Sovereignty | ISC Class 11 Political Science Notes

This note covers the meaning, definition and characteristics of sovereignty; a historical analysis of how the concept developed; the kinds of sovereignty, namely titular and real, legal and political, de jure and de facto, and popular sovereignty; and the features of Austin's theory and the pluralistic view of sovereignty.

What is the meaning and definition of sovereignty?

Sovereignty is the supreme, final and absolute power of the state over all individuals and associations within its territory, a power that is not subordinate to any other authority inside or outside the state.

The word comes from the Latin superanus, meaning supreme or above all. Sovereignty is the quality that distinguishes the state from every other association, such as a club, a company or a trade union, none of which possesses supreme and final authority over its members.

Why sovereignty marks off the state from other associations

A club can make rules for its own members and can expel a member who breaks them, but it cannot compel obedience from people who are not its members, and its rules are themselves subject to the ordinary law of the state.

The state, by contrast, can make rules binding on every person within its territory, members and non-members of any particular group alike, and no other body within that territory can override those rules.

This is why sovereignty is often described as the defining mark of the state: an association without sovereignty may still have members, rules and officers, but it is not a state unless its authority is final and supreme over a territory and the people in it.

Definition: Sovereignty. Sovereignty is the supreme, exclusive and absolute power of the state to make and enforce laws over all persons and associations within its territory, and to be free from external control.

Early definitions: Bodin and Austin

Jean Bodin, the French jurist usually credited with the first systematic theory of sovereignty, described it as the supreme power over citizens and subjects, unrestrained by law.

Writing at a time when France was torn by civil war and religious conflict, Bodin argued that a strong, undivided authority in the person of the monarch was necessary to hold the state together, and that this authority could not be bound by the laws it itself made, since a maker of law cannot logically be bound by its own creation in the way a subject is bound.

John Austin, the English jurist whose legal theory is studied separately below, tied sovereignty to the idea of a determinate superior whose commands are obeyed habitually by the people of a society.

For Austin, sovereignty is essentially a legal fact to be discovered by looking at who, in any given political society, actually receives this habitual obedience and is not in the habit of obeying anyone else; he was not concerned with whether that authority used its power wisely or justly, only with identifying where final legal authority in fact rests.

Together, these two approaches, Bodin's emphasis on supreme and perpetual power and Austin's emphasis on a determinate superior commanding habitual obedience, set the frame within which later writers, including the pluralists discussed below, developed their own views of where sovereignty lies and how absolute it really is.

What is the historical analysis of the concept of sovereignty?

The idea of a single, supreme authority within a political community developed gradually, alongside the rise of the modern nation-state.

1. In the ancient Greek city-states, authority was exercised collectively by citizens in the assembly, but the city-states were small and often dependent on one another, so sovereignty in the modern sense of an absolute and exclusive authority did not exist.
2. In the Roman period, supreme law-making power was associated first with the people and later with the emperor, giving an early sense of a single source of law within a territory.
3. During the medieval period in Europe, authority was divided between the Church and feudal rulers, and the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor both claimed supremacy, so no single, undivided sovereign existed within a state.
4. Jean Bodin, writing in the sixteenth century as feudalism declined and centralised monarchies grew, gave the first systematic theory of sovereignty, describing it as supreme and perpetual power.
5. Thomas Hobbes, in the seventeenth century, carried the theory further by arguing that individuals surrender their natural rights to an absolute sovereign through a social contract, so that the sovereign's authority is undivided and final.
6. John Austin, in the nineteenth century, gave the concept a strictly legal form, defining the sovereign as a determinate human superior receiving habitual obedience and subject to no other superior.

This sequence shows sovereignty developing from a vague and divided authority in ancient and medieval times into a precise legal concept tied to the modern state.

What are the characteristics of sovereignty?

Sovereignty is usually described through a set of characteristics that together mark it off from any other kind of power. Each characteristic highlights a different way in which sovereign authority differs from the power held by an ordinary association, a government department or an individual official.

