Sovereign state

The term sovereign state refers to a state that possesses full autonomy and self-determination over its affairs and territory. It is understood to be a situation where each state determines the internal affairs of their territory free from the interference of external powers. It is recognized as a legitimate nation by other nations and is generally characterised by five main elements: (1) a defined territory over which the state exercises internal and external sovereignty, (2) a permanent population, (3) a government not under the control of a foreign power, (4) independence from other states and powers, and (5) the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states.

Background

The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 is broadly considered to be the first recognition of state sovereignty. From it, arose the doctrine of Westphalian sovereignty that remains a principle of international law. This principle emphasizes that each nation state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of noninterference in another country's domestic affairs and that each state (no matter how large or small) is equal in international law. In this way, the Treaty of Westphalia introduced a framework within which international relations could operate.

While the sovereign state has been in existence for more than seven centuries, having emerged during a time of political and economic transformation, in some nations this legal, political, and administrative system is being gradually eroded through the membership of nations in wider organisations, for example the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN). These types of bodies or organizations bring states together under a wider umbrella, establishing a separate body of legislation, policy, legal principles, and declarations that set out agreed-upon baseline objectives and aspirations in relation to a wide variety of issues, including trade, transport, the environment, and the protection of human rights. Accordingly, Fabrid Mirbagheri argues that the building block of international society is sovereign statehood. Indeed, structuration theory and poststructuralism are founded on the idea that the sovereign state is critical to international relations. These theories are based on the belief that the sovereign state is necessary to address the need for a reordering and rearticulation of the legal, social, and political order. The sovereign state has been argued by some to be a passing phenomenon.

Topic Today

Membership to the EU involves each member state surrendering competence in certain areas of law and order. Such erosion of state sovereignty is often given up reluctantly. Consequently, competence has been divided into three parts: (1) exclusive competence, applying to areas such as customs union, competition rules for the functioning of the internal market, and conservation of marine biological resources under the common fisheries policy; (2) shared competence in areas such as social policy, agriculture, transport, and the environment and energy, and (3) state competence. Reflecting the importance attached to protecting state sovereignty, Article 5 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) provides for the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. The TFEU provides, among other things, that "the limits of Union competences are governed by the principle of conferral. The use of EU competences is governed by the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. . . . [and] under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level." To this end, as one of the bodies in existence which brings states together, the EU has recognized the need to ensure that law and policy is undertaken at the lowest administrative level.

The notion of collective security developed following the end of the World War I. As a result, the League of Nations was created to safeguard peace and security. The premise was that any attack on one state would be considered to be an attack on all states. This was met with scepticism by the US Congress, which refused to ratify the League’s covenant. Nevertheless, the later UN addressed similar issues through the UN Charter.

The UN is an international organization of 193 members and was founded on a commitment to state sovereignty, whether the state is democratic or not. Article 2, paragraph 7, of the Charter enshrines "the right to self-determination, by virtue of which all peoples can freely determine, without external interference, their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development . . . reaffirms that all countries have the obligation under the Charter to respect the right of others to self-determination and to determine freely their political status and pursue their economic social and cultural development." While the UN Charter protects expressly the sovereignty and autonomy of states, some bodies argue that the rights of UN member states to national sovereignty are being undermined by a number of groups and monitoring bodies which are allegedly attempting to create new rights which members have not agreed to.

In an era where states in various parts of the world are, through a variety of mechanisms, establishing different degrees of formal relationships between states, tension is being placed on state sovereignty. Consequently, the benefits of international cooperation have to be weighed by states against inevitable interference in the sovereign state. One example of this is the role of the United Nations Security Council, which has primary responsibility for international peace and security.

Bibliography

Family Watch International. Threats to National Sovereignty: UN Entities Overstepping Their Mandates. Family Watch International. 2013. Web. 4 Jan. 2016. http://www.familywatchinternational.org/fwi/documents/fwipolicybrief‗National‗Sovereignty.pdf.

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Mirbagheri, Fabrid. "Conflicting Interests: The United Nations Versus Sovereign Statehood" Global Dialogue,2.2 (2000). Web. 4 Jan. 2016. http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=79.

Mortimer, E., and A. Berger. The United Nations, National Sovereignty and the "Responsibility to Protect." German Development Institute. 22 March 2010. Web. 4 Jan. 2016.

Rezvani, David A. Surpassing the Sovereign State: The Wealth, Self‐Rule, and Security Advantages of Partially Independent Territories. Oxford: Oxford UP. 2014. Print.

Roll, Kate. Rev. of Surpassing the Sovereign State: The Wealth, Self‐Rule, and Security Advantages of Partially Independent Territories, by David A. Rezvani. International Affairs 91.3 (2015): 634–35. Print.

Venter, Francois. "Re-imagining the Role of the Sovereign State and Individual Rights in Mitigating the Effects of the Deterioration of the Environment." Chapters (2015): 121–42. Print.