Sovereignty refers to the supreme authority within a specified territory – typically, a nation-state. The concept embodies the right of a governing body to exert its authority over the polity without third-party interference. To fulfil the modern notion of sovereignty, there must be a distinct territory and population under the governance of an authority whose power is recognized both domestically and internationally.
The idea of sovereignty has long existed. The Roman Empire, for instance, recognized the sovereignty of its emperor, just as the ancient Egyptians accepted the sovereignty of generations of pharaohs. However, it has been argued that the idea of sovereignty waned in the Middle Ages, when the power of monarchs was constrained by the aristocratic classes. The modern conception of sovereignty is thus widely considered to have arisen with the emergence of modern nation-states from the 17th century onwards.
Sovereignty and war
The idea of sovereignty continues to wield influence in contemporary political discourse. It has, for instance, been regularly cited as a reason to go to war – as when Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 in response to German violation of Polish sovereignty. More recently still, the European Union – established in a bid to maintain peace between Europe’s sovereign states (‘As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable,’ Einstein once said) – has found itself seriously challenged by critics who accuse it of persistently undermining the sovereignty of its member states.
In the face of widespread civil and religious discord across much of Europe, the French jurist and political theorist Jean Bodin (1530–96) looked to a strong ruler because of a lack of faith in the ability of the populace to govern themselves. ‘In a democracy,’ he wrote, ‘sovereignty is vested in a majority; and a majority is not only, at best, an ignorant, foolish and emotional mob, but shifts continually and alters from year to year.’
His ideas were echoed in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, published in 1651 (see The Social Contract here), two years after the execution of Charles I in the English Civil War. Hobbes’s ideal was a ‘sovereign power’ able to compel the people to ‘act in the common good’. By contrast, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France contended that sovereignty lies with the people – what he termed ‘the general will’ – while back in England, John Locke was making a similar case. Indeed, the concept found expression in France’s post-Revolution constitution of 1791: ‘Sovereignty is one, indivisible, unalienable and imprescriptible; it belongs to the Nation; no group can attribute sovereignty to itself nor can an individual arrogate it to himself.’ Similar sentiments were shared by the authors of the American Declaration of Independence, formulated fifteen years earlier.