State Sovereignty

State Sovereignty

Introduction

One of the essential elements of a state system is the concept of state sovereignty. In the current era of global politics, each state views sovereignty as its inalienable political and legal property. State sovereignty has many definitions, and many of them are contradictory. This contradiction is informed by how complex international life is (Biersteker 2002). Professor Tunkin defines state sovereignty as the inborn supremacy, which a state has in its territory and the independence that it has when dealing with other nations on the international sphere (Butler 2002). This definition has been highly contested as it fails to reflect the current international relations among states and the various changes that have occurred in international law. Specifically, the definition is said to have failed to embrace certain concepts such as human rights, which are regarded as fundamental foundations of the international order that states cannot defy on the grounds of having state sovereignty. Despite the necessary changes in the definition of sovereignty with time, the working definition of the concept is the understanding that states exclusively and completely control people within its territory and that one nation cannot demand another country to take a particular internal action. This paper aims to look at the concept of state sovereignty with a particular reference to Palestine. Seventy years ago, the General Assembly Resolution 181 called for the partition between Israel and Palestine and the establishment of sovereign states of Palestine and Israel. However, until now, the establishment of the sovereign state of Palestine is yet to be achieved. In the first part, the paper will provide a broad understanding of the concept of sovereignty and provide some of the reasons why Palestine is not yet a state. In the second and the last part, the paper will aim to look at how the study of sovereignty has developed and its implications on how the world currently understands international relations.

The Concept of Sovereignty, its Aspects, Elements, Features, and Characteristics in Relation to Palestine

Primarily, state sovereignty has two core aspects, internal sovereignty, and external sovereignty. Internal sovereignty alludes to the fact that in every independent state, some persons possess the absolute powers to enforce obedience (Gevorgyan 2014). This type of sovereignty is absolute since every person within a state is under the absolute authority of the individuals with the powers to exercise sovereign authority. In Palestine, most of the regions are still under the watch of the Israeli soldiers. As such, the Israeli soldiers enforce obedience. On this account, Palestine lacks internal sovereignty. On the other hand, external authority means that a state cannot be subjected to the authority of any other country and cannot be compelled by another state to do a certain act since it is fully independent of other nations in the world. As a result, a state cannot be compelled to enter into a trade treaty and cannot be forced to renounce any agreement that it is has voluntarily entered. External sovereignty implies that every state has full independence to formulate a foreign policy that it intends to use and to join any power bloc it wishes. For instance, a state like Britain cannot be forced by other European states to be part of the European Union if it needs to leave the union. The external sovereignty preserves the national freedom of a state. In Palestine, the people lack this national freedom of a state. This concept explains perhaps why the citizens of the country have been fighting to get their freedom and sovereignty since the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

The proponents of the classical theory of sovereignty point out that sovereignty has various characteristics, for instance, illimitability or absoluteness, permanence, unity, universality or all-comprehensiveness, and inalienability (Roth 2005). The characteristic of permanence in state sovereignty means that a state will remain to be sovereign as long as it continues to last as an independent state. Currently, Palestine lacks full independence since parts of it are still under the control of the Israel government. The change of government in a state through either a coup or peaceful transition or the death of the head of state does not make a state lose its sovereignty. The premise for this notion is that leaders of a country are not themselves the representation of sovereignty, but instead, they exercise sovereignty on behalf of a country.

Further, sovereignty is said to be exclusive. Therefore, a state cannot have two sovereigns. Having two sovereigns means that sovereignty has been destroyed. As such, there should only be one sovereign in a state for the nation to possess state sovereignty. With reference to Palestine, two bodies claim sovereignty. The first one is the Palestine National Authority, while the second one is the government of Israel. Furthermore, Palestinian territories include the Gaza strip and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem). However, Israeli military and civilian government control 61% of West Bank, whereas the Palestinian Authority controls only 39%. Therefore, state sovereignty in Palestine is not exclusive, and thus it is non-existent.

Additionally, state sovereignty is said to be absolute (Brännström 2015). The concept implies that the sovereignty of a state cannot be limited. The state is entitled to do anything that it wishes. The logic behind this, as propounded by Austin, is that if a state has limited sovereignty, then it has submitted part of its sovereignty to another state, and if this happens, that state ceases to be a state. There is no absolute sovereignty in Palestine since the country lacks the power to make its decisions independently. However, as it shall be seen in the second part of this paper, the conception of the absoluteness of state sovereignty has been limited as the study of sovereignty continues to develop. From the above characteristics of a sovereign state, Palestine has failed to satisfy the requirements of sovereignty. First, the country has no permanent population since most of its inhabitants are refugees in Arab countries. Furthermore, the country has no particularly defined territory and is still not eligible to join the United Nations as an independent country. These three aspects will have to be satisfied before Palestine can be said to have full sovereignty.