Absoluteness, universality and permanence

• Absoluteness: the sovereign power is not limited by any other authority within the state, so no institution inside the state, whether a court, a legislature or an executive, can lawfully override the final decision of the sovereign.
• Universality (all-comprehensiveness): sovereignty extends over every person, association and institution within the territory of the state, without exception, so that no individual, group or organisation can claim to stand outside the reach of the state's authority.
• Permanence: sovereignty continues as long as the state exists; it does not end with a change of government or ruler, because sovereignty belongs to the state as a continuing legal entity rather than to any particular person or party that happens to hold office at a given time.

Indivisibility, exclusiveness, inalienability and imprescriptibility

• Indivisibility: sovereignty cannot be split into parts and shared among different bodies, as a single, undivided authority, since dividing final authority between two bodies would mean neither of them is truly final.
• Exclusiveness: within a given territory, there can be only one sovereign authority at a time, because if two rival authorities both claimed final and supreme power over the same territory and people, a conflict between them would have to be resolved by one yielding to the other, showing that only one was truly sovereign.
• Inalienability: the state cannot transfer or give away its sovereignty to another body without ceasing to be a sovereign state, since giving away the power to make final decisions for one's own territory would itself be an admission that one is no longer sovereign.
• Imprescriptibility: sovereignty does not lapse through disuse; failure to exercise a power does not cause the state to lose it, so a state does not lose its authority over a matter merely because it has not made use of that authority for a long period.

These characteristics are closely connected: a power that was limited by another authority, divided among several bodies, or liable to lapse through disuse would, on this view, not really be supreme and final in the way sovereignty is defined to be.

What are the kinds of sovereignty: titular and real?

A distinction is drawn between the person or body that formally holds sovereignty and the person or body that actually exercises it.

A titular sovereign holds sovereign power in name or by title, as a matter of ceremony and tradition, but does not actually exercise it in practice.

A real sovereign is the authority that actually exercises the sovereign power of the state, whatever the formal title may say.

In a parliamentary monarchy, for example, the monarch may be the titular sovereign, while the elected parliament and the cabinet that commands its confidence function as the real sovereign, since actual law-making and governing power lies with them.

Legal and political sovereignty

This distinction separates the authority recognised by law from the force that actually shapes and controls that authority.

Legal sovereignty is the power that is recognised by the law of the state as having the final and supreme right to make and enforce laws; its commands are legally binding and courts enforce them.

Political sovereignty is the power that lies behind the legal sovereign and actually influences and controls its decisions, such as the electorate, public opinion and organised pressure groups.

The legal sovereign in a parliamentary system is usually the legislature, while the political sovereign is the body of voters whose will the legislature is expected to follow.

De jure and de facto sovereignty

A further distinction concerns legal right as against actual exercise of power. A de jure sovereign is one who holds sovereign power by legal right, that is, an authority recognised as sovereign under the constitution and laws of the state.

A de facto sovereign is one who actually wields sovereign power in practice, whether or not this exercise is backed by legal right, for example a government that has come to power through a revolution or a coup and governs effectively even before it gains formal legal recognition.

What is popular sovereignty?

Popular sovereignty is the doctrine that the ultimate source of all political authority in the state is the people, and that governments derive their power only from the consent of the governed.

Rulers and institutions are seen as holding authority in trust for the people, who remain the final source of all power even when they exercise it indirectly through elected representatives rather than directly.

The people do not usually gather to frame every law themselves; instead, they transfer the day-to-day exercise of authority to representatives whom they choose at regular intervals, while retaining the right to withdraw that trust if the representatives fail to govern in the people's interest.

This idea underlies modern representative democracies, in which the people periodically choose their representatives through elections, and the authority of the government is justified by this popular consent.

Because the people are treated as the final source of authority, no ruler or institution in such a system can claim a right to govern that does not, in the end, rest on the people's approval, whether given directly or through their elected representatives.

