The doctrine of sovereignty is another inseparable
corollary of the nation-state just like
the concept of national power. As the system lies at the centre of
international relations, so is the
doctrine of sovereignty intertwined
with that of the nation state and
the international system. Sovereignty is
an attribute of the state system. Thus, no
discussion on the state system will be considered complete without featuring the doctrine and concept of sovereignty. The
correct phraseology will be “state sovereignty’ since there is no other social reality
that is imbued with the
doctrine of sovereignty, except the modern state system.
As a social science concept, it has been subjected to
a variety of conceptualizations. For Palmer and Perkins, it is ‘the legal
theory that gives the state unique and virtually unlimited authority in all
domestic matters and in its relations with other states”13. Another conception of the term sees it as the ‘claim to be the
unlimited political authority, subject to no higher power as regards the making and enforcing of political decisions”.14
This conception tends to restrict
sovereignty to the domestic environment
of states. Realizing this, the theorist quickly adds that sovereignty in the
international system is the ‘claim by
the state to full self government ..”
for the man credited as the father of the doctrine of
sovereignty, the 16th century French lawyer and political thinker Jean Bodin (1530=96), sovereignty is “the absolute
and perpetual power of the state,
that is, the greatest power to command”15 in his, six books
on the state (les six livres de la republique) published in 1576, Bodin was not only the first to use the word sovereignty, but was also the first to
attempt a systematic and clear
conception of the doctrine as an
attribute of the state. In his conception of the doctrine with regards to the absolute monarchy in the
France of his time, Bodin declared sovereignty to be “the supreme power over citizens and
subjects, unrestrained by law”.16
it must be observed that in his
first conception, as we indicated,
Bodin rightly associated
sovereignty with the state- the absolute
and perpetual power of the state,
but subsequently, with deference to
the absolute monarchy of his period
which claimed a fusion of the state with the monarch himself, he now associated sovereignty with the power of
the monarch.
The must however be state that the concept of sovereignty remains as attribute of the
state, not the
government. The government only
exercises sovereign rights on behalf of the state, and as an agent of the
state. And as Bodin pointed out,
sovereignty is perpetual, and so once it is conferred on the state it continues to retain and exercise
it until it, i.e the state , cases/ to exist.
Origins of the Doctrine of State
Sovereignty
The doctrine of
sovereignty developed as part of
the transformation of the
medieval system in Europe into the modern state system.17 the treaty
of Westphalia of 1648 was a culmination of this process, and it saw
the emergence of modern nation-states with
sovereign powers exercised by
recognized governments of such
sates. This treaty which ended the thirty years war (1618-1648)
in Germany, saw to it that the two medieval institutions that
threatened and rivaled the power of
nation-states: universal church and
dynastic empires, suffered several degrees of diminution of their powers. Both were
henceforth to be denied any
interference in the ecclesiastical and temporal affairs of the developing nation state.18. sovereignty thus signified thus signified the rise of the
monarch to absolute prominence over
rival feudal claimants such as
the aristocracy, the papacy and the
roman empire19. It
began, and has continued to serve
internationally, as the basis for exchanges of recognition of statehood,
and of legal equality of states
in the international system, as well as diplomacy and international law.
It has however
been argued that
“sovereignty is the other side of the
coin of international anarchy”, since the claim of sovereignty by states makes the structure of international system to be anarchic, in that
every state retains the power and authority to act authoritatively within its
domestic environment without any inhabitation either from within or without. But as we noted
earlier, the international society
operates on mutually agreed rules, precepts or conventions. So as we shall have occasion to
mention later, rather than a harbinger of chaos in the international system the mutual recognition of claims to
sovereignty is actually the basis of the
emergence of the international society
as we have come to know it today.
Ways of Acquiring Sovereignty
In the contemporary international system , at
least four possible ways have been
identified through which a political
entity can acquire sovereignty. These include:
1. Formal granting of independence by a colonial power to
a colonized territory
2. Through a successful revolution or liberation way.
3. through a
successful war of secession, and
4. By the recognition of the independence of an uncolonized or claimed territory by member
states of the international system20.
As examples abound on each of these processes, we shall only highlight a few instances,
especially those that have been neglected.
Granting
of independence to colonized territories
Most
of the new states of Africa and Asia acquired their sovereignty and
independence through this means. The
wind of change, according to Mcmillan, saw
to it that the 1960s became a decade of liberation from colonial
tutelage for most hitherto Afro-Asian colonized territories. The reverses suffered by the colonial powers
of Europe in early to mid 20th
centuries following the two world wars, among other
things, made colonialism an achromatic. They thus had no option but to grant independence to their erstwhile colonies. Although the
Portuguese continued to cling to their colonies in
southern Africa and the pacific
rim until the 70s and
80s , the British and French,
except for Lan Smith’s intransigence
in 1965 in Rhodesia now
Zimbabwe, had hands –off their colonies within the 1960s.
These states thus acquired
the sovereignty rights
that come with independence
existence