Sovereignty in the 21st Century

The state sovereignty is being considered as a rudiment of the old Westphalia system of international relations which is the subject to ever growing serious political and legal erosion. Indeed, there seems to be no place to sovereignty in a new beautiful universe of the “world society”, universal values, global civil society and supremacy of human rights. However, it is known that everything that is old becomes new again.

Over the recent decades the attention of a wide range of experts in a number of Western countries, primarily in the US and Great Britain, has been literally riveted to the problem of state sovereignty. Different researchers are trying to prognosticate the trajectories of its development, or to substantiate the necessity to limit sovereignty of individual states; they also introduce concepts of “waning”, “softened”, “layered” sovereignty and the like into scientific and political lexicon. The state sovereignty is being considered as a rudiment of the old Westphalia system of international relations which is the subject to ever growing serious political and legal erosion. Indeed, there seems to be no place to sovereignty in a new beautiful universe of the “world society”, universal values, global civil society and supremacy of human rights. However, it is known that everything that is old becomes new again. When we come across the statements on the incompatibility of “outdated” sovereignty and humanitarian principles of contemporary world order, discussions on the “untimeliness” of sovereignty and absence of its prospect in the future, unintentionally, one remembers the opinion of one of the founding fathers of the international relations theory E.H.Carr expressed more than half a century ago. He believed that the irrelevance of state sovereignty is the ideology of dominating powers which regard sovereignty of other states as an obstacle to their own dominating position [1].

Unquestionably, a forecast for nearly a century away is a venturesome undertaking. In other words (see F.A.Hayek), it would be a manifestation of “pernicious conceit” to deliberate on what the world would look like by the end of the 21st century all in earnest. Our history has gained too much speed. To date, many trends of technical, social and political development are far too indefinite (to all appearances, at the point of another historic bifurcation). At that, the problem of sovereignty is far too important – one of the fundamental issues in order to understand the essence and perspectives of the international relations’ evolution. Finding an answer to that question means to forecast a more or less clear picture of the ways of development of a modern state, or even to identify (in general terms) the perspectives of a state as a political phenomenon. Moreover, forecasting the fundamental trends of the evolution of sovereignty concept means to clearly outline the system of international relations in the distant future. What is sovereignty in the modern world? What factors can influence its transformation over the coming decades, and even by the end of the 21st century?

The concept of sovereignty was assimilated into social and political thinking relatively late. The term itself was introduced as early as in the 16th century by a renowned French thinker Jean Bodin. In fact, the concept of sovereignty was introduced and developed together with the idea of a contemporary (nation) state. According to the ideas widely spread and substantiated in the international law after the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, every state has to enjoy internal and external sovereignty. Internal sovereignty is directly related to the key political notion of power. Above all, the significance of internal sovereignty is that the state enjoys supreme power over the entire territory under its jurisdiction. The external sovereignty is well correlated with the ideas of anarchism (in the sense of nonexistence of a supreme arbitrator and inevitable sanctions for misconduct) of the system of international relations. It boils down to the freedom of the state’s conduct in the international arena in the process of pursuing its interests and goals, and nonexistence of a “superior” power over a sovereign state, to the freedom limited by the actions of other participants of international relations only. This is the basis of the cornerstone principle of the contemporary international law – the principle of sovereign equality of all states.

Under the conditions of transit from feudal anarchy (with intrinsic perpetual conflicts between the church and European sovereigns, versatility of church aspirations and imperial structure and particularism of local interests, sovereigns and their subjects) to more orderly forms of political organization of the modern age, the doctrine of sovereignty played an obviously positive role substantiating the right of a sovereign to the plenitude of power within the state borders and his/her independence of other sovereigns. In the world political history sovereignty has become an effective instrument streamlining relations between individual states, a powerful organizing factor of international relations in general. Gradually, the conception of sovereignty incorporated a range of fundamental principles of the international law. Above all, those are the principles of territorial integrity, inviolability of the borders, nondiviinterference into the internal affairs of other states. Therefore, it turns out to be not only a political conception or an abstract structure of philosophy, but it has become the pillar of the entire system of international law.

The Place of Sovereignty in the Changing World

Sovereignty has never been an unequivocal notion in political science. Over several decades (at least since the times of G.Jellinek, P.Labanda, W.Willoughby and J.Calhoun) the problems of divisibility of sovereignty have been a matter for debate. With regard to the problem of multi-component political communities and federal states, the problem of the bearer and subject of sovereignty (the bearer of sovereignty is an integrated state or its components – states, lands etc.) has always been high on the agenda. Since the times of John Locke and Jean-Jacque Rousseau the philosophic dispute over the sovereignty bearer (people, majority of the people etc.) and the problem of its subject has always been smoldering. However, over recent decades the focus of scientific research, academic and political discussions has been shifted to a different sphere.