Note: Popular sovereignty is usually exercised indirectly, through elected representatives, rather than by the people directly making every law themselves.

What is Austin's theory of sovereignty?

John Austin's theory, also called the monistic or legal theory of sovereignty, defines sovereignty strictly in legal terms, deliberately setting aside questions of whether the sovereign's commands are wise, just or morally acceptable.

The determinate human superior and habitual obedience

According to Austin, in every independent political society there exists a determinate human superior, who is not in the habit of obedience to any other superior, and to whom the bulk of the society renders habitual obedience.

The word "determinate" is important here: Austin insisted that the sovereign must be an identifiable person or a definite body of persons, such as a monarch or an assembly, and not a vague or abstract idea such as "the nation" or "the constitution", because only an identifiable superior can actually issue commands that count as law.

The commands of this sovereign are law, and law has no other source. On this view, custom, morality and religion may influence behaviour, but they are not themselves law unless and until the sovereign adopts or enforces them through its own commands; law, for Austin, is essentially the command of the sovereign backed by the threat of a sanction for disobedience.

Four features of Austin's sovereign

Austin held that sovereignty, once this determinate superior is identified, is absolute, indivisible, unlimited and exclusive within the state, meaning that no legal rule can bind the sovereign itself, that the sovereign power cannot be shared between two bodies, and that only one such sovereign can exist within a given independent political society at any one time.

Austin's theory has been criticised for being too narrowly legal, since it concentrates on who issues commands and overlooks the social, moral and customary forces, such as public opinion, religion and custom, that in practice limit and shape how a sovereign actually governs.

Critics also point out that modern states often distribute law-making powers between several institutions, such as a legislature, an executive and constitutional courts, and that identifying a single determinate superior behind all of them is difficult, which makes Austin's model harder to apply directly to many contemporary constitutional systems even though it remains useful as a way of thinking about the purely legal source of law.

What is the pluralistic view of sovereignty?

The pluralistic theory of sovereignty developed as a reaction against Austin's monistic, legal theory. Associated with writers such as Harold Laski, J.N. Figgis, Ernest Barker and F.W. Maitland, it rejects the idea that sovereignty is a single, absolute and indivisible power concentrated in one determinate authority.

The main features of the pluralistic view

The main features of the pluralistic view are as follows:

• The state is only one association among many within society, such as churches, trade unions and professional bodies, and it is not automatically supreme over all of them in every sphere of life.
• Sovereignty, in practice, is divided and shared among different groups and associations, each exercising real authority within its own field rather than deriving all authority from the state.
• The validity of law does not rest solely on the command of a determinate sovereign; it also depends on whether the law is actually accepted and obeyed by the groups and individuals it is meant to govern.
• An individual's allegiance, or loyalty, is divided among many groups and associations, not given exclusively to the state.
• Obedience to the state's laws is treated as conditional on those laws serving a useful social or moral purpose, rather than as an automatic duty owed to an absolute sovereign.

How does Austin's theory differ from the pluralistic view of sovereignty?

The two theories disagree sharply on where sovereignty is located, on how absolute it is, and on what makes a law valid and binding.

Location and nature of sovereignty

Austin's monistic theory treats sovereignty as a single legal fact: once the determinate human superior in a political society is identified, that superior's commands are law simply because they are its commands, and no further question of acceptance by the people is needed for a rule to count as valid law.

The pluralists, by contrast, argue that this picture ignores how authority actually works in practice, where churches, trade unions, professional bodies and other associations exercise real authority over their members, shape behaviour and command loyalty in their own spheres, often independently of the state.

For the pluralists, calling the state's sovereignty absolute and unlimited does not match the reality of a society made up of many overlapping groups, each with its own internal rules and sources of authority, several of which existed before the modern state and continue to function alongside it.

Why people obey the law

The practical difference between the two views shows up most clearly in how each explains why people obey the law.

On Austin's account, people obey because the command comes from a superior who is not habitually obedient to anyone else, and whose sanctions they fear; obedience follows automatically from the existence of the determinate superior.

