Sovereignty [addendum]

About 4 pages (1,237 words)

Sovereignty Summary

Sovereignty [addendum]

Sovereignty is one of the central organizing concepts of modern Western political thought. To say that it is a concept central to the organization of political thought is not to say that it is one of the concepts on which political theorists have lavished the greatest amount of explicit attention. But it is to say that certain claims about sovereignty are crucial to the way philosophers in the modern period have modeled or pictured the political world about which they are theorizing. That way of picturing the political world gained currency following the Peace of Westphalia, which was brokered to end the wars of religion that wracked Europe after the Protestant Reformation. It can therefore be called the post-Westphalian model.

The Peace of Westphalia gave impetus and sanction to the emergence of national states in Europe. The post-Westphalian model is a model of the world of states as philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin thought that world should be. The most important claims made by proponents of the post-Westphalian model are that the world is (a) divided into states that (b) should be ruled by agents who exercise sovereignty within the boundaries of the states they govern, and (c) are themselves sovereign with respect to one another. Recall that according to (1) and (3) in Stanley Benn's entry above, to say that an agent exercises sovereignty is to say that that agent exercises political authority or power, and that there is no agent who is authorized to override the decisions of the agent to whom sovereignty is ascribed, or who can generally be expected to prevail against that agent. According to the post-Westphalian model, then, the political world (a) consists of states (b) each of which is ruled by an agent exercising supreme power or authority within that state's borders, and (c) those states are not themselves subject to an agent who exercises such authority or power over international relations.

The central elements of the post-Westphalian model raise a number of interesting and important philosophical questions. That the European political world seemed increasingly to conform to the post-Westphalian model in the modern period guaranteed that the questions raised by (a), (b), and (c) would have a high place on the agenda of Western political theory. It is because these questions are raised by the claims about sovereignty that lie at the heart of the post-Westphalian model that sovereignty has become a central organizing concept of political philosophy—a concept the analysis of which, as Benn said, brings one into contact with nearly all the major problems of the discipline.

While political philosophers continue to debate the details of the post-Westphalian model, it is widely agreed that the sovereignty, which the model ascribes to rulers and states, confers on the sovereign a presumption of control over a state's people, territory, and boundaries. To question the presumption of such control—by, for example, asserting that other states may interfere in a state's internal affairs at will—is to question the sovereignty of the ruler or the state in question. Contemporary developments in politics and philosophy have led to criticism of the post-Westphalian model. Critics proceed by questioning whether states are the only corporate agents of interest in the political world and whether rulers and states can or should enjoy the presumption of control—hence the sovereignty—the model is generally taken to imply.

Why question whether states can exercise the control presupposed by the post-Westphalian model? The increasing importance of non-state actors in international affairs, and the various processes that constitute what is often called globalization, make it increasingly difficult for governments to control their own affairs or their political agenda. The rise of international terrorism in the early twenty-first century clearly makes it difficult for states to pursue their security interests or to identify rival states that threaten them. The ability of individuals and private organizations to move goods, services, information, and capital across national borders makes it increasingly difficult for contemporary nations to manage their own economies. The liability of some states to the environmental consequences of actions undertaken by other states and the corporations they house implies that there are important parts of a state—the quality of its air and water—that some governments cannot be presumed control.

Even when states are able significantly to control their economies or their environmental quality, they may think it wise to cede a certain amount of control over their economies, their environments, or the pursuit of their national security interests to multinational unions such as NATO and the European Union. Such surrender of control is a surrender of some of the powers of sovereignty. Thus are the increasing importance of non-state actors, globalization, and the emergence of economic, political, and military unions all thought to erode the sovereignty the post-Westphalian model ascribes to states.

Why question whether states should enjoy the sovereignty the post-Westphalian model ascribes to them? The sovereignty of a state is usually taken to imply that it has a very strong presumption of control over the natural resources that lie within its borders. According to this view, a state can extract, consume, or conserve those resources as it sees fit. But it is surely open to question whether states are morally entitled to deplete a resource the rest of the world needs, to control a river on which citizens of another state downstream depend, or to exacerbate global inequalities of wealth by profiting excessively from a resource it happens to possess. Furthermore, it is open to question whether states are morally entitled to control access to its resources and opportunities by forbidding or restricting the movement of people across its borders. So-called "failed states" may lack the capacity to address humanitarian crises that affect their citizens. They can also harbor terrorist and criminal organizations that threaten international order. The incapacities of failed states, and the dangers they pose, are sometimes thought to license foreign intervention even if such intervention entails a violation of state sovereignty.

Perhaps the most profound challenge to the post-Westphalian model is posed by growing international recognition of human rights. These rights are rights that people enjoy simply in virtue of their humanity. While the list and the philosophical foundations of human rights remains disputed, it is increasingly accepted that there are such rights, that they limit what governments may do to their people and that the gross and widespread violation of such rights by a government may give nongovernmental organizations, other states, and international bodies the right to intervene. The easier it is to defeat the presumption of non-intervention in such cases, the greater the challenge a global regime of human rights poses to the post-Westphalian model and to the forms of sovereignty that model implies. With the rejection of the post-Westphalian model as descriptively or normatively inadequate, its displacement by another model of the political world, or the loosening of its hold on the imagination of political theorists, sovereignty would cease to be the central organizing concept it long has been.