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During the 19th-20th centuries the principle of noninterference into internal affairs of other states was invariably applied as a fundamental principle of relations between the states. Recently, the semantic component of sovereignty has been gradually changing. Later 20th and early 21st centuries were marked by the brisk development of globalization processes and substantial changes of the rules of the game in the world politics and global economy. A whole range of Western scholars believe that traditional concepts of sovereignty can hardly express the complexity of modern international relations [2]. At least since the publication of the works of Joseph Nye and Robert Kagan the following point of view is widely spread: the processes of globalization contribute to a significant redistribution of power resources from the governments to other actors of world politics. Transnational corporations begin to compete with the state institutions. The former determine economic prosperity of entire regions, mass movements with a crucial influence on shaping the identity of substantial groups of the population, transnational political networks more and more openly affecting the composition of international agenda, and other forms of social and political organization. At the same time, in the globalized world the tendency of enhanced interdependence of the states is becoming more and more visible. Competition for effective “involvement” into the international division of labor is gaining momentum. The radical change in the theory of power and dominance is underway, where force action was the last resort to influence the opponent and the sovereign right of a state. More and more often a threating “noninterference” (according to Ulrich Beck [3]) of investors or a threat of their withdrawal from a country is becoming a means of enforcement – a substitute for a threat of invasion. Besides, the system of international security can hardly be adjusted to the proliferation of new types of threats and new forms of conflicts. In their aggregate the above tendencies entail blurring of the key notions and organization principles of the system of international relations, including the attempts to reformulate the issues of state sovereignty.

Today it is no less evident that the processes of demodernization can (ironically enough) contribute to the tendency of sovereignty erosion. With the decolonization process over, and especially after a loosely controlled disintegration of the USSR and a number of Eastern bloc countries, the system of interstate relations incorporated slackly structured and frail entities (“failed”, “new” states and the like). The sovereignty of such entities is problematic, territorial borders are inadequately identified (by and large the borders were not delimited and are actively disputed by the neighbors), while the “might” is actually fragmented among the competing clans or private entities. As many Western researchers repeatedly pointed out, external legal sovereignty is not always correlated with internal sovereignty. This factor causes political deformations of the international system where weak and failing or failed states are unable to control the situation in their own territory and to ensure elementary reproduction of social life (according to Ulrich Beck [3]) – to retain external legal sovereignty, membership in international organizations and international legal personality). In their view, such situation seems to be absurd. In this connection, the following statement has been postulated: the correlation between internal and external sovereignty substantiated by the international law and confirmed by the practices of conduct of individual states cannot be considered as something eternally fixed. It reflects the realities of the outgoing Westphalia epoch that will evolve in the future. From this viewpoint, at the times of growing interdependence a sovereign state is gradually losing both the monopoly on maintaining relations with the outside world and control over the on-going processes inside the country.

A New Phase of Struggle for Hearts in World Politics

Undoubtedly, not once our former history has seen the transformation of the institutions and principles apparently crucial to proper functioning of the world system. There was a complete extinction of such fundamental principles and institutions shaping the international medium as the dynastic principle of the transfer of power or the institution of colonialism etc. At the same time, re-interpretation of other important principles and notions was underway. For one, in the 17th-18th centuries the doctrine of mercantilism was primarily related to the market, while over the recent century and a half we have associated the market with the principle of free trade. In other words, there would be nothing extraordinary in the transformation of the sovereignty concept. The problem is that in this evermore polycentric world Western countries are trying to assume the role of an interpreter and lawmaker of the principles and institutions (which in fact is an equivalent of the rule of the gun and a manifestation of “leadership programmed” in the environment of contemporary world politics). Just like one or two hundred years back, in the framework of currently severely criticized Westphalia system of international relations the West is trying to play the role of a global vanguard. It promotes (by coercion, too) its values, institutions and their interpretation (market, human rights, democracy etc.) onto other societies which often, ironically enough, defend the totality of institutions and norms formerly imposed upon them by the West (sovereignty, territorial integrity, diplomacy as the main form of interaction in the international arena etc.).