On the pluralist account, obedience is conditional: people obey a law because, on reflection, they and the groups they belong to accept that the law serves a useful purpose, and the state must, in practice, compete for this acceptance alongside the other associations that also claim the individual's loyalty.

This is why pluralists conclude that sovereignty, properly understood, is shared and limited rather than absolute and indivisible, even though they do not deny that the state remains an important and usually the most powerful association within its territory.

Going beyond the syllabus

The disagreement between Austin and the pluralists is still useful for understanding modern debates on federalism, international organisations and group rights, where authority is often shared between national governments, regional bodies and global institutions, rather than concentrated in a single, absolute sovereign as Austin's theory describes.

In a federal state, for example, authority is distributed between a national government and the governments of constituent units, each with powers in its own sphere that the other cannot simply override, which sits uneasily with Austin's picture of a single determinate superior whose commands are final and unlimited.

International organisations, through treaties and agreements that member states accept and follow, likewise show how a state's authority within its own territory can be shaped by commitments it has itself undertaken.

The pluralists' insistence that the validity of law depends on whether it is actually accepted and obeyed by the groups it governs also anticipates later discussions of group rights, where trade unions, religious bodies, professional associations and similar groups are recognised as having a legitimate sphere of authority that the state does not simply absorb into itself, even though the state remains the final legal authority within its territory.

Glossary

• Sovereignty — the supreme, final and absolute power of the state over all persons and associations within its territory.
• Titular sovereign — the authority that formally holds sovereign power in name or title but does not actually exercise it.
• Real sovereign — the authority that actually exercises the sovereign power of the state in practice.
• Legal sovereign — the authority recognised by law as having the final right to make and enforce binding laws.
• Political sovereign — the power behind the legal sovereign, such as the electorate, that actually influences and controls it.
• De jure sovereign — a sovereign who holds power by legal right, recognised under the constitution and laws of the state.
• De facto sovereign — a sovereign who actually wields power in practice, whether or not backed by legal right.
• Popular sovereignty — the doctrine that ultimate political authority rests with the people, who are the final source of all power.
• Monistic theory — the view, held by Austin, that sovereignty is a single, absolute and indivisible power.
• Pluralistic theory — the view that sovereignty is divided and shared among many associations in society, not concentrated in one body.
• Determinate human superior — in Austin's theory, an identifiable person or body that receives habitual obedience and obeys no other superior.
• Habitual obedience — the regular, settled compliance of the people with the commands of the sovereign.
• Allegiance — the loyalty or obedience that an individual owes to the state or to other associations.
• Indivisibility — the characteristic of sovereignty by which it cannot be split and shared among different bodies.
• Imprescriptibility — the characteristic by which sovereignty does not lapse even if it is not exercised for a long time.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: Sovereignty and government are the same thing. Correct: Government is only the machinery through which sovereign power is exercised; sovereignty itself belongs to the state as a whole.
• Misconception: A titular sovereign has no importance at all. Correct: A titular sovereign may lack real power but can still perform formal, ceremonial and symbolic functions of the state.
• Misconception: Legal sovereignty and political sovereignty are always held by the same body. Correct: The legal sovereign makes and enforces laws, but the political sovereign, such as the electorate, is the force that actually shapes what the legal sovereign decides.
• Misconception: A de facto sovereign is automatically also a de jure sovereign. Correct: A de facto sovereign actually exercises power, but may lack legal right until it is formally recognised as the de jure sovereign.
• Misconception: Popular sovereignty means the people make every law directly. Correct: Popular sovereignty usually operates indirectly, with the people exercising authority through elected representatives.
• Misconception: Austin's theory and the pluralistic theory are only slightly different versions of the same idea. Correct: They differ fundamentally: Austin treats sovereignty as one absolute and indivisible power, while pluralists treat it as divided among many associations.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Define sovereignty. [2 marks]

1. Sovereignty is the supreme, final and absolute power of the state over all persons and associations within its territory.
2. It is the quality that marks off the state from every other association, since no other authority inside or outside the state can override it, and it continues as long as the state itself exists.

