As yet, no ancient or medieval concepts of the right of self-determination of peoples have been identified in Europe or elsewhere. In the early modern period as well, one cannot speak of an absolute right of self-determination of peoples. In any event, it seems that such a right was never postulated. As regards a conditional or remedial right, the situation is different. To determine the extent to which a conditional or remedial right of self-determination may have existed in the early modern period and whether it can at least be regarded as the precursor to a real right of self-determination, this chapter examines four aspects of such a right: popular sovereignty, the right to resistance, the right to emigration and option, and the consent of estates as a precondition for territorial changes.

POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

From a logical point of view, popular sovereignty corresponds to the right of self-determination: Every people is sovereign in the sense that all state power originates with and remains tied to the people, which on account of this characteristic can form a sovereign state.

Normally, however, popular sovereignty concerns the distribution of sovereign rights within a state and therefore the internal distribution of power. The people claims sovereignty for itself against its rivals, that is, the ruler or an aristocracy. The right of self-determination, on the contrary, turns on the question of whether a people are sovereign and therefore self-determining or dependent on and therefore determined by an other. Instead of the internal distribution of power, self-determination concerns the power of the state in the international context. Popular sovereignty thereby becomes a preliminary stage of the right of self-determination in the sense of being a necessary but not sufficient condition. Where there is no popular sovereignty there is also no right of self-determination. Where there is popular sovereignty, there can, but need not, be a right of self-determination. In popular sovereignty, the key question is whether all members of a people have an equal share in power and thus in sovereignty, and not the question of who constitutes a people.

Already in the late medieval and then increasingly in the early modern period, popular sovereignty appears in political theory and as a theoretical claim, but hardly at all in reality. Power is not evenly distributed among the people.