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Book No. – 002 (Political Science)
Book Name – Political Theory (Rajeev Bhargava)
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1. INTRODUCTION
2. HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF SOVEREIGNTY
3. THEORIES OF SOVEREIGNTY
4. THE CHANGING WORLD AND THE CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY
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LANGUAGE
Sovereignty
Chapter – 10
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
- National and international politics today is dominated by the notion of sovereignty and the contests over it.
- The debate on sovereignty reflects the changing relationship between the state and civil society.
- Sovereignty aims at establishing order and clarity in a world described as turbulent and incoherent.
- Sovereignty is one of the central ideas of modernity, with its antecedents traceable to changes in Western history and politics around the 16th century A.D..
- The chapter discusses the historical evolution of the concept of sovereignty, focusing on its origins in European politics.
- The theoretical formulations that shape the understanding of sovereignty are examined, ranging from Bodin, Hobbes, to Austin.
- The last section explores contemporary debates questioning the validity of sovereignty in the context of a rapidly changing world economy and politics.
HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF SOVEREIGNTY
- The concept of sovereignty is relatively new but has almost universal usage in contemporary discourse.
- In earlier civilizations, sovereignty held little significance. For example, tribal communities in Africa were organized around lineage and kinship ties.
- China had a multi-state system with a fluid relationship between the monarch and feudal lords.
- Medieval Europe was not divided into sovereign states; both rulers and the ruled were governed by universal lawsderived from the authority of God.
- Society in medieval Europe was a patchwork of overlapping political loyalties and allegiances across geographically interwoven jurisdictions.
- The Church provided an overarching, organizational, and moral framework transcending both legal and political boundaries in medieval Europe.
- In feudal Europe, there was no distinction between domestic and external spheres of organization, nor between the public and private spheres.
- By the end of the 15th century, Europe had about 500 independent political units, but this order was in decline.
- New social and economic conditions were emerging, characterized by increasing trade, the growing strength of the manufacturing class, and centralized monarchies.
- Monarchs, supported by civil servants and hired armies, began to levy royal taxes, and individuals no longer owed allegiance to the overlord or their village.
- The Renaissance led to the secularization of life and a decline in the authority of the Church.
- Reformation, counter-reformation, and the wars of religion facilitated the acceptance of a secular state.
- Papal sovereignty was undermined, paving the way for secular absolutism.
- The Thirty Years’ War ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, recognizing a religious stalemate in Europe.
- The economic practices of the trading and manufacturing classes, alongside advancements in science and technology, undermined the authority of the Church.
- The Westphalian state system replaced the decentralized political arrangements, leading to territorially bound sovereign states.
- Each sovereign state had its own centralized administration and a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence.
- The new form of state redefined the idea of private property, understood as the right to exclude others from the possession of commodities like land, labour, or capital.
- Private and public spheres of life became strongly demarcated, with the royal court as the supreme authority in the public sphere and paternal authority in the family consolidating patriarchy.
- Laws supporting paternal authority and inheritance in the male line aligned with the new sovereign state.
- The feudal state in Europe was replaced by the absolutist state based on the notion of absolute sovereignty, where the monarch had absolute rights over their domain.
- The acquisition of new territories was seen as a matter of extending sovereignty, which later became the instrument for colonial expansion.