Sovereignty

Although it is a much-debated concept, sovereignty traditionally has been defined as a condition of final and absolute authority in a political community. Essentially, sovereignty includes the recognized independent right and inherent power of a state (or country) to stand alone from all other states and for that state to lawfully and independently make and follow its own laws. Since 1648 and the Treaty of Westphalia (which codified the modern system of international politics), sovereignty has been invested in states that have authority over the land and people within their territories. It is not possible to become sovereign just through self-declaration, and so sovereignty never is a matter for a single state but rather is part of an interstate arrangement that requires reciprocal recognition. This reciprocated sovereignty is very much a feature of the capitalist world economy, and this emergence of territorially based sovereignty has created the modern interstate system that is at the heart of contemporary political geography.

Sovereignty operates both internally (outside powers cannot intervene in the affairs of a state unless they are invited to do so) and externally (this depends on reciprocity and a mutual recognition of sovereignty by other states). Thus, sovereignty provides one of the most fundamental ground rules of international politics today in that it defines who is and who is not part of the international interstate system. Some states that have been created have not been recognized by other states and so have not been considered a part of the interstate system (e.g., the republic set up in the northern half of Cyprus following the Turkish invasion of 1974). Since 1945, many new states have been created (particularly since the end of imperialism), and the main way in which they have had their sovereignty recognized is by joining the United Nations. This process was again repeated following the breakups of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia when the new states these breakups created applied to join the United Nations to prove and mark their entry onto the stage of international politics. Previously, the Soviet Union regularly interfered in the internal affairs of socialist countries in breach of those countries' sovereignty, as in the case of the Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia (in 1968) and Afghanistan (in 1979).

These twin principles of territory and sovereignty as the basis of international law mean that states are the political units around which laws are framed and that the rights of states have priority over the interests of other institutions. Far from always providing order and stability in the international system, sovereignty often has been a source of conflict, especially when its territorial basis has been contested. If sovereign states do not have precisely delimited boundaries and borders, disputes and wars often result, as in the case of the disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea during the 1980s and 1990s. Territorial claims by one state against another state can have historical and cultural roots or can derive from geographic proximity and pressures for integration and/or national self-determination. In addition, conflict may occur where nations and ethnic communities are subjected to the sovereign authority of a particular state and do not recognize themselves as citizens and subjects of that state.

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