In the foreseeable future new principles and values generated by the West are likely to more openly collide with the old ones, entailing new international crises and conflicts. Attempts to make the right of nations for self-determination a universal rule could undermine the principle of territorial integrity and sovereign equality of the states. Recognition of a wider, new modern interpretation of human rights and mechanisms of monitoring compliance (in the framework of “responsibility for the protection” initiative and the like supported by the UN) would by and large depreciate provisions of the international law which does not envisage any instruments to interfere into the affairs of other countries even if guided by humanitarian motives.

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For centuries sovereignty seemed to be immune to public criticism. Implicitly, it was understood that the value and significance of sovereignty could be questioned either by genuinely marginalized persons (Marxists of the late 19th century who predicted the collapse of statehood and denied the significance of sovereignty against international solidarity of workers) or by sincere idealists (for example, supporters of the idea of the United States of Europe of the early 20th century were in that number).

Now the situation is significantly different. The majority of analysts tend to believe in the necessity “to adjust” classical sovereignty, and to adapt it to new reality. However, to identify the range of possibility in the evolution of sovereignty is quite a difficult task. Modern interstate rivalry is limited by the structure of sovereign rights recognized by international legal provisions, and in this sense is based on the supremacy of the international law. Sovereignty looks like a “load-bearing structure” of modern politics carrying out an important function of minimizing interstate violence. At the same time, probably, the threat of the use of force by an opposing party or general compulsion is not the most crucial among the possible reasons of nearly universal observance of sovereignty. The prevailing reason is rational motivation of mutual benefit and the factor of legitimacy of actions (adjustment of conduct in the face of legitimate requirements). Should one hit this bottom of world politics (destroy political guidelines dominant in the discourse on international relations), or undermine the significance of one out of the most important institutions (according to the English School terminology, primary institutions) [4], we would have real difficulty in avoiding a forthcoming protracted period of the New Middle Ages predicted by a number of scholars in the late 20th century. Logically enough, the term of “limited sovereignty” has not been widely recognized even in the West. Therefore, one can find a large variety of euphemisms as “layered” [5], “disaggregated”, “softened” sovereignty and the like [6].

Moreover, the most appealing idea is not the limitation through voluntary relegation of a certain part of sovereignty. This is already happening in the framework of a number of international regimes and integration projects, which, until recently, regarded institutions and mechanisms of European integration as an example to follow. However, the question as to how far one can replicate such practices in different institutional and contextual environment yet remains unanswered.

Facing New Challenges of the 21st Century

One way or another, in the coming decades the traditional concept of sovereignty will have to face a whole number of challenges which cannot but introduce new aspects into interpretation of the notion. In that number one could find the demand for internationalization of scarce resources and, possibly, territories, reinforcement of international regimes, widening of transnational political spheres, establishing of the global cyberspace, global environmental and climatic imperatives etc.

The confrontation of two opposite trends would be typical of the future world politics – toward stronger sovereignty on the one hand, and toward its limitation on the other. Quite often both trends would be materialized in the policy of one or several states (strengthening of own sovereignty would accompany attempts to limit sovereignty of others). In the framework of interpretations of the 21st century sovereignty one can expect adjustments in the conception of the limits of sovereign states’ autonomy in choosing means to resolve any internal political issues. In the context of international relations a matter for debate for the coming decades would be the nature and principles of applying compulsory and other measures of influence on offenders in the framework of international regimes, the nature of interaction at interstate and transnational levels of world politics, and mechanisms of global governance.

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However, even in such a long run as a century of human history the problem of sovereignty will not cease to exist, and not only because the states will remain the essential and most effective players in the international arena. In his book Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson perfectly described the phenomenon of nationalism as a widely spread method of imagining and interpreting reality [7]. The method features a magic mobilizing potential and, at the same time, a significant historic inertia. We are used to imagine and interpret facts of the world politics in terms of nations, states and sovereignty. In this century, too, given the obvious proportions of the pending change, the abstract notion of sovereignty (and not at all abstract notion of “sovereign equality” of states) will remain a guiding star in the world of politics for billions of people and many politicians in every corner of the world. And it does not at all mean that they have chosen the “wrong side” of history.

1. Carr, E. The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939. An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. L., 1939. P. 18.

2. Slaughter, A.-M. A New World Order. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004. P. 267.

3. Beck, U. Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy. Oxford: Polity Press.

4. Wendt, A. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Buzan, B. From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

5. Buzan, B., Little, R. International Systems in World History. Remaking the Study of International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

6. Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty / Ed. by A. Clunan, H. Trinkunas. Stanford (Ca.): Stanford University Press, 2010; Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. N.Y.: Zone Books, 2010.

7. Anderson, B. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 2006.