Q2. Distinguish between titular sovereignty and real sovereignty. [4 marks]

1. A titular sovereign holds sovereign power in name or by title but does not actually exercise it in practice.
2. A real sovereign is the authority that actually exercises the sovereign power of the state, whatever the formal title may say.
3. The titular sovereign performs mainly formal and ceremonial functions, while the real sovereign takes the actual governing decisions.
4. In a parliamentary monarchy, the monarch is commonly the titular sovereign, while the elected parliament and the cabinet that commands its confidence function as the real sovereign, since actual law-making and governing power lies with them.

Q3. Explain the difference between de jure and de facto sovereignty. [4 marks]

1. A de jure sovereign holds sovereign power by legal right, recognised as sovereign under the constitution and laws of the state.
2. A de facto sovereign actually wields sovereign power in practice, whether or not this exercise is backed by legal right.
3. A government that comes to power through a revolution or a coup may act as a de facto sovereign and govern effectively even before it gains formal legal recognition.
4. Over time, such a de facto sovereign may come to be accepted and recognised as the de jure sovereign as well, once its authority gains legal standing.

Q4. State four characteristics of sovereignty. [4 marks]

1. Absoluteness: sovereign power is not limited by any other authority within the state, so no body inside the state can override its decisions.
2. Universality, or all-comprehensiveness: sovereignty extends over every person and association in the territory, without exception, so nothing within the state lies outside its reach.
3. Indivisibility: sovereignty cannot be split into parts and shared among different bodies, since it exists as a single, undivided authority.
4. Permanence: sovereignty continues as long as the state exists, and does not end merely because the government or the ruler changes.

Q5. What is popular sovereignty, and how is it usually exercised? [4 marks]

1. Popular sovereignty is the doctrine that the ultimate source of all political authority in the state is the people.
2. Governments and rulers are seen as holding authority in trust for the people, who derive their power only from the consent of the governed.
3. It is usually exercised indirectly, through representatives whom the people choose in periodic elections, rather than by the people making every law directly themselves.
4. This idea underlies modern representative democracies, in which the authority of the government is justified by the people's periodic consent given through elections.

Q6. Give a historical account of the development of the concept of sovereignty. [8 marks]

1. In ancient Greek city-states, authority was exercised collectively by citizens in the assembly, but the city-states were small and often dependent on one another, so sovereignty in the modern, absolute sense did not exist.
2. In the Roman period, supreme law-making power was associated first with the people and later with the emperor, giving an early sense of a single source of law within a territory.
3. During the medieval period, authority was divided between the Church and feudal rulers, and the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor both claimed supremacy, so no single, undivided sovereign existed within a state.
4. Jean Bodin, writing as feudalism declined and centralised monarchies grew, gave the first systematic theory of sovereignty, describing it as supreme and perpetual power.
5. Thomas Hobbes carried the theory further, arguing that individuals surrender their natural rights to an absolute sovereign through a social contract, making the sovereign's authority undivided and final.
6. John Austin gave the concept a strictly legal form, defining the sovereign as a determinate human superior receiving habitual obedience and subject to no other superior.
7. The pluralists later reacted against this legal, absolute view, arguing that sovereignty is, in practice, divided and shared among many associations in society.
8. The concept has therefore moved from a vague and divided authority in ancient and medieval times, through Bodin's and Hobbes's theories, to Austin's precise legal theory, and then to a more flexible, shared understanding of authority.

