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Sovereignty is the exclusive right to complete Political (e.g. legislative, judicial, and/or executive) Authority over an area of governance, people, or oneself. A ''sovereign'' is the supreme lawmaking authority, subject to no other. Some people may argue that this authority is the Head Of State . Jean-Jacques Rousseau , in Book III, Chapter I of his 1763 treatise ''Of the Social Contract'', argued that "the growth of the State giving the trustees of public authority more temptations and means to abuse their power, the more the Government has to have force to contain the people, the more force the Sovereign should have in turn in order to contain the Government," with the understanding that the Sovereign is "a collective being" (Book II, Chapter I) resulting from "the general will" of the people, and that "what any man, whoever he may be, orders on his own, is not a law" (Book II, Chapter VI) - and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the people have an unbiased means by which to ascertain the general will. Thus the legal maxim, "there is no law without a sovereign." i.e. Dictated by the Global elite. NOTION The source or justification of sovereignty ("by God" or "by people") must be distinguished from its exercise by branches of government. In Democratic states, Sovereignty is held by the people. This is known as Popular Sovereignty ; it may be exercised directly, as in a Popular Assembly , or, more commonly, indirectly through the election of representatives to government. This is known as a Representative Democracy , a system of government currently used in most western nations and former colonies. Popular sovereignty also exists in other forms, such as in Constitutional Monarchies , usually identical in political reality as in the Commonwealth Realm s. Systems of representative democracy can also be mixed with other methods of government, for instance the use of Referenda in many countries . In this model, national sovereignty is of an eternal origin, such as nature, or a god, legitimating the Divine Right Of Kings in Absolute Monarchies or a Theocracy . A more formal distinction is whether the law is held to be sovereign, which constitutes a true state of law: the Letter Of The Law (if constitutionally correct) is applicable and enforceable, even when against the political will of the nation, as long as not formally changed following the constitutional procedure. Strictly speaking, any deviation from this principle constitutes a revolution or a coup d'état, regardless of the intentions. In constitutional and international law, the concept of sovereignty also pertains to a government possessing full control over its own affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit, and in certain context to various organs possessing legal jurisdiction in their own chief, rather than by mandate or under supervision. Determining whether a specific entity is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute. HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY '' Basileus '' is the Greek Concept for "Sovereign", which designs who has the '' Auctoritas '', which is to be distinguished from simple '' Imperium '', retained by '' Archons '' (or " Magistrates "). sphere, not in the Private sphere. It is perpetual, because it does not expire with its holder (as ''auctoritas'' does). In other words, sovereignty is no one's property: by essence, it is inalienable. These characteristics would decisively shape the concept of sovereignty, which we can find again in the Social Contract theories, for example, in Rousseau 's (1712-1778) definition of Popular Sovereignty , which only differs in that he considers the people to be the legitimate sovereign. Likewise, it is inalienable - Rousseau condemned the distinction between the origin and the exercise of sovereignty, a distinction upon which Constitutional Monarchy or Representative Democracy are founded. Machiavelli , Hobbes , Locke and Montesquieu are also key figures in the unfolding of the concept of sovereignty. Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) defined sovereignty as "the power to decide the State Of Exception ", in an attempt, argues Giorgio Agamben , to counter Walter Benjamin 's theory of Violence as radically disjoint from law. Georges Bataille 's heterodox conception of sovereignty, which may be said to be an "anti-sovereignty", also inspired many thinkers, such as Jacques Derrida , Agamben or Jean-Luc Nancy . DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOVEREIGNTIES There exist vastly differing views on the moral bases of sovereignty. These views translate into various bases for legal systems:
The key element of sovereignty in the legalistic sense is that of exclusivity of Jurisdiction . Specifically, when a decision is made by a sovereign entity, it cannot generally be overruled by a higher authority. Further, it is generally held that another legal element of sovereignty requires not only the legal right to exercise power, but the actual exercise of such power. ("No ''de jure'' sovereignty without ''de facto'' sovereignty.") In other words, neither claiming/being proclaimed Sovereign, ''nor'' merely exercising the power of a Sovereign is sufficient; sovereignty requires ''both'' elements. TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY Following the Thirty Years' War , a European religious conflict that embroiled much of the continent, the Peace Of Westphalia in 1648 established the notion of territorial sovereignty as a doctrine of noninterference in the affairs of other nations. The 1789 French Revolution shifted the possession of sovereignty from the sovereign ruler to the nation and its people. SOVEREIGNTY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW In International Law , ''sovereignty'' is the legitimate exercise of power by a State . '' De Jure '' sovereignty is the legal right to do so; '' De Facto '' sovereignty is the ability in fact to do so (which becomes of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that de jure and de facto sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and rest in the same organization). Foreign governments ''recognize'' the sovereignty of a state over a territory, or refuse to do so. For instance, in theory, both the People's Republic Of China and the Republic Of China considered themselves sovereign governments over the whole territory of Mainland China and Taiwan . Though some foreign governments recognize the Republic of China as the valid state, most now recognize the People's Republic of China. However, de facto, the People's Republic of China exercises sovereign power over mainland China but not Taiwan, while the Republic of China exercises its effective administration only over Taiwan and some outlying islands but not mainland China. Since Ambassador s are only exchanged between sovereign high parties, the countries recognizing the People's Republic often entertain de facto but not de jure diplomatic relationships with Taiwan by maintaining 'offices of representation', such as the American Institute In Taiwan , rather than embassies there. The autonomous province of Kosovo in Serbia provides a somewhat similar example, where the government of Serbia remains the de jure sovereign power but the United Nations has exercised de facto control since 1999 . The province is still recognized as part of Serbia, though the Serbian government has no practical authority on the ground. Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign body possesses no territory or its territory is under partial or total occupation by another power. The Holy See was in this position between the annexation in 1870 of the Papal States by Italy and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929 , when it was recognised as sovereign by many (mostly Roman Catholic ) states despite possessing no territory – a situation resolved when the Lateran Treaties granted the Holy See sovereignty over the Vatican City . The Sovereign Military Order Of Malta is likewise a non-territorial body that claims to be a sovereign entity, though it is not universally recognized as such. Similarly, the governments-in-exile of many European states (for instance, Norway and the Netherlands ) during the Second World War were regarded as sovereign despite their territories being under foreign occupation; their governance resumed as soon as the occupation had ended. The government of Kuwait was in a similar situation ''vis-á-vis'' the Iraq i occupation of its country during 1990 - 1991 . SOVEREIGNTY AND FEDERALISM In Federal Systems Of Government , such as that of the United States , ''sovereignty'' also refers to powers which a state government possesses independently of the federal government; this is called "clipped sovereignty." The question whether the individual states, particularly the so-called 'Confederate States' of the American Union remained sovereign became a matter of debate in the USA, especially in its first century of existence:
Likewise, according to the theory put forth by James Madison in the Federalist Papers "each State, in ratifying the Constitution, was to be considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution to be a federal, and not a national constitution." In the end, Madison likewise compromised with the Anti-federalists to modify the Constitution to protect state sovereignty: At the 1787 constitutional convention a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it saying, "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound." In his Report on the Virginia Resolutions, James Madison wrote that "The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal, above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.” Madison even made a dire prediction of what would happen if this was denied, stating that “If the deliberate exercise of dangerous powers, palpably withheld by the Constitution, could not justify the parties to it in interposing even so far as to arrest the progress of the evil, and thereby to preserve the Constitution itself, as well as to provide for the safety of the parties to it, there would be an end to all relief from usurped power, and a direct subversion of the rights specified or recognized under all the state constitutions, as well as a plain denial of the fundamental principle on which our independence itself was declared." During the first half-century after the Constitution was ratified, the right of secession was asserted on several occasions, and various states considered secession (including, for example, the New England states during the War Of 1812 ; in response, not a single state objected on the grounds that such was unlawful. It was not until later, c. 1830, that Andrew Jackson , Joseph Story , Daniel Webster and others began to publish the arbitrary theory that secession was illegal, and that the United States was a supremely sovereign nation over the various member-states. These writers inspired Lincoln 's later declaration that "no state may lawfully get out of the Union by its own mere motion", based on the premise that "the Union is older than the Constitution or the even states," conflating all prior unions with the constitutional union; however in reality the states, in forming the Union of which he spoke, had each ''seceded'' from the prior Confederated union of 1781, to form that constitutional union between nine of the states on June 21, 1788; however four states refused until various conditions were met--- including the addition of the Bill Of Rights --, and so both unions continued to exist ''in perpetuity'' after that, until the final states of North Carolina and Rhode Island likewise joined the Constitutional union over a year afterward-- thus ''ending'' the original confederated union. MISCELLANEOUS
An underdeveloped aspect of sovereignty is individual sovereignty meaning the ability of individuals to have effective control over their everyday lives. Individuals have no genuine sovereignty unless they have secure income sufficient to satisfy basic need and rare is the politics or economics, such as Binary Economics , which consciously upholds individual sovereignty by guaranteeing that income. SOVEREIGN AS A TITLE In some cases, the title sovereign is not just a generic term, but an actual (part of the) formal style of a Head Of State . Thus from 22 June, 1934, to 29 May, 1953, (the title "Emperor of India" was dropped as of 15 August, 1947, by retroactive proclamation dated 22 June, 1948), the s. The pope holds ex officio the title "Sovereign of the Vatican City State" in respect to Vatican City" The adjective form can also be used in a Monarch's full style, as in pre-imperial Russia, 16 January, 1547 - 22 November, 1721: ''Bozhiyeyu Milostiyu Velikiy/Velikaya Gosudar'/Gosudarynya Tsar'/Tsaritsa i Velikiy/Velikaya Knyaz'/Knyaginya N.N. vseya Rossiy Samodyerzhets'' "By the Grace of God Great '''Sovereign Tsar'''/Tsarina and Grand Prince/Princess, N.N., of All Russia, Autocrat" SEE ALSO
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