Sovereignty

Definition of Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the supreme authority within a territory, the ultimate source of political power that cannot be legitimately overridden by any higher authority. In the early modern period, thinkers such as Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes developed the concept of sovereignty to justify the centralized power of the state against feudal fragmentation and religious civil war. Sovereignty has since become the foundational principle of the international state system, defining the legal and political independence of states.

The concept raises fundamental philosophical questions. Who is the sovereign? Is sovereignty absolute or limited? Can sovereignty be divided? What is the relationship between sovereignty and legitimacy? In democratic theory, the principle of popular sovereignty holds that the people are the ultimate source of political authority. In international law, state sovereignty is the principle that each state has exclusive jurisdiction over its own territory and domestic affairs.

Key Thinkers

Jean Bodin, in his Six Books of the Commonwealth, first articulated the modern concept of sovereignty as absolute, perpetual, and indivisible. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, argued that sovereignty must be absolute to prevent the state of nature — a war of all against all. Jean-Jacques Rousseau relocated sovereignty in the people, arguing that legitimate political authority derives from the general will. Carl Schmitt defined the sovereign as "he who decides on the exception," emphasizing the extra-legal foundation of sovereign power. Hannah Arendt examined the crisis of sovereignty in the twentieth century, linking its collapse to the rise of totalitarianism.