What is sovereignty and how is it changing?

Authors Avatar

What is sovereignty and how is it changing?

After looking through various sources both in text books and on the web, there seems little difference in opinion of what traditional sovereignty is, Robert Jackson describes sovereignty as an ‘international institution, meaning a set of rules which states play by”. There seems to be four criteria that a state must meet to be sovereign. Firstly a sovereign state is one that enjoys supreme political control within its own borders and these powers can not be withdrawn by any other body, also they command the use of legitimate force within its own borders. Secondly as Richard Haass (a US ambassador) “it is capable of regulating movements across its borders” this is of course a reference to migration and asylum seeker policies. Another definition of sovereignty is that a state is free to make its own foreign policy decisions freely this includes the drawing up of treaties and alliances with other nations. Perhaps the most significant of all, is that it is recognised by other governments as having legal authority within its own borders and is entitled to freedom from external intervention.

The nature of sovereignty has significantly changed since the old Westphalia system which was established in Europe after the 1648 westphalian treaty, which recognised that states should be free to act within their own borders.

Whilst these factors have never been absolute they have produced a solid and recognised foundation to which most have operated within, however in today’s world all of these factors (internal authority, border Control, policy autonomy, and non-intervention) are been challenged by many factors. Such as the conflict in interests between sovereign states, such changes have many to believe that the nature of sovereignty is changing dramatically as both politics and economics become more globalized.

Join now!

The existence of so called ‘weak states’, such states lack legitimacy and find it difficult to exercise any control or power within their own borders, they often find themselves confronting insurgents or rebels who are trying to overthrow them and replace the regime with a tyrannical dictatorship style of government, this may lead to neighbouring states taking advantage of the vulnerability caused by the domestic problems within a state, such states may collapse and be classified as one of the so called ‘failed states’, it wasn’t until the events of September 11th 2001 that such states have come to the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay