Sovereignty

Key people

• Jonathan BachAmerican academic
• Hidemi SuganamiBritish political scientist
• Armin CuyversProfessor of European law at Leiden University (born 1980)

Timeline

• 1907Binding international rules regarding the conduct of military occupation were more carefully codified in the 1907 Hague Convention (and accompanying Hague Regulations).
• 1939But by 1939 these rules ...
• 1971The ROC represented China at the United Nations until 1971, when the People's Republic of China obtained the UN seat.
• 1990The government of Kuwait was in a similar situation vis-à-vis the Iraqi occupation of its country during 1990–1991.

Read

• The Sovereignty of GoodIris Murdoch · 1967Book
• SovereigntyBertrand de Jouvenel · 1957Book
• Native American sovereigntyJohn R. Wunder · 1996Book
• Sovereignty, knowledge, lawPanu Minkkinen · 2009Book

Listen

• Architects of SovereigntyMakhosi Hefisah NejeserPodcast
• The Sovereign Shift™ | Nervous System Regulation, Spiritual Growth, Freedom, Personal SovereigntyChelsea Eden Dubeau | Breathwork GuidePodcast
• The Sovereignty PodcastErvin E-Truf RobinsonPodcast
• Sovereignty of GodArthur PinkPodcast

By the numbers

• 27.2Women in parliament (%) — global, 2025 (World Bank)

Debates

• Should international law limit state sovereignty?One view: Yes, global issues like climate change and human rights require states to cede some sovereignty for collective good. · Another: No, states must retain ultimate authority over their internal affairs to protect national interests and self-determination.Open question
• Can sovereignty be shared or is it indivisible?One view: Sovereignty can be shared through international agreements or federal systems, allowing for flexible governance. · Another: Sovereignty is inherently indivisible; any sharing diminishes the state's ultimate authority and control.Open question

Glossary

• SovereigntyThe supreme authority of a state to govern itself or another state without external interference.
• StateA political entity with a defined territory, permanent population, effective government, and capacity to enter relations with other states.
• International LawA set of rules and norms generally accepted as binding in relations between states.
• Self-determinationThe right of a people to freely determine their own political status and form of government.
• Non-interventionThe principle that states should not interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign states.
• TreatyA formal, written agreement between two or more states or international organizations.

Careers

Roles this can lead toward

Student research

Published policy papers by One Young India delegates — every delegate leaves published under their own name.

• Decentralized Sovereignty: Restructuring Economic Power with Crypto-Nations and Blockchain-Based GovernanceTamil Jeevan S S

Threads 6

Where this connects to other fields — and why it's worth knowing.

• Location Tracking and Surveillance Geography

  A government can't tax or draft people it can't find. So states forced messy life into readable form: fixed surnames, house numbers, standard weights, maps of every plot of land. A huge chunk of modern life is really administrative eyesight, built so the state could finally read you like a page.

• Food & Agriculture Systems Environment

  Early kingdoms were built on wheat, not because it fed the most people, but because a wheat field ripens all at once, right out in the open where a tax collector can count it and take a cut. A potato hides underground and gets dug up whenever you want, so it can't be counted or taxed. Which crop you grow decided whether a state could seize a share of it.

• Media Law & Freedom of the Press Media

  A country's laws stop at its borders, but a single online post is everywhere on Earth at the same instant. So when someone says something illegal in one nation but legal in another, whose rules win? Nobody's fully sure. The internet quietly leaks right through the walls that are supposed to define where a government's power ends.

• Incentives & Rational Choice Economics

  A raider who loots a village and rides off takes everything once. But a raider who settles down and rules the village realizes he'll earn more by protecting these people and taxing them every year. An economist named Olson made the unsettling case that this is basically how governments began: a bandit who got greedy enough to stay put and call it 'protection.'

• Internet Censorship Media

  The internet was built to ignore borders. Now countries are carving it back up into national chunks, sometimes called the 'splinternet.' Governments are basically re-drawing their borders onto a thing that was invented specifically to have none.

• NEP 2020 Education

  In India, both the national government and the states get a say over schools. So when the center tries a giant education overhaul, it crashes into the states' own power. The deepest fight over NEP isn't about how to teach; it's about who's in charge.