Another important concept in the understanding of state sovereignty is to note that there are different classifications of state sovereignty. State sovereignty can either be legal, political, popular and de facto and de jure sovereignty. The first classification, which is legal sovereignty, comes into play when a state has the legal power to issue final commands. According to Jean Bodin, who propounded the legal theory of sovereignty, sovereignty is said to be legal sovereignty if the final authority of a state lies in its powers to make law (Weston & Janelle 2003). Every state has laws that have to be obeyed, and it is incumbent upon certain powers and possess legal sovereignty to issue and enforce them. In such a context, there can be no right against the legal sovereign since he is in charge of granting people the rights they enjoy and enforcing those rights. Palestine has no legal sovereignty since most of its territories are under the laws of the Israeli state.

Another classification of state autonomy is political sovereignty. Even though legal sovereignty is determinate, it must bow to political sovereignty. In every peaceful state with law and order, the legal sovereign of that state has to give the political sovereign of the same state due attention. Political sovereignty is regarded as the power of the people since it is their influence that acts behind the law to influence the things that happen in a state (Ecks 2005). Contrary to legal sovereignty, which is clear and determinate, political sovereignty is vague and indeterminate since the so-called power of the people that forms its foundation rests on different groups of people ranging from the electorate, the civil society organizations, and in public opinion. Although being powerful, legal sovereignty cannot go against political sovereignty. However, political sovereignty, on its part, has control over legal sovereignty.

The third classification of authority is popular sovereignty. This sovereignty pits the power, which the people of a state have to the influence possessed by the ruling class. In this type of sovereignty, the people in a state are said to wield more power than anybody else. In a democratic country, popular sovereignty means the power, which the majority of the people have. These people have the discretion to choose whatever will they perceive is appropriate to them and make it prevail. Lastly, state sovereignty can be classified as de facto and de jure sovereignty. De jure sovereignty is sovereignty that has been sanctioned by law. Nobody can challenge sovereignty that has been sanctioned by law on the question of its legality. On the other hand, de facto sovereignty is the actual sovereignty of a state and cannot be founded on the law (Nicolosi 2011). The authority comes into existence when a state makes its will prevail either against or per the law. Whereas Palestine does not have either legal, political, or popular sovereignty, in 2016, the United Nations approved the de facto recognition of the sovereignty of Palestine and gave it a non-member state position at UN.

The Development of the Study of Sovereignty and its Implications in the Understanding of International Relations

Traditional Studies of State Sovereignty

Over the past years, the study of sovereignty and its understanding has been under constant changes and development. Traditionally, if Palestine was to be recognized as a sovereign state, it had had to be independent and sovereign. The initial studies of sovereignty were undertaken by Jean Bodin, who viewed state sovereignty as a government’s absolute and perpetual power. According to the scholar, absolute sovereignty mandates a state to exercise full dominion over its territorial boundaries and that no other law creating agent should be above a state in its jurisdiction (Andrew 2011). Bodin adds that state sovereignty cannot be limited even by positive law and that only the natural law and the law of God that can restrict it. Bodin was of the view that only international law can bind state sovereignty. Thomas Hobbes came up with his conception of state sovereignty in the seventeenth century by averring that state sovereignty is not bound by anything and that within its territorial borders, a state has sovereignty over everything, including religion.

While conducting studies on the concept of state sovereignty, the Spanish scholar Francisco de Vitoria argued that the objectives and aims of a state are encompassed within the common good of the larger global community (Scott & Francisco 2000). According to de Vitoria ,if a state like Palestine had to be sovereign, then it must be subjected to international law, which is a law that has been established by the whole global community. According to Francisco de Vitoria, absolute state sovereignty is a fallacy since it is the common good of the larger world community that dictates international relations among states and that it is the obligation of a state to make sure its acts conform to the requirements of the world community. On his part, Francisco Suarez posits that principles such as pacta sunt servanda which are major concepts of international law bind states and cannot be changed (Dörr & Kirsten 2012). As such, when states relate with each other, they are required to do so in good faith.

