Sovereignty

Origins: History and Political Theory

The idea that the sovereign is subject to no higher power in the making and enforcing of political decisions in a given territory paradoxically leads to the antithesis of sovereignty: international anarchy (the absence of any overarching authority above sovereigns themselves). This means that sovereigns are supreme at home, but only equals abroad. Sovereignty is at once a claim to self-government and an assertion of membership in the society of nations. Therefore, sovereignty is intimately tied up with questions of borders, for boundaries mark the extent of the sovereign's power. The origins of today's sovereign states lie in the prolonged history of the consolidation and expansion of state power in the hands of self-aggrandizing European dynasties, who carved out exclusive domains of rule by crushing alternative sources of authority. In this way, a system of states existed before sovereignty became the ruling principle of diplomacy and international law.

The immediate concern that inspired modern theories of sovereignty was internal discord. Both Bodin's Six livres de la république of 1576 and Hobbes's Leviathan of 1651 proposed similar answers to the dilemma of destructive civil conflict. They both put forward the idea of an ultimate decision-making authority that would safeguard the polity as a stable, united body to meet foreign threats and suppress internal strife. The idea of a single hub of political obligation undermined the overlapping spheres of authority, rights, and responsibilities that hitherto prevailed in Europe. With their ruthless emphasis on unity, the ideas of Bodin and Hobbes undoubtedly gave succor to an authoritarian conception of the state. But for Hobbes at least, the idea of sovereignty entailed something more. For the idea of a supreme seat of decision making that trumped the privileges of any other section or member of the body politic logically required the prior assumption of a shared ideal of political legitimation. In other words, sovereignty presumed the idea of a unified collective will that flattened social hierarchy by placing all members of the polity on the same level. Hobbes's theoretical innovation was not, therefore, the idea of popular sovereignty. This idea was already familiar to Europe from republican city-states and the Protestant Huguenots' challenge to the Catholic French monarchy. Rather, the abstract idea of a representative state was new.

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