SOVEREIGN STATES

Sovereignty is a central attribute of modern states, as argued in Chapter 2. There I offered a preliminary and rough characterization of sovereignty as the ultimate source of political authority within a realm. It is common to distinguish internal and external aspects of sovereignty, and today these are often treated separately. Internal sovereignty pertains to the governance of the realm; external sovereignty, to independence of other states. The two aspects are related, as will be made clear when I examine what I call the classical account of sovereignty.

Sovereignty is not a simple idea. As one would expect of a notion with a long and controversial history, it is rather complex. Determining the relations among all its parts is no easy matter. To understand the ideas contained in the notion of sovereignty, it is important to keep in mind certain aspects of the history of the emergence of the modern state. Medieval rule was feudal, imperial, and/or theocratic. The early modern competitors of the state were city-states and leagues of cities, as well as empires, the Church, and various remnants of feudalism. Two features of modern governance were scarce in all these earlier forms of rule: territoriality and exclusivity of rule (a “closed” system of governance).