Studies by Hugo Grotius, who is acknowledged as the father of international law focused mainly on distinguishing the customary law of nations and the international relations between states. Grotius asserted that the will of states is independent of international law, but international law is fashioned to bind sovereign states (Bull 2017). A look into the understanding of state sovereignty shows that most of the traditional studies focus on state sovereignty as the supreme authority and independence, which a state has. However, they somehow recognized that state sovereignty is not absolute, but particular higher norms instead bind it.

Westphalian Sovereignty Studies

After fighting for 30 years, Europe finally ended up with the 1648 peace of Westphalia. This peace was a significant part of the development of international law since it saw a transition from person-oriented to territory-oriented law (Osiander 2001). During this time, scholars aimed to put absolute sovereignty on states, and they did this first by declaring that all states are equal. Initially, states used to be given importance based on a hierarchy. However, the peace of Westphalia brought a dispensation where states can relate with each other at a global landscape while treating each other as equal partners. Thus, there is no difference between the United States and Seychelles in the international eyes since both of them are sovereign states with a duty to cooperate.

The Concept of State Sovereignty under the Classical Studies

In the classical age, state sovereignty was understood to mean that a state had the powers to govern itself without any interference from outside. The international law was considered to possess no binding force, and states were seen to have a full mandate to define what they perceive as being right in their territorial boundaries. The classical theorists of sovereignty came up with the idea of equality of states, which was aimed to make sure that neither international law nor other states can intrude into the affairs of another state (Clark & Iver 2016). The scholars in this period, which ranged from the late 18th century and early 19th century, saw international law as voluntary. Particularly, they saw international law as something that derived its rules from treaties. As such, international law was supposed to guide state sovereignty based on the subject of the treaties in which a state is a member and should not extend its mandate beyond that.

Modern Studies on the Concept of State Sovereignty

In the early 20th century, understanding state sovereignty was through the study of classical theorists who were advocating for state autonomy to be absolute, and unlimited was a threat to the preservation of international peace. Further, the classical approach to state sovereignty seemed to pose a big threat to the existence of independent nation-states. Scholars such as Duguit have opined that in the current understanding of the conception of state sovereignty, the idea of a state has been replaced by public service and that a state is no longer viewed as a sovereign power with the ability to issue its commands (Duguit 2018). The scholar argues that the modern state theory has clung to the idea of public service and that this has made sovereignty to disintegrate. Duguit defines public service as activities which the government is under an obligation to perform.

The modern theory of state sovereignty as advanced by Lauterpach views sovereignty as an aspect that can be divided and limited. He replaces the principle of absolute sovereignty with relative sovereignty and avers that the modern existence of states is that the freedom of one state is limited by the freedom of another state (Vrdoljak 2009). Additionally, international law superintends over the independent nature of a state. Another view of relative sovereignty, as propounded by Ninčić, sees the inclusion of individuals as subjects of international law, which is a departure from the classical theorists who viewed states as the only subjects of international law (Biersteker 2002). As a result, when a state loses its status as a subject of international law, it ceases to be a sovereign state.

The modern studies of sovereignty occasions a departure from the conception of unconditional sovereignty and replacing it with responsible where the chief objective of a sovereign state is the need to protect its citizens and to make sure that it has taken care of their welfare. When the United Nations was founded in 1945, it majorly set out to bring sanity to international relations between states by making sure human rights are respected, wars are prevented from happening, and that international peace and security are maintained. Additionally, the body aimed to maintain global justice and welfare and to make sure there are collective measures in place that can allow states to cooperate peacefully with each other. The United Nations Charter prohibits the use of force among nations and holds that a sovereign state is only allowed to use force in circumstances of self-defense.

Conclusion

Sovereignty is a coveted existence globally. Countries like Kosovo, Western Sahara, and Palestine have continued to engage in struggles that are aimed to make sure they become sovereign states. When a country is sovereign, it enjoys some benefits. For instance, no other country will be allowed to interfere in a sovereign state’s internal affairs and had a right to lodge war as an exercise of self-defense. The development of the study of sovereignty over the years, starting from the traditional studies, to the modern studies, shows that emerging issues exist that states must take into keen consideration as they continue to relate with one another. The understanding of international relations, which is basically how states relate at a global level on issues such as politics, economics, law, and environment needs to be approached with the knowledge that the concept of state sovereignty keeps on changing and that all states in the world are equal before international law (Laski 2014). Further, as states continue to tackle global issues such as terrorism and cyber-attacks, they should do so with a full understanding of the sovereignty of the states they are dealing with and should be willing to cooperate to fulfill the objectives of the international law as provided for by the United Nations charter.