Understanding Sovereignty: Key Features and Historical Phases
The concept of sovereignty is linked to the idea that any request is subject to some criterion or justification. For Bodin and Hobbes, ‘absolute’ cannot mean the same as ‘with full arbitrariness’.
Key Features of Sovereignty
We can state the features that persist in the idea of sovereignty:
- It is a political power higher than any other power in society, whose decisions can be imposed.
- It operates from a general justification in reference to a social interest.
- What characterizes it is the power to establish what is right in a community. This power is justified and legitimate to fulfill its mandate.
Phases of Sovereignty
The idea of sovereignty has evolved through several phases:
Initial Phase
In the initial phase, the theoretical core of sovereignty appears, and authors begin to elaborate on it. The sovereign makes the final decision but must ensure a valid right.
Second Phase
The second phase is formed when the constituent power appears in the first constitutions.
During the French Revolution, the figure of sovereignty refers to a payment of sovereignty to the nation. The sovereign can do whatever they want.
In England, there is the awareness that in a state governed by law, there can be no absolute sovereign; no court can have absolute power. This statement does not exclude the figure of sovereignty. Instead, sovereignty guarantees fixing guarantees that list the rights and freedoms of citizens. They also covered the powers of the monarch as head of the courts. In a state governed by law, sovereignty appears when defining who can handle it and how. The question is who exactly is the subject, and how should it be done under the established law. It is the first time to highlight those divisions. The two aspects are inseparable from the concept of sovereignty.
The second phase refers to when the constitutional question is consolidated under the liberal view. This means that under this regime, a clear difference is established between positive law and the Constitution, which is a political document and something different from the law. At that point, we speak of the sovereignty of Parliament. The law is the Higher Standard created by the Parliament acting by proxy.
Third Phase
In the third phase, there is talk of a constitutional state and popular sovereignty. This step involves two moments up to the current design:
- Timing of struggle against the bourgeois liberal conception: the idea of popular sovereignty arises with a quantitative trait: all citizens should participate; the people are the subject of sovereignty.
- Qualitative: We all have the right to participate fully and without any duress.
The idea of popular sovereignty is understood. In a way, what is at issue is a key differentiation in this area that becomes visible when exposing two terms:
- International law (among nations).
- Supranational law (Above nations).
International law refers to a law between sovereign nations. If international law is part of that idea, however good it is, it lacks two things: a power to compel that applicable law and the legitimacy of that power that can establish the law. These two elements are what could make a supranational law, such as the UN, possible.