society, democracy, human rights, as well as self-determination and autonomy.

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