Q7. Explain Austin's theory of sovereignty. [8 marks]

1. Austin's theory, also called the monistic or legal theory, defines sovereignty strictly in legal terms.
2. It holds that in every independent political society there exists a determinate human superior, an identifiable person or body holding ultimate authority.
3. This superior is not in the habit of obeying any other superior, inside or outside the state.
4. The bulk of the society renders habitual obedience to this determinate superior, as a matter of regular, settled compliance.
5. The commands of this sovereign constitute law, and law has no other source under this theory.
6. Sovereignty, once this determinate superior is identified, is absolute, since no other authority within the state can limit it.
7. It is also indivisible, since it cannot be split and shared among different bodies, and exclusive, since only one such superior can exist in a given state at a time.
8. The theory has been criticised for being too narrowly legal, since it focuses only on who issues commands and overlooks the social, moral and customary forces, such as public opinion, religion and custom, that actually shape how a sovereign governs in practice.

Q8. Describe the features of the pluralistic view of sovereignty. [8 marks]

1. The pluralistic theory developed as a reaction against Austin's monistic, legal theory of sovereignty.
2. It is associated with writers such as Harold Laski, J.N. Figgis, Ernest Barker and F.W. Maitland.
3. It rejects the idea that sovereignty is a single, absolute and indivisible power concentrated in one determinate authority.
4. The state is treated as only one association among many within society, such as churches, trade unions and professional bodies.
5. The state is not automatically supreme over these other associations in every sphere of life, according to this view.
6. Sovereignty, in practice, is divided and shared among different groups and associations, each exercising real authority within its own field.
7. The validity of law does not rest solely on the command of a determinate sovereign, but also on whether the law is actually accepted and obeyed by the groups and individuals it is meant to govern.
8. An individual's allegiance is divided among many groups and associations, not given exclusively to the state, and obedience to the state's laws is treated as conditional on those laws serving a useful social or moral purpose.

Key takeaways

• Sovereignty is the supreme, final and absolute power of the state over all persons and associations in its territory.
• Its main characteristics are absoluteness, universality, permanence, indivisibility, exclusiveness, inalienability and imprescriptibility.
• The concept developed historically from vague and divided authority in Greek and medieval times to Bodin's and Hobbes's theories, and finally to Austin's precise legal theory.
• Titular sovereignty is held in name only, while real sovereignty is actually exercised in practice.
• Legal sovereignty belongs to the body recognised by law, while political sovereignty belongs to the force, such as the electorate, that actually controls it.
• De jure sovereignty rests on legal right, while de facto sovereignty rests on actual exercise of power.
• Popular sovereignty places ultimate authority in the people, usually exercised indirectly through representatives.
• Austin's theory treats sovereignty as absolute, indivisible and concentrated in one determinate superior.
• The pluralistic theory treats sovereignty as divided among many associations in society, with the state as only one association among them.

Test yourself

What does the word "sovereignty" literally mean, and from which language does it come?

It comes from the Latin word "superanus," meaning supreme or above all, reflecting the idea of a supreme power above every other authority.

Name two characteristics of sovereignty other than absoluteness.

Universality, meaning sovereignty covers every person and association in the territory, and indivisibility, meaning it cannot be split and shared among different bodies.

Which jurist is usually credited with giving the first systematic theory of sovereignty?

Jean Bodin, the French jurist, is usually credited with the first systematic theory, describing sovereignty as supreme and perpetual power.

What is the key difference between a titular sovereign and a real sovereign?

A titular sovereign holds power in name or title only, while a real sovereign actually exercises the sovereign power of the state in practice.

How does a de facto sovereign differ from a de jure sovereign?

A de facto sovereign actually wields power in practice, while a de jure sovereign holds power by legal right recognised under the constitution.

What does Austin mean by a "determinate human superior"?

An identifiable person or body within a political society that receives habitual obedience from the people and is not habitually obedient to any other superior.

Name two thinkers associated with the pluralistic theory of sovereignty.

Harold Laski and J.N. Figgis are two thinkers associated with the pluralistic theory; Ernest Barker and F.W. Maitland are also associated with it.

Why does the pluralistic theory reject the idea that the state is supreme over all other associations?

Because it treats the state as only one association among many, such as churches and trade unions, each exercising real authority within its own field.